Lack of Network Visibility Hurts End User Experience

Hybrid work dominates the workforce as it is convenient for employees to work a few days at home and a few in the office throughout the week. There is no need for them to be in the office every day of the week, especially if they work on the computer.

As the network expands beyond an office firewall, IT professionals and decision makers need to be aware of the role that network monitoring and management as well as SaaS, Wi-Fi and end user experience play in their organizations. They need to automate network tasks and improve network visibility to manage the workforce with internal in-house IT and MSPs.

That is ideal on paper and is easier said than done. But, in reality, IT professionals and MSPs face challenges when it comes to network visibility, management and security, according to an Auvik report.

One of the key findings of the report involves the gaps in network visibility and security facing most IT teams. A little less than 90% of the respondents support a remote workforce at least some of the time, but only half perform SaaS and cloud monitoring or Wi-Fi management. These are critical components of the new enterprise network in today’s hybrid world.

SaaS and cloud applications are how employees get the work done they are paid to do. The apps and the Wi-Fi employees use at home or in public areas pose potential security risks to the enterprise network. That means IT teams must have visibility and solutions for enabling their workforce to be productive while minimizing risk.

Think of the risks that came up for enterprise networks when California residents turned to coffee shops, bookstores or friends’ homes during power outages in January; or, more recently, the people in Texas doing the same thing due to the power outages from the recent winter storm. That should leave any IT team nervous.

Because of those risks, IT teams must have the tools to monitor, manage and support employees’ work experiences from any location, at any time.

Another visibility and security gap that IT teams face is with network configurations. The report found 45% of IT teams do not fully know the configuration of their networks, and 21% responded that individuals outside of ITOps make configuration changes. To add to that, 20% of respondents said configuration changes occur daily, and another 33% said they’re happening at least weekly.

Talk about yikes. With unknown and non-IT employees making frequent changes to the network’s configuration, the security risks increase significantly.

“The network has evolved from assets solely owned by the IT organization to anything that allows the team to connect to their application, which results in greater change and complexity for the end user experience,” said Alex Hoff, co-founder and chief product officer at Auvik. “This means greater chances for a poor end user experience and decreased productivity, security risks and network downtime, which directly impacts the bottom line.”