According to the Dimensional Research conducted survey commissioned by One Identity IT security professionals globally (99%) said their organisation’s transitioned to remote work because of COVID-19. In Singapore 29% described that transition as “smooth.”
Shifting priorities
Fifty-nine percent respondents indicated that cloud infrastructure is more important now than 12 months ago in Singapore with 28% attributing this shift directly to COVID-19. The cloud has become front and centre to the new working reality, creating flexibility for employees.
The results demonstrate that the previous level of attention to cloud deployments, while notable, does not appear to have been nearly enough to accommodate the dramatic computing shift across organisations.
Identity management
Identity management became more important for 65% of Singaporeans, with 24% attributing this shift to COVID-19. Twenty-five percent acknowledged that the pandemic impacted their identity management compliances, indicating a huge security risk that organisations dealt with due to sudden move to remote working.
According to Serkan Cetin, technical director, APJ, One Identity, identity management has been a major focus for many enterprises in Singapore amid the pandemic as IT teams pivoted the transitions into a remote workforce.
“However, pre-COVID security processes and strategies have not been fully effective in supporting the new working environment, and the sudden shift to remote working has resulted in challenges to ensuring secure access, third party administration, and maintaining governance across application accesses and data.”
Shifting priorities – what it means
Identity/access lifecycle management, identity process and workflow, and role management all saw increased priority among at least half of those surveyed in Singapore.
Shifts in priorities indicate organisations in Singapore are turning their focus on tackling the security basics.
When compared to 12 months ago, 48% of respondents in Singapore are placing a higher priority on access request technologies and 27% said this change in prioritisation is because of COVID.
Perhaps shell shocked, only 45% of IT security professionals in Singapore indicated they are fully prepared for the IT changes necessary when their employees move back to organisations’ offices, according to survey results.
Yet, 59% of Singaporeans expressed increased confidence in the effectiveness of their identity management programmes post COVID-based changes.
Cetin acknowledged that while remote access is a valuable enabler of employee productivity, it is also an attractive attack surface for hackers. The increase in successful attacks discovered during COVID-19 clearly also emphasises the need to find better and more reliable ways of securing applications and data, meeting regulatory compliance requirements, whilst providing the capability to be better prepared for future events.
“At the same time, most businesses are still dealing with new challenges as employees adapt, IT and security teams respond to the need of providing effective processes for gaining access with this new working environment,” he concluded.
