Is security enabling or compromising productivity?

While most organizations fundamentally believe connecting people to the best technology is vital to business productivity, many struggle to achieve agility due to traditional on-premise security mindsets, according to an Okta survey of 300 IT and security professionals.

Failing to adapt and upgrade security tools is putting organizations at risk. 65% of respondents think that a data breach will happen within the next 12 months if they do not upgrade legacy security solutions in time.

“In order to be more productive, organizations worldwide are investing in cloud and mobile technologies, enabling their staff to work from virtually anywhere. But this isn’t enough to ensure true agility. As organizations become increasingly connected, the traditional idea of the enterprise network boundary is vanishing and businesses need to prioritise strong security,” said David Baker, CSO at Okta. “To successfully navigate the new perimeter and avoid compromising on security and productivity, IT leaders need to adopt tools that span traditional company and network boundaries and enable agility across the organization.”

Organizations are unsure if security is enabling or compromising productivity and agility

When asked if security measures compromised or enabled productivity in their organization, respondents’ opinions were mixed. Just over half (52%) said that their current security solutions compromise productivity, while 48% believe their security measures enable the organization to adopt best of breed solutions that enable productivity and agility.

Visibility into application usage is limited

Okta’s research shows that 85% of IT leaders suffer from a lack of insight over who has access to applications within their organization. Even more worrying, 80% of respondents pointed to weak passwords or weak access controls as a security issue.

Investing in new mobile, automation, and cloud technologies is paying dividends for organizations

92% of respondents believe their organization could do more to integrate and support cloud applications into their infrastructure and systems. This reveals a massive opportunity for IT teams to further drive agility and productivity, and the chance to drive this percentage down.