AvePoint, Inc., has published the results of its ‘Impact of COVID-19 on Workplace Collaboration Survey’. The report, conducted in partnership with Exec Survey and iGov Survey, reveals how over 200 organizations in the UK managed business continuity when the pandemic hit, where they face security challenges today, and what policies and procedures they are prioritising in the next six months.
Key findings include:
- Despite a quick pivot to digital, most companies did not have a roll out plan: Since the speed of deployment was crucial to workplace productivity, 75 percent of organizations deployed Microsoft Teams without proper governance or security in place, leaving them vulnerable to internal and external threats.
- IT teams express confidence in their collaboration security: nearly all (95 percent) of companies believe they are compliant with internal and external regulations. Similarly, only 7 percent lacked confidence that their digital collaboration deployment was secure from data leaks and unauthorised access.
- Only about a quarter are currently doing routine governance, compliance, and security tasks: Annually, just 28 percent check the settings and membership of Microsoft Teams, to identify potential risks. Only 25 percent remove guest users, in addition to less than a quarter (22 percent) who can determine who has access to specific data for audits, and the mere 13 percent who can restore individual files deleted for a year or longer.
- Consistent with the over 145 million daily active Teams users Microsoft recently announced, AvePoint found that only 3 percent of companies do not leverage Teams today. Further, regular Office 365 usage jumped from nearly half (48 percent) pre-pandemic to now over three quarters (76 percent).
- Increased Microsoft Teams usage is creating more demand for collaboration security, but blockers remain: despite widespread adoption of new digital communications tools, 43 percent of companies believe making them compliant is challenging. In fact, 37 percent want to invest in Teams governance and management in the future to reduce the burden on IT and more confidently ensure they are compliant with regional and industry specific guidelines like records – which only 23 percent of companies capture across Teams.
- IT teams experienced heightened demand: nearly half (48 percent) of organisations' IT teams need hours or days to create digital workspaces like Microsoft Teams or SharePoint once requested by employees, which can lead to low adoption and shadow IT. As a result of increased responsibilities, the biggest challenge for 56 percent of organizations is the surging burden on IT when it comes to managing and servicing new collaboration tools.
