In the first half of 2020, organizations around the globe scrambled to get their employees working from home, while also recognizing a critical business continuity gap. This reality accelerated the adoption of cloud-based solutions, with speed of deployment being a top priority. As we settle into a new normal, the world of work looks like it will be changed forever. In a recent Entrust Datacard customer survey, 84% of respondents said they expect the recent shift to a more significant remote workforce to be a permanent change.

A remote workforce makes the perimeter security concept more dated than ever and adds to the challenge of securing employee identities. During the pandemic, phishing continues to be the attack of choice because it’s very effective. In a different Entrust Datacard survey of Americans working from home in mid-April, the vast majority reported knowing what a phishing scam is, yet a full 24% still acknowledged clicking on a link in a COVID-related email from an unknown sender!

Not surprisingly, workforce authentication has become a top priority for many IT organizations, which also means it now has C-level visibility and support. As the threat landscape continues to intensify, don’t be the easiest target on the block. Employee passwords, especially in less secure home environments, are likely your single largest vulnerability. In that same survey, a majority of remote workers reported using weak or easy passwords, recycling old passwords, using the same password across multiple systems, and/or physically writing down passwords.

It’s way past the accepted time to do away with passwords, but be forewarned that a passwordless experience is not the same as passwordless authentication. Simply replacing the password with another authenticator like FaceID on a smart phone still means a single point of exposure. Credential-based passwordless authentication, on the other hand, provisions a digital certificate onto the worker’s mobile device, which is then unlocked by the phone’s biometrics, transforming it into their trusted workplace identity – regardless of physical location. A credential-based passwordless solution provides both a friction-free passwordless user experience and secure passwordless user authentication.

To learn more, attend our July 22 webinar: Passwordless and Cloud-Based Identity for the New Era of Work