Surge in enterprise and education security violations

Absolute’s insights have also revealed that one in four devices used by enterprises remain at risk of breaches or compliance violations; nearly three in four Windows 10 devices have versions more than a year old, and on average, one in four enterprise endpoint devices have a critical security application (Anti-Malware, Encryption, VPN, or Client Management) that is missing, inactive or out-of-date.

Worryingly, Absolute have reported that there has been a 46 per cent increase in the number of items of sensitive data on enterprise endpoints, compared to pre-COVID-19 levels.

In Education, heavy device use has risen by 62 per cent, compared to a 49 per cent increase in Enterprise heavy device usage – meaning 8+ hours a day.

Soon after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, almost 9 million UK employees were instructed to work remotely, while governments around the world implemented widespread school closures impacting over 90 percent of the world’s student population. This placed IT and Security teams under immediate pressure to quickly stand up work-from-home or learn-from-home environments to ensure continued productivity, connectivity, and security.

Christy Wyatt, President and CEO of Absolute, said: "COVID-19 marks the beginning of a new era where we believe the nature of work will be forever changed.

“As this crisis took hold, we saw our customers mobilize quickly to get devices into the hands of students and employees and navigate the challenges of standing up remote work and distance learning programs. What has become resoundingly clear is there has never been a more critical time for having undeletable Endpoint Resilience.”