Organizations are finding it challenging to meet demands for greater mobility as 92 percent of IT departments worldwide still restrict users from accessing sensitive corporate data and resources from mobile devices. This is according to a recent global survey of 900 IT decision makers by Gemalto. Despite almost all organizations (98 percent) having users who require mobile or remote access, 95 percent of IT departments are facing obstacles to increased user mobility in their organization, the main one being security concerns.
The Gemalto 2015 Global Authentication and Identity Access Management Index reveals that almost all respondents (94 percent) are concerned that their organization will be breached or hacked as a result of credential theft or compromise. This is exacerbated by the rise in mobile endpoints within organizations, as most organizations reported to have, on average, two mobile end points per user and said they were managing three sets of credentials per user. Additionally, on average, one out of every five (20 percent) IT support tickets are resulting from lost or forgotten usernames and passwords.
In an effort to overcome the security challenges around mobility, the majority of IT departments (86 percent) plan to implement two-factor authentication for access to cloud applications. Currently, 38 percent of users utilise two-factor authentication, this is expected to rise to over half (51 percent) of users using it in two years. Over half (57 percent) already use two-factor authentication to secure external users’ access to resources, indicating the varied use of the technology. Almost all (92 percent) respondents currently have at least one application protected by two-factor authentication, with cloud applications, web portals and VPNs among the top three apps protected.
As IT continues to look to two-factor authentication to deal with the credentials crunch, the vast majority (91 percent) of respondents are seeking to do this by using cloud-based authentication-as-a-service and managing their organization’s two-factor authentication centrally. By having the ability to implement uniform policies that address security threats in a consistent way, two-factor authentication can at the same time streamline access to numerous applications. In addition, cloud efficiencies are a critical factor in being able to deploy two-factor authentication across multiple use cases and implement solutions quickly and efficiently. Indeed, 90 percent of respondents view cloud delivery as a key consideration in the purchasing process of a strong authentication solution.
About the survey
The research from Gemalto polled 900 IT decision makers in July 2015, across the US (200), UK (100), France (100), Germany (100), Australia (100), Japan (100), Benelux (50), Middle East (50), South Africa (50) and Hong Kong (50). All respondents’ organizations across a variety of sectors have at least 250 employees. Interviews were conducted by Vanson Bourne, an independent specialist in market research for the technology sector.
www.gemalto.com
