Survey: Security concerns slow adoption of mobile access for employees
28 October, 2015
category: Corporate, Digital ID, Financial
Demands for greater mobility within organizations are being greatly thwarted because of security concerns. An international survey finds 92% of IT departments restrict users from accessing corporate data via mobile devices.
While most of these organizations have users that need mobile or remote access, their IT departments say obstacles stand in the way. Concerns about the organization being breached or hacked top the list. On average, the respondents have two mobile end points per user within their organizations, and they’re managing three sets of credentials per user.
More than half of IT staffers surveyed believe it will take a high profile breach involving cloud-hosted resources to convince company stakeholders to agree to an authentication solution that supports increased user mobility.
About nine out of 10 respondents are using two-factor authentication for at least one application, and they want to be able to manage their organization’s two-factor authentication centrally. The applications most commonly used in these cases are VPNs, web portals, and cloud applications.
Ultimately, the 2015 Global Authentication and Identity Access Management Index finds that IT departments are trying to meet the needs of remote employees even as organizations are slow to adapt. The survey concludes that users are doing whatever is needed to get the job done – even without permission – scattering corporate resources across various sites.
“The pressure is on for IT departments to accommodate demands for greater mobility as employees crave new and flexible approaches to working. Organizations that are not open to this change are very likely to be inhibiting business productivity,” says François Lasnier, senior vice president for Identity Protection at Gemalto. “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.”
Key findings from Gemalto survey:
- 95% of respondents agree that there are obstacles to increased user mobility within their organization, mainly security concerns and IT management overhead
- An average of 20% of their organization’s help desk/IT support tickets are for forgotten usernames and passwords
- 38% of users in respondents’ organizations use two-factor authentication; this is expected to increase to over half in two years
- 56% of respondents cited the ability to protect as many enterprise and cloud applications as possible as a key criteria when assessing a strong authentication solution
- Cloud efficiencies play a role in decision making – 52% of respondents citing cloud-based delivery as a main consideration when sourcing an authentication solution
- Ease of use is at the top of IT professionals minds – 94% cite software and frictionless authentication methods as a key consideration when assessing strong authentication solutions
Gemalto surveyed 900 IT decision makers in July. Participants were polled from all over the world including the U.S., UK, Middle East, France, Germany, Australia, and Japan. Respondents work in a variety of sectors for organizations with at least 250 employees.
