Avast study shows that over half of IT decision-makers in small and medium-sized businesses are more concerned about cybersecurity today than they were before the pandemic. The bigger the company, the more worries about IT security in the home office.
A recent survey by Avast, a leading global provider of IT security and data protection solutions, found that security fears among IT decision-makers in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have increased by 56 percent since the beginning of the pandemic to have. The more employees a company has, the more worries and hardships IT managers currently have. Accordingly, in companies with 2-5 employees, the situation in the home office has been a headache since the pandemic, while with 35-100 employees it is up to 300 percent.
The bigger the company, the bigger the worries
Percentage distribution of security concerns among IT decision-makers since the beginning of the pandemic in relation to company size:
- 2-5 employees: 35 percent
- 6-10 employees: 43 percent
- 11-49 employees: 53 percent
- 50-99 employees: 61 percent
- 100-300 employees: 70 percent
The “New Work” model, i.e. the significant increase in employees who have been working from home on a regular basis since the pandemic, is fueling concerns among IT managers. This change in the world of work has, among other things, resulted in an expansion of company networks, and securing them has become a strategic priority for many companies.
Of the IT decision-makers surveyed in the study, 59 percent said that they had problems keeping up with the security of their employees' devices in the home office. At the same time, 54 percent of respondents said that it is difficult to educate employees about cyber risks and how to avoid them when they work from home.
Getting everyone to work from home was a challenge
“The past 18 months have been an incredible challenge for SMEs, many have managed to adapt quickly to the changed working conditions and ensure that their employees can continue to work as well as possible. IT decision-makers had the tricky task of managing their workforce and keeping the infrastructure of their company intact and secure, ”says Thomas Hefner, Sales Director DACH & CEE at Avast. “It is clear that hybrid work patterns will prevail in the future, and since any device can be an access point to the corporate network, SMBs need to develop a robust and comprehensive approach to cybersecurity. However, this does not always have to be done in-house, because professional managed service providers can help small and medium-sized companies in particular to manage and secure their infrastructure remotely. "
Changes in the home office
Before the pandemic, 20 percent of German SME employees and 30 percent of IT decision-makers worked from home. Unsurprisingly, those numbers have risen over the past year, with SMB employees more than double (12 percent) likely to have worked from home in the past 44 months than before the pandemic.
It is noticeable that the extent of home work is not the same in all countries, even if the pandemic influences the decisions. For example, working from home was more widespread in Great Britain last year than in Germany - 64 percent of employees in small and medium-sized companies worked from home in Great Britain last year, compared with only 44 percent in Germany. For IT staff, who are often responsible for on-site tasks, these numbers were lower at 57 percent in the UK compared to 36 percent in Germany.
Challenges to be overcome
When asked about the challenges and concerns related to employees who do not work from the office, five main problems emerged for the IT managers surveyed:
- 35 percent: More employees work via insecure Internet connections
- 35 percent: Employees use personal devices without security controls to connect to the IT network
- 32 percent: Employees who work from home are less careful about what they do online, e.g. B. what you download
- 29 percent: Managing security on employees' devices is more difficult when they work from home
- 25 percent: Employees who work from home mean that IT managers have less insight into company-wide IT systems
As expected, cyber criminals have also taken advantage of the pandemic: Avast has noted a 24 percent increase in business users exposed to a cyber threat compared to the previous year. In addition, at the beginning of the pandemic, ransomware attacks increased by 20 percent worldwide. In the home office, for example, the Remote Desktop Protocol has become a popular point of attack in conjunction with easy-to-guess passwords.
Employees praise the IT department
Despite the challenges and the increasing concern among IT managers, the employees of SMEs have words of praise for the college from the IT department: 77 percent said that their company did a good job of protecting employees during the Covid-19 pandemic has done in the home office. Additionally, 66 percent of workers said their company learned valuable lessons on how to deal with remote workers as a result of the pandemic.
The study was conducted by Dynata in July 2021. 500 IT decision-makers in Great Britain and Germany and 1.000 SME employees in Great Britain and Germany were interviewed.
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About Avast Avast (LSE: AVST), a FTSE 100 company, is a leading global provider of digital security and privacy products. Avast has over 400 million online users and offers products under the Avast and AVG brands that protect people from threats from the Internet and the evolving IoT threat landscape. The company's threat detection network is one of the most advanced in the world, using technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect and stop threats in real time. Avast's digital security products for mobile, PC or Mac have been top-rated and certified by VB100, AV-Comparatives, AV-Test, SE Labs and other test institutes.