When it comes to work patterns, the past months have truly been a roller coaster ride for both IT managers and employees. With the proliferation of remote and hybrid work patterns, the overall threat surface is at record high levels right now.
This was validated by a recent survey of nearly 1,250 security decision makers that was conducted by Citrix. The respondents of the survey belonged to medium as well as large scale organizations. Let us discuss a few highlights of the survey.
74% of the respondents cited an increase in the complexity of cyber security controls, as a direct consequence of the pandemic induced remote and hybrid work. 73% of the respondents were facing difficulties in keeping their remote work platforms secure.
What is making the security of remote work platforms even more challenging is the rising expectations of remotely working employees when it comes to user experience. 66% of the surveyed knowledge workers declared remote work capability an absolute necessity.
To make matters even more challenging for securing remote work environments, 86% of the respondents said that a sub-par end user experience was just not acceptable to them. This overwhelming stat underscores the importance of seamless employee experiences.
Now, IT and cyber security professionals are faced with two mammoth challenges. The first one is to secure remote and hybrid work environments, which are daunting to monitor, let alone fully secure them from the complex cyber threats of the present day.
The other challenge that information security professional are facing is that they just cannot afford to heighten security at the expense of end user experience. Another 79% of the respondents declared the pandemic as an opportunity to re-envision their security.
The Citrix survey also covers the sentiments of employees that are working remotely, and there is a lot of room for improvement. 43% of the employees working remotely cited poor connectivity as a factor that deteriorated their end user experience.
A sizeable 34% of the surveyed remote workers found that it was difficult for them to tackle technical issues remotely or virtually. 32% of the present day remote workers also declared an inability to get IT support on time, in a way that was easy for them.
The survey concludes by emphasizing the need for enterprises to invest in smart, automated security tools that do the job of securing hybrid and remote work infrastructures, without deteriorating the end user experience.
