Why you should take a look at the single vendor SASE setup

Fortinet, a global cybersecurity leader, has released the findings of a new Asia-Pacific SASE survey conducted by IDC across nine countries in Asia/Pacific, which explores cybersecurity leaders’ perspectives on hybrid work and how it impacted their organizations in the last year, as well as their strategies to mitigate the security challenges arising from the adoption of hybrid work.

According to the survey, 88% of respondents in The Philippines have a hybrid or fully remote working model, with more than two-thirds (58%) having at least 50% of their employees working in hybrid mode.

This shift to remote work has resulted in employees becoming ‘branch offices of one,’ working from their homes or other locations outside the traditional office. Consequently, 48% of respondents in The Philippines anticipate managed devices to surge by more than 100% over the next two years (with some expecting growth of 400%).

Additionally, 76% in The Philippines expect unmanaged devices to grow by over 50%. This is expected to compound the complexity and risk of security breaches, placing additional strain on already overburdened IT security teams.

“As Philippines continues to embrace the digital future and become a leader in the digital economy, it is essential that we acknowledge the increasing frequency and sophistication of cyber-attacks and data breaches. The shortage of skilled talent in the cybersecurity industry only makes this issue more challenging,” said Alan Reyes, Country Manager, Fortinet Philippines.

With cloud computing and remote work becoming more prevalent, an increasing number of users, devices, and data are located outside of enterprise networks.

Currently, 30% of devices connecting to networks in The Philippines are unmanaged, raising the possibility of security breaches. Survey respondents in The Philippines expect this figure to rise, with 76% predicting a 50% increase by 2025.

With hybrid work increasing, employees require multiple connections to external systems and cloud applications to remain productive. Survey respondents indicated that their employees in The Philippines need more than 30 connections to third-party cloud applications, increasing the risk of security breaches.

Over the next two years, 100% of respondents in The Philippines expect this number to double, while more than 70% feel that this number will triple, exacerbating the risk. Maintaining network security while ensuring employee connectivity to third-party and cloud-based services is a significant challenge, as traditional security measures are inadequate.

Hybrid work and the growth in managed and unmanaged connections have caused a significant rise in security incidents, with 62% of surveyed organizations in The Philippines reporting more than triple the number of breaches.

According to the Survey, 94% of respondents in The Philippines have experienced at least a 2X increase in security incidents. The top security incidents include phishing, denial of service, data/identity theft, ransomware, and data loss.

However, only 49% of organizations across Asia have dedicated security personnel, which leaves them more vulnerable to security incidents and breaches.

To tackle the challenges of hybrid work, many organizations across The Philippines plan to invest in a Single-Vendor SASE solution to improve their security posture and provide consistency in the user experience for remote employees.

The need for a comprehensive solution that offers a consistent security posture for users on and off the network while simplifying security policy management and enhancing the user experience for remote employees is driving many organizations to explore SASE.

As organizations adopt SASE to manage networking and security services, they are seeking a converged platform to streamline their operations. According to the survey, 76% of respondents across The Philippines prefer a single vendor for networking and security capabilities, with 82% consolidating or in the process of consolidating their IT security vendors.

More than half (54%) of the respondents prefer a single vendor for cloud-delivered security services and SDWAN, citing various benefits such as reduced security gaps, improved network performance, ease of deployment, and addressing integration and scalability challenges.

The survey was conducted among 450 cybersecurity leaders from 9 different locations across Asia (Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam).