Data-based endpoint management: the winning card for proactive admins

Whether a company’s digital transformation is successful is often evident at the grassroots level. An excellent example of this is the smooth functioning of the digital working environment. We explained in detail in previous articles why a positive digital employee experience (DEX) is becoming an increasingly important success factor for managing mobile and home-based  users and increasingly complex on-premises and cloud structures. If the digital workplace quality does not meet expectations, IT teams quickly become the focus of criticism.

Old data is wrong data – nothing is truer in IT than this realization. Even yesterday’s data can lead to incorrect decisions in a crisis. This is because yesterday’s data usually says nothing about how endpoints in the company are protected today or where the current risk for potential cyberattacks lurks. IT teams can only make the right decisions if they have the most current, accurate and comprehensive data on their endpoint environment. However, the importance of up-to-date data is not the same in every area. For example, if the hardware is on a low refresh cycle, such as two or three years, it is not as important if the CPU or hard disk model data is one month old. However, when IT professionals need to make decisions about retiring servers or migrating workloads from a physical to a virtual environment, data that is days old causes problems. IT teams are in a much better position using accurate, real-time data. The solution to all these challenges, and especially the ability to decide which data is most relevant to various problem, lies in data-based endpoint management.

Thanks to comprehensive availability of data for all active network endpoints, IT admins can take informed actions in any situation. They have exactly the knowledge they need to make the right decisions to ensure the smooth functioning of the digital working environment for all colleagues. But which data areas do IT teams need to keep a constant eye on? Here are four key areas where good data insight into endpoint security can be crucial:
 

• Inventory data: Precise real-time insight is essential, especially in crisis situations. Inventory data in particular includes information about which devices are connected to the network and which applications are running on these devices.
   
• Security vulnerabilities: Warnings about newly discovered security vulnerabilities are frequent – and it is often high time for a quick patch across all endpoints. However, not every warning requires a comprehensive update across the entire network. For IT teams to confidently decide whether and where a software update is required for each vulnerability alert, they need a deep understanding of their endpoints, including the files, components and libraries used in the potentially affected applications.
   
• Application crashes: When IT teams use data to track what causes a client to crash or what factors affect CPU performance in real time, they can make informed recommendations for action. The cause of a blue screen also has implications for employee productivity and possibly IT security.
   
• Remote workstations: Data show whether protective measures taken for on-premise endpoints are also effective for employees working in remote or hybrid mode and whether their endpoints are adequately protected.

Fortunately, there is support for IT admins with this central challenge. With baramundi Argus Experience, the current endpoint status can be recorded at any time and simultaneously provide IT teams detailed insight into end user satisfaction. The cloud-based tool makes it possible to detect and analyze faults at an early stage before they affect end users. A comprehensive software and hardware inventory helps to identify applications on all managed clients that cause frequent crashes or long loading times. I explained which technical “little things” are the most frequent sources of frustration for end users  in an earlier blog article. With detailed analyses, IT teams can back up their recommendations to management for IT improvements -- such as a comprehensive migration to Windows 11 –by simply demonstrating higher satisfaction of users already using Win 11.