Some 72% of respondents to a survey in Thailand experienced at least double the number of security incidents recorded in 2022, which has been attributed to an increase in hybrid work, according to a survey commissioned by Fortinet.
“As the world shifts to hybrid work, organisations face the challenge of securing a ‘branch-office-of-one’ environment where employees and devices operate outside of traditional office boundaries,” said Rashish Pandey, vice-president of marketing and communications for Asia, Australia and New Zealand at Fortinet.
Mr Pandey referred to IDC’s new Asia-Pacific SASE survey — commissioned by Fortinet — which found that hybrid work and the growth in managed and unmanaged connections has caused a significant rise in security incidents, with 34% of organisations surveyed in Thailand reporting more than triple the number of breaches recorded in the previous year.
SASE, which stands for secure access service edge, is a cloud architecture model that combines network and security-as-a-service functions into a single cloud service to improve the security aspect and provide consistency in the user experience for remote employees.
The SASE survey included the participation of 450 cybersecurity leaders from nine different locations across Asia, including Thailand. The most common security incidents reported were phishing, denial of service, data/identity theft, ransomware and data loss.
According to the survey, 96% of respondents in Thailand have a hybrid or fully remote working model, with about 44% having at least 50% of their employees working in hybrid mode.
This shift to remote work has resulted in employees becoming “branch offices of one”, working from their homes or other locations outside the traditional office.
Consequently, 80% of respondents in Thailand anticipate managed devices to surge by 100% over the next two years with some expecting growth of 400%.
Additionally, 64% respondents in Thailand expect unmanaged devices to grow by over 50%. This is expected to compound the complexity and risk of security breaches, placing additional strain on already overburdened IT security teams.
With cloud computing and remote work becoming more prevalent, an increasing number of users, devices and data are located outside of enterprise networks.
Currently, 30% of devices connecting to networks in Thailand are unmanaged, raising the possibility of security breaches.
The survey indicated that the employees of the Thai respondents need over 40 connections to third-party cloud apps, increasing the risk of security breaches.
