What the Looming Employee Exodus Means for Network Security & How Organizations Can Respond

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Every skilled can relate to the sensation of watching an older, highly experienced coworker retire. While it’s often a pleased occasion to have fun the contributions, a person dropped at an organization, the gulf of skill and knowledge that person leaves will be intimidating to fill.

Many businesses today are all too acquainted with this retirement trend – especially in developed and Western nations – as more individuals from older generations proceed to depart the workforce. This employee exodus, often called “The Great Resignation” or “The Golden Resignation,” will profoundly impact various elements of labor, including network security. With the price of cybercrime hitting $8 trillion in 2023, firms must navigate the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape without their best and most experienced employees.

Two solutions businesses should harness to bolster their network resilience amid this talent shortage are Out-of-Band (OOB) management networking tools and advanced automation technologies like artificial intelligence (AI).

The Network Security Implications of the Golden Resignation

There’s a world talent shortage of expert roles, equivalent to network engineers and cybersecurity experts, which can proceed to worsen, in response to current projections. A 2023 evaluation of the Golden Resignation carried out by Censuswide on behalf of a number one OOB management solutions provider found that 86% of those US-based CIOs surveyed anticipate that at the least 25% of their network engineers will retire in the subsequent five years. This global study surveyed 502 CIOs and network engineers within the US, the UK, France, Germany, and Australia.

Probably the most significant takeaway from the evaluation (outside the indisputable fact that many network engineers will retire soon) is how much of an impact talent shortage has on network integrity. For instance, just about all CIOs said that a scarcity of engineers led to an inability to administer networks. Likewise, 91% of US engineers consider a scarcity of skills impacted their networks.

Maintaining the lucrative “always-on” status for networks demands round the clock and hands-on management from a dedicated team of execs. Veteran network engineers are deeply acquainted with the potential weakness of their company’s network. Nevertheless, sustaining that ideal always-on status becomes way more difficult when limited by less-experienced teams.

Reducing human oversight can expose the network to exploitation by cybercriminals. Should bad actors successfully infiltrate a business environment, they may cause a network outage, making critical services and applications inaccessible. Network downtime is dear (e.g., recovery fees and lost productivity). It also damages customer experience and partner relations and could cause worker burnout and turnover. In light of those dangers, organizations must leverage solutions that may empower short-staffed teams to strengthen network resilience, allowing them to reduce and recuperate quickly from outages.

Supporting Limited Teams with Out-of-Band Management

One strategy depleted network engineers can use to reinforce security and ensure operational continuity is OOB network management. Unlike conventional methods that depend on the first in-band network, OOB management utilizes an independent, secondary pathway for network management and remediation, which operates individually from the first in-band network. Even when there’s a failure on the important data path as a result of a cyberattack, an OOB network ensures operations proceed without considerable disruption; likewise, network engineers have a reliable technique of accessing and restoring the network.

OOB management also allows network engineering teams to swiftly isolate and contain breaches or attacks, locking down the affected parts of the network to forestall bad actors from moving at will and inflicting further damage. Some leading OOB management offerings include additional solutions equivalent to a strong management fabric, which provides engineers with dynamic routing and a unified management framework. With these advanced tools, network engineers can quickly detect, diagnose, and resolve security-related incidents, shutting down or restarting network equipment as needed.

Moreover, network engineers can leverage best-in-class OOB solutions to remotely access IT environments, allowing them to administer, monitor, and remediate network issues from any location. Distant management capabilities are worthwhile – in actual fact, 47% of US CIOs and engineers listed the power to finish network-related tasks remotely as a top initiative to handle the talent shortage.

By enabling network teams to work from anywhere through OOB solutions, businesses can support distant and hybrid working practices, opening the doors to a broader talent pool that might otherwise be unavailable as a result of geographical restraints. Having the power to rent far and wide for network and other IT talent alleviates pressure on understaffed teams while concurrently bolstering network resiliency.

AI-Powered Automation: Doing More with Less

AI is one other invaluable technology to businesses moving forward in a post-Golden Resignation world. AI’s ability to automate networking tasks is crucial; furthermore, its value to businesses increases as more bad actors add it to their very own tool belt. Cybercriminals aren’t any longer the obese, Cheeto-dust-covered hackers of the flicks sitting in a dark basement typing code. Today, well-organized hacker groups use advanced AI systems trained on machine learning algorithms to execute sophisticated scams and attacks. For networking and security teams to have a probability against these threats, firms must equip them with similar technology.

Organizations can integrate AI into their OOB management strategy, empowering understaffed network professionals to automate many time-consuming processes. For instance, AI can automate incident response procedures, accelerating the speed at which threats get detected and nullified. Likewise, shorthanded engineers can use AI to automate management tasks, including network configurations, routine updates, and maintenance. Streamlining these various responsibilities allows people to deal with high-level tasks, transforming them from teams that “put out fires” to groups that innovate and enhance security.

Delaying Workforce Retirement Through Training

Although the truth (and implications) of the Golden Resignation are largely inescapable, there are methods that companies can soften the wave of retirements. Based on a report from Multiverse, 41% of staff could be willing to remain within the labor market in the event that they received higher access to training because it pertains to recent technologies. As such, organizations should implement continuous training programs on technologies like AI and generative AI for veteran teams.

Should businesses retain their most expert and experienced personnel for a bit of longer before they retire, there’s a better likelihood these individuals can pass on more of their industry knowledge to the newer (and smaller) crop of network and security employees. After all, the necessity for upskilling shouldn’t supersede but coincide with OOB management and AI, in addition to other advanced encryption methods or regular vulnerability assessments.

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