ESG TechTruth: Security vs. Productivity Security considerations are still paramount.

ESG surveyed 101 IT and business professionals at small (20 to 99 employees), midmarket (100 to 999 employees), and enterprise (1,000 or more employees) organizations in North America and Western Europe tasked with providing a productive employee/end-user computing environment across various applications and endpoint devices. While recent trends like the consumerization of IT and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies were ultimately rooted in and driven by a desire to maximize employee productivity, security still trumps these aspirations. Indeed, when survey respondents were asked whether they would be more willing to sacrifice security or productivity in the pursuit of supporting the application, endpoint device, and data requirements of the organization’s employees/end-users, nearly three-quarters (71%) stated that they would sacrifice productivity for improved security

Source: ESG Brief, The Challenge of Delivering Secure Workspaces, May 2017.