Securing WFH economy needs greater investment in Zero Trust & identity security: Survey

The pandemic-driven shift to remote work has significantly changed how companies are investing in identity and access management capabilities and Zero Trust security, according to a new survey from Ping Identity.

The Ping Identity Executive Survey: Growth in Remote Work Fuels Zero Trust Investment asked more than 1,300 senior executives across the U.S., U.K., Germany, France and Australia about how the pandemic has impacted their IT resources and strategies. The survey found that a large number of companies will continue to have a majority of their workforce working remotely, prompting an increase in IT and information security investments in the form of staff and technology.

Along with increased IT investments, companies are also consolidating and rationalizing their workforce identity procedures. Combined, they expect these efforts will address issues of security and compliance as well as employee productivity to deliver a superior experience regardless of where work is being done.

“Business leaders have been faced with an urgent need to invest more in identity security capabilities to effectively secure employees and customers in a dispersed work environment,” said Andre Durand, CEO and founder of Ping Identity. “As this digital transformation acceleration continues, identity and zero trust need to be central in all major business decisions to deliver the level of customer experience expected by modern employees and customers.”

Key global findings include:

Increased Spend on Identity Management

• 85% of executives agree that identity security is critical to their overall user experience.
• 69% expect to increase investment in identity access management (IAM) capabilities for their workforce in the next 12 months – ranging from a high of 79% in the U.S. to a low of 63% in the U.K.
• 64% estimate that over one half of their workforce is currently using multi-factor authentication (MFA) as a result of the pandemic, yet only one third (38%) made the same claim before the pandemic.
• 60% increased identity related investments like IAM, MFA, and single sign-on (SSO), due to the shift to remote work.
• 55% invested in new identity security capabilities as a result of the pandemic.

Majority Adoption of Zero Trust

• 82% of executives have deployed, are actively deploying or enhancing, or have already established mature Zero Trust principles.
• 71% believe their investment in Zero Trust will increase over the next 12 months.
• 37% increased the size of their IT team to support the shift to remote work. The dramatic jump in remote work also prompted execs to elevate IT as a strategic priority.

IT Support for Long Term Remote Work

• 70% said the responsibility of security is either the full or majority burden of IT teams.
• 50% of executives said that failed login attempts were up by more than 25%.
• 47% expect 25% or more of their staff to spend at least three days out of office in 2022.