Australia leads APAC in adoption of zero trust

Australian enterprises lead the Asia–Pacific region in terms of embracing zero-trust IT security architecture, research from Cloudflare indicates.

A survey of IT professionals in the region found that 88% of Australian respondents said their organisation has adopted a zero trust approach — significantly ahead of their peers in Malaysia (75%), Singapore (65%), India (62%) and Japan (43%).

More than a quarter (28%) of Australian respondents had rolled out zero trust in the past 12 months, in the wake of a significant increase in cybersecurity challenges as a result of COVID-19.

According to the research, 48% of Australian respondents struggled to maximise remote workers’ productivity, while 62% said their organisation had experienced more security attacks in 2021 compared to the previous year.

This included an increase in phishing attempts (47%), a data breach or leak (46%) and ransomware attacks (45%). In response to an attack and the increasing cyberthreat landscape, 93% changed their IT security procedures.

Fortunately, adoption of zero trust is already having a significant impact on limiting data breaches (47%), network visibility (37%) and prevention of malware propagation (33%), the research found.

Cloudflare head of ANZ Raymond Maisano said while it is encouraging that Australian organisations are embracing zero trust, there is still some way to go towards making it a reality.

“Zero trust is a journey for organisations, and while our research indicates that the intent is there, most Australian businesses have only just begun to roll out this approach to IT security,” he said.

“One of the biggest challenges here is finding the right talent to fill the technology skills gap, and organisations need to find the balance between outsourcing and investing in existing talent and resources in order to secure hybrid workforces, especially as lockdown restrictions ease and employees once again log on from almost anywhere.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Olivier Le Moal