Work from Home Remote Access Challenges NetOps, SecOps

Work from home and remote access employees are a top network operations (NetOps) and security operations (SecOps) challenge. That’s as the number of these employees soars, according to results of a global network study Viavi Solutions released Wednesday.

The 13^th annual State of the Network Global Study finds that IT is living in an age of dynamic disruption. This disruption is twofold; first, the transition to remote employee support is at an all-time high due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, it’s making emerging technologies go mainstream.

The surge in remote users is challenging NetOps and SecOps. And, 58% of them want greater visibility — along with supporting resources.

Viavi Solutions’ Charles Thompson

“As remote working becomes the new norm, IT teams are challenged to find and adapt technologies, such as flow-based reporting to manage bandwidth consumption, VPN oversubscription and troubleshooting applications. To guarantee the best performance and reduce cybersecurity threats, increasing network visibility is now a must for all businesses,” said Charles Thompson, senior director, enterprise and cloud at Viavi Solutions, the provider of network test, monitoring and assurance products. “By empowering NetOps, as well as application and security teams with network visibility, IT can mitigate the impact of disruptive migrations, incidents and new technologies like SD-WAN to achieve consistent operational excellence. This year’s State of the Network study clearly demonstrates an increasing awareness of this fact among all IT stakeholders.”

Key Findings

Here are the six key findings from the Network Global Study.

• For the first time in the 13 years of the survey, “understanding end-user experience” is the top challenge for troubleshooting applications (about 47%). That’s in contrast to the previous 12-year leader, “problem domain isolation,” which this year fell to third place at 31%.
• SD-WAN has gone mainstream for organizations of all sizes. Cost savings (58%) and business continuity (51%) are the top motivators for SD-WAN deployments. More than 60% of respondents have either deployed, are deploying, or are planning to deploy SD-WAN in the next 12 months.
• The rampant bandwidth growth in the previous year’s findings slowed slightly this year. That said, 69% of respondents expect up to 50% increases in traffic loads, which is independent of company size. Remote users and cloud deployments drive the increases.
• NetOps teams report that resolving secuity issues consumes more than 35% of their time. Also, almost three in four respondents agreed or strongly agreed that SecOps need more visibility into the network.
• The surge in remote workers challenges both NetOps and SecOps teams.
• Sixty-four percent of businesses of all sizes leverage…