Global enterprises are investing heavily in advanced security solutions, yet a concerning pattern emerges: critical features remain unused or improperly configured across organisations.
Despite significant cybersecurity spending, these implementation gaps create substantial vulnerabilities that could compromise entire systems.
The reality is stark - extensive security investments are transforming into significant business risks, often without leadership’s awareness.
While many businesses have installed security measures - many are still underutilising their existing features, creating a critical gap between capability and implementation.
Having sophisticated security measures in place is merely the first step - without proper configuration, optimisation, and active usage, organisations expose themselves to unnecessary risk while failing to realise returns on their security investments.
This gap between potential and actual security effectiveness has become a critical issue for enterprise risk management and poses a vulnerability risk for leaders.
Digital Employee Experience (DEX)
Leaders seeking to close this implementation gap are finding a strategic advantage in Digital Employee Experience (DEX) solutions which refers to the way employees interact with their organisation’s digital environment. This includes the hardware and software they use to perform their daily tasks, as well as the degree of access and support they receive. While previously overlooked, DEX represents a fundamental shift in security optimisation.
Ivanti has positioned itself as an industry leader in DEX solutions, combining security with productivity enhancements while reducing user frustrations and integrating seamlessly with IT solutions for cross-team insights.
“Imagine buying a luxury car with cutting-edge safety features, then finding out the manufacturer never installed seatbelts and airbags, or their installation made them unusable. Organisations do this with their security solutions, often ignoring the right configurations to make them optimised and properly utilised”, says Daren Goeson, SVP of product management at Unified Endpoint Management, Ivanti.
DEX provides comprehensive visibility into organisational devices, their users, installed applications and performance metrics, enabling leaders to transform security investments into active protection.
The solution provides unprecedented visibility into an enterprise’s security posture. By generating comprehensive security indicators as part of their digital experience scores, these solutions offer a clear picture of whether built-in protections are being leveraged effectively.
This approach aligns strategically with established ‘secure by design’ frameworks - a critical standard for modern enterprise security. This guidance emphasises that manufacturers must develop clear roadmaps for secure-by-design practices across their product portfolios, with exceptions permitted only in extraordinary circumstances.
Through DEX, businesses can finally begin transforming security potential into actual protection. At its core, the software is about proactive improvement. These platforms go beyond highlighting vulnerabilities, and surfacing potential IT and security issues and provide actionable recommendations and automation to remediate them.
Shifting from reactive to proactive security management is increasingly important. The current threat landscape can move fast and leaders must ensure they are one step ahead.
For leaders, the ability to anticipate security vulnerabilities has become a strategic imperative. While traditional security metrics provide system-level data, advanced DEX platforms offer leaders unprecedented visibility into actual security posture.
“DEX isn’t just another IT tool - it’s a lifeline for overwhelmed IT teams. By automatically handling everything from patch management to performance issues, it transforms reactive firefighting into proactive problem-solving. This shift doesn’t just streamline operations - it helps prevent burnout and improves the quality of life for IT professionals,” says Goeson.
By aggregating intelligence across the digital environment, from device deployment to user behaviour patterns, these insights enable executives to identify emerging risks before they impact operations.
This evolution from technical monitoring to strategic oversight is transforming how leadership teams approach security governance - revealing critical indicators from unpatched systems to unauthorised technology adoption that could compromise system integrity.
This shift doesn’t just streamline operations - it helps prevent burnout and improves the quality of life for IT professionals
The predictive capabilities of employee cyber security solutions are also valuable. By analysing trends and patterns, these platforms can predict future security problems based on accurate data. This intelligence enables IT leaders to anticipate and address vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, eliminating the scramble to resolve a threat.
The strongest DEX solutions offer integration and are designed to work seamlessly with existing IT asset management, IT service management, unified endpoint management and security tools.
This interoperability means that insights gained from DEX analysis can be applied across an organisation’s entire IT landscape, helping to close gaps and ensure consistency.
Understanding employee sentiment
While the technical capabilities of digital employee security solutions are substantial, their most valuable contribution can lie in capturing and analysing workforce sentiment.
By combining quantitative metrics with qualitative employee feedback, businesses can gain actionable insights into how security measures affect workplace productivity, risk-taking behaviours, and team morale.
This is important. The human element can be forgotten in traditional security approaches, yet it’s crucial for sustainable protection. After all, the “sturdiest” security measures are ineffective if employees find ways to work around them.
According to Ivanti research, 55% of employees surveyed believe that negative experiences with workplace technology negatively affect their mood and morale.
“Even seemingly minor issues in the workplace, such as slow network connections or substandard device performance, can impact employee sentiment”, Goeson says.
DEX solutions help bridge the gap between IT, security and business objectives. By providing clear, actionable insights into both security posture and employee experience, these platforms facilitate more informed decision-making at all levels of the organisation.
They enable IT leaders to demonstrate the tangible impact of security investments, making it easier to secure buy-in for critical initiatives.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this approach. Threat actors continue to get savvier. Attack surfaces continue to expand. Without the right security tools — properly configured, enhanced and utilised — businesses are catching up at best, and likely to be highly vulnerable.
“It’s high time for businesses to prioritise cybersecurity. Just as you wouldn’t drive without a seatbelt, you shouldn’t operate in a digital environment without investing in and fully utilising adequate security measures. Without properly configured measures, you face a business which is vulnerable to cyberattacks,” Goeson explains.
Leaders must prioritise comprehensive security. Operating in today’s digital environment demands both investing in and fully adopting robust security measures – it’s no longer optional, it’s essential for survival.
To read more about how your organisation’s digital employee experience (DEX) can help bridge IT, security, business and employee objectives, read the 2024 Digital Employee Experience Report here.
