As offices emptied and remote work became the norm, security teams struggled

One Identity released a global survey that reveals attitudes of IT and security teams regarding their responses to COVID-19-driven work environment changes. The results shed insight into IT best practices that have emerged in recent months, and how organizations rushed to adopt them to maintain a secure and efficient virtual workplace.

Cloud computing has been a lifesaver

99% of IT security professionals said their organizations transitioned to remote work because of COVID-19, and only a third described that transition as “smooth.” 62% of respondents indicated that cloud infrastructure is more important now than 12 months ago.

Thirty-one percent attributed this shift directly to COVID-19. The cloud has become front and center to the new working reality, creating flexibility for employees.

These results demonstrate that the previous level of attention to cloud deployments, while notable, does not appear to have been nearly enough to accommodate the dramatic computing shift across organizations.

“This research makes it clearly evident that cloud computing has been a lifesaver for many enterprises as IT teams pivoted and supported the massive shift to working away from offices,” said Darrell Long, president and general manager at One Identity.

“While we knew the pandemic-driven changes were sudden, what was particularly notable was how strongly the results proved that organizations had to turn their focus on the immediate challenges presented by the aggressive move to cloud computing, chiefly finding solutions that streamlined administering and securing who has access to what and how.”

Higher priority on access request technologies

Shifts in priorities indicate organizations are turning their focus on tackling the security basics. When compared to 12 months ago, 50% of respondents are placing a higher priority on access request technologies, and 31% said this change in prioritization is because of COVID.

Identity/access lifecycle management, identity process and workflow, and role management all saw increased priority among at least half of those surveyed.

Perhaps shell shocked, only 45% of IT security professionals indicated they are prepared for the IT changes necessary when their employees move back to organizations’ offices, according to survey results. Yet, 66% expressed increased confidence in the effectiveness of their identity management programs post COVID-based changes.

“We now know the truth: the COVID pandemic did not change the need to be productive, nor did it change the regulatory compliance requirements companies face, but clearly IT and security teams scrambled to shift their systems to accommodate work from home in a secure and controlled way,” said Long.

“Companies and organizations were helped to an extent by cloud investments that prepared them pre-COVID. However, most of them are still dealing with new challenges as employees adapt, IT and security teams effectively respond to the challenge of providing effective processes for gaining access to the resources needed for the workforce to do their jobs and security challenges associated with this new working environment.”