Gemalto Study Reveals Security Concerns over Convergence of Personal and Workplace Identities

AMSTERDAM, Dec
14, 2016 – (ACN Newswire) – Gemalto, the world leader in digital security,
today released the findings of its Authentication and Identity Management
Index, which revealed that 90% of enterprise IT professionals are concerned
that employee reuse of personal credentials for work purposes could compromise
security. However, with two thirds (68%) saying they would be comfortable
allowing employees to use their social media credentials on company resources,
Gemalto’s research suggests that personal applications (such as email) are the
biggest worry to organizations.Convergence of Personal and Workplace Identities

The enterprise and consumer worlds are merging closer together, with enterprise
security teams under increasing pressure to implement the same type of
authentication methods typically seen in consumer services, such as fingerprint
scanning and iris recognition. Six in ten (62%) believed this was the case,
with a similar amount (63%) revealing they feel security methods designed for
consumers provide sufficient protection for enterprises. In fact, over half of
respondents (52%) believe it will be just three years before these methods
merge completely.

Consumer breaches impacting enterprise security

Identity theft accounts for 64% of all data breaches across the globe[1], and
consumer service breaches continue to rise, resulting in almost nine in ten
(89%) enterprises addressing their access management security policies. Half of
enterprises have implemented extra training (49%) to allay their security
concerns, 47% increased security spend, and 44% allocated further resources.

Employee expectations around usability and mobility are affecting how
enterprises approach authentication and access management. Nearly half of
respondents stated that they are increasing resources and spending on access
management. Deployment rates are also increasing: 62% expect to implement
strong authentication in two years’ time – up from 51% of respondents who said
the same thing last year, and nearly 40% responded they will implement Cloud
SSO or IDaaS within the next two years.

Enterprises are clearly seeing the benefits, with over nine in ten (94%) using
two-factor authentication to protect at least one application and nearly all
respondents (96%) expecting to use it at some point in the future.

Mobility security still a challenge

As more enterprises become mobile, the challenges in protecting resources while
increasing flexibility for employees working on the move increases. Despite an
increasing amount of businesses enabling mobile working, a third (35%)
completely restricted employees from accessing company resources via mobile
devices and nine in ten (91%) are at least part-restricting access to resources.
This is backed up as half of businesses (50%) admit security is one of their
biggest concerns to increasing user mobility.

In order to protect themselves against threats from increased mobility,
enterprises are still most likely to be using usernames and passwords – two
thirds of users at respondents’ organizations are using this authentication
method, on average. Currently, 37% of users at respondents’ organizations are
required to use two-factor authentication to access corporate resources from mobile
devices, on average. However, like the rise for access while in the office, on
average, respondents believe this will increase to over half (56%) in two years’
time.

“From credential sharing to authentication practices, it’s clear that
consumer trends are having a big impact on enterprise security,” said
Francois Lasnier, Senior Vice President, Identity Protection at Gemalto.
“But businesses need to make sure their data isn’t compromised by bad
personal habits. It’s encouraging to see deployment of two-factor
authentication methods on the rise, and increased awareness for cloud access
management, as these are the most effective solutions for businesses to secure
cloud resources and protect against internal and external threats. For IT
leaders, it’s important that they keep pushing for security to be a priority at
the board level, and ensure that it’s front of mind for everyone in an
organization.”

[1] According to Gemalto’s H1 2016 Breach Level Index http://bit.ly/2hjOTCu

Related Resources
– Download the full Authentication and Identity Management Report here http://www6.gemalto.com/pr-2016-identity-access-management-index
– Download the Infographic here http://bit.ly/2hCDgHx
– Access full global and regional data on the Authentication and Identity
Management website here http://www2.gemalto.com/authentication-identity-management-index/
– Read more about Gemalt’s Identity and Access Management solutions http://www.gemalto.com/enterprise-security/identity-access-management