Your company executives could still be the weakest cybersecurity link

Representational image depecting cybersecurity protection

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The C-Suite is often still the weakest cybersecurity link in an organization, as it focuses too hard on the bottom line, often ignoring warnings coming in from IT, and not paying that much attention to the digital employee experience (DEX).

A new report from IT software company Ivanti surveying 10,000 office workers, IT professionals, and the C-Suite on their level of prioritization and adoption of DEX in organizations found executives very much exacerbates the problem of IT security.

Today’s enterprise has a hybrid workforce. Some work full-time remotely, some check in from time to time, while some prefer office life in its full glory. This approach has expanded the asset inventory under IT management by quite a lot, leaving security experts struggling.

Prioritizing user experience

Roughly a third (32%) still use spreadsheets to track these assets, while half (47%) have full visibility into every endpoint attempting to connect to the network. At the same time, 49% of C-level executives requested, at least on one occasion, to bypass one or more security measures in the last 12 months.

The C-Suite seems to have its priorities backwards, Ivanti suggests. Its number one priority was employee productivity, while workplace culture and employee satisfaction fell further down the list. Also, almost two-thirds (62%) of C-Suite execs admitted that leadership prioritizes profitability over employee experience.

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This is also prompting IT to behave the same, the report further found, stating that only 21% of IT leaders consider the end user experience as their main priority when choosing new tools.

Yet, almost half (49%) of employees are frustrated by the tech and tools at their disposal in the workplace, with two-thirds (64%) believing the way they interact with technology directly impacts overall employee morale.

To that end, a quarter (26%) of employees are considering finding a new job, where the tech would be more suitable.

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Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.