Controlling access to applications, data, and systems is an increasingly important aspect of securing any environment and protecting it against both internal and external threats.
After two years of the pandemic, confidence in addressing certain security risks and threats arising from hybrid and remote work has improved among businesses and organisations around the world.
According to the 2022 Thales Access Management Index when it comes to secure access to applications, data, and systems, 84% of IT professionals that participated in the study said they have some degree of confidence in their current user access security systems to enable remote work securely and easily, compared to 56% in 2021. In addition, 60% said they were highly confident this year compared to just 22% last year.
Source: 2022 Thales Data Threat Report
Growing confidence in securing remote work
The report also suggests that firms remain concerned about the security risks of remote work, but those concerns seem to be less severe. At the same time, firms are also growing more confident in the ability of authentication and access management systems to manage those risks.
Only 31% of IT professionals surveyed reported having “very high” concerns about the security risks and threats of remote work in 2022, down from 39% in 2021, while those who said they were “somewhat concerned” – the most popular response – increased from 43% to 48% in 2022.
Francois Lasnier, vice president of access management solutions at Thales observes that the past few years have cemented remote work and work-from-anywhere as a permanent part of the security landscape, and they have also introduced new security risks and challenges.
“However, growing familiarity with remote work has ultimately broadened awareness on an enterprise level of daily business security risks and has strengthened both confidence and ability in security teams and products to handle those risks and threats properly."
Francois Lasnier
Rising interest in MFA
While multi-factor authentication (MFA) usage remains most prevalent for remote workers (68%) and privileged users (52%), the report shows that MFA adoption is on the rise for internal and non-IT staff with MFA adoption increased to 40% compared to 34% in 2021.
With a 17-percentage point increase in adoption to 65%, Singapore saw significant increases in 2022 in terms of overall MFA adoption levels.
However, widespread MFA adoption by businesses is still yet to be the norm with just over half (56%) having adopted MFA in their organisations.
What’s driving interest in AC, MFA and ZTNA
The survey inquired about the direct impacts that the pandemic and remote work had on deployment plans for new access security technologies. Responses revealed a six-percentage-point global increase in plans to deploy stand-alone MFA, up from 31% in 2021.
The pandemic also impacted plans to deploy cloud-based access management, selected by 45% of respondents worldwide compared to 41% in 2021. These two increases illustrate respondents’ growing awareness that threats come from all angles, and that proper authentication and management of access and privileges is necessary for an adequate security foundation.
Last year, Zero Trust Network Access/Software-Defined Perimeter (ZTNA)/(SDP) was the top choice, selected by 44% of respondents. In 2022, ZTNA was the second choice at 42%.
Garrett Bekker, principal analyst at 451 Research comments: “Just as the threat landscape has evolved, the tools and methods to handle the landscape have, too. However, even with innovative tools and boosted confidence levels, security plans and approaches still need to adapt to the ever-changing threat environment.
“A greater shift towards a Zero Trust model would place access management in a central role in corporate security strategies, with a related reliance on MFA as a critical supporting enabler,” he concluded.
