More than two-thirds (70 per cent) of UK businesses have been the victim of a successful network security attack in the last year, and 65 per cent have been the victim of at least one ransomware attack in the last 12 months.

That's according to commissioned research from security vendor Barracuda Networks, which surveyed 100 UK IT decision makers responsible for their organisation’s networking, public cloud and security functions.

The data revealed that a significant 80 per cent of firms with company-issued devices saw their workers share their home internet connections with other members of the household, posing a “significant security risk”, said Barracuda.

Remote working is also set to continue, with over nine-in-ten (94 per cent) of IT decision makers revealing that the majority of their workforce are likely to continue remote working for at least one or two days a week.

And 34 per cent will remain working from a remote environment on a full-time basis.

Secure access service edge (SASE) technologies are being prioritised by firms to prevent security breaches and overcome work-from-home challenges.

In fact, 97 per cent of UK IT decision makers have already deployed or plan to deploy software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN), zero trust network access (ZTNA) and extended detection and response (XDR) solutions .

Tim Jefferson, SVP for engineering covering data, networks and application security at Barracuda, said: “Organisations are experiencing a high level of network breaches and facing ongoing connectivity and security challenges as they adapt to hybrid work environments.

“But, they are realising that moving to SaaS applications and the public cloud improves both the user experience and security, so they’re starting to embrace new SASE technologies,” said Jefferson.

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