HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ) released its latest HP Wolf Security report: Out of Sight & Out of Mind, a comprehensive global study highlighting how the rise of hybrid work is changing user behavior and creating new cybersecurity challenges for IT departments.
The research shows that a growing number of users are buying and connecting unsanctioned devices outside of IT’s purview. It also highlights that threat levels are rising, with attackers increasingly successful at by passing defenses and tricking users into initiating attacks through phishing. All of this is making IT support more complex, time-consuming, and costly than ever.
The report combines data from a global YouGov online survey of 8,443 office workers who shifted to Working from Home (WFH) during the pandemic, and a global survey of 1,100 IT decision makers conducted by Toluna.Key findings include:
“People often don’t know if they have clicked on something malicious, so the real numbers are likely much higher,” comments Ian Pratt, Global Head of Security for Personal Systems, HP Inc. “Threat actors don’t always announce themselves, as playing the ‘long game’ to move laterally and infiltrate higher-value infrastructure has proven to be more lucrative. For example, by using cloud backups to exfiltrate sensitive data in bulk, encrypting data on servers, then demanding a multi-million-dollar ransom.”
Pratt continues: “It shouldn’t be this easy for an attacker to get a foothold — clicking on an email attachment should not come with that level of risk. By isolating and containing the threat you can mitigate any harmful impact, preventing persistence and lateral movement.”
The increasing unmanageability of IT security support
With threats rising, it’s becoming more difficult for IT teams to deliver security support.77% of IT teams said the time it takes to triage a threat has increased in the past year, while an estimated 62% of alerts relating to the endpoint are false positives, leading to wasted time. With IT teams tied up dealing with alerts, it’s becoming harder for them to onboard employees and identify threats:
HP is helping organizations to secure the hybrid workplace by delivering endpoint security that provides teams with greater visibility and management tools. With HP Wolf Security organizations benefit from robust, built-in protection from the silicon to the cloud, and BIOS to browser. HP Wolf Security provides the ideal support for securing the hybrid workplace – for example HP Sure Click Enterprise reduces the attack surface by rendering malware, delivered via email, browser or downloads, harmless through threat containment and isolation. HP Wolf Security enables teams to deliver defense-in-depth and enhanced protection, privacy, and threat intelligence, gathering data at the endpoint to help protect the business at large.