Organizations Are Struggling with Networking and Security Challenges in Modern IT Environments

Ken Rutsky
Aryaka

As enterprises across nearly all sectors accelerate digital transformation efforts, they're facing a universal challenge: their networking and security efforts aren't equipped for these dynamic new environments. Aryaka recently conducted a series of surveys in three distinct industries (manufacturing, transportation, and business services), looking deeper at key trends and pain points in networking and security. Despite differences in industry priorities and digital maturity, IT leaders in these sectors are all clearly facing an uphill battle to secure increasingly hybrid, cloud-connected, and distributed infrastructure without overwhelming their limited resources.

The data paints a clear picture. Whether managing a global supply chain, a high-performance professional services network, or a factory floor filled with legacy systems, organizations are struggling to gain observability, enforce consistent policies, and protect themselves at the edge.

Visibility Is Lacking as Complexity Grows

In all three sectors, organizations are desperate to improve visibility into network and application performance. In the business services sector, 68% of respondents cited observability as a leading focus, while 64% of manufacturing organizations and 57% of transportation and logistics firms said the same.

This is a consequence of digital transformation in each sector. As enterprises migrate legacy applications to hybrid cloud environments, the network perimeter is morphing. Manufacturers and transportation companies are operating in highly distributed, mixed environments. Both still have large on-prem presences due to legacy constraints. Business services firms, on the other hand, are leaning harder into cloud-first architectures. Both approaches are proving difficult to maintain network visibility.

Poor observability doesn't just make it harder to manage and optimize performance. It also introduces major risks, opening the door to shadow IT, unmonitored AI tools, and gaping vulnerabilities.

Resource Constraints Are a Universal Bottleneck

The surveys revealed that another consistent trend is the intense resource burden placed on internal IT and security teams. In all three industries, lean staffing and limited budgets are inhibiting efforts to modernize networking and security.

  • Manufacturing: 68% said they are "trying to do more with less," with overwhelmed internal teams and insufficient resources making it difficult to manage growing network complexity.
  • Transportation: 60% face understaffed IT teams.
  • Business Services: The fast pace of SaaS adoption and cloud expansion is outstripping internal capacity, with 58% reporting operational strain from limited IT personnel.

This finding across sectors shows that even as IT leaders begin to understand the need to modernize their networking and security approaches, they often lack the tools and support to do so effectively.

Edge Security Remains Dangerously Underprioritized

Despite the rise of remote work, cloud adoption, and mobility, edge security still lags. Only 38 to 40% of organizations in manufacturing, transportation, and business services said edge security is viewed as "mission critical" in their organization. That's a startling figure given the increasing dependence on edge deployments in these and other sectors.

Failing to prioritize edge security poses a significant risk as infrastructure becomes so highly distributed. Without strong protections at the edge (where users, devices, and applications connect), companies are vulnerable to data leakage, unauthorized access, and policy blind spots. In manufacturing and logistics, this weakens defenses at globally dispersed sites and mobile endpoints, while in business services, it undermines control over SaaS platforms and remote work environments. As more critical operations move outside the traditional perimeter, overlooking edge security leaves these sectors exposed precisely where threats are most likely to emerge.

GenAI Is Adding New Pressure

The surveys show that organizations in all three sectors are all at different stages of GenAI adoption. Business services organizations are clearly ahead, with 34% actively deploying or evaluating GenAI solutions. By comparison, only 28% in transportation and just 22% in manufacturing are currently leveraging or considering GenAI.

GenAI brings significant network performance and security concerns. In the services sector, the leader in GenAI adoption, respondents cited worries about bandwidth saturation, latency degradation, unmonitored data exfiltration, and limited visibility into application-layer AI activity. Enterprises embracing AI must ensure their network infrastructure is ready to scale securely alongside it.

Uniform Policy Enforcement Remains Elusive

As remote work, hybrid hosting, and SaaS usage increase, the ability to maintain uniform access controls and security protocols has become critical, though elusive. In manufacturing, 68% of respondents flagged policy definition and enforcement as a top concern, a finding mirrored closely in transportation (66%). Business services, despite being more cloud-mature, also reported significant challenges maintaining policy consistency for remote and hybrid users, with 58% citing it as a risk area.

The lack of unified enforcement creates gaps in protection and compliance. Without coordinated controls, threats can bypass defenses, user experience suffers, and IT teams are left patching fragmented systems. As edge use cases grow and AI tools proliferate, policy governance will become a make-or-break capability for network resilience.

Modern Networks Will Only Get More Complex

As enterprises lean more into digital transformation, their networks are becoming exponentially more complex. Multi-cloud environments, AI adoption, and hybrid workforces are blurring traditional perimeters and multiplying the number of endpoints, applications, and risks IT teams must manage. These three surveys show that visibility, staffing, edge security, and policy enforcement are serious pain points. Traditional networking and security approaches are proving insufficient to mitigate these challenges.

Ken Rutsky is CMO at Aryaka

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Organizations Are Struggling with Networking and Security Challenges in Modern IT Environments

Ken Rutsky
Aryaka

As enterprises across nearly all sectors accelerate digital transformation efforts, they're facing a universal challenge: their networking and security efforts aren't equipped for these dynamic new environments. Aryaka recently conducted a series of surveys in three distinct industries (manufacturing, transportation, and business services), looking deeper at key trends and pain points in networking and security. Despite differences in industry priorities and digital maturity, IT leaders in these sectors are all clearly facing an uphill battle to secure increasingly hybrid, cloud-connected, and distributed infrastructure without overwhelming their limited resources.

The data paints a clear picture. Whether managing a global supply chain, a high-performance professional services network, or a factory floor filled with legacy systems, organizations are struggling to gain observability, enforce consistent policies, and protect themselves at the edge.

Visibility Is Lacking as Complexity Grows

In all three sectors, organizations are desperate to improve visibility into network and application performance. In the business services sector, 68% of respondents cited observability as a leading focus, while 64% of manufacturing organizations and 57% of transportation and logistics firms said the same.

This is a consequence of digital transformation in each sector. As enterprises migrate legacy applications to hybrid cloud environments, the network perimeter is morphing. Manufacturers and transportation companies are operating in highly distributed, mixed environments. Both still have large on-prem presences due to legacy constraints. Business services firms, on the other hand, are leaning harder into cloud-first architectures. Both approaches are proving difficult to maintain network visibility.

Poor observability doesn't just make it harder to manage and optimize performance. It also introduces major risks, opening the door to shadow IT, unmonitored AI tools, and gaping vulnerabilities.

Resource Constraints Are a Universal Bottleneck

The surveys revealed that another consistent trend is the intense resource burden placed on internal IT and security teams. In all three industries, lean staffing and limited budgets are inhibiting efforts to modernize networking and security.

  • Manufacturing: 68% said they are "trying to do more with less," with overwhelmed internal teams and insufficient resources making it difficult to manage growing network complexity.
  • Transportation: 60% face understaffed IT teams.
  • Business Services: The fast pace of SaaS adoption and cloud expansion is outstripping internal capacity, with 58% reporting operational strain from limited IT personnel.

This finding across sectors shows that even as IT leaders begin to understand the need to modernize their networking and security approaches, they often lack the tools and support to do so effectively.

Edge Security Remains Dangerously Underprioritized

Despite the rise of remote work, cloud adoption, and mobility, edge security still lags. Only 38 to 40% of organizations in manufacturing, transportation, and business services said edge security is viewed as "mission critical" in their organization. That's a startling figure given the increasing dependence on edge deployments in these and other sectors.

Failing to prioritize edge security poses a significant risk as infrastructure becomes so highly distributed. Without strong protections at the edge (where users, devices, and applications connect), companies are vulnerable to data leakage, unauthorized access, and policy blind spots. In manufacturing and logistics, this weakens defenses at globally dispersed sites and mobile endpoints, while in business services, it undermines control over SaaS platforms and remote work environments. As more critical operations move outside the traditional perimeter, overlooking edge security leaves these sectors exposed precisely where threats are most likely to emerge.

GenAI Is Adding New Pressure

The surveys show that organizations in all three sectors are all at different stages of GenAI adoption. Business services organizations are clearly ahead, with 34% actively deploying or evaluating GenAI solutions. By comparison, only 28% in transportation and just 22% in manufacturing are currently leveraging or considering GenAI.

GenAI brings significant network performance and security concerns. In the services sector, the leader in GenAI adoption, respondents cited worries about bandwidth saturation, latency degradation, unmonitored data exfiltration, and limited visibility into application-layer AI activity. Enterprises embracing AI must ensure their network infrastructure is ready to scale securely alongside it.

Uniform Policy Enforcement Remains Elusive

As remote work, hybrid hosting, and SaaS usage increase, the ability to maintain uniform access controls and security protocols has become critical, though elusive. In manufacturing, 68% of respondents flagged policy definition and enforcement as a top concern, a finding mirrored closely in transportation (66%). Business services, despite being more cloud-mature, also reported significant challenges maintaining policy consistency for remote and hybrid users, with 58% citing it as a risk area.

The lack of unified enforcement creates gaps in protection and compliance. Without coordinated controls, threats can bypass defenses, user experience suffers, and IT teams are left patching fragmented systems. As edge use cases grow and AI tools proliferate, policy governance will become a make-or-break capability for network resilience.

Modern Networks Will Only Get More Complex

As enterprises lean more into digital transformation, their networks are becoming exponentially more complex. Multi-cloud environments, AI adoption, and hybrid workforces are blurring traditional perimeters and multiplying the number of endpoints, applications, and risks IT teams must manage. These three surveys show that visibility, staffing, edge security, and policy enforcement are serious pain points. Traditional networking and security approaches are proving insufficient to mitigate these challenges.

Ken Rutsky is CMO at Aryaka

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Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...

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