Fifty-one percent (51%) of UK business leaders say their shift to a cloud computing-based business model has saved their company from collapse during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to research from Centrify, a leading provider of Identity-Centric Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions. Given this success, 60 percent of respondents are planning to substantially increase their use of cloud-based IT throughout and following the pandemic.

The research, which surveyed 200 senior business decision makers in large- and medium-sized companies in the UK in September, also found that Covid-19 has exposed serious weaknesses in businesses' IT security. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of decision-makers agree that the pandemic has exposed huge gaps in their cybersecurity armor. Conversely, this data point suggests that a majority of companies (61 percent) were ready for the huge security challenge posed by Covid-19 and the shift to remote working.

However, 60 percent of business leaders agreed that they are more aware of the risks facing their organization after the recent surge in phishing attacks aimed at quarantined remote workers.

Worryingly, 56 percent of those surveyed said that remote working has made it harder to identify potential hackers impersonating staff, and, as a result, more than half (51 percent) say remote working has led to an increase in insider threats. This highlights a need for modern cybersecurity solutions that can limit access and privilege by segregating duties, implementing access request and approval workflows, and leveraging behavior analytics based on machine learning technology.

"Facing the security threats posed by Covid-19 continues to be no easy task, but fortunately business leaders have been rewarded for their trust in public cloud adoption, said Andy Heather, VP at Centrify. "Addressing this concern starts with adopting a cloud-ready privileged access management security solution to enforce least privilege, only granting administrative users just enough access to resources, just in time to do the job required. A modern approach to privileged access control enables businesses to continue remote operations across scalable multi-cloud environments whilst remaining confident that internal threats are flagged, blocked and neutralized."