Remote working drove cyber attack volume up 78%

By Staff Writer – A massive 78% of businesses globally experienced an increase in the volume of cyberattacks because of a shift towards remote work, according to data presented by the Atlas VPN team.

Even though social media platforms are flooded with news of companies proudly presenting the fact that they are permanently shifting to a remote-work environment, they usually do not mention the fact that the pivot has created major issues for their security.

Unpatched personal devices, erratic employee behavior, and inadequately protected home networks create many loopholes for threat actors to exploit.

Carbon Black, a company that provides workload protection services surveyed 3 542 CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs to find out if WFH (work from home) resulted in an increase in cyberattacks. Respondents were from various industries and 14 different countries. The survey was published in June 2021.

The study shows that a massive 96% of enterprises in France saw a significant increase in the number of attacks due to the shift to a WFH environment.

The second most affected country is Australia, where 89% of cybersecurity professionals reported that attacks increased due to employees working remotely. The UK and Japan share third and fourth place, with 86% of respondents stating that they noticed a significant jump in cyber threats in the past year.

As many as 84% of businesses in Saudi Arabia, 83% in the Netherlands, 82% in Singapore, and 80% in the United Arab Emirates said that attacks jumped substantially. Canada is in line with the global average, where 78% of enterprises reported a growth in the cyberattack volume.

The US is at the lower side of the scale, with 63% of cybersecurity professionals reporting an increase in cyber threats in the past year.

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