Yubico has released the results of a new survey that suggests that businesses are getting better when it comes to their security practices. The survey found that a full 74 percent of businesses are planning to invest more money in multi-factor authentication (MFA) tech.
Yubico attributed that trend to the growing awareness of security best practices, and to the work-from-home environment that emerged in the wake of COVID-19. In that regard, 49 percent of the respondents implemented an MFA solution to protect their remote workers, making it the most common security response for organizations during the pandemic.
Other organizations turned to MFA after experiencing a security breach, with 53 percent of the respondents reporting at least one such incident in the past year. Fifty-seven percent cited security as their primary motivation when embracing MFA technology, though they also highlighted several factors that could slow adoption rates. Most notably, the respondents were worried that MFA would deliver a poor user experience (43 percent), and that it would be too complex (41 percent) and too expensive (36 percent) to install at a corporate scale.
The survey raised additional concerns about the persistent support for SMS authenticators, which remain one of the most popular multi-factor authentication options, largely due to their perceived convenience. However, many of those organizations believe that SMS security is more robust than it is in practice, with only 22 percent of the respondents expressing any concern about the integrity of SMS authentication.
Yubico did find growing support for FIDO authentication protocols. Sixty-one percent of the respondents have installed a passwordless system, or have one in a pilot phase.
“The pandemic and the move to cloud-based office applications has been a turning point for enterprises to implement and modernize their multi-factor authentication,” said Yubico Founder and CEO Stina Ehrensvärd. “This research shows that while there is an appetite for strong security, many companies stick with less effective old habits and technologies.”
The study was carried out in collaboration with 451 Research. It arrives shortly after the release of Yubico’s updated iOS and Android SDKs, which arrived earlier this month.
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