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12/06/2026 10:16 pm
TL;DR: 2020 accelerated remote work, exposed persistent password and MFA weaknesses, and highlighted how phishing, credential theft, ransomware, and SolarWinds-style supply chain compromise can overwhelm identity controls, according to Axiad. The lesson is that identity security must assume bypass, not just authentication success.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Axiad: The Major Cybersecurity Themes of 2020
By the numbers:
- At the beginning of 2020, more than half of CIOs expected an increase in remote workers.
- By last fall, only 57% of businesses were utilizing MFA.
- 91% of people understand that repurposing passwords is a security risk, 66% still do so.
Questions worth separating out
A: Password-centric access breaks down because remote work expands the number of channels attackers can exploit, from phishing to helpdesk abuse to interception of temporary credentials.
Q: Why do organisations need zero trust for both human and non-human identities?
A: Human and non-human identities both become trust shortcuts once a credential is issued.
Q: How do teams know whether MFA is actually reducing access risk?
A: MFA is working only if it blocks meaningful bypass paths and reduces the success rate of stolen credentials, not just if users see an extra prompt.
Practitioner guidance
- Eliminate password recovery shortcuts Remove email-based temporary passwords and other recovery paths that assume users are inside a controlled office environment.
- Treat MFA as a baseline, not an endpoint Review where MFA is present but bypassable through legacy protocols, helpdesk resets, or weak exception handling.
- Extend zero trust to non-human identities Apply the same continuous verification discipline to service accounts, API keys, and tokens that you apply to employee identities.
What's in the full article
Axiad's full blog covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- A year-by-year recap of the 2020 threat landscape and how each trend developed across the year
- The article's full discussion of remote work, MFA adoption, and regulatory pressure in context
- Additional commentary on major breaches including SolarWinds, FireEye, and healthcare ransomware
- The original author’s framing of why 2020 accelerated existing cybersecurity trends rather than replacing them
👉 Read Axiad’s analysis of the major cybersecurity themes of 2020 →
Remote work, MFA, and zero trust: what 2020 changed?
Explore further
13/06/2026 12:55 am
Remote work turned identity into the primary control plane for security. Once users, devices, and support workflows moved outside the office, the old assumption that access could be safely mediated by network location stopped holding. That is an identity governance problem, not just a remote work problem. Practitioners should treat this as a structural shift in how access is validated and governed.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 96% of organisations store secrets outside of secrets managers in vulnerable locations including code, config files, and CI/CD tools, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which means most teams cannot confidently inventory the identities that remote work and cloud operations now depend on.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when third-party trust relationships are exploited in a supply chain compromise?
A: Accountability sits with the organisation that allowed inherited trust to persist without enough verification, as well as with the third party whose access or software path became the attack vector. Governance should define ownership for vendor access, delegated credentials, and offboarding so that trust changes are tracked and revoked.
👉 Read our full editorial: 2020 showed identity security gaps widening under remote work
