As the number of identities increase across nearly all surveyed enterprises, identity-related data breaches have affected over 80% of organizations.

The 2022 Trends in Securing Digital Identities report from the Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA) is based on an online survey of over 500 identity and security professionals. As identity-related breaches threaten enterprise organizations, this report examines the progress businesses are making in defending against these attacks and the internal factors that are both enabling and interfering identity-based data breaches.

Identity management challenges

Identity and access management (IAM) has become significantly more complicated over the last several years. Between the increasing number of identities, the challenges posed by phishing attacks, and the continued growth of cloud adoption, enterprises are under tremendous pressure to ensure that remote workers, contractors and employees are accessing network resources securely and successfully.

According to the report, 84% of respondents said their organization experienced an identity-related breach in the last year, with 78% citing a direct business impact as a result. 

Nearly all (98%) of respondents said the number of identities in their organization is increasing, primarily driven by cloud adoption, third-party relationships and machine identities. Perhaps to due this increase, 64% of respondents say managing and securing identity is one of the top three priorities of their security program.

Cyberattack prevention and response

With a majority of respondents experiencing identity-related data breaches within the past year, security leaders have reflected on ways to prevent further attacks. Ninety-six percent of respondents reported that they could have prevented or minimized the breach by implementing identity-focused security outcomes.

Forty-three percent of respondents believe that implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) would have made a difference in their cyberattack prevention efforts. According to the report, 72% of respondents are more careful with their work passwords than personal passwords when executives discuss passwords, highlighting the need for leadership buy-in.

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