Employees now rarely set foot on-premises, and self-determine when they are at their desks.
Therefore, remotely managing endpoint estates regardless of power, OS state or location is essential to the modern workforce. Organisations must onboard new workers, update existing endpoints, and patch problems anywhere, anytime.
Computing's latest research on this subject, conducted in partnership with Intel, highlights the chief endpoint manageability concerns for IT leaders today.
We surveyed 150 IT decision makers involved in endpoint strategy or implementation at their organisation, from a range of industries.
One hundred per cent of survey respondents saw endpoint estate management demands increase or stay the same over the last two years. However, fewer than a quarter say they had an advanced, reliable remote management technology in place pre-pandemic, and under half say they have improved their processes.
Survey respondents shared these challenges:
Distance difficulties
New ways of working have meant a proliferation of devices. IT teams have to keep up with the demands, and for many, issues have occurred. A selection of responses that reflect the most common sentiments follows.
- "All our staff are now working from remote endpoint devices that must be managed within a mobile device platform."
- "People working from home are no longer using the corporate internet gateway. Workers are not regularly connecting to the network, creating difficulties with updating patches and new configurations."
- "Bandwidth restrictions and usage of remote devices has been an issue."
- "The increased usage of multiple devices from home caused performance issues on endpoint infrastructure."
- "Endpoints being out of date and working in remote areas are not able to connect back in and receive updates. Visibility is a real problem."
Skills shortages
Advances in digital capabilities have supported the seismic shift to remote working, but digital acceleration of this kind has placed greater responsibility on IT teams, creating workload and skills problems.
- "We had to accelerate our plans and rapidly roll out additional devices. Time was a challenge and demand for better endpoint security greatly increased."
- "We have a lack of resources to support the increase in remote devices. There's insufficient staff, knowledge and skills internally."
- "There are issues with the availability of IT staff to monitor the status of endpoints and their capacity to respond to alerts."
- "Physical control of assets, off-network management, and overall visibility are major challenges."
People problems
As users become increasingly dispersed, it becomes more difficult for IT teams to provide support. Making sure users are remaining vigilant and aware is also tricky.
- "BYOD is difficult. There are human errors and clashes between BYOD support and endpoint security management. User awareness, education, and errors are a challenge."
- "It's difficult to get end users to accept policies, procedures, and tools now they are remote."
Across the board, endpoint manageability struggles are taking their toll. Only seven per cent of respondents are extremely confident in their current endpoint processes. As devices become increasingly dispersed, they must be secure, stable, and efficient. In order to manage estates as efficiently and effectively as possible, IT leaders should review and refresh management solutions, modernising their approach and keeping pace with the demands of today and tomorrow.
To learn more about Computing's latest research in which a range of organisations reported endpoint manageability issues, read the full report.
This article is sponsored by Intel
