The proportion of remote work among some employees of Chinese companies has increased after the epidemic

Infoblox, a leader in secure cloud managed network services, and Zogby Analytics conducted a survey and published a survey report on the ongoing IT challenges faced by enterprises during the COVID-19 shutdown. The survey found that despite the shutdown lasting half a year, enterprises are still exploring the best solutions to optimize their remote working experience. The survey covered 1,077 respondents from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, China, Japan, Australia and Singapore. The main findings show:

· The borderless enterprise is here to stay. More than 90% of business decision-makers consider enterprise digital transformation and cloud managed services a priority. The number of companies that had most of their employees working remotely more than tripled from 21% to 70% before and after the pandemic shutdown. 40% of companies surveyed (twice as many as before the outbreak of the coronavirus) said they would have most of their employees working remotely permanently. In China, only one in ten companies had more than half of their employees working remotely before the outbreak (90% of companies surveyed had less than 50% of their employees working remotely); after the outbreak, this number increased to 63% of Chinese companies.

· Enterprises are still looking to build their own IT infrastructure and security controls to optimize remote work environments. Respondents said that distributing approved devices (35%), building network infrastructure (35%), and protecting network security (29%) are the main challenges facing enterprise IT in the process of switching to a remote work model. For Chinese enterprises alone, building network infrastructure (44%) and distributing approved devices (40%) are the biggest challenges.

Mitigating security threats and achieving network visibility remain top priorities for securing remote work environments. 68% of respondents said better threat detection and mitigation technologies would allow companies to further expand remote work. Specifically, they want better visibility into corporate network devices (65%), cloud applications used by employees (61%), and attacked devices (46%). In China, 80% of respondents believe better threat detection and/or mitigation technologies are most important; 70% said visibility into corporate network devices is also important.

· Security incidents continue to rise. Half of the companies surveyed said they were subjected to more frequent cyber attacks, with China (61%) and Australia seeing the largest increases; only a quarter of companies said they were subjected to fewer cyber attacks. Respondents also said that malware attacks against edge devices (74%) and phishing and other social engineering attacks (73%) were the most common types of attacks. Chinese companies also said that malware attacks (83%) and phishing attacks (74%) were the most common, and 56% of Chinese companies have shifted IT resources to cyber security.

Some companies have changed their strategies to allow employees to use personal apps to facilitate office collaboration. 63% of the companies surveyed allow employees to use apps such as WhatsApp, Zoom and Houseparty for communication and collaboration. In China, 61% of companies allow employees to use personal apps, while 37% strictly prohibit their use.

Some companies use cloud security tools, especially the DDI series of products (DNS, DHCP and IP address management) to protect the network security of borderless enterprises. 59% of global respondents plan to further increase their investment in DNS to ensure the security of their extended networks, while this proportion in China has reached 65%. 75% of Chinese respondents also said they will invest in multi-factor authentication to protect their networks.

“When the COVID-19 shutdowns began, businesses rushed to enable remote work overnight,” said Lin Zicong, General Manager of Infoblox Greater China. “Their priority was simply to ensure that employees could access corporate applications from home, but sometimes employees used unsecured personal devices to work.”

“While most organizations are now able to adapt to the basic requirements of remote work, this research further highlights the need for additional security controls,” added Lam. “To meet this need, the majority of organizations surveyed are using DNS to rapidly provide a secure foundational layer for employees working from home. Using a hybrid DNS security solution like BloxOne Threat Defense, organizations can create a pervasive layer of visibility and security across their extended infrastructure.”