Asia Pacific Businesses Identify Zero Trust as Key to Addressing Increasing Cyber Attacks and Flexible Workforces

New Cloudflare study reveals the latest security trends in the region, including 54% of companies experienced more cyber attacks in 2021 vs. 2020

Cloudflare, Inc., the security, performance, and reliability company helping to build a better Internet, released new findings on security practices across Asia Pacific, revealing how organizations are coping with increased cyberattacks and flexible workforces. The survey solidified that across the region attacks are up, and organizations are looking for new ways to secure their workforce—turning to Zero Trust security models.

Organizations Couldn’t Rely on Outdated Security Procedures as Cyberattacks Increased

According to the study, which was conducted across 1,000 IT and cybersecurity decision-makers and influencers across Australia, India, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore, more than half (54%) of organizations in Asia Pacific have experienced more security incidents in 2021 than in the previous year. And with attacks on the rise, 83% of respondents said they had to make changes to their IT security procedures.

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Securing Flexible Workforces Keeps IT Leaders Awake at Night

The study also found that the pandemic left organizations unprepared to cope with the challenges of remote working and added security risks. According to the survey, 44% of the respondents said the pandemic has had a significant impact on how their organization approached IT security, and 77% shared IT security as one of the main areas “keeping them awake at night.”

As businesses navigate their way through a post-pandemic world, 88% of respondents said their organization will be implementing a flexible workforce—a combination of return-to-office and work from home, with 85% saying their workforce will be more mobile in the future, a move now likely to forever change our way of working. This hybrid work model requires a security strategy that can maximize productivity regardless of location, without compromising IT networks and infrastructure.

Organizations are Turning to Zero Trust Security Models to Secure their Workforces

The study further reveals that a majority—86% of organizations—are aware of Zero Trust, and 66% of respondents indicated they have implemented a Zero Trust strategy. Of those that have yet to implement Zero Trust, 58% said they will be implementing a Zero Trust strategy in the next 12 months.

However, businesses face a number of challenges when it comes to incorporating Zero Trust in their IT security strategy, with 67% of respondents stating that the biggest risk to their ability to execute is the lack of internal IT security experts. Likewise, educating internal stakeholders to obtain buy-in, and allocating the appropriate level of financial resources are also key to implementing Zero Trust.

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Zero Trust Security for the Modern Enterprise

Companies have traditionally used a castle-and-moat approach to security, creating a barrier between the enterprise network and external threats. Now that applications have moved to the cloud, and more employees have moved outside of the office, that model is broken. Today’s new landscape requires a Zero Trust approach, where organizations do not automatically trust any requests to corporate data or resources, and instead, verify every attempt to connect to corporate systems before allowing them access. A Zero Trust architecture trusts no one and nothing.

“Companies are moving towards a hybrid way of working and the only way to secure today’s work-from-anywhere economy is to secure each individual employee. That means protecting their individual networks, devices, and access to business-critical applications. Cloudflare knows the importance of being able to give organizations of any size the power to solve their security and networking needs seamlessly, no matter how their business needs or work environments shift,” said Jonathon Dixon, Vice-President and General Manager, Asia Pacific, Japan and China of Cloudflare.

In October 2020, Cloudflare launched Cloudflare One, a Zero Trust, network-as-a-service (NaaS) solution for enterprises that securely connects remote users, offices, and data centers to each other and the resources they need. This unified solution enables fast and safe connections to workplace applications, allows teams to use an app without exposing it to the public Internet, makes personal devices safe for business use, and works in any environment with any cloud provider. Cloudflare’s Zero Trust solution sits in its global network, which spans 250 cities in more than 100 countries, including 84 cities across Asia Pacific, Japan, and China.

Today some of Asia Pacific’s most sophisticated organizations turn to Cloudflare for their Zero Trust security needs, including Canva and Kathmandu. “As we embrace a hybrid way of working, enabling remote collaboration at scale is a priority. Implementing a Zero Trust strategy allows us to focus on adding value to our platform, growing the team and expanding into new markets with confidence,” said Jim Tyrrell, Head of Infrastructure at Canva.

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