New Delhi, Sep 28 : India leads in adoption and usage of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to address certain security risks and threats arising from hybrid and remote work, a report showed on Wednesday. Indians have the highest percentage increase of MFA adoption and highest overall percentage of MFA usage among all countries surveyed, up 19 percentage points to 66 per cent this year, finds Thales report conducted by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence. India is followed by Singapore with a 17 percentage point increase in adoption to 64 per cent and the UAE with a 10 percentage point increase to 65 per cent. "The strong growth in adoption of multi-factor authentication in India points towards rising awareness and a commitment towards ensuring high levels of security in enterprise environments," said Ashish Saraf, Vice President and Country Director, India at Thales. Globally, 84 per cent of IT professionals have some degree of confidence in their user access security systems to enable remote work securely and easily, up from 56 per cent in 2021. IT professionals with very high concerns about the security risks of remote work decreased to 31 per cent from 39 per cent globally last year, said the study. In addition, 60 per cent said this year they were highly confident compared to just 22 per cent last year. After two years of the pandemic, confidence in addressing certain security risks and threats arising from hybrid and remote work has improved among businesses and organizations around the world and in India, it added. The MFA usage remains most prevalent for remote workers (68 per cent) and privileged users (52 per cent) globally. The report showed that the MFA adoption is on the rise for internal and non-IT staff with MFA adoption increasing to 40 per cent compared to 34 per cent in 2021. "A greater shift towards a Zero Trust model would certainly place access management in a central role in corporate security strategies, with a related reliance on MFA as a critical supporting enabler," said Garrett Bekker, Principal Analyst at 451 Research. /IANS