strongDM, the company behind a People-First Access Platform, has released the results of its latest survey, the 2022 Access-Productivity Gap Report, which revealed that almost two-thirds of organisations have their productivity impacted on a daily or weekly basis due to access issues. The survey of 600 DevOps professionals highlights the consequences organisations can face when access is poorly managed and technical teams turn to workarounds to access critical systems.
Over half of technical staff wait days or weeks for access to critical systems
The report shows that it takes days to add tools to existing access solutions for 40% of the organisations surveyed, with 21% of businesses waiting weeks or months. As a result, access, productivity and security create a negative loop. When technical staff is unable to access new tools, productivity is impacted. When that happens, it should come as no surprise that impatient employees will devise workarounds that create unintended security risks.
In an effort to keep data and systems secure, access to infrastructure and new tools is restricted to ensure security. But at what cost? Over half of organisations (57%) report that it can take days or weeks for access requests to be approved – which isn’t counting the 10% of organisations that don’t have clear SLAs for access at all. In the meantime, businesses experience lost productivity as they wait:
- Access issues consistently impact productivity: 64% of organisations have their productivity impacted on a daily or weekly basis due to access issues.
- Significant time is lost simply accessing infrastructure: 73% of employees require 15 or more minutes to get access to infrastructure, with over a quarter (30%) requiring more than 30 minutes.
- Poor access practices means missed deadlines: 52% of development teams have missed deadlines due to issues with accessing infrastructure, with 53% of teams being held accountable for the missed deadline even if it was caused by lack of access to the required infrastructure.
Complicated access can lead to data breaches
Technical teams that are unable to access required resources often embrace risky workarounds in order to perform job functions. The data shows that 55% of IT, security and DevOps team members are maintaining backdoor access to systems and 42% have embraced ‘shadow IT’ in order to get access to tools and systems needed for their roles. Further complicating matters, 53% of respondents are sharing credentials across teams, adding exceptional risk, especially since credentials are involved in a majority of all data breaches.
A people-first approach streamlines access without compromising security
Organisations looking to combat the access productivity gap should rethink access around the people that need it, making it both easier and more secure, rather than adding more user and administrator friction in an effort to improve security.