The latest study from ManageEngine, the enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corp., revealed a dismal rate of implementing Zero Trust strategies among firms. This, even if 56% of organizations worldwide have changed their cybersecurity policies amid the shift to remote work and rising cyberattacks on the remote workforce.

Zero Trust is a model in which anything and everything trying to connect to an IT system are verified first before access is granted. According to ManageEngine, Singapore firms fare relatively better in adopting a Zero Trust approach to safeguard their networks, with 40% of respondents stating they have implemented Zero Trust compared to the global average of 31%, which indicates that companies worldwide are yet to fully embrace the model.

The 2021 Digital Readiness Survey polled 1,210 IT executives and technology professionals from Singapore, India, North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.

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A whopping 93% of global respondents revealed that multiple security threats have increased as a result of the pandemic, with 84% reporting that remote workers have placed additional challenges on security infrastructures. However, respondents said that their top three security concerns, globally, were phishing (52%), attacks on endpoint networks including employee devices at home and edge networks (42%), and malware (40%).

The survey also found that the threat of shadow IT looms large, with 78% of global respondents mentioning that remote workers download software without obtaining approval from the IT department, which significantly escalates the potential for security breaches and data loss.

Global respondents ranked improving security as the top driver for technology adoption at 56%, while the top driver for Singaporean firms was increased reliability while making decisions (62%).