EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The coronavirus pandemic has brought perhaps the fastest, and most stark changes to working patterns in living memory.  Whilst workers in healthcare, policing, retail, delivery, cleaning and a host of other essential frontline services grapple with vastly increased demand and challenging working conditions, the majority of office staff are having to quickly adjust to 24/7 remote work.  And IT and security teams are facing multiple challenges in delivering and securing this mass migration to remote connectivity.

To better understand these challenges, Check Point, together with Dimensional Research, recently surveyed 411 IT and security professionals, all from organizations of 500 or more employees and across a range of industries.

The results are sobering.

The leading threat cited was phishing (55%) followed by malicious websites purporting to offer information or advice about the pandemic (32%). Increases in malware (28%) and ransomware attacks (19%) have also been noticed.

Meanwhile, 95% of security professionals say they are facing added IT security challenges due to the spread of coronavirus. The three leading challenges were the provision of secure remote access for employees, mentioned by 56% of respondents; the need for remote access scalable solutions (55%) and employees working from home using untested software, tools and services (47%).

Looking to the future, 61% of security professionals are concerned about the need for rapid adjustments to changing circumstances, and 55% are worried about the need for improved remote access security. 49% are concerned about the need to scale-up security remotely.

In some ways, these results are unsurprising. Cybercriminals will always seek to capitalize on the latest trends to try and boost the success rates of attacks, and the Coronavirus pandemic has created a truly perfect storm.

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