In a digital business, processes are rarely, if ever, confined to the infrastructure of the company. Customers and employees engage across numerous digital channels and dozens of third-party relationships critical to operations. IT leaders must rapidly evolve to protect their firms’ brands, strengthen their reputations, and build customer trust. To do so, security and productivity should go hand-in-hand, and that means a well-defined policy framework, metrics that demonstrate business value, and a business-aligned strategy that ties all this together.

Balanced security requires firms to transition from treating privacy and data security as compliance requirements to one that champions privacy and uses its technology prowess to differentiate the brand. Any misstep with or changes to the IT infrastructure can and will exacerbate complexity, which is why building a balanced security strategy is so important. A balanced security strategy negates complexity by keeping up with the pace of technological change as well as industry disruption and evolving regulatory compliance. In March 2019, Dell commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the evolving security trends and technology needed to protect and enable employees. Our study found that empowering employees while adhering to security protocols improves employee productivity. Forrester conducted an online survey of 887 senior business and IT decision makers to explore this topic.

Security leaders have been in front of boards and executive committees long enough to know that security metrics that simply portray statistics from monitoring tools, or count the number of malware attacks, add relatively little value to strategy and budget decisions. Protecting sensitive customer and company data shouldn’t be just a compliance obligation, it should be a business imperative. This is exactly why the right technology partners will help push security, risk, and compliance objectives forward. In March 2019, Dell commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the evolving security trends and technology needed to protect and enable employees. Our study found that empowering employees while adhering to security protocols improves employee productivity. Forrester conducted an online survey of 887 senior business and IT decision makers to explore this topic.