Topic starter
24/06/2026 8:59 pm
TL;DR: 68% of organisations suffered a cyberattack in the last 12 months, while 49% would prioritise improving PAM if they could choose, according to Netwrix Research Lab’s survey of 1,610 IT professionals across 106 countries. The message for identity programmes is clear: hybrid security still fails at privilege control, not just at perimeter coverage.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Netwrix: “2023 Hybrid Security Trends Report”.
By the numbers:
- 68% of organizations suffered a cyberattack within the last 12 months.
- 49% of respondents would opt to improve privileged access management in their organization if they could decide on their own.
- 81% of organizations worldwide now use at least one cloud environment.
Key questions
Q: Why do privileged access controls break down in hybrid environments?
A: Hybrid environments fragment identity evidence across clouds, endpoints, workflows, and ticketing systems.
Q: Why does cloud adoption change how organisations should manage privileged access?
A: Cloud environments change both the control surface and the tools used to reach it.
Q: How should security teams compare PAM solutions for hybrid environments?
A: Start with the controls that reduce exposure, not the feature count.
Practitioner guidance
- Tighten privileged role inventory Catalogue every privileged account, admin role, break-glass path, and delegated elevation route across on-premises and cloud platforms.
- Review standing privilege by environment Identify where privileged access persists beyond the task, session, or approval that justified it.
- Align PAM controls across cloud and on-premises Apply the same approval, session oversight, and recertification expectations to both cloud administrative roles and legacy infrastructure accounts.
Bottom line: The report shows that hybrid security still has a privilege problem, even where cloud adoption is already mainstream.
Explore further
View Full Forum → | NHI Foundation Course → | Our Services → | Read the full analysis →
25/06/2026 5:54 am
Hybrid security usually fails first at privilege, not perimeter. The report’s numbers point to a programme reality that many teams already know but understate in planning: broad security coverage does not matter if elevated access is still loosely governed. PAM becomes the control that decides whether identity boundaries hold under pressure, especially where cloud and on-premises administration overlap. For practitioners, that means the risk discussion should start with privileged access paths rather than with environment type.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What happens if cloud and on-premises privilege rules are not aligned?
A: Teams end up with two governance standards for the same risk, which creates weak points wherever the lighter policy applies. That inconsistency encourages overprivileged access, fragmented reviews, and slower containment during an incident. The result is not just a compliance issue. It is a wider operational exposure because attackers will follow the least governed administrative path.
👉 Read our full editorial: Hybrid security trends show PAM remains the weakest control gap