Discover data points from a recent Pulse and Citrix survey on zero trust security. They may surprise you.
Talk to 100 security executives about how they intend to deliver a great employee experience and you may get some surprises. What you probably already know is that the technology and tools your employees use every day play a crucial role in empowering them and improving their experience.
A new survey from Pulse and Citrix reveals that secure remote access to technology also impacts employee experience. If an employee can’t securely access apps and data easily, productivity may plummet. Even more important, security must extend beyond the point of access to protect the entire employee work session. If employees can simply and securely access apps and data and be confident that the intellectual property they deliver to the company or the innovations they provide are secure, the net result is a better employee experience — which, in turn, means better ongoing productivity and better engagement with company culture and company goals.
Where and how your employees work will continue to evolve — but more change shouldn’t mean more complexity. Implementing zero trust provides employees more choice to work wherever and however they want, reduces friction in accessing key information resources, and improves performance over traditional VPNs.
The Pulse and Citrix survey revealed some interesting findings. The first is about security in general:
- A whopping 97 percent of IT decision makers surveyed believe that employee experience has a significant place in their security strategies.
“Security and experience are two sides of the same coin. A realistic way to look at security is to make it frictionless,” emphasizes Meerah Rajavel, Citrix’s CIO. “That means that you have guardrails; you have the control; but security does not get in the way of the employee experience. It’s the container that we in IT can manage — so all of the controls can be implemented. Yet users still have the freedom to work on an iPad, mobile phone, laptop, or device of their choice.”
More findings from the survey highlight additional insight about the current use of VPN technology and security executives’ willingness to consider zero trust security models in the future:
- Sixty-four percent of security executives aim to shift from their current VPN strategies; 71 percent of these leaders are eyeing zero trust as their replacement model.
- Seventy-four percent of the decision makers surveyed planned to implement a holistic zero trust strategy that spans remote access and beyond.
- Two main reasons why zero trust is getting so much consideration are its agility and the fact that there are zero trust solutions (like Citrix Workspace) that replace mismatched collections of point products.
Why does all of this matter? These findings speak to changing viewpoints when it comes to the use of VPN technology in the future. More than ever, IT and security leaders are considering replacing point solutions including traditional VPNs with more comprehensive holistic security that is built into digital workspace platforms like Citrix Workspace.
Securely accessing apps and data shouldn’t mean employees jumping through hoops. Complex and cumbersome security affects employee productivity, leading some workers to try to circumvent security measures. Implementing a more modern, VPN-less solution that alleviates the need for a password by using FIDO2 removes the friction employees face today in the hybrid-work environment. In a zero trust model, employees aren’t restricted to working with specific devices or from certain locations. They don’t always have to log in to their VPNs, accept slow performance, and remember countless passwords.
Yes, employee experience is about providing workers with the right technology — technology that removes busy work and enables more focus and creativity so they can do their best work. But in today’s hybrid-work environment, everyone works differently. How employees access their apps and data also has a big impact on the employee experience. Only Citrix Workspace provides the right balance between experience and security for both IT and end users.
Learn about the Citrix zero trust model and review the infographic about the Pulse and Citrix study. Read how we’re delivering a great experience for our own employees with Citrix technologies, and learn about our new Secure Workspace Access solution.
