In 2020, the pandemic forced huge corporations to accelerate executing plans most of them had for many years — having a hybrid workforce.
But moving all or some of the workforce to working from home comes with its own set of risks. With several people working on personal devices on their home networks, which aren’t generally configured for high standards of security, the risk of organizations’ networks getting compromised is substantial.
So, to understand how the world is coping with the remote-work model, ManageEngine ran a survey asking IT admins about the challenges they faced in 2020 and what their organizations have planned for 2021.
How have businesses adapted to the remote-work culture in 2020?
Some corporations have opened and are running their business as usual while most of us still work from home, largely depending on what region we’re in and how that region is faring against the pandemic. According to 18 percent of network admins, over 75 percent of their workforce still operates remotely.
It’s not just the general workforce that’s gone remote; 25 percent of the admins we spoke to said that they’ve been managing their entire IT infrastructure remotely with the help of IT management solutions since March 2020. They’ve been able to monitor, modify, and manage the IT Infrastructure without being onsite.
However, to accommodate all the requirements of the remote-work era, admins have had to modify their infrastructure configurations continuously. We’ve seen how abrupt changes going wrong can bring down even the biggest corporations and their services. There are also other threats that IT admins face while working remotely. Some of these threats are ones we see on a regular basis while others are old threats resurfacing after a long period of hiding in the shadows.
So, ManageEngine asked IT admins what they fear the most about abrupt infrastructure configuration changes. About 48 percent of admins answered compliance policy violations and 30 percent answered ransomware.
While these threats have existed for a while, most organizations haven’t trained their IT staff appropriately to mitigate a cyberattack. We asked survey participants if they’ve trained their staff to protect their business from cyberattacks. Only a little over half, 57 percent, said they had, highlighting that many businesses still don’t take the threat of cyberattacks seriously.
How did businesses strengthen data and network security in 2020?
Businesses are increasingly becoming aware of the threats that they might face and are trying to do everything in their power to minimize the potential damage they’ll incur in the event of a security breach.
Restricting access to sensitive information tops the list of priorities for IT admins. VPNs are one of the common tools used to restrict access, and over 70 percent of companies surveyed are already using VPNs.
Scanning networks for vulnerabilities and loopholes is another priority with admins reporting that there’s an increase in the frequency of scans they perform. 40 percent of businesses are scanning their networks for vulnerabilities everyday.
IT investments in 2020 and plans for 2021
It’s crucial for companies to understand that it’s high time they invest in tools to manage their IT infrastructure better and keep themselves safe from attacks.
15.4 percent of businesses are already using IT management solutions, and only 7.7 percent of companies have planned to adopt and deploy solutions in 2021.
While the trend of adopting IT management solutions looks bleak, 40 percent of businesses who already have deployed IT management solutions increased their IT budgets in 2020 and have plans to increase it for 2021 as well.
How do IT management solutions help?
We asked users who’ve adopted ManageEngine ITOM solutions in 2020 how they’ve benefited from our solutions. They responded saying that they’ve been able to resolve issues quicker and have reported they’re able to resolve faults 86 percent quicker.
What’s more, many of them used ManageEngine ITOM solutions to predict and fix network issues. This has helped them reduce loss of revenue due to outages by a staggering 90 percent.
So, if you still haven’t decided if you should invest in ITOM solutions for your organization, now’s the time to decide! You can download a free, 30-day trial of any of our solutions to see for yourself how they can benefit your organization!