Member Article

WannaCry cyberattack accelerates Windows 10 adoption

Duo Security has released its third annual Duo Trusted Access Report, which looks at the security state of the employees, contractors, devices and applications that make up the IT environments of Duo’s more than 10,000 customers worldwide. The 2018 Duo Trusted Access Report analyzes nearly 11 million computers, laptops and smartphones and half-a-billion user access requests to protected corporate applications and data per month.

A number of ongoing trends emerge from this year’s report, chief among them is the rapid evolution of how and where employees work; it’s not clear that businesses are keeping up from a security standpoint.

In 2017, after the worldwide WannaCry ransomware attack against unpatched Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 systems, businesses accelerated their adoption of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 10, in an effort to protect against future attacks. In the three months prior to the WannaCry outbreak, Windows 10 adoption remained steady at 17 percent. In the three months following the attack, adoption jumped to 29 percent, then dropped to nine percent in subsequent months.

Year-over-year, the average number of unique networks that employees, contractors and partners from enterprise-sized organizations and mid-market companies are accessing protected data from has spiked 24 percent and 17 percent, respectively. Across Duo’s entire customer population, the average number of unique networks increased 10 percent in the same time frame. This means more work is being conducted from potentially unsecured Wi-Fi networks, which could include homes, airports, coffee shops, or other public spaces. These external, untrusted networks may introduce potential risks to corporate applications and data.

Duo also found that 43 percent of requests to access protected applications and data came from outside of the corporate office and network, meaning the way we work is changing. People are logging into applications, networks and systems wherever, and whenever as work hours start to flex to fit different lifestyles, time zones and travel. Employers need to figure out how to grant the flexibility their workforce demands while also ensuring data remains secure and accessible to only trusted devices. It’s clear that the traditional, firewall-based security perimeter is quickly becoming irrelevant.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BS .