Infoblox Network Protection Survey: Organizations Utilizing Best Practices Enjoy Outsized Business Outcomes

Infoblox Inc. (NYSE:BLOX), the network control company, today announced results of its 2016 Network Protection Survey. The in-depth survey compares the measures IT takes to protect and optimize networks among 200 enterprises in the United States and Canada. The survey uncovers dramatic differences between the highest- and lowest-performing organizations, in terms of how they manage their networks as well as their outcomes.

“Top enterprises think more strategically about their networks, don’t tolerate operational silos, and invest in the necessary tools for effective and secure infrastructure,” said Scott Fulton, executive vice president of products at Infoblox. “The results are clear—fewer outages and breaches, as well as better alignment with the business needs of their organizations.”

Respondents to the survey were asked a series of questions about their practices in a range of areas, such as security, operations, and visibility. Infoblox then compared those who most closely adhered to best practices (top-tier) with those who deviated the most (bottom-tier). Top-tier organizations, in the survey results, are dramatically differentiated in achieving their outcomes and taking a strategic approach to making IT a key business enabler.

Top-tier Organizations are More Serious about Network Protection

Top-tier organizations are more committed to network protection in a variety of ways:

• Top-tier organizations automate basic network tasks so they can focus on more strategic items.
• They banish silos: 100 percent of top-tier organizations report moderate to complete cooperation between network, security, and app teams.
• They mine DNS and DHCP data for security purposes. Roughly half of the top tier use DNS and DHCP data to discover new devices on the network, versus none of the bottom tier.
• Top-tier organizations are more than four times as likely to invest in technology such as machine-readable threat intelligence, security information and event management (SIEM) solutions, and automated tools that detect when new devices enter the network.
• They are three times less likely to understaff their security teams.

Top-tier Organizations Enjoy Better Business Outcomes

Top-tier enterprises are more agile and strategic. They provision new users, servers, devices, and apps much more quickly than bottom-tier organizations. And they are 2.3 times as likely to say they focus more on strategic tasks than tactical.

The Infoblox Network Protection Survey found that adhering to industry best-practices results in better outcomes:

• Greater internal customer satisfaction: Top-tier enterprises have IT departments that are roughly twice as likely to have somewhat to extremely satisfied stakeholders within the business—C level and users alike.
• Stronger security: Top-tier organizations reported no security-incident related outages or data breaches, while bottom-tier organizations reported an average of three security-incident related outages and one data breach. Top-tier organizations are also much more likely to achieve internal and external compliance.
• Networks that run more smoothly: Top-tier IT teams are roughly twice as likely to meet SLAs and 10 times as likely to remediate security events “extremely quickly.”
• Better visibility into and control over infrastructure details such as IP addresses, malicious DNS traffic, and trusted users deviating from appropriate behavior: Top-tier organizations are four times more likely to report having complete control over their IP addressing.

A full copy of the survey report is available at https://www.infoblox.com/downloads/resources/2016-network-protection-survey-report.

As the industry leader in DNS, DHCP, and IP address management, the category known as DDI, Infoblox is committed to helping its enterprise and service provider customers leverage core network data to deliver actionable network intelligence. This intelligence gives IT teams the power to:

• Control their networks through automation, optimization, and resilient architecture
• Secure their networks by prioritizing, preventing, and predicting threats
• Analyze their networks to identify, prioritize, and remediate choke points

“The Infoblox 2016 Network Protection Survey demonstrates the value to IT organizations of thinking strategically about both people and tools,” said Ashish Gupta, chief marketing officer at Infoblox. “Innovative technology such as network automation and context-aware security can make a big difference in helping IT organizations meet their key business objectives in customer experience, risk management, operational efficiency, and visibility.”