About 92% of IT departments worldwide still restrict users from accessing sensitive corporate data and resources from mobile devices.
According to a survey from Gemalto, almost all organizations (98%) have users who require mobile or remote access. Yet 95% of IT departments are facing obstacles to increased user mobility, with the primary issue being security concerns.
The 2015 Global Authentication and Identity Access Management Index reveals that almost all respondents (94%) are concerned that their organization will be breached or hacked as a result of mobile credential theft or compromise. This is exacerbated by the rise in mobile endpoints; companies have, on average, two mobile end points per user, managing three sets of credentials per user.
Additionally, on average, one out of every five (20%) IT support tickets result from lost or forgotten usernames and passwords.
In an effort to overcome the security challenges around mobility, the majority of IT departments (86%) plan to implement two-factor authentication for access to cloud applications, the report found. About 38% of users utilize two-factor authentication, which is expected to rise to more than half (51%) of users using it in two years.
About half (57%) already use two-factor authentication to secure external users’ access to resources, indicating the varied use of the technology. Almost all (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.
As IT continues to look to two-factor authentication to deal with the credentials crunch, the vast majority (91%) 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% of respondents view cloud delivery as a key consideration in the purchasing process of a strong authentication solution.
“The pressure is on for IT departments to accommodate demands for greater mobility as employees crave new and flexible approaches to working,” said François Lasnier, senior vice president for identity protection at Gemalto. “Organizations that are not open to this change are very likely to be inhibiting business productivity.