Security is a top of the mind concern for IT departments worldwide as they scramble to catch up with the enterprise mobility requirements of an untethered workforce.
An overwhelming 98 percent of the organizations are challenged to meet the demands for greater enterprise mobility for users who require mobile or remote access. This business imperative, however, conflicts with the IT department. Over 95% of IT departments are battling with security challenges in their bid to increase user mobility within their organization.
According to a recent global survey of 900 IT decision makers by Gemalto, 92% of IT departments worldwide still restrict users from accessing sensitive corporate data and resources from mobile devices.
"The pressure is on for IT departments to accommodate demands for greater mobility as employees crave new and flexible approaches to working," said Francois Lasnier, Senior Vice President for Identity Protection, Gemalto.
"Organizations that are not open to this change are very likely to be inhibiting business productivity."
The 2015 Global Authentication and Identity Access Management Index reveals that almost 94% of the IT decision makers are anxious that their organization will be 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 managing three sets of credentials per user. Additionally, on average, one out of every five IT support tickets are resulting from lost or forgotten usernames and passwords.
Need for two factor authentication in an effort to overcome the security challenges around mobility, 86% of IT departments plan to implement two-factor authentication for access to cloud applications. Currently, 38% of users utilize two-factor authentication, this is expected to rise to 51% of users using it in two years.
Nearly 57 percent of the respondents already use two-factor authentication to secure external users' access to resources, indicating the varied use of the technology. 92% 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.
"The growing use of cloud applications and mobile devices within organizations, combined with rising threats, and the need to reduce costs, require entirely new considerations for access control. Clearly there is an immediate need for authentication and access management solutions that can help organizations solve these challenges," concluded Lasnier.
As IT continues to look to two-factor authentication to deal with the credentials crunch, the vast majority 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.
"Organizations recognize the need to scale security to protect as many on-premises and cloud applications as possible, especially when sourcing a two-factor authentication solution," said Garrett Bekker, Senior Security Analyst, 451 Research.
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% of respondents view cloud delivery as a key consideration in the purchasing process of a strong authentication solution.