Meet Travis, a dropout IT geek. His father started a restaurant in the 1990s which Travis heads now. Back then, the waiting staff gave a printed menu to the customers who had to pay only in cash for their orders. Today, customers scan a QR code to view the menu, and waiting staff carry sleek handheld devices for billing. By 2030, Travis wants to open 10 more hi-tech outlets but wants highly centralized, automated control over every endpoint in his chain of restaurants. Needless to say, he wants 100% device and data security. We wish Travis success ahead!
Almost every job profile worldwide has undergone a sea change in the last couple of decades. A day in the life of an IT admin back in the day was different from what it is today. And if IT teams are still configuring devices manually in your organization, that’s a nice cave you live in.
Endpoint management is not a new tech term by any sense of imagination. Though it’s true that the criticality of managing endpoints is more evident today than ever. The reason is quite straightforward—the diversity, form and type of devices have become broader—thanks to IoT and IIoT. So what does 2023 and beyond mean for endpoint management and IT admins? Let’s get going.
Compounding Numbers
Enterprise mobility has been on a rapid rise, and it will continue to gather steam in 2023 and thereafter. The way people work is also not how it used to be with the prevalence of remote/hybrid work and BYOD models. And with our usual suspects IoT and AR, VR or rather XR, the number of endpoints is set to ascend every year. Testimony to that is a McKinsey study that says by 2025, there will be 51.9 billion connected devices.
Unified endpoint management (UEM) will be indispensable for organizations to keep up with the escalated growth of enterprise mobility and the compounding numbers of devices, i.e., endpoints.
Transforming UX: Welcome to DEX
The shift to hybrid and remote models from the conventional in-office work style isn’t just a mere trend that will become a passe. It’s the new normal and here to stay, maybe forever! The devices people use for work will only get more diverse than today, which underlines the great significance UEM holds in managing and securing employee-facing endpoints. There’s now a new buzzword in corporate circles—digital employee experience (DEX).
So, what’s the whole DEX buzz all about? To simplify it, DEX is an uber-cool feature assortment of UEM, mobile device management (MDM) and remote monitoring management (RMM), all blended with a dollop of AI and ML. DEX assesses the effectiveness of how employees interact with technologies and how they feel about using these technologies.
DEX will be a determining employee retention factor for organizations in the future as the work-from-anywhere model gains further momentum. While modern-day UEM and MDM tools offer features like reporting and remote troubleshooting to enhance employee productivity, DEX will be a more holistic, data-driven approach. ML engines will be in full swing to analyze employee sentiment data with organizational and team data to deliver actionable insights for decision-makers.
DEX will empower and enable dispersed workforces to stay engaged and loyal. For instance, live polls and survey results can be analyzed in real time using a UEM. Don’t be surprised if, in the future, present-day intuitive UEM dashboards become interactive with in-app features. For instance, a smartbot asks for a quick survey on how an employee feels about email automation, CRM, or even the UEM software itself.
A for (Advanced) Automation
Currently, most UEM or MDM solutions offer some degree of automation of manual IT tasks. This degree of automation will only increase and include IT infrastructure updates as organizations grow and IT teams deal with scalability challenges. The automation will extend to managing and securing more unattended endpoints beyond just kiosks. Unattended endpoints will involve IoT/IIoT devices. For example, patient monitoring systems in healthcare or RTD sensors in manufacturing plants.
Of course, there’s also a high possibility that kiosks in the future will have capabilities where they can connect automatically to Wi-Fi and configure themselves based on the settings IT admins applied from the UEM console. Brace yourself because, like it or not, the proliferation of AI and ML within the framework of UEM software is inevitable for advanced automation.
A key feature of any UEM solution which IT admins admire is automated patch management. So, what lies in the future?
| Read our blog on hyperautomation of patch management to dig deep. |
More Cloud, More Endpoint Security
Gartner says that by 2023, over 65% of people will have privacy regulations governing their personal data. The recent PDPL in Saudi Arabia highlights the prediction. And that’s just 2023, so one can imagine the degree of compliance UEM providers must deal with in years to come. It’s simple. The more organizations move to the cloud, the more stringent and vital data security standards will become.
The wicked minds of bad actors will also evolve, and UEM solutions need to synchronize their security features with that evolution. While many cyberattacks can be mitigated with hyperautomation of patch management, there will be no perfect world without data breaches. Thus, organizations must make their endpoints more resilient.
For better endpoint resilience, especially as work-from-anywhere and bring your own device (BYOD) structures continue to rise, native endpoint security integration will be an absolute must. Most organizations and their CISOs know that endpoint and access security must be like brothers in arms. The strength of this brotherly bond in the future will revolve around zero-trust standards that cover endpoints and network edges.
Cyberattacks due to compromised endpoints will remain a grave threat; hence, security and IT teams must reimagine the box in the future. ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access) or software-based perimeters won’t suffice with sole dependence on geolocations, time-of-day or other contextual factors for access denial or permissions.
Devices’ security postures and configurations must be incorporated in access authorization. For example, any access to a device running close to the allowed storage limit can be blocked completely until IT frees up storage space. This is where IAM (Identity and Access Management) will meet UEM.
Closing Lines
Remember Travis from the beginning of the blog? He must put together everything we discussed above for him to scale up, and so will every organization seeking future readiness. There will be many parallel integrations UEM solutions will offer, particularly in lines of automation and endpoint and data security. More AI and ML, more cloud, and more cybersecurity risks, and thus, more resilient endpoints as the future of UEM unfolds.
Scalefusion UEM can help organizations streamline the present and future of endpoint management and security. Schedule a demo or get going with a 14-day free trial.
