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The pandemic has been transformational , to say the least . Vaccines have been developed and rolled out at historical speeds and expectations from everyday life have changed in ways we never thought would be possible . Enterprise IT has also gone through its own profound changes . Almost overnight , businesses had to reconsider how they secure their networks and how their employees and customers access their online information .
Ping Identity ’ s C-Suite survey demonstrates this evolution within the boardroom . In late-2020 , over 1,300 executives around the globe were surveyed to see how the pandemic impacted working conditions and mindsets towards security .
Perhaps the largest visible change to working life was the acceleration of remote work . Shortly after the beginning of the pandemic , governments ordered their citizenry to lockdown – staying in their houses for sometimes months at a time . In order to preserve Business Continuity and overcome the problem of their suddenly vacant offices , business enabled remote working on a massive scale . This often involved onboarding hundreds if not thousands of stressed employees onto a technology that businesses had never planned to accommodate for more than a handful of people . Though mass remote work came suddenly , many adapted well and it ’ s now looking as though it won ’ t be just an emergency measure but a staple of the post-pandemic norm .
In fact , executive respondents believe that remote work is here to stay . An average of 47 % said that over a quarter of their employees would be working mostly remotely into 2022 . In the UK , that expectation is even higher at 54 %, compared with 52 % in the US and 50 % in France . increased investment also signifies an increased responsibility they ’ ve put in IT departments to protect the business and its revenues . Two-thirds ( 70 %) of executives believe that security is the sole or majority responsibility of the IT departments .
This can be seen most clearly in the way they are architecting their networks . During the pandemic , security teams could no longer depend on existing perimeters , or the walls that kept threats out and sensitive data inside , to secure their borderless workforce . With most , if not all , of their employees
Emma Maslen , VP and GM for EMEA and APAC , Ping Identity
As a result , businesses are helping their employees secure their home networks for the long-term potential of remote work . Nearly half ( 44 %) of executives said they were providing new safe passwords for home routers and Wi-Fi networks , 42 % said they were helping tether mobile devices for backup access in case of outages and 30 % were providing additional routers .
This shift has also forced the boardroom to take a newfound interest in IT , the pandemic shedding light on its importance and entrenching it deeper within enterprise strategy . A total of 37 % of executives say that they have increased the size of their IT departments in the wake of the pandemic . That
Perhaps the largest visible change to working life was the acceleration of remote work .
working from home on potentially insecure and unreliable devices and computers – enterprises needed to find a new way to secure their networks – in whatever form .
Hence – an accelerating interest in identity security . Over half ( 55 %) have invested in new identity security
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