Report reveals the main IT security trends in Mexico

Infoblox, a leader in DNS management and security services, today introduces,State of Security Report 2022report that examines the status of security concerns, costs, and solutions.

As the pandemic and lockdowns extend into a third year, organizations are accelerating digital transformation projects to support remote work. Meanwhile, attackers have taken advantage of vulnerabilities in these environments, increasing the workload and budgets for security teams.

1,100 respondents in IT and cybersecurity roles in 11 countries (United States, Mexico, Brazil, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain, United Arab Emirates, Australia, and Singapore) participated in the survey.

According to the Report, Mexico ended 2021 with a recession mainly due to supply chain shortages and higher shipping prices. The economic contraction also had an impact on the country’s overall cybersecurity landscape. In 2017, Mexico ranked 28th out of 182 countries in terms of cybersecurity maturity, according to the United Nations International Telecommunications Union’s Global Cybersecurity Index. By 2020, it had dropped to 52nd place and saw ransomware attacks skyrocket.

Key findings from the Mexican market include:

• The rise of remote work has significantly and permanently changed the corporate landscape. 52% of respondents accelerated digital transformation projects, 45% increased customer portal support for remote engagement, 30% moved applications to third-party cloud providers, and 26% closed physical offices forever. These changes resulted in the addition of VPNs and firewalls, a combination of corporate and employee-owned devices, as well as on-premises and cloud DDI servers to handle data traffic on the extended network.

• Since 2020, many Mexican organizations have accelerated their digital transformations to support remote workers. The study shows that 52% have shortened timelines to modernize their IT infrastructure and 45% have added more resources to networks and databases. 36% of Mexican companies also increased support for portals that enabled remote customer engagement.

• The reality of the hybrid workforce is causing increased concerns with data leakage, ransomware, and attacks via remote access tools and cloud services. Respondents indicate concerns about their ability to counter increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks with limited control over employees, work-from-home technologies, and vulnerable supply chain partners. The sophistication of state-sponsored malware is also a cause for concern for many.

• Organizations have good reason to worry: 66% of respondents experienced up to five security incidents that resulted in at least one breach. 47% of Mexican companies were more likely to be victims of ransomware and 45% of phishing. Attacks tended to originate from WiFi hotspots, employee-owned terminals, or in the cloud. 70% suffered at least $1 million in direct and indirect losses.

• Organizations are buying cloud-first security tools to protect their hybrid environments. 56% of respondents saw larger budgets in 2021, and nearly 83% anticipate an increase in 2022. Those who anticipate a hybrid approach are most likely to adopt VPN/access control at 54%, DNS security 53%, and password encryption. data and loss prevention 50%.

• 83% of Mexican organizations overall were able to respond to a threat within 24 hours. This response time rate, one of the highest of all nations surveyed, was aided by threat hunting tools such as external threat intelligence platform or service at 49%, a system-specific vulnerability at 46%, and DNS ( Domain Name System) queries and answers in 38%.

Companies are creating a defense-in-depth strategy using everything from network and endpoint security to cloud access security agents, DNS security, and threat intelligence services to defend the attack surface. 52% use DNS to determine which devices were making requests linked to malicious destinations and 50% to protect against threats such as DNS data exfiltration.

• Interest in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) frameworks is accelerating. As assets, access, and security move from the core of the network to the edge with the drive for virtualization, 62% have already fully or partially implemented SASE and 28% intend to do so.

“The closures due to the pandemic in the last two years have changed the way businesses operate. Many organizations in Mexico are accelerating their digital transformation, DNS security is becoming a very popular strategy in Mexico, as are SASE services, to protect corporate data and remote devices, for the hybrid workforce model ”, said Ivan Sánchez, Sales Manager LATAM of Infoblox.

The full report is available for download here (requires registration).