In a survey of 508 global CEOs and CISOs, 90% of respondents said they were adopting, or considering, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and 74% had reallocated funds to cybersecurity, said cloud security company Forcepoint. CEOs and CISOs are doubling down on converged security approaches, Forcepoint found.

While analysts previously estimated 60% of enterprises would eventually embrace SASE by 2025, the WSJ Intelligence report found that the pandemic had accelerated many of their plans. Enterprise leaders who previously viewed cybersecurity as part of traditional infrastructure are now rapidly investing in integrated, cloud-based approaches — resulting in ripple effects on innovation, distributed workforce security and competitive advantages.

Cyber attacks of all types — supply chain (60%), ransomware (54%), custom malware (57%), phishing (56%) — are on the rise. Against this backdrop of greater threats, security and business leaders must also support distributed employees working in an increasingly digitized and SaaS-based world. Cloud apps are everywhere and so are our anywhere workers. As a result, cybersecurity decision-makers are in dire need (58%) of a “trust framework” to secure and accommodate this new reality.

Read the full C-Suite Report: Business and Security Strategies for Today’s Unbound Enterprise from Forcepoint.