Cisco Shares Key Trends Around Risk Reduction and IT Security

Cisco published the 2022 Duo Trusted Access Report under the motto "Logins in a dangerous time". The report analyzes data from 13 billion authentications on almost 50 million different devices worldwide made via Cisco Duo. 

Overall, the report shows that companies recognize and use multi-factor authentication (MFA) and passwordless technologies as important elements for risk reduction and IT security. 

 “Digitization in the region and beyond, paves the way for a surge in cyber threats at all levels across organizations. With companies rigorously adopting hybrid and remote working models, indispensable business devices such as laptops and mobile phones are now more vulnerable than before. At Cisco we believe that business and IT leaders need to train, and ultimately, encourage the organization’s workforce to implement MFA and passwordless technologies to ensure their assets are updated with additional layers of security,” said Fady Younes, Cybersecurity Director, EMEA Service Providers and MEA,

The report highlights the following important insights:

1. Passwordless adoption continues to rise: our data shows a 50% increase in the percentage of accounts allowing WebAuthn authentication and a fivefold increase in WebAuthn usage since April 2019.
2. Biometrics have stalled: The percentage of phones with biometrics enabled held steady at around 81% (a minor increase from 2021), indicating that progress towards biometrics across the board has stalled. 
3. MFA continues to strengthen passwords: Multi-factor authentication holds strong while adding to the security of only traditional password usage. The number of MFA authentications using Duo rose by 38% in the past year.
4. Cloud usage continues to rise: An increasing number of authentications are attributed to cloud applications, with a 24% rise in the percentage of cloud applications in 2022.
5. Hybrid work and back to the office: Remote access authentications peaked in 2020 but have declined since then.