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Netskope Cloud and Threat Report reveals massive shift in user behavior and increased risk as personal use of managed devices becomes ubiquitous
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 4, 2020 — Netskope, the leading security cloud, today announced the release of the August 2020 Netskope Cloud and Threat Report, which analyzes the most interesting trends on enterprise cloud service and app use, web and cloud-enabled threats, and cloud data migrations and transfers. Based on anonymized data from millions of global users, the report found there was a 148% rise in remote workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic—which resulted in a 161% increase in visits to high-risk apps and websites, as personal use of managed devices nearly doubled.
“The abrupt shift to remote work in 2020 sent a shockwave through organizations, as people found work and personal lives blended unlike ever before,” said Ray Canzanese, threat research director at Netskope. “While many companies rose to the challenge to embrace cloud-based collaboration tools, we also found increased risk as employees used work devices for personal reasons. Organizations must tackle this problem head-on by prioritizing threat protection and ensuring safe cloud and web access through methods like strong authentication and access controls, data and threat protection, as well as zero-trust network access to private apps in data centers and public cloud services. Enacting measures like this will reduce exposure of apps, cloud-enabled threats, unintentional data movement, and limit network lateral movement.”
Key Findings
Based on anonymized data collected from the Netskope Security Cloud platform across millions of users from January 1, 2020 through June 30, 2020, key findings of the report include:
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated remote work by more than doubling the number of people working outside the office, as 64% of workers are now remote. Along with this increase in remote work came an 80% increase in the use of collaboration apps as remote workers seek to remain connected with their colleagues, and the total number of cloud apps being used in the average enterprise increased to over 7,000 in the largest enterprises.
Personal use of devices increased by 97% and use of risky apps and websites increased by 161%. As employees become more accustomed to remote work, the lines are blurred between business and personal use, as employees are muc