Keeping users happy and boosting IT productivity is easier than you think when you have an effective service desk tool. Read this white paper to discover the ten key features to look for in a service desk solution.

Most cyberattacks today begin on user workstations. Why? Well, in part it's because workstations, unlike servers, are typically the province of non-technical users, who are easier prey for attackers. It's easy to lay all the blame on users, but attacks are getting more sophisticated all the time. The other side of the coin is that users' workstations are also particularly vulnerable, for several reasons.

Too many organizations today spend millions of dollars fortifying their perimeters to keep attackers out of their network, but fail to pay sufficient attention to the malicious users already inside. In fact, insider threats actually represent 60% of all cyber security attacks, so they can't just be ignored.

Complete, reliable user activity tracking is essential to both security and compliance. But using native tools means struggling with an avalanche of uncorrelated, cryptic event activity from individual DCs, servers and more, and most third-party tools are cumbersome to implement and don't provide the depth of auditing required.

Endpoint management has become more complex. Besides deploying and maintaining a growing range of devices, IT administrators also need to continually meet compliance standards and protect their organization's network.

Organizations today are increasingly the targets of sophisticated threats developed by a shadowy and well-financed cybercrime industry that has demonstrated it can often outsmart even the most robust security defenses. Worse yet, cybercriminals are aided by the fact that security teams often lack the human and financial resources necessary to keep pace with evolving threats, so they often cannot defend against every attack coming their way.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has fueled a proliferation of connected devices that do amazing things. If your business wants to get on board, you've got to face the challenge of managing and securing these devices to protect your networks - and all of the critical data that resides there.

In this Analyst Connection, IDC research director Melinda Ballou answers questions about the state of DevOps, the value it provides for continuous application delivery and the idea of integrating database development into the DevOps workflow.