Like a lot of organizations today, your company is facing increasing demands to support and protect countless systems, applications, and platforms that contain sensitive business data by controlling access to this critical information. On top of this, you are pressured to meet ongoing regulatory compliance and industry mandates.

Make no mistake, the pace of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) has reached a fever pitch in the last year. Throughout 2021, M&A activity has continued to trend sharply upwards—with the rate of announcements projected to be the biggest ever in recorded history.

If you’re like most IT or security professionals, it seems harder than ever to manage the complexity of user access. Keeping track of access rights, roles, accounts, permissions, entitlements, credentials, and privileges is a never ending—and sometimes thankless—proposition.

If the last year has demonstrated any lessons for IT and security teams, it’s this: managing privileged access should be a top priority for the business. When a large portion of the workforce began working remotely, there was a frenzy to extend access so individuals could perform their jobs from home. Yet this may have unintentionally caused inappropriate access levels to be extended to employees. This becomes especially problematic if those access levels are elevated or privileged within the business.

As a new year looms bright with possibility in front of us, how can we prepare for a world that looks profoundly different than it did a year ago? On the cybersecurity front, we can always anticipate continuing battles with familiar foes, as well as a few new challenges on the horizon. Though we may not have a crystal ball, based on our observations and discussions, here are six predictions for the upcoming year.

As 2020 comes to an end and we anticipate gleefully tossing our calendars in the garbage, we can all agree it was one of the most tumultuous years in recent history. It was a difficult time for almost every person and industry, and cybersecurity was certainly no exception, with shocking breaches, mass transitions to remote working, and threat actors thriving as the pandemic raged on. Though we’re as eager as everyone else to look forward, let’s look back at 2020 one more time to identify trends that may help you plan for a better 2021.

The impact of COVID-19 has been far-reaching across nearly every sector. Millions of employees now work remotely, making companies particularly vulnerable when it comes to external access risks. Many organizations lack a centralized process to manage user access to accounts and resources. They often have limited visibility into access levels users possess to data and systems within their network. And they may be quickly adding or changing access levels to meet the needs of their remote workforce.

Financial services information security continues to be a top priority across the entire financial sector—and for good reason. The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that financial profit or gain was the primary motivation in 71 percent of all information security incidents, making financial services organizations a prime target for attack.

The identity security landscape has transformed considerably within the last two decades. And for good reason. Mitigating identity-related access risks has become essential as companies face threats every day, from virtually everywhere.