In an age where COVID-19 has forced organizations to adopt wide-reaching work-from-home protocols, the job of securing data resources and preventing breaches seems to be harder than ever before.

Earlier this week, Fortinet Inc. brought together 300 of its customers and industry partners to talk about topics related to cybersecurity solutions.

“We did a threat report recently that showed about a tenfold increase in ransomware attacks over the last 12 months,” said John Maddison (pictured), chief marketing officer and executive vice president of products at Fortinet. “So I think customers are very aware of the cybersecurity threats. The damage now is not just, you know, sucking information out on IP; it’s causing damage to the infrastructure.”

Maddison spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Fortinet Security Summit. They discussed the evolution of modern ransomware and how it’s changed the entire cybersecurity threat landscape. (* Disclosure below.)

A whole new playing field

Network security was hard enough before the pandemic. In the wake of COVID, however, a whole new set of threats look to have risen to prominence. With around 40% of the American workforce continuing to work from home, severe strain is being placed on the distributed data structures of several organizations, leaving them more vulnerable to attacks, according to Maddison.

“The attack surface is increased when people work from home versus in the office. And then you’ve got the threat landscape really, really focused on that ransomware,” Maddison said. “Now, you’ve got both targeted and broad ransomware campaigns going on. A lot of companies are just rethinking their cybersecurity strategy to defend against that. And that work-from-home component is another prominent attack surface.”

With much of the population working and learning from home for, at least, the foreseeable future, Fortinet and Linksys Holdings Inc. have partnered on HomeWRK for Business/Secured by Fortinet. The initiative is built on Linksys technology underpinnings, with security and networking capabilities being provided by Fortinet. HomeWRK establishes secure home networks during activities like work, play, education and everything else, according to Maddison.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Fortinet Security Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Fortinet Security Summit. Neither Fortinet Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE