The security and productivity balancing act

As an IT leader, you understand the struggle. To be productive, employees need the freedom to work from anywhere and on any device they choose. And you need to ensure that sensitive company information is secure. Tip the scale too far one way, and you lose control. Tip it too far the other way, and productivity suffers. With a secure digital workspace, you can. Let’s dig a little deeper to uncover how you can balance security and productivity — without compromise.

It’s no secret that employees who have the freedom to work how and when they need are more productive and have higher job satisfaction. The business advantage belongs to those who can attract and hire the best talent and give them the best tools to be productive from anywhere.

Weighing in productivity

The most engaged employees spent between 60% to 80% of their time working offsite

Work activities that have the greatest impact on productivity:

1. The ability to work from any location at any time 2. The ability to access information quickly and easily

Actively disengaged employees cost $450 to $550 billion per year in lost productivity

As the center of work shifts to the user and to the cloud, IT is challenged with the complexity of adding and securing new technologies to support business needs and deliver new ways of working. Relying on ad hoc integrations of multiple point security solutions is unwieldy and can inhibit productivity, user experience, and the adoption of new technology.

Weighing in security

The average employee actively uses 36 cloud services at work

74% of organizations say a new IT security framework is needed to improve their security posture and reduce risk.

69% of organizations don't believe the threats they're seeing can be blocked by their anti-virus software

Experience Citrix Workspace A secure digital workspace from Citrix is the simplest, most integrated way to secure your apps and data across the clouds, devices, and networks where business is happening and people are collaborating. Citrix Workspace takes a people-centric approach that’s all about maintaining user experience and security through:

Don’t let security or productivity hang in the balance

Secure single sign-on with contextual access

By 2020, the estimated number of passwords used by humans and machines worldwide will grow to 300 billion Users are struggling to be productive as they juggle multiple sets of user names, passwords, and experiences across their diverse services and devices. Providing single sign-on (SSO) to not only all their apps — including Windows, Linux, mobile, SaaS, and web — but also their desktops and files is a must for driving optimal productivity and experience. Once a user is signed in, contextual access policies give you control over ever-changing situations involving devices, locations, data sensitivity levels, threats, and vulnerabilities. • The 5 Ws of access: Contextual access policies allow you to dynamically dial access up and down depending on the who, what, when, where, and why of any given scenario • Situational awareness: Ensure reliability and performance regardless of the network connection, location, or device

App and data security

Ransomware attacks are growing more than 350 percent annually Ransomware attacks not only result in data loss and business downtime but also lost productivity. User education, anti-malware, frequent backups, and keeping a supply of Bitcoin on hand are no longer sufficient for thwarting these attacks. You need a more robust, systems-level approach to keep data out of an attacker’s reach and to keep business running as usual. Best practices for comprehensive, systems-level security include: • Secure web apps to insulate business data and protect corporate networks from intrusion • Protect against infection via malicious email links and attachments — a key delivery vector for ransomware and other forms of malware • Protect mobile devices — including BYOD smartphones and tablets — from exposing business data to ransomware • Ensure all systems are up-to-date, patched, and easily recoverable in the event of an attack • Keep business data beyond the reach of ransomware, and ensure that clean, up-to-date versions of files are always easily available to users

Advanced SaaS and internet controls

The average enterprise experiences 23.2 cloud-related threats per month Cloud and web apps and internet browsing are a regular part of anyone’s workday. While necessary for productivity, they introduce new security risks for IT. Citrix Workspace provides advanced security controls over SaaS apps and the internet, so you can allow the tools people need without sacrificing the advanced control you need.

Enhanced security controls for SaaS apps Protect intellectual property by watermarking pages and restricting actions such as copy, paste, print, and download.

Controlling access to unsanctioned SaaS apps and the internet Blacklist and whitelist URL categories, and monitor usage. Disable URLs launched from SaaS apps, and present unknown SaaS apps or web links in a secure browser to isolate them from corporate network or resources.

Pre-configured application catalogs Publish well-known SaaS apps, such as Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, GSuite, Slack, Zoom, Expensify, Workday, from an out-of-the-box catalog.

Visibility and analytics

The top goal of organizations seeking a new IT security framework is a unified view of users across the enterprise Users depend on the security parameters IT puts in place to give them the freedom to get work done their way without restriction. Because Citrix Workspace provides a unified view into your entire digital workspace, you’re able to generate actionable insights to proactively handle user and application security threats, improve app performance, and support continuous operations.

A secure digital workspace from Citrix makes the security and productivity balancing act a thing of the past and empowers you to embrace the best of both worlds. Achieve the level of security the business requires while enabling new, flexible ways of working that people demand — all without the scale.

Toss out the scale

“We see a huge benefit in enabling our team to work from where they want and when they want. … That level of flexibility has increased productivity by as much as 30 percent.”

Jan Vogt, Chairman of the Board and Partner, Treuhandzentrum Zürich

Explore Citrix Workspace

What could a data breach cost you?

Sources 1. State of the American Workplace Report. Gallup, 2017. 2. “Mobility, performance and engagement: How CIOs can contribute to business performance by shaping the employee experience.” The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2016. 3. 12 Must-Know Statistics on Cloud Usage in the Enterprise. Skyhigh Networks, 2016 4. “The Need for a New IT Security Architecture.” Ponemon Institute, sponsored by Citrix, 2017 5. “2017 Cost of a Data Breach Study.” Ponemon Institute, sponsored by IBM, 2017. 6. “300 billion passwords by 2020, report predicts.” SC Media, 2017. 7. “2018 Annual Cybersecurity Report.” Cisco, 2018.

Striking a balance

But what if you could toss out the scale for good?

End-to-end visibility and analytics

Simple visual dashboards

Proactive attack detection

Fast troubleshooting

Actionable insights

View sources ↓

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How a secure digital workspace can help IT toss out the scale. Forever.

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