• 73% of enterprises (over 500 employees) accelerated their cloud migration plans to support the shift to remote working across their organisations due to the pandemic.
• 81% of enterprises accelerated their IT modernisation processes due to the pandemic.
• 48% of all companies surveyed have accelerated their cloud migration plans, 49% have sped up their IT modernisation plans because of Covid-19.
• 32% of large-scale enterprises, over 500 employees, are implementing more automation using artificial intelligence-based tools this year.

These and many other insights are from a recent survey of IT leaders completed by CensusWide and sponsored by Centrify. The survey’s objectives on understanding how the dynamics of IT investments, operations and spending have shifted over the last six months. The study finds that the larger the enterprise, the more important it is to secure remote access to critical infrastructure to IT admin teams. Remote access and updating privacy policies and notices are two of the highest priorities for mid-size organisations to enterprises today. The methodology is based on interviews with 215 IT leaders located in the U.S.

Key insights from the survey include the following:

The overwhelming majority of enterprises have transformed their cybersecurity approach over the last six months, with 83% of large-scale enterprises leading all organisations

It’s encouraging to see small and medium-sized businesses adjusting and improving their approach to cybersecurity. Reflecting how digitally-driven many small and medium businesses are, cybersecurity adjustments begin in organisations with 10 to 49 employees. 60% adjusted their cloud security postures as a result of distributed workforces.

48% of all organisations had to accelerate cloud migration due to the pandemic, with larger enterprises leading the way

Enterprises with over 500 employees are the most likely to accelerate cloud migration plans due to the pandemic. 73.5% of enterprises with more than 500 employees accelerated cloud migration plans to support their employees’ remote working arrangements, leading all organisation categories. This finding reflects how cloud-first the largest enterprises have become this year. It’s also consistent with many other surveys completed in 2020, reflecting how much the cloud has solidly won the enterprise.

49% of all organisations and 81% of large-scale enterprises had to accelerate their IT modernisation process due to the pandemic

For the largest enterprises, IT modernisation equates to digitising more processes using cloud-native services (59%), maintaining flexibility and security for a partially remote workforce (57%) and revisiting and adjusting their cybersecurity stacks (40%).

51% of enterprises with 500 employees or more are making remote, secure access their highest internal priority

In contrast, 27% of all organisations’ IT leaders say that providing secure, granular access to IT admin teams, outsourced IT and third-party vendors is a leading priority. The larger the enterprise, the more important remote access becomes. The survey also found organisations with 250 – 500 employees are most likely to purchase specific cybersecurity tools and applications to meet compliance requirements.

Conclusion  

IT leaders are quickly using the lessons learned from the pandemic as a crucible to strengthen cloud transformation and IT modernisation strategies. One of every three IT leaders interviewed, 34%, say their budgets have increased during the pandemic. In large-scale enterprises with over 500 employees, 59% of IT leaders have seen their budgets increase.

All organisations are also keeping their IT staff in place. 63% saw little to no impact on their teams, indicating that the majority of organisations will have both the budget and resources to maintain or grow their cybersecurity programs. 25% of IT leaders indicated that their company plans to keep their entire workforce 100% remote.

It’s encouraging to see IT leaders getting the support they need to achieve their cloud transformation and IT modernisation initiatives going into next year. With every size of organisation spending on cybersecurity tools, protecting cloud infrastructures needs to be a priority. Controlling administrative access risk in the cloud and DevOps is an excellent place to start with a comprehensive, modern Privileged Access Management solution. Leaders in this field, including Centrify, whose cloud-native architecture and flexible deployment and management options, deliver deep expertise in securing cloud environments.

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend the Cyber Security & Cloud Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.