Organisations are struggling with network breaches, ransomware attacks, remote work, and more, says new report from Barracuda

More than two-thirds (70 per cent) of UK businesses have been the victim of a successful network security attack in the last year, and 65 per cent have been the victim of at least one ransomware attack in the last 12 months, according to new research from Barracuda Networks, a trusted partner and leading provider of cloud-enabled security solutions.

These findings were released today in a new report titled: “The state of network security in 2021.” Commissioned by Barracuda, the research surveyed 100 UK IT decision makers responsible for their organisation’s networking, public cloud, and security to get their perspectives on cloud adoption, working from home, security concerns, and a variety of issues and challenges related to cybersecurity risks.

The data revealed that a significant 80 per cent of respondents with company-issued devices share their home internet connection with other members of their household, posing a significant security risk. Furthermore, one third (34 per cent) of UK companies do not issue company devices, and instead operated a bring your own device (BYOD) policy, and an additional 43 per cent of companies do issue company devices, but still allow BYOD for some use cases such as email.

What’s more, remote working is set to continue, with over nine in 10 (94 per cent) IT decision makers revealing that the majority of their workforce are likely to continue remote working for at least one or two days a week. 34 per cent will even remain working from a remote environment on a full time basis.

To help overcome work-from-home challenges, the report revealed that Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) technologies are being prioritised to prevent security breaches and overcome work from home challenges.

In fact, 97 per cent of UK IT decision makers have already deployed or plan to deploy of Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Extended Detection and Response Solution (XDR).

Tim Jefferson, SVP, Engineering for Data, Networks and Application Security, Barracuda:

“Organisations are experiencing a high level of network breaches and facing ongoing connectivity and security challenges as they adapt to hybrid work environments,” 

“But, they are realising that moving to SaaS applications and the public cloud improves both the user experience and security, so they’re starting to embrace new SASE technologies.”