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08/06/2026 4:08 pm
TL;DR: Remote work shifted identity to the front line of enterprise security, with Axiad citing Gartner and Axiad survey data showing that 71% of remote-work threat concerns were phishing and 61% were malware, while 52% of tech leaders said employees had found policy workarounds. Identity-first security is now a governance requirement, not a usability slogan.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Axiad: What you need to know about ‘Identity-first Security’: The rise of remote
By the numbers:
- The Axiad Remote Work Survey found that phishing threats (71%) and malware (61%) emerged as the most significant new threat vectors concerning remote work environments.
- (52%) of tech leaders said their remote employees, emote employees had found workarounds to their company’s security policies.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams reduce friction in remote identity controls without weakening security?
A: Start by consolidating overlapping authentication methods and removing credentials that do not add clear assurance.
Q: Why do remote environments increase identity risk for both people and systems?
A: Remote environments expand the number of access points, applications, and credentials that must be governed outside a fixed office perimeter.
Q: What do organisations get wrong about identity-first security?
A: They often treat it as an authentication project rather than an operating model.
Practitioner guidance
- Rationalise remote-access credentials Inventory the credential types employees need for remote work, then remove duplicated authentication paths and retire low-value variants that only add operational overhead.
- Build policy around user friction thresholds Measure where employees abandon approved methods and create workarounds, then revise authentication flows before those workarounds become normal operating behaviour.
- Extend governance to machine identities Apply the same issue, ownership, and offboarding discipline to application credentials, service accounts, and collaboration-tool tokens that support remote work.
What's in the full article
Axiad's full blog covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The article’s own breakdown of how remote work changed credential demand across employees, devices, and collaboration tools.
- Axiad’s explanation of why users created workarounds when approved authentication felt too cumbersome.
- The product-oriented description of how a single pane of glass can simplify support for multiple credential types.
- The article’s framing of identity-first security as a response to remote work rather than a narrow authentication problem.
👉 Read Axiad's analysis of identity-first security for remote work →
Identity-first security for remote work: what IAM teams need to know?
Explore further
08/06/2026 5:36 pm
Identity-first security is really control-plane consolidation. The article shows that remote work forced organisations to treat identity as the primary security boundary, because the old office perimeter no longer explains how access happens. That is not a tooling preference, it is a governance reset. IAM teams should read this as a demand to unify authentication, credential lifecycle, and access policy across human and machine identities.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which means most teams cannot confidently explain where machine access exists or who owns it.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How can teams tell whether identity controls are working in a remote workforce?
A: Look for reduced policy workarounds, fewer ad hoc credential requests, and clearer ownership of every access-bearing identity. If employees or administrators are repeatedly improvising around the approved process, the programme is losing authority. Effective controls should lower confusion while keeping access decisions traceable and revocable.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity-first security for remote work raises the IAM bar
