In its “2023 Work-From-Anywhere Global Study” Fortinet found that a majority of the 570 companies surveyed are still accommodating employees working from home, or are embracing a hybrid-work strategy for their employees. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of the companies said they could at least partially attribute a data breach due to their work-from-anywhere (WFA) employee vulnerabilities during the past two to three years.

Peter Newton, senior director of product and solutions at Fortinet, said the study “clearly calls out the insecurity of home networks, personal use of company PCs, as well as other users on the home network as the biggest concerns by the organizations.”

“That points out the fact that vulnerabilities associated with home network, personal applications, and personal devices all act as back-door into companies’ networks, applications, and data, highlighting the need for continued security awareness training for employees as well as technologies such as SASE, SD-WAN, on-prem security appliances, and [zero-trust network access],” he told SDxCentral.

The survey revealed that security solutions used for securing remote workforces vary widely across companies. According to Newton, those that experienced a breach tied to WFA are more likely to invest in both traditional technologies such as laptop antivirus and VPN, as well as modern approaches like SASE, SD-WAN, and zero-trust network access (ZTNA).

Fortinet reported 94% of respondents anticipate an increase in their security budget to accommodate WFA policies, with over a third (37%) expecting an increase of 10% or more.

“We see the organizations are still in their early stage when it comes to WFA strategy and solutions. Some just started and some ventured further along. Regardless, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and securing WFA needs a layered-defense and a combination of solutions that work together,” Newton said.

Following the study Fortinet announced enhancements to three of its global customers’ most common secure access service edge (SASE) use cases – secure internet access, secure private access, and secure SaaS access – to provide a more consistent security posture for WFA users.

“The latest version of the FortiSASE solution provides consistent security for users anywhere, whether they are working remotely or at a branch office,” said Nirav Shah, VP of products and solutions at Fortinet.

FortiSASE secure internet access now has performance and infrastructure scalability improvements with dedicated public IP support and custom services access that is based on user geolocation.

This will provide a better user experience for employees trying to access corporate applications located at private data centers or public clouds, Shah explained. Improved geolocation services offer a “tailored web experience” based on the location of the users.

Fortinet delivers an SD-WAN fabric within its SASE platform to enable scalable and secure private access for WFA users. The SASE platform’s secure private access now has expanded secure SD-WAN hub connectivity to support larger global hybrid networks with on-premises integration that provides secure access to corporate applications for remote users.

“Large customers are on the journey to a SASE framework and, while these organizations are adopting cloud-delivered security for a hybrid workforce, they are also making sure to enable internal segmentation for on-prem locations to prevent the lateral movement of threats,” Shah told SDxCentral.

Fortinet also expanded visibility of SaaS applications and granular control of application usage, including ability to restrict tenants’ access control.