Australian IT teams adapting to hybrid work future

Australian IT professionals are becoming more confident in their organisations’ ability to enable secure remote work, according to new research published by Thales.

A survey conducted by 451 Research for the company found that 83% of IT professionals in Australia have some degree of confidence in the ability of their user access security systems to enable remote work securely and easily, up from 78% last year.

Organisations are also growing more confident in the ability of authentication and access management systems to manage risks, with only 30% of IT professionals reporting very high concerns about the security risks of remote work, down from 47% in 2021.

The proportion of those who are somewhat concerned meanwhile increased from 36 to 47% over the same period.

Use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) to manage security risks posed by remote workers is also increasing, but only 56% of respondents report having adopted the technology to date.

Intentions to adopt the technology are increasing, with 39% of respondents reporting plans to deploy standalone MFA, up from just 21% in 2021.

Thales VP of access management Francois Lasnier said the results suggest that IT teams are adapting well to the pressures posed by the increasing popularity of hybrid working models.

“The past few years have cemented remote work and work-from-anywhere as a permanent part of the security landscape, and they have also introduced new security risks and challenges,” he said.

“However, growing familiarity with remote work has ultimately broadened awareness on an enterprise level of daily business security risks and has strengthened both confidence and ability in security teams and products to handle those risks and threats properly.”

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