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."