COVID-19 impact on digital transformation, cloud and security strategies

Half a year into the shutdown, companies are still playing catch up to optimize their remote work experience, according to Infoblox.

Survey findings are based on 1,077 responses from the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, China, Japan, Australia, and Singapore.

The borderless enterprise is here to stay

More than 90% of decision-makers consider digital transformation and cloud-managed services a priority. The percentage of companies with a majority of employees working remotely more than tripled from 21% before the shutdown to 70% after. 40% of companies, twice the pre-COVID-19 rate, are permanently keeping a majority of workers remote.

Optimizing remote work

Organizations are still building out their IT infrastructure and security controls to optimize remote work. Organizations say distributing sanctioned devices (35%), building network infrastructure (35%), and securing the network (29%) are top IT challenges when transitioning to remote work.

The top security concerns

Threat mitigation and network visibility remain the top security concerns for the remote work environment. 68% say better threat detection and or mitigation technologies would enable more remote work for their organizations.

Specifically, respondents are looking for better visibility into devices on the corporate network (65%), cloud applications workers are using (61%), and compromised devices (46%).

Security incidents are rising

Half of the surveyed businesses are seeing more cyber-attacks—with the biggest jumps in China and Australia—while just a quarter are seeing fewer.

COVID-19 impact: Fostering collaboration

Companies are reversing policies to allow the use of personal applications to foster collaboration. 63% of companies are allowing workers to connect with each other using applications like WhatsApp, Zoom, and Houseparty.

Companies are using cloud security tools, particularly from the DDI family (DNS, DHCP, IP Address Management), to secure the borderless enterprise. 59% of companies plan on making additional investments in DNS to secure their expanded networks.

“When the COVID-19 shutdown started, organizations rushed to enable remote work overnight,” said Kanaiya Vasani, Executive Vice President, Products and Corporate Development at Infoblox. “Their top priority was making sure workers could connect to enterprise applications from their homes—sometimes through unsecured personal devices.”