The remote workforce is putting organisations at a greater risk of data breaches, IP theft, and illegal access through company and personal devices. In the first six months of the pandemic, 48% of total UK knowledge workers said they had experienced targeted phishing emails, calls, or texts in a personal or professional capacity – this number will only continue to grow. If these risks are not addressed, 2021 will be yet another year where we say, “the threat landscape continues to become more complex”. Identity and access management plays a major role in securing enterprise identities and limiting the blast radius from a compromise. But IAM processes are complex, and a well-managed identity governance programme can thus be costly and out of reach for many organisations. Yet AI is already starting to change this, and the trend will accelerate in 2021. Identity management will become more streamlined as we analyse patterns and anomalies to automate access requests, spot risky users, and eliminate manual and cumbersome re-certification processes. Organisations will become more comfortable embracing automated governance around the real crown jewels in any organisation —their identities—and this automation will make IAM programmes more accessible to a broader range of organisations. I believe regulators will start to become comfortable with AI-driven decisions as they realise that machines will deliver smarter and faster results vs. overwhelmed humans trying to determine who can access what and when.  Read Less