Context-aware security keeps businesses safe and employees productive

Common access management processes limit employee productivity and often force employees to find workarounds that expose organizations to greater risk. In fact, 91 percent of business respondents report that their productivity is negatively impacted by security measures their employer has put in place.

This is among the findings of a new survey by Dell which shows that if a context-aware security approach were in place 97 percent of IT professionals say they would see the benefits, including improved worker productivity without compromised security.

So what is context-aware security? It replaces static access processes with an approach that evaluates the context surrounding each access request, and adapts security requirements accordingly. This allows it to deliver the level of security a business needs in real time based on an ever-changing threat landscape.

"It's undeniable that IT staff, business professionals, and employees struggle with security," says John Milburn, executive director and general manager, Identity and Access Management at Dell Security. "The business puts security first above employee convenience, and, right now, IT thinks it has only two options for security -- turn the dial to 1 (open) or 11 (super secure). 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".

Other findings of the survey, which was conducted among more than 300 business users and over 450 IT professionals in the US, UK and Germany, include that more than 90 percent of business respondents use multiple passwords on a daily basis, and 92 percent are negatively impacted when required to use additional security for remote work. Nearly 70 percent of IT professionals say employee workarounds to avoid security measures imposed by IT pose the greatest risk to the organization.

The benefits of context-aware security are recognized by 97 percent of IT professionals. These include the ability to prioritize threats based on context, including types of applications targeted, the ability to gain visibility into the context when assessing risk and the ability to address changing security needs in real-time and assess threats based on their potential level of harm.

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 and an inability to analyze how and why restrictions are managed, according to 93 percent of IT professionals.

A free white paper on context aware security is available on the Dell website.

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