5 Quick Takeaways from the Verizon Mobile Security Index 2022

Netskope is proud to have again contributed data and insights to Verizon’s annual Mobile Security Index, one of the most influential reports in the industry for evaluating mobile security trends. This report is based on a survey of hundreds of professionals responsible for buying, managing, and securing mobile and IoT devices, making it highly relevant to cybersecurity decision makers who deal with the challenges of hybrid work.

Here are some of the highlights:

Major attacks are increasing

It should come as no surprise that security incidents are on the rise. In the 2022 report, 45% of respondents said they were hit with security breaches in the past 12 months. 73% of these companies said a compromise was described as “major.”

The future of work is here… 

While the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t create the trend toward more flexible working, it dramatically accelerated the pace toward better enabling it. Now, 70% of organizations surveyed believe their workforce is more productive outside the office, and workers now expect that flexibility. 85% of respondents said that flexibility in where they work and what devices they can use will be important to attracting the best new talent. 

… but working anywhere is adding pressure on security teams…

79% of organizations surveyed agree that recent changes to working practices have adversely affected their organization’s cybersecurity. Nearly two in three CISOs surveyed, across all regions, agreed that remote working makes their organization more vulnerable to cyberattack.

…and raising burnout risk for employees

For many people, working “any time, anywhere” has become “everywhere, all the time.” In response, 48% of organizations surveyed noted they have tools in place to restrict “out of hours” use (e.g. embargoing emails overnight). As Verizon’s report notes, working excessive hours can have a negative effect on employees’ mental health, which may in turn raise security risks while reducing overall productivity. The report cites research by LifeWorks that found that workers who stated they could not typically “disconnect from work after usual work hours” had a measurably lower Mental Health Index score than those who could. 

“The Great Resignation” has greatly impacted security

Some companies definitely saw a spike in employee departures. And as the January 2022 Netskope Cloud and Threat Report found, 29% of employees downloaded more files from managed corporate app instances and 15% of users uploaded more files to personal app instances in their final 30 days than usual. Of the users who uploaded more files, half uploaded more than 5x the normal volume, 8% uploaded 100x more and 1% uploaded 1,000x more.

This particular finding underscores the importance of having good reporting and monitoring tools. A data-loss prevention tool could also help to prevent this, by enabling consistent policies that extend across cloud applications, web sites, and legacy applications in data centers to endpoint devices, including laptops, mobile phones, tablets and even IoT devices. Netskope Cloud XD, for example, decodes thousands of apps and cloud services to understand content and context including company versus personal instances, app risk, activity, user risk, and data sensitivity enabling adaptive policies, defenses, and rich analytics.

For more useful insights into the current threat landscape, download the Verizon Mobile Security Index (MSI) 2022 or watch the Verizon on-demand webinar featuring Netskope Chief Technical Officer Krishna Narayanaswamy.