TALKING

Though mass remote work came suddenly , many adapted well and it ’ s now looking as though it won ’ t be just an emergency measure but a staple of the post-pandemic norm .

capabilities since the start of the pandemic . A total of 60 % have increased their existing identity security investments and over the next 12 months , 79 % believed they would be increasing their investments in Identity and Access Management ( IAM ). They also believe those technologies are important to more than just security – 85 % believe they are critical for mobile and user experiences too .

Multi-Factor Authentication ( MFA ) has been particularly popular . One-third ( 38 %) of executives estimate that before the pandemic , around half of their employees were using MFA . Now , nearly two-thirds ( 64 %) report that over half of their employees are using MFA .

Zero Trust architectures have also mounted in popularity over the course of the pandemic . The majority of executives ( 83 %) say that they have deployed some kind of Zero Trust element in their environments .

Zero Trust seems like a good choice for enterprises that can no longer rely on their traditional office-and- perimeter bound networks . In such networks , anyone that can get on the network is automatically granted an incredible amount of trust – commonly based on a single username and password combination . In Zero Trust architecture , no trust is automatically granted to any entity – be it the network , user or device . Instead , those entities are constantly authenticated using a variety of contextual factors as they move through the network . It makes sense from that point of view that over the next 12 months , 71 % of executives believe they will be increasing their investments in Zero Trust .

Necessity , as they say , is the mother of invention . Many of these trends were mounting in popularity before the pandemic but have been solidified under the pressures of global events . Perimeters were already giving way under the strain of new standards of working and new technologies . By the same token , identity security technologies were increasingly being recognised as a way to secure those new technologies and ways of working . In that sense , the data from this survey doesn ’ t quite show a full step change in how executives are thinking about IT and security post-pandemic , but rather that their thinking is finally catching up .

The profundity of that recognition shouldn ’ t be understated . Amid uncertain economic conditions , executives are actually investing in new IT and security technologies . They hope that these will protect them not just from pandemic-like shocks , but moving ahead into the post-pandemic landscape . That ’ s a remarkable show of faith at a time when the market doesn ’ t have a lot to spare . p

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