Riverbed Study: Majority of Federal IT Leaders Say Telework Accelerated Network Visibility Adoption

A new Riverbed Technology survey has found that 81 percent of federal information technology leaders said the move to telework arrangements expedited their agencies’ deployment and use of network visibility platforms. 

The “Federal Network Visibility in a Modernized World study also showed that 87 percent of respondents consider network visibility as a moderate or strong enabler of cloud infrastructure, Riverbed said in an Oct. 28 news release. 

“The accelerated move to cloud was necessary because the majority of federal staff were no longer on-prem, creating significant potential for disruption to citizen services and mission delivery,” said Marlin McFate, public sector chief technology officer at Riverbed Technology.  

“This basically took IT teams from being able to see, to being blind. All of their users were now outside of their protected environments, and they no longer had control over the internet connections, the networks employees were logging on from or who or what else has access to those networks. To be able to securely maintain networks and manage end-user experience, you have to have greater visibility,” added McFate. 

More than 90 percent of respondents said they think that better network visibility could lead to greater network security and 96 percent said having visibility into networks is highly or moderately important in assuring secure infrastructure. 

Riverbed commissioned Market Connections to poll 200 federal IT decision makers and influencers between August and September for the study.