Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023. Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Secure Offboarding Keeps the Spotlight on Enterprise Technology Management
By Arthur Lozinski, CEO and Co-Founder of Oomnitza
As CIOs press on to deliver on digital
transformation and other strategic initiatives, the question around proper funding continually comes up. Where is IT going to find the
budget necessary to properly fund disruptive initiatives such as digital
transformation?
To this end, in 2023, CIOs are going to
realize that there's a treasure chest of potential funding sitting right there
in their existing budgets. The key will be in elevating their attention back to
operations, as they realize significant IT productivity efficiencies can be
gained by automating and optimizing the key business processes that span siloed
point management tools and touch broad sections of their technology portfolio
landscape.
Today, these processes are done mostly
through manual workflows, which creates all sorts of cost inefficiencies, invites
human errors, and risks security vulnerabilities and issues come audit time.
Relying on siloed management tools also creates data hygiene issues, as they
frequently store inconsistent data regarding the same assets.
For example, take the seemingly mundane
process of employee offboarding. This process will rise in importance in 2023,
as an increase in employee turnover is accelerating IT asset loss and
increasing security incidents. According to
one survey, 12 percent of all employees take sensitive intellectual property
(IP) with them when they leave an organization.[1] This is forcing IT and HR
to readdress automated offboarding and onboarding capabilities.
Today, the offboarding process is typically
executed through manual workflows, which require touching several technology
management systems. Tasks can include terminating in an HR system, notifying
stakeholders of the change in employee status, locking corporate laptops,
revoking access to on-premises and SaaS applications, reassigning ownership of
documents, data and cloud resources, and reimaging and returning employee-issued
devices, to name only a few.
Automating manual processes such as employee
offboarding could significantly free up existing IT resources to be reassigned to
more strategic initiatives like digital transformation. As we've learned, it's
typically much more efficient to let computers do the work.
The potential to better utilize existing
budget doesn't stop there. Let's talk about making limited IT headcount more
productive. For instance, when an employee leaves, IT incurs the task of making
sure monthly cloud infrastructure charges and SaaS licenses are either turned
off or properly transferred to another employee. Here again, today this is
typically a manual workflow that also impacts licensing, cybersecurity, audit,
and compliance.
Of course, there's a big question: How will
CIOs automate their key business processes that span technology management
silos? The answer is an emerging category of applications called Enterprise
Technology Management (ETM). ETM holds the promise of helping CIOs move IT
closer to running an autonomous, self-driving operation.
Enterprise Technology Management (ETM)
platforms unify technology lifecycle management and process automation across
an organization's entire IT estate, including endpoints, applications,
infrastructure, and cloud. They provide a single system of record and action
for technology assets across IT (CIO and ITOps) and security (CISO, GRC)
leaders, enabling their teams to align, make informed decisions, and achieve
business objectives. By automating long-standing manual business processes,
enterprises can optimize resources, security, compliance, experience, and
technology spend. The improvements in operational efficiency and reduction in
tech debt can serve to free up funds for strategic, innovative initiates.
Secure offboarding was the killer ETM use
case in 2022, and current indicators - including a steady stream of corporate
layoffs that have yet to subside, and recent research quantifying the
amount of lost IT assets and cybersecurity risk that accompanies insecure,
manual offboarding processes - show that it will continue to dominate in 2023.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arthur Lozinski is the CEO and Co-Founder
of Oomnitza. Arthur is focused on scaling the company's reach, evangelizing ETM
and spearheading the mission of providing key business process automation for
IT across all enterprises, ranging from fast-growing companies to Fortune 500
giants. Arthur co-founded Oomnitza in 2012, along with Trent Seed and Ramin
Ettehad, to provide solutions that advance the way organizations manage and
secure their IT estate.
[1] Insider Risk on the Rise: 12%
of Employees Take IP When Leaving Jobs: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/12-of-employees-take-ip-when/