Whitepaper
IT: The Key to
Effective Work
Whitepaper IT: The Key to Effective Work 1
Table of 2 Introduction
Contents 5 Expectations for technology have never been higher—
and it can lead to dashed hopes
6 Access issues are major inhibitors to employee
productivity, but they’re not the worst ones
7 Resolving access issues would still make a real
difference, and it’s more than doable
8 Your employees are your new security team, and
everyone needs to understand the risks
9 While organizational security might not be top of mind
for workers, they do care—a lot
10 With identity, IT teams can deliver seamless digital
experiences
Whitepaper IT: The Key to Effective Work 2
Introduction What is the primary purpose of IT? In the past,
it was to keep systems up and running for
users—and while that’s still true, expectations
have changed in recent years as organizations
become exponentially more digital. Employees
have access to an array of productivity tools and
user-centered digital experiences in their personal
lives, and they see no reason that user friction
should characterize their work experience.
People and data are on the move, now more than
ever, and IT departments are the vital links that
connect employees to the tools and resources
they need. To engage an expanding cohort of
digitally engaged workers, organizations need
to put them on par with consumers. It’s on IT to
win employee loyalty by empowering them with
the apps and tools that help them do their best
work—or they may take their talent elsewhere.
With every staff transition, IT adds another cycle of
user provisioning and deprovisioning to its to-do list,
operating under pressure to rapidly scale its impact
despite static—or even dwindling—resources.
Whitepaper IT: The Key to Effective Work 3
At the same time, IT teams need to be ever
vigilant for security threats and vulnerabilities.
The threat landscape is shifting as quickly as
employees’ expectations, and employers are
rethinking their approaches to IT. A variety of
factors are responsible for driving the fast-
paced transformations taking place today:
People
• The rise of dynamic work: Remote and distributed workforces
have become the norm, and as employees become more
mobile—signing in on their personal devices as they work
from homes, coffee shops, airports, and co-working spaces—
IT systems must be optimized to support and secure them.
• The Great Resignation: With unprecedented numbers of
people leaving their jobs to look for careers that deliver
freedom, flexibility, and fulfillment, the onus is on organizations
to create supportive workplaces that grant people the
capabilities to be productive and do their best work.
Technology
• The move to the cloud: Gartner forecasts that 85% of
organizations will be cloud-first by the year 2025. Migrating
information to the cloud is important to avoid the prohibitive
maintenance and ownership costs of aging legacy systems—
but it also comes with its own challenges. Adopting cloud
apps can silo your IT environment, making it more difficult
for IT to manage and interrupting the user experience.
• New standards of security: Not surprisingly, the mobilization
of people and the digitization of work means that the
traditional network perimeter and firewall-based security
Whitepaper IT: The Key to Effective Work 4
model is no longer viable. In fact, according to the Verizon
Data Breach report, 89% of web attacks are caused by
credential abuse. So while bad actors may still target your
network, they are increasingly going after your people
and any substandard security practices they employ.
Because people are working in new ways,
the responsibility for optimizing the employee
experience—that once fell most heavily on HR and
facilities departments—is increasingly falling on IT,
and transforming to embrace this new responsibility
is critical. At the same time, identity has become the
new security perimeter. But these challenges also
present a promising opportunity for organizations.
By reorienting their security strategies around
identity, they can also deliver the personalized
digital experiences their employees expect.
To meaningfully track the trends impacting
IT teams today and measure whether they’re
keeping the workforce protected and productive,
Pulse and Okta surveyed 500 IT, security, and
HR professionals. Here are five key findings.
Whitepaper IT: The Key to Effective Work 5
Expectations Now that distributed work has become the norm, employees place an even
greater emphasis on gaining access to the resources needed to succeed—
for technology and when they encounter friction or failure, it can be extremely frustrating.
have never Out of the survey respondents, 46% said that getting the right tools at the
right time would make them moderately to considerably more productive—
been higher— but only 1 in 5 said it was easy to do.
and it can lead There’s also a notable generation gap: 51% of Millennials said getting access
to dashed to necessary tools would improve their productivity, compared to 39% of
Gen X. Similarly, 46% of Millennials said that they regularly have IT issues,
hopes while the same holds true for only 37% of their Gen X colleagues. As more
of Gen X reaches retirement age and is replaced by digitally native workers,
it’s likely these challenges will intensify. According to Adobe’s State of
Work 2021 report, 49% of US workers say they will leave a company out of
frustration with technology.
46% said that getting the right tools at the
46% right time would make them moderately to
considerably more productive.
20% But only 1 in 5 said it was easy to do.
What can IT teams do? Considering one of their biggest obstacles is being
bogged down by help tickets and simple access requests, automating
processes such as self-service password resets or provisioning and
deprovisioning accounts would be a smart place to start.
Whitepaper IT: The Key to Effective Work 6
Access issues Perhaps because they’re more reliant on digital systems to get their work
done, Millennial respondents were more likely to report that they were
are major sometimes or often impacted by access issues: this was the case for 46%
inhibitors to of them, compared to 34% of Gen X.
employee However, the biggest individual productivity detractor, by a significant
margin, was too many meetings. When asked what would make the biggest
productivity, positive difference, 49% of respondents said fewer meetings, compared
but they’re not to 28% who wanted easier access to the right tools, 15% who wanted the
flexibility to work in different locations, and 8% who wished it was simpler to
the worst ones find the information they needed.
What would have the biggest positive
impact on your productivity at work?
28%
Easy access to
the right tools
49%
Fewer meetings
15%
Working in a
different location
8%
Finding information easily
This signals an imperative to streamline communication with solutions that
centralize information and reduce the requirement to meet. Organizations
should consider how they can invest in IT that promotes extensibility to
adapt to such evolving needs. And as for the IT team, when user and
resource management is centralized to provide comprehensive visibility, it
doesn’t require a meeting to get everyone on the same page.
Whitepaper IT: The Key to Effective Work 7
Resolving 51% of employees surveyed want easier access to tools and information
along with greater freedom and flexibility. And all of these wishes can be
access issues granted straightforwardly—and securely—through adaptive multi-factor
would still authentication (AMFA).
make a real So what methods do respondents prefer when logging into workforce
systems and applications? Overwhelmingly, they prefer passwordless:
difference, and single sign-on (SSO) was the top choice for 64% of respondents, followed
it’s more than by biometrics for 23%. Only 13% of respondents would opt for username
and password, given the choice.
doable
What is your preferred method for
logging into software for work?
64% 23% 13%
Single sign-on (SSO) Biometrics Username and password
This is a positive sign. Not only are outdated passwords being phased out
through popular demand, but SSO and biometrics enable the convenience
employees are looking for from their organizations—including the flexibility
to work from a variety of locations, using a variety of devices, and at the
opportune time. For 15% of respondents, being able to work in a different
location is the thing that would most significantly improve their productivity.
Whitepaper IT: The Key to Effective Work 8
Your Even the best defenses will crumble if users unknowingly create exploitable
weaknesses, and this is a problem for IT teams everywhere. Admins aren’t
employees always aware of the threats or how to defend their data.
are your new For example, 44% of survey respondents admitted to reusing passwords
security team, more than 40% of the time. Again, there’s a generation gap, with 49%
of Millennials making this mistake at work compared to 39% of Gen
and everyone X. This indicates that the trend could get worse as digital natives, who
needs to may be more likely to take security for granted, join the workforce. Out
of the Millennial respondents, only 1 in 4 stated that security risks to the
understand the organization were important to them, compared to 1 in 3 respondents
risks overall.
How important to you are the security risks to your company
and actions you can take to comply with security policies?
0% Grand Total (n=500) 0% Millennials (n=235)
Not important Not important
at all at all
31%
Minimally 37%
important Minimally
important
40%
Reasonably
40%
important Reasonably
important
10% 8%
Important
Important
19% 15%
Very Very
important important
Only 27% of survey respondents felt that they were fairly well or very
well informed about security threats and vulnerabilities faced by their
organization and how to mitigate them. Organizations must therefore
communicate security policies to all employees, not just IT, to secure
their buy-in. With everyone implicated in security, that also means the
opportunity is ripe to reduce risk by automating manual processes that
might otherwise introduce human error.
Whitepaper IT: The Key to Effective Work 9
While While it’s true that relatively few respondents said they were concerned
about security risks to the organization, that could be because they aren’t
organizational aware of the risk. It’s clear from their preference for SSO and biometric
security might factors that security still ranks high among their priorities.
not be top In fact, 66% rated “secure and trusted” as the top attribute they care
about when choosing and using technology for work. That’s significant
of mind for when compared to the other criteria, with 20% opting for “conveniently
workers, they accessible from anywhere,” 8% favoring “ease of use,” and only 6% wanting
technology that “helps them do their job better.”
do care—a lot
When using technology for work,
which attribute is most important to you?
6%
Helps me do
my job better
66%
8%
Secure and
Ease of use trusted
20%
Conveniently
accessible from
anywhere
Whitepaper IT: The Key to Effective Work 10
With identity, When 1 in 3 respondents would consider leaving an organization over
technology issues and 41% of respondents abandoning tasks when they
IT teams can’t get access to the right technology or guidance from IT, the value of
can deliver identity to the business is clear. Employees not only prefer convenience,
but access to the right tools at the right time meaningfully contributes to
seamless their productivity. When IT teams deliver seamless experiences with secure
digital remote access, productivity among Millennials increases by 51%.
experiences Identity and access management (IAM) removes the friction that damages
morale and inhibits work while maintaining a strong security posture
and warding off identity-based attacks on the remote workforce. For the
benefit of IT admins and employees alike, IAM belongs at the foundation of
organizations’ IT and security strategy.
• Streamlining the login process and providing self-service and
passwordless options for the workforce enhances employee experience
and engagement while freeing IT from costly and time-consuming help
tickets.
• Having a single source of truth for all users and workplace apps
simplifies processes for everyone while also strengthening security.
• Automating tedious identity tasks helps eliminate manual error, reducing
the likelihood of “ghost accounts” and other risks posed by incomplete
deprovisioning.
Okta is the world’s leading independent identity platform. As a vendor-
neutral solution, it powers a best-of-breed technology ecosystem so
that employees have the resources and ease of access they value,
administrators can keep people and partners safe and secure, and
organizations can ensure agility and flexibility in the face of ever-changing
market pressures.
Discover how Okta can help you deliver the
employee experiences that grow an engaged
and productive workforce.
Learn more
Whitepaper IT: The Key to Effective Work 11
About Okta
Okta is the leading independent identity provider. The Okta Identity Cloud enables organizations to securely connect the right peo-
ple to the right technologies at the right time. With more than 7,000 pre-built integrations to applications and infrastructure provid-
ers, Okta provides simple and secure access to people and organizations everywhere, giving them the confidence to reach their full
potential. More than 16,400 organizations, including JetBlue, Nordstrom, Siemens, Slack, Takeda, and Teach for America, trust Okta
to help protect the identities of their workforces and customers. To learn more visit okta.com. okta.com
Whitepaper
IT: The Key to
Effective Work
Okta Inc.
100 First Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
[email protected]
1-888-722-7871
