Economic volatility, new technological advancements and an evolving threatscape, presents businesses with an ongoing skills shortage in IT - one of the most pervasive skills shortages we’ve seen in 60 years. Not only do such shortages impede productivity, but it can also expose cybersecurity vulnerabilities that could threaten operations.
All the while, understaffed IT departments face increased workloads, inadequate monitoring and patching, resulting in a lack of expertise in regulatory compliance. Using robust device management solutions can help businesses overcome the IT skills shortage, while simultaneously ensuring optimal cybersecurity and operational efficiency. Here’s how:
Streamlined Operations
Centralised device management leads to quicker issue resolution times and streamlined operations. It can also save training time, money and resources that you’d otherwise spend on individually upskilling your team in required IT skills.
Uniform policies and configurations
IT providers who centralise device management can establish and enforce uniform policies and configurations across all of your organisation's devices. This provides consistency across devices and ensures they are set up and maintained according to your industry-specific standards, therefore, eliminating variations or inaccuracies that could potentially lead to issues. Consistency in configurations and policies plays a pivotal role in improving security. By ensuring all devices adhere to identical security standards, vulnerabilities caused by misconfigurations or deviations in policies or configurations, are minimised.
Efficient updates and patching
Centralised management enables easier and quicker implementation of updates, patches, and security fixes across all devices - no matter the location!. This streamlined implementation reduces risks and vulnerabilities while guaranteeing your devices operate on the latest and safest software configurations.
Simplified troubleshooting and issue resolution
With consistent policies and configurations, troubleshooting and issue resolution become quicker and easier. The right Managed IT service provider can help identify and resolve problems more rapidly since they're dealing with standardisation rather than with unique configurations on each device. They can remotely diagnose and fix devices without physically accessing each one individually - saving both time and resources.
Automated Device Management
Implementing automation offers numerous benefits that reduce maintenance costs, optimise resource allocation, and increase overall efficiency within IT operations.
Automation can significantly cut labour hours required for maintenance tasks. By automating repetitive processes like software updates, patch management and system configuration, businesses reap the benefits. This allows IT teams to re-allocate human resources more effectively towards higher value tasks that involve problem-solving, innovation and strategic planning.
What’s more, automated systems frequently include monitoring and alerting functionalities to detect issues or anomalies quickly. These trigger real time automated responses or notify IT staff accordingly. This not only allows you to uplift your security posture but also meet compliance standards by ensuring devices and systems are automatically configured in accordance with regulatory requirements. In turn, this reduces the risk of a costly and damaging security breach.
Reducing IT Burnout
Alleviating internal IT team workload can have a substantial impact on preventing burnout and allowing your team to focus on higher-value tasks - which in turn boost productivity in various ways.
However, internal IT teams frequently devote much of their time and resources to repetitive and routine tasks, such as manually configuring systems, performing basic troubleshooting or updating software applications.
Skilled IT professionals possess expertise that goes far beyond simple maintenance tasks. By freeing your IT team of these duties, they can devote more of their energy toward more complex projects requiring specialised skills, innovation and creativity. Redirecting IT talent means that your staff can contribute more to contribute to your organisation's development and expansion.
Increased network security
Robust device management plays an essential part in strengthening your cybersecurity protocols, helping your organisation mitigate risks and ensure business continuity even amid an ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape. Device management provides several key advantages:
Comprehensive security measures
Robust device management encompasses and enforces comprehensive security measures across all devices in your organisation, such as strong access controls, encryption, antivirus software updates and firewall protection, with regular security updates being applied across them all. Implementation of these measures ensures a more secure network environment.
Proactive threat detection and response solutions
With central device management, your business can experience the benefits of advanced monitoring and threat detection tools - without the hefty price tag. These tools allow you to identify security risks, anomalies, or breaches in real time and take proactive measures to stop threats before they escalate further. This is because the right Managed IT provider can conduct regular patch management and updates to address vulnerabilities and weaknesses in your software and systems.
This ensures that patches and updates are promptly applied across all your devices, decreasing the window of opportunity for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities. Plus, effective device management can give you uniform security policies and configurations across all your devices. This helps ensure all endpoints adhere to similar security standards, thereby decreasing human error or oversight in security implementations and decreasing your IT team’s workload.
Disaster recovery and business continuity
In the event the worst happens, your managed IT provider should include disaster recovery and business continuity measures in case of security breach or system failure. These should be outlined with predefined protocols and backup systems that help quickly recover operations, while mitigating downtime and potential financial losses.
Conclusion
Centralised device management provides a practical solution to overcoming the IT skills shortage. Automated device management can optimise operations while also reducing manual effort for increased security, thus leading to cost savings and creating a more dependable IT environment.
The skills shortage in IT doesn't need to compromise business security. Effective device management solutions like Suredeploy can bolster a company's security posture while helping bridge any skills gap that exists.
James Xuereb
