97 percent of IT professionals said that worker productivity will increase if businesses implement a context-aware security approach, replacing traditional measures, said a Dell survey.
Meanwhile, 91 percent of business respondents reported that their productivity is negatively impacted by security measures their employer has put in place.
Context-aware security replaces static access processes with an approach that evaluates the context surrounding each access request, and adapts security requirements accordingly.
While nearly 100 percent of IT professionals surveyed recognize the benefits a context-aware security approach would bring; only 28 percent said their organizations have fully embraced this approach.
More than 60 percent indicated that lack of awareness about context-aware security is the greatest barrier to adopting it in their organization.
Additional survey findings:
# More than 90 percent of business respondents use multiple passwords on a daily basis
# 92 percent of business respondents are negatively impacted when required to use additional security for remote work
# When looking at changes made to corporate security policies in the past 18 months, more than half of business respondents say security’s negative impact on day-to-day work has increased
# Nearly 70 percent of IT professionals say employee workarounds to avoid IT-imposed security measures pose the greatest risk to the organization
# 97 percent of IT professionals see the benefits in context-aware security, including:
The ability to prioritize threats based on context, including types of applications targeted
The ability to gain visibility into the context when assessing risk
The ability to address changing security needs in real-time and assess threats based on potential level of harm
The ability to improve worker productivity without sacrificing security
# 93 percent of IT professionals said that a lack of context-aware security causes challenges that include:
Difficulty in quickly addressing changing security needs
Non-standard access needs that require IT intervention
Unnecessary impact on employee productivity
Inability to analyze how/why restrictions are managed to improve worker productivity
“Context-aware security gives IT the ability to adjust the dial in real-time, giving users the convenience they desire without resorting to risky workarounds, and giving the security team the confidence they need to keep the organization both safe and productive,” said John Milburn, executive director and general manager, Identity and Access Management, Dell Security.
