Okta’s new Zero Trust 2023 report shows that zero-trust is in high demand in business. Between 2021 and now, the number of organizations that zero-trust has grown from less than a quarter to 61 percent.
The survey involved 860 IT decision-makers, which Okta defined as “director-level or higher employees responsible for making technology purchasing decisions.” Participants came from North America, Europe, Japan and Australia.
Zero-trust is now well established in many organizations. It assumes continuous ongoing authentication to allow access to corporate networks, data and systems. Under zero-trust principles, access is never simply granted to a privileged user or device without an additional verification step.
Okta surveyed four types of organizations: the financial and public sector, as well as healthcare and software companies. Only 4 percent of the organizations surveyed have no plans at all to deploy zero-trust in their business within 18 months. Finance is ahead of the rest when it comes to zero-trust adoption: 71 percent of those surveyed in this sector have already defined an approach in this area. Among software companies, the figure is 68 percent, compared to 58 percent among public agencies and 47 percent in healthcare.
Tip: Zero Trust must be a pivotal part of OT security
Swimming against the tide
In recent years, it has been a common trope to cut budgets and downsize roadmaps within the IT world. Protecting organizations increasingly proves to be a near-impossible task as cyber threats increase and security expertise is rare. However, “budgets for zero-trust seem virtually untouchable,” Okta noted. In fact, the money made available to implement zero-trust is on the up at 60 percent of organizations worldwide. With that, zero-trust is clearly swimming against the tide when it comes to IT budgets.
Some things remain the same, though: organizations surveyed still overwhelmingly indicate that people are the biggest security risk – even more so than before, in fact. 38 percent of respondents had this answer at number one. Behind them, networks and data follow at a good distance.
Okta foresees a zero-trust world
Regional Vice President Benelux of Okta Mark van Leeuwen says we now live in a zero-trust world. “The numbers suggest that within 18 months, nine in 10 companies will have adopted a zero-trust security model. Moreover, companies are dedicating their cybersecurity budgets to zero-trust.” According to him, this trend indicates “that this form of security is and will continue to be a priority.”
Also read: What is Okta AI and how does it help protect and secure identity?