New LastPass Study Finds Identity and Access Management is Critical to Securing a Remote Workforce

Identity and access management (IAM) technologies securely connect the right employees to the right business resources at the right time. IAM protects the business while keeping employees securely connected, but were organizations prepared for their employees to work from anywhere? LastPass ran a study with IT decision makers in partnership with IDG to discover the impacts of remote work to IAM. We found that IAM is critical to securing a remote workforce, but almost all organizations have had to adjust their IAM strategy to securely enable employees to work from anywhere. 98% Agree That IAM Is Critical to Securing a Remote Workforce Almost every business agrees that IAM is critical to securing their remote workforce. 98% of organizations surveyed depend on IAM solutions to keep their business secure in the work from anywhere era. IAM solutions such as single sign-on, multifactor authentication and password management help ensure employees have the secure access they need to stay productive, while IT has visibility and control over every login. Remote Work Has Impacted 96% of IAM Strategies There is no one-size-fits all approach to IAM – businesses build their IAM strategies based on their organizational requirements and objectives. However, 96% of IT decision makers revealed that remote work has impacted their IAM strategy. Whether businesses weren’t prepared to accommodate secure remote work or needed to rethink how they centralized employee access and authentication, remote work has played a major impact on IAM further emphasizing how critical flexibility is to an IAM strategy. Organizations need the ability to quickly adapt, all while keeping employees securely connected. 62% Believe MFA is the Most Effective Way to Secure a Remote Workforce In terms of how businesses are securing their remote workforce, 62% believe multifactor authentication (MFA) is the most effective way to do so. MFA requires two or more authentication factors in the employee login experience prior to gaining access. Framed conceptually around something you know, something you have and something you are, MFA doubles the security of employee logins helping IT teams to ensure that all logins are legitimate. In a time when phishing campaigns targeting remote workers are on the rise and the majority of data breaches are still caused by weak passwords, MFA helps thwart the risk of fraudulent logins. An additional layer of security is more critical now than ever, as IT teams have less oversight into which employees are logging into which resources from which device. Secure Access Is the Top Priority for IAM and Remote Work The highest priority of businesses implementing IAM strategies to secure their remote workforce is to facilitate secure access for employees. 35% of respondents ranked secure access as their most critical objective and 27% ranked as their second most critical objective. Secure access is closely followed by adding MFA across employee logins, where 23% of respondents ranked as their most critical and 23% ranked as their second most critical objective. Secure access and authentication go hand-in-hand. Secure access ensures employees are connected to the resources required for their role to stay productive and authentication helps verify the login. For example, single sign-on enables IT teams to delegate access to applications and password management offers employees a secure location to store credentials. MFA adds an additional layer on top of both to help ensure those gaining access are who they say they are prior to logging in. For 59%, Increasing Security for Remote Work is a Critical Priority Over the Next Year Looking at the next 12 months, 59% of IT decision makers strongly agree that increasing security for their remote workforce through IAM is a critical priority. We have now entered the work from anywhere era, and organizations will need to consider what their long-term IAM strategy is because remote work is the new normal. The majority of respondents (96%) had to adjust their IAM strategy to enable their employees to securely work from anywhere already. Over the next year, we can expect to see a large number of businesses adapting and optimizing their IAM strategies to accommodate their remote workforce. IAM Secures a Remote Workforce With employees accessing business resources from anywhere, organizations will need to determine an IAM strategy that offers security for everywhere while also remaining easy to use. Securing a remote workforce doesn’t need to be a challenge with the right IAM strategy in place. Discover how to keep your business secure and employees productive through an IAM strategy that enables employees to securely work from anywhere.