Dive Brief:

• Nearly 70% of global business executives plan to increase spending on identity access management for their workforce over the next 12 months, as a continuation of remote work increases demand on IT and security teams, according to a study from Ping Identity released Tuesday. In the U.S. that ratio is nearly eight out of 10 senior executives. 
• The report shows 82% of executives either have deployed or enhanced zero trust principles across their organization. In addition, 71% of executives expect zero trust principles to increase across organizations in the next 12 months. 
• Nearly half (47%) of executives say they expect at least 25% of their employees to spend at least three days a week working remotely during 2022. The survey showed 37% of executives increased the size of their IT staff to accommodate remote work and also elevated the role of IT as a strategic priority.

Dive Insight:

The survey of 1,300 executives in the U.S., U.K.,Germany, France and Australia shows how the shift toward remote work due to COVID-19 has impacted the long-term strategic goals of major enterprises in terms of IT and security spending as well as policies. 

About 91% of organizations planned to increase cybersecurity spending, according to a February report from Insight. A separate report from PwC shows 55% of technology and security executives plan to boost their cybersecurity budgets in 2021, with 51% of executives adding full-time cybersecurity staff this year.

The shift to remote work has put increased pressure on IT and security departments to give workers the proper tools and policy changes to secure corporate data, while maintaining the productivity of employees, according to the research. 

"Organizations have learned that user experience and productivity is an important ingredient to their security strategy," Zain Malik, senior product marketing manager at Ping Identity, said via email. "They need to remove the friction as much as possible or risk overwhelming their help desks and or [reducing] employee morale."

Boosting spending on IAM and zero trust can protect critical data while maintaining employee productivity. Zero trust and IAM have been major issues during the COVID-19 pandemic as companies have reported data breaches linked to more workers operating outside of corporate firewalls as well as too many workers having access to data they don't need. 

One of the biggest issues with corporate data security during the pandemic is managing access privileges for key executives, providing them the proper access to do their jobs, without putting corporate data at risk. 

"The growth in remote working over the past year has increased identity's importance as organizations are seeking to find solutions to keep their employees secure outside of the office without sacrificing their productivity," Malik said.