The study shows that a growing number of users are purchasing and connecting unauthorized devices outside of IT environments. It also highlights that threat levels are rising, and that attackers are becoming increasingly successful at bypassing defenses and tricking users into initiating attacks through phishing.

The report combines data from a global online survey conducted by YouGov of 8,443 workers who began working from home during the pandemic, and a global survey of 1,100 IT decision-makers conducted by Toluna. Key findings include:
• The term "shadow IT" refers to hardware or software within a company that lacks IT department approval. This shadow is growing as individuals acquire and connect devices without sufficient technical knowledge. 45% of surveyed workers purchased computer equipment (such as printers and computers) to support their work-from-home arrangements in the past year. However, 68% said security was not a significant factor in their purchase decision, while 43% did not have their new laptop or PC reviewed or installed by the IT department, and 50% said the same about their new printer.

• Phishing is becoming increasingly successful: 74% of IT teams have seen an increase in the number of employees opening malicious phishing links or attachments in emails over the past 12 months. 40% of surveyed workers aged 18-24 have clicked on a malicious email in the past year, with nearly half (49%) reporting doing so more frequently since working from home. Of those workers who clicked or nearly clicked, 70% did not report it to the IT department: 24% did not consider it important, 20% cited the "annoyance factor," and 12% were afraid of retaliation.

• The increase in compromised devices is fueling the growth in repair rates: 79% of IT teams report that these rates increased during the pandemic and are directly correlated with the number of access devices that have to be formatted and re-impressed because they have been attacked, implying that more attackers are succeeding in breaching external defenses. The actual figure could be even higher: 80% of IT teams are concerned that employee devices may be compromised without their knowledge.

The Growing Ungovernability of IT Security Support:
With the rise in threats, it is becoming increasingly difficult for IT teams to provide security support. 77% of IT teams reported that the time it takes to classify a threat has increased in the past year, while an estimated 62% of alerts related to access devices are false positives, resulting in wasted time. With IT teams preoccupied with managing alerts, they find it more difficult to onboard employees and identify threats:
• 65% of IT teams report that patching devices is taking longer and is more difficult due to the massive shift to working from home, while 64% report the same regarding provisioning and onboarding new employees with secure devices.
• As a result, IT teams estimate that the cost of IT support related to security has increased by 52% in the past 12 months.
• 83% of IT teams say the pandemic has put even more pressure on IT support due to security issues for those working from home, while 77% of IT teams say hybrid working has made their activities much more difficult and they fear teams will burn out and consider quitting.