Integrating DEX capabilities with IT security operations improves workforce productivity, IT operations effectiveness and the corporate security posture.
Digital Employee Experience (DEX) is rapidly becoming a strategic necessity for IT organisations. According to Gartner’s recent report, “DEX tools help IT improve the digital employee experience by quickly identifying and remediating technology issues.”
However, it’s not simply an IT service management (ITSM) need – in terms of IT service delivery and support – other IT disciplines, including security operations, are also impacted. To be fully effective, your organisation’s DEX capabilities must be integrated into your IT security operations. This integration helps to improve your IT and security operations across three key areas:
- Workforce productivity
- IT operations effectiveness
- Corporate security posture
It also helps to reduce costs for both disciplines.
Security and employee experience are often seen as competing priorities leading to tension between what users actually do and the corporate policies in place to protect the organisation. However, security and DEX have the same objective, albeit viewed from different perspectives.
Therefore, it’s important to ensure that your organisation’s security operations and DEX are aligned – with the dual ambition of protecting corporate assets and empowering people to optimise business operations and outcomes.
Make experience a core pillar of IT security
A good starting point is to make experience a pillar of security. Often the best security capabilities are “invisible” to the end-user, causing minimal friction and frustration. Corporate DEX capabilities provide insight into how security measures adversely impact employees.
When security and DEX are aligned correctly, corporate assets are protected, and people are empowered to optimise business operations and outcomes. For example:
- Leveraging automation, including self-healing technology, to resolve employee IT issues before they notice them
- Improving IT operations using experience-based insights, real-time diagnostics data, and automation capabilities
- Using DEX technologies to optimise device and application management – improving the technology experience for end-users and the team that manage the technology
Each of these is covered in more detail below. However, it’s important not to make the integration of your organisation’s DEX capabilities into your IT security operations a “bolt-on” initiative.
Instead, you must redesign your corporate security practices with the end-user experience in mind.For example, creating end-user-centric security policies, automating security patches, monitoring vulnerabilities, and improving authentication experiences to not only improve the corporate security posture but also to make employees more productive.
Leveraging automation, including self-healing technology
While a DEX solution with endpoint management (EPM) capabilities can improve IT security operations and IT operations, it’s value can go well beyond these. It can automate high-volume and routine IT service desk tasks such as password resets and device troubleshooting – two common areas that are costly when performed manually.
Therefore the real opportunity is bigger than operational optimisation across these areas.
Using a DEX platform to automate IT issue resolution, including leveraging self-healing technology, allows your organisation to deliver better employee or end-user experiences.
Fixes are quicker, and for some issues, employee IT issues are resolved before they even notice them. It’s a win-win, the corporate IT infrastructure is more secure and employees are more productive.
Improving IT operations using experience data and insights
Many of the IT operations use cases for DEX that employ experience-based insights, real-time diagnostics data, and automation capabilities are well known. However, there are also many IT security opportunities too. For example:
- Capturing end-user feedback on security services – such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), VPN access, single sign-on (SSO), and device restrictions – and taking proactive action to address those that can be minimised.
- Correlating end-user experiences with the adoption of secure IT services and tools, fixing issues where possible, and leveraging learnings when designing new security practices.
- Prioritising changes where security-caused end-user friction is highest – for example, reducing unacceptable login times
Using DEX technologies to optimise device and application management
Employees might use multiple devices during their working day with different operating systems, such as a Windows PC, an Android smartphone and an iOS tablet. They expect a seamless experience across all devices. Likewise, your organisation wants and needs its employees to be productive regardless of device used.
Employee device spread adds to the complexity of IT (service) management and IT security. Thankfully, DEX solutions with EPM capabilities can help. For example:
- Monitoring and managing all device types remotely, including ensuring that appropriate security is maintained, monitoring vulnerabilities in real-time and automating security patches whilst delivering a seamless end-user experience
- Proactively detecting and addressing potential device failures before they disrupt end-user productivity
- Optimising performance across multiple platforms, reducing downtime for end-users
Improving security isn’t about putting more barriers in the way of your users. Aligning security operations with DEX gives you the best of both worlds. With automation, self-healing, and real-time experience insights, organisations can strengthen their security posture while creating a frictionless experience for employees and reducing the load of the teams that manage the technology.