The ongoing pandemic has caused organizations to shift to a more flexible and hybrid work environment. The adoption of a hybrid work model creates inevitable challenges for IT departments to manage technology assets.

Historically, under a pre-pandemic lifestyle, legacy assets would have been classified as on-premises data center servers, desktop PCs, network equipment, and other traditional hardware found in an office. As employees work less from the office and more from home and other remote locations, this has placed more reliance on cloud, SaaS, and virtual resources. This means the legacy definition of technology assets needs to evolve and include an entire range of technology not previously thought of from the perspective of IT, such as personal devices used in the enterprise.

IT Asset Management (ITAM) is a set of processes that are used to manage IT assets across the various business lines of an organization. As the concept of technology management broadens, so do the visibility and security issues related to it.

In today’s scenario, organizations’ IT management infrastructure is determined by the tools and processes used to manage the various assets: hardware (ITAM), software (software asset management or SAM), SaaS and cloud (infrastructure and SaaS management tools), mobile devices (mobile device management or MDM), and IoT (Internet of Things).

Traditionally, the enterprise has used a compartmentalized approach to manage these different technology stacks. This often includes using inefficient legacy systems that are highly specialized to individual needs, ultimately making upgrades difficult as new versions become available.

Furthermore, the rapidly expanding range of network-enabled devices in such varied fields as medical, transportation, manufacturing, and education, are all now part of a rapidly evolving and expanding IT infrastructure that must be tracked, managed and secured. IT asset managers have never worked in an environment with this many varieties, speeds, and sizes of assets to manage. And it’s not getting easier.

Along with more technology having to be managed, the increasing adoption of the cloud and SaaS has also accelerated due to more employees not working in traditional office locations. The expectation, however, is that IT departments must still be able to deliver the same level of infrastructure support that was previously provided in an office setting. This inherently makes IT’s job exponentially more difficult, and more importantly, it creates a vast expansion in the potential attack surface.

The risks associated with a hybrid framework are wide, with infrastructure management, security, compliance, and productivity constituting the most significant threats.