Network knowledge leads to 'outsize' business outcomes

Survey highlights what works and doesn’t work for improving the agility, efficiency, and security of enterprise networks.

  • 8 years ago Posted in
Infoblox has published results of its 2016 Network Protection Survey. The in-depth survey compares the measures IT takes to protect and optimise networks among 200 enterprises in the United States and Canada. The survey uncovers dramatic differences between the highest- and lowest-performing organisations, in terms of how they manage their networks as well as their outcomes.
 
“Top enterprises think more strategically about their networks, don’t tolerate operational silos, and invest in the necessary tools for effective and secure infrastructure,” said Scott Fulton, executive vice president of products at Infoblox. “The results are clear—fewer outages and breaches, as well as better alignment with the business needs of their organisations.”
 
Respondents to the survey were asked a series of questions about their practices in a range of areas, such as security, operations, and visibility. Infoblox then compared those who most closely adhered to best practices (top-tier) with those who deviated the most (bottom-tier). Top-tier organisations, in the survey results, are dramatically differentiated in achieving their outcomes and taking a strategic approach to making IT a key business enabler.
 
Top-tier Organisations are More Serious about Network Protection
 
Top-tier organisations are more committed to network protection in a variety of ways:
 
·         Top-tier organisations automate basic network tasks so they can focus on more strategic items.
·         They banish silos: 100 percent of top-tier organisations report moderate to complete cooperation between network, security, and app teams.
·         They mine DNS and DHCP data for security purposes. Roughly half of the top tier use DNS and DHCP data to discover new devices on the network, versus none of the bottom tier. 
·         Top-tier organisations are more than four times as likely to invest in technology such as machine-readable threat intelligence, security information and event management (SIEM) solutions, and automated tools that detect when new devices enter the network.
·         They are three times less likely to understaff their security teams.
 
Top-tier Organisations Enjoy Better Business Outcomes
 
Top-tier enterprises are more agile and strategic. They provision new users, servers, devices, and apps much more quickly than bottom-tier organisations. And they are 2.3 times as likely to say they focus more on strategic tasks than tactical.
 
The Infoblox Network Protection Survey found that adhering to industry best-practices results in better outcomes:
 
·         Greater internal customer satisfaction: Top-tier enterprises have IT departments that are roughly twice as likely to have somewhat to extremely satisfied stakeholders within the business—C level and users alike.
·         Stronger security: Top-tier organisations reported no security-incident related outages or data breaches, while bottom-tier organisations reported an average of three security-incident related outages and one data breach. Top-tier organisations are also much more likely to achieve internal and external compliance.
·         Networks that run more smoothly: Top-tier IT teams are roughly twice as likely to meet SLAs and 10 times as likely to remediate security events “extremely quickly.”
·         Better visibility into and control over infrastructure details such as IP addresses, malicious DNS traffic, and trusted users deviating from appropriate behaviour:  Top-tier organisations are four times more likely to report having complete control over their IP addressing.
 
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