Fifty-nine percent geo-distributed businesses globally – and 60% in South Africa – have experienced network problems related to their multi-site structure at least once a month.
This is according to a Kaspersky survey of Network and Information Security decision makers from 20 countries worldwide.
Among the most common challenges named were network outages, lost connections and poor performance of services and applications.
The latest Kaspersky report ‘Managing geographically distributed businesses: challenges and solutions’ provides a deeper insight into the network security challenges faced by geo-distributed companies while building and maintaining their multi-site infrastructure. It also highlights problems related to comprehensive information protection of all their offices.
According to this report, 40% of geo-distributed companies in South Africa encountered network problems between one and three times per month, while 20% stated they experienced network challenges every week. The remaining 36% of businesses said they faced these problems only a few times per year while 4% faced them less than once a year or didn’t’ face them at all.
Regarding the most common challenges, network failures or outages were the most widespread issue among companies surveyed in South Africa (58%). Loss of connectivity was experienced by 56% of respondents. Among other network problems respondents also named poor performance of services and applications (42%), inadequate connection capacity (38%) and complete or partial network shutdown (36%).
“As we can see, geo-distributed organisations encountered network problems quite often,” comments Maxim Kaminsky, business development manager: secure access service edge at Kaspersky. “Given the importance of network infrastructure for modern businesses, any network downtime and IT issues carry a huge risk that can lead to reputational and financial losses.
“Therefore, it’s important to take timely measures to secure company’s networks and implement solutions that enable centralised and automated network management, providing businesses with a clear view of what’s happening in their multi-site IT infrastructure.”