By Matthew Dubie
Until recently, the choice to work remotely was often one of convenience. Whether working from home to accommodate a doctor’s appointment or logging in while traveling to a conference, remote work helped busy professionals stay connected and work around the daily demands of their lives. Now, remote work is a necessity for many employees, and businesses are navigating a shift to a new normal where most or all employees may be logging in from home. As a result, identity and access management (IAM) programs are shifting to support a work-from-anywhere policy that ensures the business is secure while employees can do their jobs efficiently every day.
Secure access is the top priority
Based on our recent research with IDG on the impact of remote work to IAM, 35% of IT decision makers agree that secure access is the most critical objective they’re trying to achieve through their IAM program. An additional 27% ranked secure access as their second most critical objective. Overall, over half of IT decision makers see secure access as a top IAM priority in the age of remote work.
Secure access means safely connecting employees to the resources they need to do their jobs. Resources might include a corporate VPN, email, apps, databases, company chat, video conferencing, and more. Employees need a way to use those resources (access), and IT needs a way to prove that employees are who they say they are before access is granted (security). Single sign-on (SSO) is an IAM technology that secures access to many apps. However, not every app is managed by SSO which is where enterprise password management comes in to secure password-protected accounts, shared credentials, and other important pieces of data.
IAM technologies that facilitate secure access benefit both the employees that use them every day to get work done, and the IT teams that must manage the systems behind-the-scenes. For IT teams, secure access helps ensure employees are only accessing the business resources that are appropriate for their job. With oversight of which employees have access to what resources, wherever and whenever they’re working, IT can reduce risk of data breaches and mitigate cyberattacks. From an employee perspective, secure access increases productivity and makes it easier to navigate the workday. Employees can quickly access the data and resources they need while collaborating with team members. By focusing on secure access, businesses can ensure their IAM program is serving the needs of both IT and employees.
MFA is a leading IAM objective, too
According to our research, the second most critical objective for IAM programs is adding MFA across employee logins. In the age of remote work, MFA provides a much-needed boost to an organization’s security. With cyberattacks on the rise as more employees work from home, MFA provides additional proof points that a user is who they claim to be before granting access. MFA can secure the corporate network, lock down corporate apps, add security to password-protected accounts, and more. Implementing an MFA solution that leverages biometric and contextual data can deliver a better user experience while making it harder for attackers to gain unauthorized access.
As businesses adapt to a work-from-anywhere policy and adjust their IAM strategy accordingly, secure access and MFA will be top priorities. IT decision makers agree that by focusing on those two objectives, they can reduce cyber security risks while quickly connecting employees to the resources they need to do their work, and to do it well.
