Huntress Survey: 90% of IT Professionals Confident in Remote-Work Security
Summary
A Huntress survey of 227 U.S. IT professionals found 90% were confident in their organization’s remote-work security. It also found gaps in MFA adoption and employee security habits, alongside recommendations for improving protections.
Key points
- The survey was conducted for Huntress on December 4–6, 2024, with 227 U.S. IT professionals whose organizations offered remote or hybrid work.
- Respondents said cybersecurity concerns played some role in 61% of organizations’ return-to-office decisions; 20% said security was a deciding factor and 41% said it was one of several considerations.
- While 51% were confident in their organization’s protections for remote and hybrid work, another 42% were somewhat confident.
- About 39% of respondents said their organizations used MFA. The article cautions that SMS-based MFA is less secure than TOTP or hardware tokens.
- Respondents most often cited regular security training (84%), encrypted password managers (78%) and VPNs (64%) as implemented policies.
- Weak or reused passwords were the most commonly reported employee security weakness; phishing and social engineering were among the top external threats.
- The article recommends regular security training, VPNs, MFA, encrypted password managers and a remote-work security policy covering incident reporting, data handling and Wi-Fi security.
Article Details
- Publisher
- Huntress
- Report Period
- Survey conducted 2024-12-04 to 2024-12-06; article last updated 2025-03-07
- Scope
- Survey of US IT professionals about cybersecurity and remote and hybrid work
- Sample Size
- 227 US IT professionals; respondents had worked at organizations offering fully remote or hybrid options
- Key Statistics
- 61% said cybersecurity concerns played some role in their organization's decision to return to the office; 20% of that group called it a deciding factor.
- More than 90% reported confidence in their organization's ability to protect sensitive information in remote or hybrid work scenarios.
- 64% said the shift to remote or hybrid work positively affected their ability to predict and prevent cybersecurity incidents; 30% were neutral and 6% reported a negative impact.
- 39% reported using multifactor authentication at their organization.
- 28% identified password usage as the biggest weakness of remote or hybrid employees.
- Recommendations
- Provide regular cybersecurity training, including guidance on password practices, phishing, safe browsing, data handling, and mobile-device security.
- Require multifactor authentication; the article recommends time-based one-time passwords or hardware tokens over SMS-based MFA.
- Use encrypted password managers to generate and store strong, unique passwords for each account.
- Use VPNs for remote access, including when employees connect from networks that may be unsecured.
- Create a remote-work cybersecurity policy covering training, MFA, VPNs, incident reporting, data handling, and Wi-Fi security.
MITRE ATT&CK
T1110.001 · Password GuessingThe article describes brute-force attacks that attempt to gain access by guessing credentials.T1110.004 · Credential StuffingThe article describes credential stuffing using previously compromised credentials.T1566 · PhishingPhishing attacks and phishing scams are identified as threats to remote and in-person workplaces.