Survey Data – Digital IT News

Planning Ensures AI Adoption Delivers Real Value Lucidworks Finds

Taylor Graham — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 15:00:09 +0000

Lucidworks published the findings of its second annual Generative AI Global Benchmark Study, the largest ongoing study of its kind worldwide. The survey gathered insights from business leaders in North America, EMEA, and the APAC region who are actively engaged in generative AI initiatives. The report examines critical areas of investment in generative AI and tracks the progress organizations are making in adopting this technology.

Flattened Spending Points to More Thoughtful Planning

Generative AI’s explosive growth is cooling as businesses face cost and security hurdles. Global AI spending plans are down sharply, with only 63% planning increases (vs. 93% last year). USA-based organizations remain above average with 69% planning to increase AI spend. While investment remains high, more companies are prioritizing thoughtful planning to balance the potential of this new technology with managing risks and costs.

Deployment Delays Stall ROI

Despite initial hype, slow deployment and low success rates are commonplace, with only 25% of planned projects fully implemented. This lag is stalling anticipated ROI, with 42% of companies yet to see a significant benefit from generative AI initiatives. Tech and retail sectors stand out with higher deployment and realized gains, but overall, most industries are slow to move beyond the pilot phase.

Implementation Costs Raise Alarms

Security remains a top concern for business leaders, but cost worries have surged 14x in the past year. Additionally, concerns around response accuracy have risen 5x, likely due to issues with hallucinations. This highlights the need for careful large language model selection to balance cost and ensure accurate, secure results.

Practical Applications Are First to Deployment

Businesses are using generative AI to establish clear guidelines for AI use (governance) and automate tasks like generating first drafts of code (reducing G&A costs). This trend is driven by concerns around data privacy, security, and skyrocketing implementation costs. Qualitative applications like generating FAQs are seeing success, but more complex quantitative applications like fraud detection in financial services or predictive maintenance in manufacturing are lagging behind. The ability to analyze unstructured data and generate actionable insights holds the greatest potential for generative AI’s future value.

“The initial wave of enthusiasm for generative AI is being met with a more strategic approach,” said Mike Sinoway, CEO, Lucidworks. “Businesses are recognizing the potential of this technology, but they’re also cautious about the risks and costs. This is reflected in the flattened spending, which suggests a shift toward more thoughtful planning. This planning ensures AI adoption delivers real value, balancing the need to stay competitive with managing costs and potential risks.”

The 2024 benchmark study also includes the following findings:

Across all organizations, 36% of leaders plan to keep spending flat, compared to only 6% in last year’s survey
Only 49% of Chinese leaders plan to increase AI spending in 2024, a massive drop from 100% in 2023
Close to 70% of financial services companies plan to increase spending over the next 12 months, followed closely by tech at 68% and B2C retail at 64%
Roughly 20% of companies report significant delays during deployment with only one in five planned revenue and growth initiatives and one in eight OpEx cost reduction initiatives implemented
Retailers have some of the highest concerns around cost (63%), likely due to the required responsiveness and high number of customer queries
Nearly eight in 10 companies use commercial LLMs and 21% have opted for open source only
A third of business leaders feel like they’re falling behind competitors despite almost everyone struggling to implement this new technology

Download the complete 2024 Generative AI Global Benchmark Study here to learn industry trends, top concerns, best practices and planning insights.

Qlik AI Council Warned AI Adoption is a Risky Gamble Without Data Integrity

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RTO-Return to Office Study Found a Quarter of Execs Hoped for Turnover

Taylor Graham — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 15:30:13 +0000

BambooHR has published a new study on the state of Return To Office (RTO) sentiment, revealing that nearly one-third (32%) of managers acknowledge that the primary aim of RTO policies was to monitor employees. Additionally, one-quarter (25%) of VP and C-suite executives and 18% of HR professionals admit they anticipated some voluntary turnover with RTO implementation. Currently, a significant majority of both remote (88%) and in-office (79%) employees feel the pressure to demonstrate that they are online and working.

“The conversation around work modes is one of the most important things to address and get clear on as a business. It often gets reduced to just RTO, but it’s actually a much bigger conversation around how teams best work together and is a leader-led initiative,” said Anita Grantham, Head of HR at BambooHR. “RTO is one of many different work modes, and if a change in work modes is needed, it’s important to handle the transition thoughtfully. Any hasty change to an employee’s work mode can leave your company culture in a precarious situation where employees are not unified, management teams are seen as overlords, and employee satisfaction will continue to nose dive.”

Performative Cultures and The Green Status Effect
Hybrid work and RTO mandates have unexpected consequences that have office culture shifting to performative tactics where just under half (42%) of all employees feel they’re showing up solely for the purpose of being seen by their bosses and managers. Employees are adopting various strategies to put on a show, whether working remotely or on-site. Here’s how they ensure their efforts are visible:

In-office
- 37% walk around the office so coworkers see them.
- 35% plan meetings with other coworkers who are also in the office.
- 33% show up earlier or leave later than their manager.
Remote
- 39% participate in social conversations in work messaging apps.
- 31% schedule-send emails.
- 64% of remote workers admit to keeping work messaging apps perpetually open, displaying a green “active” status to imply they’re online and actively engaged in work, even when they may not be actively working.
  - While all workers are taking steps to demonstrate productivity, it’s among remote employees that the “Green Status Effect” has emerged.

Management’s Not-So-Noble Efforts
Many leaders are using RTO as a tactic to increase productivity in employees or even prod employees to quit, leaving HR teams (22%) without clear metrics to measure a successful RTO. It’s clear these efforts are not producing the desired results.

Efforts:
- Nearly two in five (37%) managers, directors, and executives believe their organization enacted layoffs in the last year because fewer employees quit than they expected during their RTO.
- Nearly a third (32%) of managers admit the desire to track employee work was a main goal for their company’s RTO.
- Nearly half of managers say that the main goal of their company’s RTO was improving company culture (46%).
Results:
- Workers (both in-office and remote) only work for around three-quarters (76%) of a 9-to-5 shift; the other quarter is spent socializing, procrastinating, or doing non-work-related tasks. Put simply, all workers typically spend 2 hours out of every 8-hour shift not working.
- When it comes to who’s more productive overall, in-office workers spend around one hour more socializing than their remote counterparts, while remote workers spend that time on work-related tasks and responsibilities.
- Since having an RTO mandate, more than a fourth (26%) say a greater divide has developed between remote and non-remote workers.

“The distrusting and performative cultures some companies are cultivating are harmful to bottom-line growth and it’s becoming more clear that leaders should take each employee’s experience into account,” Grantham said. “It’s okay to have broad RTO policies but when 61% of parents and caretakers who prefer remote work say it’s because it allows them to fulfill their family responsibilities (vs. 38% non-caretakers) and 63% of workers with disabilities prefer remote work (vs. 51% of non-disabled workers), individual exceptions make sense. We’re striving for a balance between the needs of the organization and the needs of the humans we work with.”

To read the full State of Return To Office (RTO) report, visit the website here.

Flexible Work Valued by 80% of Professional Revealed by Ivanti Research

Methodology
BambooHR conducted this research using an online survey prepared by Method Research and distributed by RepData among n=1,504 adults (age 18+) in the United States who are full-time salaried employees that currently work in a desk job position, included a subgroup of n=504 HR professionals who have a manager title or above. The sample was equally split between gender, with a spread of age groups, race groups, and geographies represented. Data was collected from March 9 to March 22, 2024.

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Organizations with Cyber Insurance had to Improve Security to Meet Requirements

Taylor Graham — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 13:00:13 +0000

Netwrix surveyed 1,309 IT and security professionals worldwide and analyzed the data for its 2024 Hybrid Security Trends Report.

The survey reveals that almost half (48%) of organizations with a cyber insurance policy had to enhance their security posture to meet the insurer’s requirements. Among those, 30% made changes simply to be eligible for the policy compared to 22% a year ago. 18% of respondents say they implemented additional security measures in order to reduce the cost of a policy, down from 28% in 2023. What’s more, almost 1 in 5 (19%) insured organizations used their cyber insurance policy within the last 12 months.

The most common security measure required by insurers in 2024 is multi-factor authentication, named by 75% of respondents (up from 65% in 2023), followed by patch management (55%) and regular cybersecurity training for employees (49%). Moreover, insurance companies are now more likely to require advanced security solutions. Indeed, in 2024, 45% of respondents named IAM among the requested security measures in place, up from 38% in 2023, and 42% said the same about PAM compared to 36% in 2023.

“One thing insurance providers understand well is risk management. They know that, sooner or later, adversaries with enough motivation and resources will infiltrate an IT environment,” says Ilia Sotnikov, Security Strategist at Netwrix. “PAM makes it harder for attackers to move laterally through the environment and escalate their privileges, and it ensures they will create more noise along the way. All this gives the security team the opportunity to detect and respond to attacks in time to prevent significant losses. And minimizing the loss (e.g., the payout request) is exactly what insurance providers are looking for.”

Learn how a logistics firm secured a cyber insurance renewal by implementing a PAM solution in just two months here.

2024 Cybersecurity Trends to Expect Released by Netwrix

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IT and Security Professionals Report Security and IT Data are Siloed in Their Organization

Taylor Graham — Fri, 24 May 2024 17:00:35 +0000

Ivanti has published the findings of its 2024 State of Cybersecurity Report. As the threat landscape becomes more complex and threat-actor tactics continue to evolve, cybersecurity professionals are in a constant struggle to stay ahead of the increasingly sophisticated methods employed by malicious actors. This situation has amplified the demand for innovative and adaptive security solutions.

Although the goals and challenges of IT and security professionals intersect, 72% report security data and IT data are siloed in their organization, which contributes to corporate misalignment and elevated security risk. Due to insufficient data, IT and security professionals report the following:

63% report that siloed data slows down security response times.
54% report that siloed data weakens their organization’s security posture.
41% struggle to collaboratively manage cybersecurity.
Struggle to make informed security decisions regarding software employees use (including shadow IT) (47%), devices accessing the network and/or corporate resources (42%) and determining what vulnerabilities are exposing their systems (41%).

“While data silos can be a technology issue, resolving them and gaining a comprehensive understanding of an organization’s risk landscape requires leadership. However, CIOs and CISOs are at odds. They face a tug-of-war challenge between enabling employee productivity while ensuring data security, which can lead to an increase in cyberattacks. To foster a more secure workplace, collaboration is essential,” said Jeff Abbott, CEO, Ivanti. “When there is CIO and CISO alignment, it helps both parties build consensus on organizational risk tolerance while promoting cross-functional security and IT data collaboration. This eliminates costly ripple effects and increases data accessibility for investments in AI.”

Data silos are a universal problem for CISOs and CIOs — and a particularly thorny one given the speed of investments in AI, which will require data integration and accessibility. To ultimately strengthen an organization’s security posture and drive transformation, there needs to be CIO and CISO alignment and executive buy-in on security. According to Ivanti’s research, cybersecurity is widely viewed as a top priority, even at the board level. Fully 80% of those surveyed say their boards include someone with security expertise, and 86% report it’s a topic of discussion at the board level. This is promising to hear in light of the various cybersecurity concerns raised by the study.

For instance, when it comes to a practice called BYOD (bring your own device), IT and security teams use tools that were designed for just in-office usage and have no effective way to track and manage employees’ personal devices at work.

Just 63% can track BYOD alongside corporate-owned IT assets, yet 78% say employees use their personal devices at work even when it’s forbidden.
81% of office workers admit they are using some type of personal device for work.
Of the 81%, half are logging in to networks and work-affiliated software on their personal devices. And 40% say their employers don’t know about their activities.

Another cause for concern – 54% of office workers were not aware that advanced AI could impersonate anyone’s voice. Ivanti’s research finds that 95% of IT and security professionals believe that security threats will be more dangerous due to AI. However, despite the elevated risk posed by AI, nearly one in three security and IT professionals have no documented strategy in place to address generative AI risks.

Taking these various concerns into account, the report emphasizes the critical need for alignment between the CIO and CISO in their approach to security mandates. This alignment can help organizations identify areas of friction and make operational improvements, eliminate data silos that hinder response times and conceal crucial insights, and gain a thorough understanding of the software supply chain. Ultimately, this collaborative effort fosters mutual accountability and enhances overall security posture.

Ivanti surveyed over 7,300 executive leaders, IT and cybersecurity professionals‌ and office workers in October 2023 to understand today’s most pressing cybersecurity threats as well as emerging trends, opportunities and business strategies.

To learn more about the results of the IT and Security Professionals Ivanti’s 2024 State of Cybersecurity Report, please visit here.

Flexible Work Valued by 80% of Professional Revealed by Ivanti Research

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Mid-Year Assessment on The State of Phishing Report Released

Taylor Graham — Wed, 22 May 2024 14:15:41 +0000

SlashNext released its 2024 Mid-Year Assessment on The State of Phishing. This update follows the annual State of Phishing report issued by the SlashNext Threat Labs team in October 2023. The significant rise in phishing attacks reported then led the team to perform a comprehensive six-month analysis to determine if the upward trend continued, particularly as threat actors increasingly use generative AI tools to enhance their phishing, business email compromise (BEC), and other social engineering attacks.

Fueled by AI-generated attacks, the Mid-Year Assessment revealed a 341% increase in malicious phishing link, BEC, QR Code and attachment-based email and multi-channel messaging threats in the last six months alone. This was on top of a staggering 856% increase in malicious email and messaging threats over the prior 12 months. And, since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, there has been a 4,151% increase in malicious phishing messages sent.

“Humans have been, and will continue to be, the weakest point in any organization’s security,” said Patrick Harr, CEO, SlashNext. “There is a reason threat actors continue to iterate on tactics like phishing that have been around for decades – they are highly effective. According to Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, humans are increasingly falling for phishing attacks and it now takes a median time of only 21 seconds for a user to click on a malicious link, and only another 28 seconds to then enter their personal data. We know from our research these attacks are getting a boost from generative AI tools that are readily available. Threat actors are using gen AI to customize messages for their victims, write more convincing messages, and dramatically accelerate the speed and volume of these attacks with little to no added cost.”

In looking at specific threat types, SlashNext Threat Labs found a 217% increase in credential harvesting phishing attacks and a 29% increase in BEC attacks in the last six months. Losses due to BEC attacks exceeded $2.9B in 2023, at an average cost of $137,000 per BEC incident, according to the recent FBI IC3 Report. In addition, mobile phones have emerged as the most utilized and vulnerable communications channel, with 45% of all mobile threats now being reported as SMS smishing attacks.

CAPTCHA-based attacks, particularly using CloudFlare, are also on the rise and they are being used to mask credential harvesting forms. Attackers are generating thousands of domains and implementing CloudFlare’s CAPTCHAs to hide credential phishing forms from security protocols that are unable to bypass theCAPTCHAs.

“Leveraging legitimate services like Microsoft Sharepoint, AWS, and Salesforce to hide phishing and malware is another favorite tactic employed by threat actors because it preys on users’ trust in these tools,” continued Harr. “In addition to CAPTCHA-based attacks, QR code-based attacks are growing in popularity and now comprise 11% of all malicious emails – often embedded in legitimate infrastructures. The onus should not be on users to identify and avoid sophisticated attacks, especially when the research proves that relying on training and traditional cybersecurity tools is ineffective against modern attack tactics. It’s time to fight AI with AI and implement AI-powered email and messaging security tools that keep malicious messages out of users’ inboxes altogether.”

To counter the growing sophistication of these cyberattacks, the SlashNext advanced gen AI security platform is specifically engineered to identify, anticipate and block complex BEC threats, phishing, and ransomware. Utilizing generative AI, natural language parallel prediction, computer vision, relationship graphs, and contextual analysis, the platform achieves an industry-leading detection rate of 99.99%.

Download the full 2024 Mid-Year Assessment to The State of Phishing report.

15 Security Predictions for 2024

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Putting Generative AI to Work Study Released by Altman Solon

Taylor Graham — Wed, 22 May 2024 13:45:17 +0000

More than two-thirds of global enterprises are now using generative AI, a six-fold increase since 2023, according to “Putting Generative AI to Work,” a new study from global strategy consulting firm Altman Solon. But AI adoption growth could be threatened by concerns over security, with nearly three-fourths of executives expressing security as a major risk.

The Putting Generative AI to Work survey of global technology executives found that 65% of U.S.-based enterprises were using generative AI tools today compared with only 11% in 2023. This adoption growth correlates with changing views on gen AI benefits, with the percentage of respondents seeing current value in gen AI jumping from 32% last year to 76% in 2024. Nearly all (94%) respondents expected measurable future benefits from gen AI.

“Last year’s survey revealed significant interest in generative AI, but executives were skeptical about its value for their business operations,” said Altman Solon Partner Swope Fleming. “This year, executives are showing a much clearer understanding for the benefits associated with generative AI. Adoption barriers are now shifting to more practical concerns, like security.”

Security (72%) ranked as the greatest risk for gen AI adoption for 2024, replacing last year’s top risk, “unclear value,” which dropped from 68% in 2023 to 28% this year.

Other key findings of the report include:

The leading reported reasons for gen AI adoption include expedited processes through automation (88%), lower costs (68%), and improved results through workflow optimization (58%).
The top usage for gen AI tool is in software development at 78%, up from 23% in 2023.
Current adoption of cross-functional, multimodal gen AI tools is low (13%), but 59% of respondents are “highly likely” to adopt a multimodal solution over the next three years.

To review the Altman Solon Putting Generative AI to Work study, visit the website here.

Without Intelligent Data Infrastructure Up to 20% of AI Initiatives Fail

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Without Intelligent Data Infrastructure Up to 20% of AI Initiatives Fail

Taylor Graham — Wed, 08 May 2024 18:00:38 +0000

NetApp has unveiled findings from its recent study on the changing landscape of AI implementation in businesses. The IDC White Paper, supported by NetApp, titled “Scaling AI Initiatives Responsibly: The Crucial Role of an Intelligent Data Infrastructure,” highlights the hurdles and advantages encountered at different stages of AI development. It offers insights into successful strategies embraced by top-performing organizations to responsibly expand their AI and GenAI workloads. Through actionable recommendations, the paper aims to steer organizations away from common pitfalls, ensuring that their AI initiatives do not fall within the 20% that typically fail. Additionally, it introduces an elaborate AI maturity model crafted to gauge organizational advancement based on their AI approach, ranging from AI Emergents and Pioneers to Leaders and Masters.

Intelligent Data Infrastructure is the Foundation of AI Success

The IDC White Paper found that:

AI Masters optimize their data infrastructure for transformational AI initiatives by facilitating easy access to corporate datasets with minimal preparation and designing a unified, hybrid, multicloud environment that supports various data types and access methods.
AI Masters have more ambitious AI goals and yet experience data-related failures including infrastructure-based data access limitations (21%), compliance limitations (16%), and insufficient data (17%).
AI Emergents note similar challenges but also experience budget constraints (20% Emergents vs 9% AI Masters), insufficient data for model training (26% vs 17%) and business restrictions on data access (28% vs 20%).

According to the findings, organizations need an intelligent data infrastructure in order to scale AI initiatives responsibly. Where a company falls on the AI maturity scale is determined by the level of infrastructure they have in place that will not only drive the long-term success of AI projects, but also of their associated business outcomes. Those organizations that are just beginning or have recently begun their AI journey typically have disparate data architectures or plans for a more unified architecture, while AI Leaders and AI Masters are likely already executing on a unified vision. As a result, organizations with the most AI experience are failing less.

“This IDC White Paper further solidifies that companies need intelligent data infrastructure to scale AI responsibly and boost the rate of AI initiative success,” said Jonsi Stefansson, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at NetApp. “With intelligent data infrastructure in place, companies have the flexibility to access any data, anywhere with integrated data management to ensure data security, protection, and governance and adaptive operations that can optimize performance, cost and sustainability.”

Data Infrastructure Flexibility is Crucial for Data Access and AI Initiative Success

The IDC White Paper found that:

48% of AI Masters report they have instant availability of their structured data and 43% of their unstructured data, while AI Emergents have only 26% and 20% respectively.
AI Masters (65%) and AI Emergents (35%) reported their current data architectures can seamlessly integrate their organization’s private data with AI Cloud services.

According to the research, AI Masters know that their data architecture and infrastructure for transformational AI initiatives must offer ease of access to corporate data sets without any—or with only minor—preparation or preprocessing.

“Infrastructure decisions made during the design and planning process of AI Initiatives must factor in architecture flexibility,” said Ritu Jyoti Group Vice President, Worldwide Artificial Intelligence and Automation Research Practice, Global AI Research Lead, at IDC. “The dynamic nature of data inputs to AI and GenAI workstreams means easy access to distributed and diverse data—both structured and unstructured data sets with varying characteristics—is critical. This requires a flexible, unified approach to storage, a common control plane, and management tools that make it seamless for data scientists and developers to consume data with MLOps integrations.”

Effective Data Governance and Security Processes Drive AI Success

The IDC White Paper found that:

The inability for AI Emergents to progress is often due to a lack of standardized governance policies and procedures; only 8% of AI Emergents have completed and standardized these across all AI projects, compared to 38% of AI Masters.
While 51% of AI Masters reported they have standardized policies in place that are rigorously enforced by an independent group in their organization, only 3% of AI Emergents claim this.

The study found that effective data governance and security are crucial indicators of organizational maturity in AI initiatives. Managing data responsibly and securely remains a key issue for enterprises, because AI stakeholders often try to shortcut security processes to accelerate development. Feedback from organizations that have become more successful at delivering positive outcomes from their AI initiatives demonstrates that governance and security are not merely cost centers but vital enablers of innovation. By prioritizing security, data sovereignty, and regulatory compliance, organizations can mitigate risk in their AI and GenAI initiatives and ensure that their data engineers and scientists can focus on maximizing efficiency and productivity.

Efficient Use of Resources Important for Scaling AI Responsibly

The IDC White Paper found that:

43% of AI Masters have clearly defined metrics for assessing resource efficiency when developing AI models that were completed and standardized across all AI projects compared to 9% of AI Emergents.
63% of all respondents reported the need for major improvements or a complete overhaul to ensure their storage is optimized for AI and only 14% indicated they needed no improvements.

As AI workflows become increasingly integral to almost every industry, it’s critical to acknowledge the impact on compute and storage infrastructure, data and energy resources, and their associated costs. A key measure of AI maturity is the definition and implementation of metrics to assess the efficiency of resource use in the creation of AI models.

To review the IDC White Paper, “Scaling AI Initiatives Responsibly: The Critical Role of an Intelligent Data Infrastructure,” visit the website here.

CyberSense 8.6 Released, Index Engines’ Latest Alerts Dashboard

Methodology

In December of 2023 and January of 2024, IDC conducted 24 in-depth interviews and 1,220 quantitative interviews by web survey with global decision makers involved in IT operations, data science, data engineering and software development related to AI initiatives. These interviews revealed in-depth information about the state of AI initiatives today including the array of challenges, numerous business benefits, and best practices that leading organizations have taken to achieve success.

In conducting this analysis IDC has developed an AI maturity model where organizations fall into one of four maturity levels based on their current approach to AI in terms of data and storage infrastructure, data policy and governance, resource efficiency focus, and stakeholder enablement and collaboration. These maturity levels are AI Emergents, AI Pioneers, AI Leaders, and AI Masters.

*Source: IDC White Paper sponsored by NetApp, “Scaling AI Initiatives Responsibly: The Critical Role of an Intelligent Data Infrastructure,” Doc #US52048524, April 2024

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Software Developers Prioritizing Issue Resolution Over Innovation

Taylor Graham — Tue, 07 May 2024 15:00:02 +0000

Cisco released results from a survey revealing that software developers allocate over 57% of their time to resolving application performance issues in “war rooms,” rather than focusing on developing innovative software applications as part of their organization’s innovation strategy.

Software developers play a critical role in building, launching and maintaining the applications and digital services that are essential to the way modern organizations operate today, and the pressure on them has never been higher. Globally, 85% of those surveyed report encountering increased pressure to accelerate release velocity, while 77% point to mounting pressure to deliver seamless and secure digital experiences.

But while developers are being expected to deliver new tools and functionality at ever faster speeds, they also find themselves on the receiving end of endless demands to help Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) and IT operations teams manage the ongoing availability and performance of applications. The result is teams of developers spending hours in war room meetings and debugging applications, instead of creating code and building new applications.

Lack of Critical Insight into Application Performance

Developers report that the issue is down to their organizations not having the right tools and visibility required to understand the root cause of application issues. They believe this stems from IT departments lacking a full and unified view into applications and the supporting IT stack. Developers are acutely concerned about the potential consequences this could have, with three quarters (75%) of those surveyed fearing that the lack of visibility and insight into IT performance is increasing the chances of their organization suffering downtime and disruption to business-critical applications.

The situation is significantly affecting morale amongst developers, with 82% admitting that they feel frustrated and demotivated, and 54% increasingly inclined to leave their current job. These findings should ring alarm bells for organizations who are now dependent on developers to create the compelling, intuitive digital experiences that customers and users expect. With demand for developer skills at an all-time high and a finite pool of talent, businesses cannot afford an exodus of talent simply because their IT teams don’t have the tools they need to do their jobs.

“While most IT departments have deployed a multitude of monitoring tools across different domains, they simply fall short when it comes to today’s complex and dynamic IT environments, leaving technologists unable to generate a full and unified view into their applications and the supporting IT stack,” said Shannon McFarland, Vice President, Cisco DevNet. “When things go wrong, it’s incredibly difficult to quickly identify where the root cause lies, often resulting in panic war room situations and developers having to spend hours trying to help their colleagues in IT operations identify the quickest path to remediation.”

The Potential for Full-Stack Observability

Encouragingly, developers are acutely aware that there are solutions available to address these concerns, and as many as 91% feel that they should be playing a bigger role in shaping and deciding on the solutions needed within their organization. Above all else, developers point to full-stack observability as being a potential game changer, providing SREs and IT operations teams with unified visibility into applications and supporting infrastructure, across both cloud-native and on premises environments.

While developers themselves may not be the primary users of full-stack observability solutions – focusing instead on their specific areas of domain expertise – 78% believe that implementing full-stack observability within their organization would be beneficial. Developers recognize the benefits of having unified visibility across the IT estate and acknowledge that full-stack observability would make it much easier and quicker for operations teams to identify issues, understand root causes, and carry out necessary remediation. In turn, this would result in fewer technologists from multiple domain teams being required to attend war room sessions, and free up that talent – including developers – to focus on their day jobs.

76% of developers went so far as to state that it’s becoming impossible for them to do their job because SREs and IT operations teams don’t have the insights they need to effectively manage IT performance. This explains why 94% point to full-stack observability as the single thing that would most help them to escape war rooms and focus on innovation.

The Role of AI

Alongside full-stack observability, many developers (39%) also feel that their organization (and they themselves) would benefit from deploying AI to automate application issue detection and resolution. Rather than relying on manual processes, AI can enable IT teams to cut through overwhelming volumes of application data to identify the most serious issues and apply fixes in real-time.

In addition, developers are ready to embrace new ways of working within the IT department to drive greater efficiency and productivity, and a more streamlined approach to managing application performance. The majority (57%) believe that there needs to be greater ongoing collaboration between developers and IT teams. This is already being seen in shift left testing and widespread adoption of DevOps and DevSecOps methodologies, so that application availability, performance and security considerations are embedded into the development lifecycle from the outset.

“At a time when developer talent is in such high demand, organizations must do everything they can to empower their teams with the tools they need to be able to perform to their full potential and maximize impact,” added McFarland. “Full-stack observability has become mission-critical – without it, IT teams simply cannot deliver the levels of digital experience that consumers now demand.”

For more information about how full-stack observability can help software developers escape “War Rooms,” visit the website here.

Research Methodology

Cisco conducted research amongst 500 global software developers split across the U.S. (200), UK (100), Australia (30), and the rest of the world (170 – including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Japan, Singapore, India). The research was conducted by Insight Avenue in March and April 2024.

Cisco Hypershield Reimagines Data Centers and Cloud Security

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Security Incidents Spotted by Organizations in the Past Year, Up 68%

Taylor Graham — Thu, 02 May 2024 17:00:41 +0000

Netwrix has unveiled its annual 2024 Hybrid Security Trends Report, compiled from a survey of 1,309 IT and security professionals worldwide. The findings indicate that 79% of surveyed organizations detected a cyberattack in the past year, marking an increase from 68% in the previous year. Additionally, 45% of these organizations faced unforeseen expenses, and 1 in 5 (20%) suffered a loss in competitive edge as a result of these incidents. The proportion of those experiencing severe repercussions surged: 16% reported a decline in company evaluation, and 13% dealt with legal actions, compared to just 3% the previous year.

“Growing security awareness at the executive level means a better understanding that the risks of security gaps extend far beyond downtime and data loss. As a result, more organizations are investing resources into audits to investigate the root cause of security incidents to prevent similar events in the future,” explains Ilia Sotnikov, Security Strategist at Netwrix.

1 in 6 (17%) organizations estimated their financial damage from cyber security incidents to be at least $50,000. In addition, the share of those who faced no financial consequences dropped from 47% to 38% compared to last year. To mitigate the risk of financial loss from data breach, organizations often opt to purchase cyber insurance. Indeed, 62% of respondents confirmed having a cyber insurance policy or planning to purchase one within 12 months. Almost 1 in 5 (19%) insured organizations used their policy last year.

“Considering the high chances of a payout request, it’s no wonder the requirements for obtaining a policy have become stricter. The survey shows that insurers are now more likely to require identity and access management as well as privileged access management,” says Dirk Schrader, VP of Security Research at Netwrix. “These solutions significantly complicate the privilege escalation for the attacker and their lateral movement. As a result, the security team has more time to spot suspicious activity and respond to the attack before any serious damage occurs.”

Other notable survey findings include:

Phishing is still the most common attack vector both on premises and in the cloud: 74% of respondents suffered this type of cyberattack.
Account compromise attacks in the cloud spiked, with 55% of respondents reporting them in 2024, compared to 39% in 2023, 31% in 2022, and just 16% in 2020.
Targeted attacks on premises continue to intensify: the share of those who suffered this type of attack increased by 42%, from 19% to 27%.
Interest in implementing AI tools surged: This year, 28% of respondents named it among their top IT priorities compared to only 9% in 2023.

“The interest in AI is surging across enterprises – both within the security department and outside. The introduction of AI tools like Copilot to assist with regular business processes raises a new scope of associated security gaps. Since Copilot relies on native access controls within Microsoft 365, it can access all data a user can. If the user has been granted inappropriate access to content, then sensitive information can quickly spiral out of control,” warns Ilia Sotnikov. “Implementing and maintaining a strict least-privilege model is a good start to address the risks associated with Copilot and similar AI-powered business tools.”

Download the 2024 Hybrid Security Trends Report to learn about IT architecture, Security challenges, and security incidents and more here.

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Low-Code Software Provides Productivity Boost Survey Revealed

Taylor Graham — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 13:00:45 +0000

According to the 2024 Reveal Biggest Software Development Challenges survey, low-code software has emerged as a significant advancement, proving to be a potent force in expediting app development and enhancing productivity. The survey, encompassing 585 respondents, revealed that nearly all participants (90.4%) reported increased developer productivity through the use of low-code tools. Furthermore, a majority (43.5%) of developers reported saving up to half of their time when employing low-code tools on projects.

“Low-code software has real value in democratizing software development to include non-developers,” says Jason Beres, Senior VP of Developer Tools at Infragistics, and creator of App Builder software. “It puts users in control of application development and empowers teams to develop and modify applications using intuitive tools without coding expertise. The global shortage of skilled software developers drove the implementation of low-code software for non-programmers and has resulted in improved efficiency.”

The survey found that building apps significantly consumes development resources, with 28.2% of developer’s time dedicated to coding and 24.8% to design. This marks progress from 2023, where coding alone accounted for 43.4% of their time.

Low-code tools make it easier to create apps without a designer or design team. Nearly half of respondents (47.2%) work with a designer in 2024 compared to 88.8% who worked with a designer in 2023.

The Market for Low-Code Tools is Exploding

Low-code platforms like App Builder have surged in popularity, due to their ability to simplify app creation for business and technical users, thereby saving time and money. The 2024 Reveal survey reports that two-thirds (71.8%) of developers are now using low-code/no-code tools. Additionally, more than half (56.4%) anticipate greater reliance on these tools in 2024. Nearly one in three developers (28%) aim to adopt low-code/no-code tools within the year and 26.7% seek software suitable for citizen developers.

In addition, a third (33.5%) of respondents plan to implement designer/developer collaboration tools.

“Strained technology budgets, a shortage of developers and the pressure to work efficiently and deliver better services have fueled the low-code boom,” says Beres. “Companies are realizing that if they streamline their low-code stack, they can achieve cost reductions, enhance business resilience, and better adapt to a rapidly changing competitive landscape.”

According to KPMG, “Analysts predict that low code will become the preferred software development method by 2025. Gartner expects the market to grow to almost $30 billion by then, with a compound annual growth rate of 20 percent. Clearly, the industry has great expectations for low code adoption and utilization. For now, companies are deciding how to transition from selective low code adoption to the cohesive, enterprise-wide approach that would drive these lofty growth expectations.”

One of the most significant benefits of adding low-code tools to your tech stack is that they bridge the gap between design and development, offering pre-designed templates and drag-and-drop interfaces. In an age of developer shortages and overworked programmers, low-code software not only increases productivity, but it also improves organizational efficiency, overcomes development backlogs, reduces costs, and uses fewer resources. The rise of low-code/no-code platforms is shaking up the world of software development – not by replacing traditional programmers but by expanding the toolkits available to software developers and enhancing their productivity. Learn more about low-code software as a significant advancement in the App Builder report.

Survey Methodology

A total of 585 software developers and IT professionals participated in Reveal’s fifth annual survey from December 2023 to January 2024.

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