IT Trends Report 2021: Building a Secure Future

In 2020, the global pandemic transformed the way we work, rapidly matured a distributed global workforce, and accelerated digital transformation efforts.

Public cloud services consumption increased sharply. Organizations pivoted seemingly overnight to implement technologies to ensure the lights stayed on and employees were empowered to be successful working from home.

Against this backdrop, nearly every industry was confronted with the rise of high-level cybersecurity breaches, highlighting the potential risk of incomplete security policies and procedures. A year of unprecedented upheaval has ultimately served as a critical catalyst for a broader exploration of organizations’ exposure to enterprise IT risk of all kinds—including risk introduced by the implications of remote, distributed work—and the degree to which organizations are prepared to manage, mitigate, and prevent risk in the future.

Rising to the Challenge

The SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2021: Building a Secure Future seeks to facilitate a more transparent conversation by analyzing the state of enterprise IT risk within the industry today.

Specifically, it explores how tech pros perceive their organizations’ risk management and mitigation readiness while providing guidance on workplace strategy, toolsets, preparedness, and leadership for companies as they work to construct an organization built to withstand risk.

The findings of the SolarWinds IT Trends Report 2021 uncover a reality in which exposure to enterprise IT risk is common across organizations—but perceptions of apathy and complacency surrounding risk preparedness are high as businesses exit a year of pandemic-driven “crisis mode.” Tech pros have outlined key areas of technology investment and upskilling that prioritize cloud computing, network infrastructure solutions, and security/compliance—demonstrating an inherent awareness that falling behind is potentially the greatest risk of all. This year’s study reveals the immense opportunity ahead for tech pros and IT leadership to align and collaborate on priorities and policies to best position not only individual organizations but the industry at large to succeed in a future built for risk.