The IT Nerd

By Gregg Ostrowski, CTO Advisor, Cisco Observability 
 

Digital experience is now positioned at the heart of almost every organization’s strategic priorities. Whether it’s driving employee engagement to address skills gaps and boost productivity, reaching new and diverse audiences, or deepening relationships (and expanding revenue streams) with existing customers, businesses must deliver exceptional digital experiences to be successful. We’ve reached the point where “experience is everything.”  

Globally, consumer demand for applications and digital services is on the rise, focused on innovative, personalized, and intuitive experiences. Brands failing to meet these expectations are being abandoned. Consequently, digital experiences have become a crucial battleground for businesses. Success here can attract customers, strengthen relationships, and boost sales, while failure results in losing customers, revenue, and reputation.  

Not surprisingly, experience is now a key focus in boardrooms around the world. Recent research from Cisco reveals that 75 per cent of senior global business leaders emphasize the increased importance of digital experience for C-level executives in their organizations over the past three years. Consequently, they are pushing their IT teams to ensure applications and digital services are available, secure and performing at an optimal level at all times. 

Visibility into application performance enables business leaders to identify opportunities and manage risk 

In 80 per cent of organizations, C-level executives routinely receive reports on the performance of business-critical applications, digital services and their business impact. Business leaders are now diving deeper into application performance data to gain a comprehensive understanding of the experiences customers and employees have with their brand.  

This trend is driven by two primary factors. First, leaders need insights into application performance to identify trends, highlight areas bringing substantial business value, and capitalize on these opportunities. Second, they aim to pinpoint potential availability, performance, and security issues that could significantly jeopardize digital experiences. They’re urgently looking to mitigate risk and avoid a revenue-impacting incident. 

For example, in the retail sector, business leaders now want to be able to scrutinize the performance of every stage of the user journey, from sign-up to check-out. They want to analyze the speed and efficiency of every phase of the workflow, identify what is working well and where improvements could be made. And crucially, they want to know where vulnerabilities exist within applications in order to manage risk. 

It’s a similar story in other industries. Leaders in financial services firms are placing a massive focus on digital experience monitoring to compete and win against emerging and disruptive digital-first competition, and within manufacturing, leaders are scrutinizing the performance of each process across their vast SAP landscapes. 

Threats to Digital Experience Arise from Escalating IT Complexity 

For IT teams tasked with developing, deploying, and sustaining applications, the stakes are higher than ever. They understand that even minor lapses in digital experiences could yield significant repercussions for their organizations.  

The reality though is that most IT teams simply don’t have the tools and insights they need to manage modern application environments in an effective and sustainable manner. And, as a result, they’re stuck in a never-ending cycle of firefighting, trying to identify and fix application performance issues ideally before the end user experience is impacted. 

Anybody working in or around an IT department will know how much more complex enterprise IT environments have become over recent years. The shift to cloud native technologies has left technologists trying to manage an increasingly fragmented and dynamic landscape, where everything is continually changing. Additionally, it has also exposed major visibility gaps across hybrid IT environments, where organizations are still deploying separate and siloed monitoring tools for on-premises and cloud native technologies. 

Observability is essential for technologists to deliver exceptional digital experiences 

To overcome this challenge, IT teams need to progress from traditional monitoring approaches and implement full-stack observability, to generate unified visibility across both cloud native and on-premises environments. With observability, IT teams can get real-time insights into IT availability and performance up and down the IT stack, from customer-facing applications right through to core infrastructure. And they can integrate security into the development lifecycle from day one, speeding up innovation and resulting in more robust applications. 

With full-stack observability, IT teams can provide business leaders with a comprehensive set of metrics and insights related to experience – from number of unique sessions, average revenue per session and average revenue per transaction, through to ‘revenue at risk’ from potential outages, and overall user experience (based on defined workflows). 

Ultimately, full-stack observability not only ensures seamless alignment with IT and broader business strategies, it also cultivates a common language between IT and business stakeholders, including C-level executives. This cohesion is essential for organizations looking to excel in a market where digital experience increasingly dictates commercial success. 

 Only one per cent of organizations in Canada have the ‘Mature’ level of readiness needed to be resilient against modern cybersecurity risks, according to Cisco’s 2024 Cybersecurity Readiness Index.

The 2024 Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index was developed in an era defined by hyperconnectivity and a rapidly evolving threat landscape. Companies today continue to be targeted with a variety of techniques that range from phishing and ransomware to supply chain and social engineering attacks. And while they are building defenses against these attacks, they still struggle to defend against them, slowed down by their own overly complex security postures that are dominated by multiple point solutions.

These challenges are compounded in today’s distributed working environments where data can be spread across limitless services, devices, applications, and users. However, 78 per cent of Canadian companies still feel moderately to very confident in their ability to defend against a cyberattack with their current infrastructure. This disparity between confidence and readiness suggests that companies may have misplaced confidence in their ability to navigate the threat landscape and may not be properly assessing the true scale of the challenges they face.

2024 Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index: Underprepared and Overconfident Companies Tackle an Evolving Threat Landscape

The Index assesses the readiness of companies on five key pillars: Identity Intelligence, Network Resilience, Machine Trustworthiness, Cloud Reinforcement, and AI Fortification, which are comprised of 31 corresponding solutions and capabilities. It is based on a double-blind survey of more than 8,000 private sector security and business leaders across 30 global markets conducted by an independent third party. The respondents were asked to indicate which of these solutions and capabilities they had deployed and the stage of deployment. Companies were then classified into four stages of increasing readiness: Beginner, Formative, Progressive and Mature.

Findings

Overall, the study found that only one per cent of companies in Canada are ready to tackle today’s threats, with 78 per cent of organizations falling into the Beginner or Formative stages of readiness. Globally, 3 per cent of companies are at a Mature stage. Further:

• Future Cyber Incidents Expected: 63 per cent of respondents said they expect a cybersecurity incident to disrupt their business in the next 12 to 24 months. The cost of being unprepared can be substantial, as 43 per cent of respondents said they experienced a cybersecurity incident in the last 12 months, and 46 per cent of those affected said it cost them at least US$300,000.
• Point Solution Overload: The traditional approach of adopting multiple cybersecurity point solutions has not delivered effective results, as 72 per cent of respondents admitted that having multiple point solutions slowed down their team’s ability to detect, respond and recover from incidents. This raises significant concerns as 62 per cent of organizations said they have deployed ten or more point solutions in their security stacks, while 17 per cent said they have 30 or more.​
• Unsecure and Unmanaged Devices Add Complexity: 78 per cent of companies said their employees access company platforms from unmanaged devices​, and 33 per cent of those spend one-fifth (20 per cent) of their time logged onto company networks from unmanaged devices. ​Additionally, 20 per cent reported that their employees hop between at least six networks over a week.
• The Cyber Talent Gap Persists: Progress is being further hampered by critical talent shortages, with 83 per cent of companies highlighting it as an issue. In fact, 35 per cent of companies said they had more than ten roles related to cybersecurity unfilled in their organization at the time of the survey.
• Future Cyber Investments Ramping Up: Companies are aware of the challenge and are ramping up their defenses with 40 per cent planning to significantly upgrade their IT infrastructure in the next 12 to 24 months. This is a marked increase from just 25 per cent who planned to do so last year. Most prominently, organizations plan to upgrade existing solutions (67 per cent), deploy new solutions (53 per cent), and invest in AI-driven technologies (50 per cent). Further, 96 per cent of companies expect to increase their cybersecurity budget in the next 12 months, and 78 per cent of respondents say their budgets will increase by 10 per cent or more.

To overcome the challenges of today’s threat landscape, companies must accelerate meaningful investments in security, including adoption of innovative security measures and a security platform approach, strengthen their network resilience, establish meaningful use of generative AI, and ramp up recruitment to bridge the cybersecurity skills gap.

Additional Resources:

• 2024 Cybersecurity Readiness Index Overview and Reports

By Joe Byrne, CTO Advisor, Cisco Observability 

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital interactions, a new type of application user has emerged over the last two years – the ‘Application Generation.’ These users, have a heightened sophistication and demands for their use of applications and digital services, and are reshaping the expectations for organizations across industries. While these users actively pursue innovative, intuitive, and secure digital experiences, many brands find themselves at a crossroads, facing the challenge of meeting these elevated standards.  

The growing gap between Application Generation’s expectations and the current digital landscape is becoming increasingly frustrating, causing serious trouble for organizations who fail to keep up.  

The latest research from Cisco, The App Attention Index 2023: Beware the Application Generation, sheds light on this transformative group of global consumers ages 18 to 34 who are changing the criteria of what digital experience needs to be. 

Consumers’ expectations for digital experiences skyrocket 

According to the global research of more than 15,000 consumers, appetite for applications and digital services has remained strong in the two years post pandemic. However, today’s consumers feel they have more control of the applications they use and are more empowered to seek alternatives after poor experiences. 

During the pandemic, applications and digital services were a lifeline for many. With enforced lockdowns, relying on digital platforms became the only viable option for shopping, accessing essential services, and staying connected with friends. Today, things are back to normal. People can once again meet up face to face, shop in stores and visit offices and bank branches. This return to regular or pre-pandemic activities has provided individuals with choices, significantly influencing their interaction with digital services. 

A notable 59 per cent of Canadian consumers state their expectations for digital experiences are far higher now than they were two years ago. Additionally, 53 per cent feel some of the applications they relied on during the pandemic no longer meet their current expectations for digital experience. What was good enough during the pandemic is now inadequate. This evolving landscape underscores the necessity for digital platforms to adapt and exceed heightened user expectations.  

Consumers are encountering more bad digital experiences 

Alarmingly, while expectations for seamless digital experiences have reached new highs, as many as 94 per cent of the Application Generation globally report they have experienced performance issues when using digital services over the past 12 months. This figure is up from 83 per cent of consumers in 2021, when the App Attention Index was last published. 

63 per cent of Canadian consumers report they are now less forgiving of poor digital experiences. This means people are deleting applications at an unprecedented rate, with a staggering 70 per cent of Canadian consumers reporting they have stopped using digital services or deleted applications from their devices because of performance issues over the last 12 months.  

As well as banishing poorly performing applications, global consumers are also becoming far more vocal when they encounter issues – 67 per cent claim they are now more likely to warn people of applications that don’t perform than they were 12 months ago. 

Application observability is key for brands to avoid consumer outrage 

In order to retain and attract customers through their digital services, application owners need to consistently deliver seamless and secure digital experiences. But this is easier said than done. Rapid digital transformation has left IT teams struggling to manage a highly dynamic and dispersed application landscape. Many don’t have full visibility into cloud native technologies, and this is making it almost impossible to detect and fix issues before they impact end users. 

Application observability provides a solution to this critical and growing challenge. It provides IT teams with full and unified visibility across their hybrid environments so they can rapidly detect issues and understand root causes. Additionally, by correlating application availability, performance and security data with key business metrics, teams can prioritize those issues with the potential to do the most damage to digital experience. 

Application owners urgently need to recognize they can’t afford to maintain current levels of disruption and downtime to their applications and digital services. The Application Generation won’t tolerate anything less than the very best, most seamless and secure digital experiences.

Today, Cisco released findings from its Reimagining Workspaces Survey which showed working preferences are shifting as employees crave in-office collaboration and social interactions, and now, the race is on for workspace design and technology to catch up.

Study data found that 76 per cent of Canadian companies are choosing to partially or fully mandate a return to the office with productivity, team communication, and workplace culture as key drivers for the decision. Sixty-four per cent of employees positively support their organization’s decisions, however their motives have significantly evolved.

Canadians want to be in the office to collaborate (58%), ideate (27%), and foster connections with colleagues (28%), but current workspaces do not meet this need. Most (83%) employers allocate at least half the office to individual work stations. As a result, only 40 per cent of employees say their offices are very well prepared to support changing hybrid work needs.

Technology is a Baseline Expectation; AI-Enabled Features are Highly Desired
When it comes to the ideal workspace, both employees and employers agree that technology is foundational. Canadian employees ranked technology infrastructure and connectivity (93%) as the most important in office design, followed by layout and seating arrangements (90%), and collaboration and meeting spaces (86%).

Employees also see an opportunity for artificial intelligence (AI) to improve collaboration and their working experiences, but AI adoption among employers is not keeping pace. For example, while over half (53%) of employees agree AI-powered meeting room devices would be most useful to them, only 36 per cent of employers plan to invest in them. Similarly, while 81 per cent of employees agree AI-assistant tools would be most useful to them, only 61 per cent of employers intend to invest in these features.

Flexibility and Hybrid Work Models are Here to Stay
The data shows working preferences across all levels of employees are evenly split so flexibility will continue to be essential for organizations as they work to meet employee expectations. Of Canadian employers, 24 per cent prefer a mix of working from home and the office, 37 per cent prefer to be mostly in the office, and 34 per cent prefer working mainly from home. The trend is mirrored in employees as 29 per cent prefer a mix of working from home and the office, 34 per cent prefer to work mostly from the office, and 30 per cent prefer working mostly from home.

Office Redesigns are Underway
Organizations are beginning to transform office spaces. Two-thirds (64%) of employers have redesigned their office in the wake of the pandemic or are planning to do so in the next 24 months.

Regular enhancements to workspace layouts (63%) and technology features (60%) are the top items for organizations that have allocated budgets to office redesign, however considerations for AI and cybersecurity are lagging which means businesses may not be setting themselves up for long-term success. Only 21 per cent plan to prioritize AI technology in their office redesign and just 18 per cent have allocated a budget for cybersecurity. It is critical businesses allocate resources and focus on AI and cybersecurity. AI will fuel significant transformation for businesses that can successfully harness it and a strong cybersecurity posture will ensure that every organization, including its data, its people and its customers, is protected.

The Cisco Canada Reimagining Workspaces Survey is based on an online research survey conducted with 150 Canadian employers and 500 Canadian employees in January and February 2024.

In a data-driven world, responsible handling and compliance with regulatory standards are more crucial than ever for business growth.

Cisco’s recent introduction of the Observability for Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) module is designed to address these challenges and elevate today’s data security practices. These modules offer: 

• Discovery and Classification: Easily identify and secure sensitive data across various data stores. 
• Data Access Control: Manage user, role, and application access with precision.  
• Exfiltration Attempt Detection: Stop data breaches with GenAI-powered detection. 
• Identify Security Risks: Spot vulnerabilities like unencrypted data and dormant users.  

The Data Security module, recently announced at Cisco Live 2024 Amsterdam, is currently available in beta and will be available in spring 2024. In today’s evolving digital realm, robust security controls are paramount. This module enhances business risk observability for cloud environments, offering real-time insights to tackle security issues preemptively.  

Cisco today announced a series of exciting new solutions – enriched by business context – on the Cisco Observability Platform. With applications acting as the front door for nearly every business – and delivering a flawless application experience a top priority for IT teams – the latest enhancements will help customers deliver secure and performant user and application experience.

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) for greater visibility and insight into user behavior

With application experience expectations at an all-time high, technologists can now leverage new Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) capabilities for both hybrid and cloud environments. The new DEM application includes Real User Monitoring (RUM) and Session Replay modules for deep insights into browser and mobile applications performance and efficient resolution of session-level issues. In addition, integrations with Cisco ThousandEyes and Cisco Accedian empower applications and network teams with the insights into service delivery required to identify whether the root cause of impacted digital experience is the application, network or cloud infrastructure.

Observability for Kubernetes workloads, powered by extended Berkeley Packet Filters (eBPF) technology

Cisco offers observability for Kubernetes workloads on the Cisco Observability Platform, using the powerful, lightweight Linux kernel utility, extended Berkeley Packet Filters (eBPF). Operating at the kernel level allows operators access to granular visibility into network activity, resource utilization, application dependencies and misconfigurations impacting network performance, without the need for multiple tools, cross-team collaboration and manual dependency mapping.

Unified Observability Experience for increased application insights

Cisco is delivering a unified experience across its observability portfolio, with new capabilities across Cisco AppDynamics and the Cisco Observability Platform. Using a single account and shared context, the unified observability experience arms operators with capabilities including Log Analytics, to search with context and improved log storage; and Core Web Vitals, providing front-end application owners the golden signals to keep their web pages from being de-ranked for poor user experience.

Natural Language Interface, powered by Generative AI

As part of Cisco’s continued expansion in innovations powered by Generative AI, the Cisco Observability Platform now offers a natural language interface for troubleshooting. Operators can use conversational dialogues instead of a structured query language to perform common tasks during troubleshooting, thereby increasing productivity.

In addition, Cisco is announcing:

Cisco AIOps for Cisco Full-Stack Observability for actionable insights that improve IT operations

The new Cisco AIOps application simplifies real-time business health monitoring and significantly reduces noise from events and alerts to automate IT processes and keep operations teams productive and responsive. The application unifies data from Cisco AppDynamics, Cisco ThousandEyes, Cisco DNA Center, VMWare, Zabbix and ServiceNow (ITSM, ITOM and CMDB). It is uniquely positioned having been built on the Cisco Observability Platform, which supports logs in addition to alerts, events and metrics. It also provides dynamic thresholds-based alerting on metrics and events and multiple anomaly-detection approaches.

Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) Observability

The introduction of Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) Observability to Cisco’s Business Risk Observability solution delivers real-time and automated data discovery, classification, policy definition and compliance visibility for sensitive data, in addition to visualizing and prioritizing attack surface.

New Partner Modules

Continuing the momentum of creating an observability ecosystem with its global partners across categories including AIOps, MLOps, networking, infrastructure observability and business insights, Cisco unveiled a series of new partner modules on the Cisco Observability Platform:

• Aporia – Machine Learning Monitoring.
• CloudFabrix – Asset Intelligence, Operational Intelligence and Infrastructure Observability.
• Komodor – Kubernetes Change Management.
• Perform IT – AS400 Monitoring and I4Cube business performance.
• SoftServe – Operational Intelligence for Oilfields.

About the Cisco Observability Platform:

The Cisco Observability Platform brings data together from multiple domains at scale – including networking, security, applications, end user, cloud services and multi-cloud infrastructure and business – to break down silos by leveraging ML and AI capabilities to contextualize and correlate real-time telemetry across these domains, so organizations can better attain the visibility, insights and actions to improve digital experiences for customers and end-users.

According to the latest quarterly Trends report by Cisco Talos, ransomware was back on top as the #1 cyber threat in 2023, with education and manufacturing tied as the most targeted verticals, “accounting for nearly 50% … of incident response engagements, closely followed by healthcare and public administration.”

The company’s findings say ransomware rose significantly in Q4 2023, with the education sector now one of the biggest targets.

Ransomware and pre-ransomware activity together accounted for more than 28% of all Cisco Talos Incident Response engagements, a rise of 17%, compared to the third quarter of the year.

Initial access:
Compromised credentials on valid accounts and exploiting public-facing applications accounted for 28% of access methods, with phishing running a close second place. Phishing attacks using malicious links and QR codes leading to fake login sites were the most widely seen.

Security Weaknesses:
Researchers report “a lack of MFA or proper MFA implementation” and “misconfigured or unpatched systems” accounted for fully 36% of all attacks responded to.

“attacks that could have been prevented if MFA was enabled on critical services, such as RDP.”

Stephen Gates, Principal Security SME, Horizon3.ai:

   “From what I observe, (and due to no fault of their own,) when journalists hear that someone got ransomed, the community tends to jump on the “it must have been some super-special malware” bandwagon. However, the vast majority of human-operated, ransom-based attacks have little if anything to do with “malware”. Instead, the real cause of the problem is due to easily compromised and reused credentials, effortlessly discovered, and unprotected data, software and hardware misconfigurations, unpatched yet fully known software vulnerabilities, poorly implemented security controls, and weak and/or unenforceable security policies. These issues are the primary cause of attackers gaining access and maintaining footholds in someone’s networks.

   “Once attackers gain a foothold, administrative access is next obtained (think domain admin). Then attackers proceed with their objectives of exfiltrating your data, encrypting your data, proving they have your data, sabotaging your backup/recovery processes, and telling you to pay up to get your data back. If you don’t pay their initial ransom demands, they effectively take your entire enterprise offline by either crashing your systems (since they have admin access) or they make it impossible to recover your data on your own. This is Big Game hunting that can generate extremely high payouts. That is why it is the most pressing security issue worldwide – and rightfully so.

For those in education who want to learn more about what human-operated ransom-based attacks are all about, they should consider reading this paper.

Steve Hahn, Executive VP, BullWall had this comment:

   “Companies must keep their systems up to date with the latest security patches, use strong and complex passwords, implement MFA, maintain regular backups of critical data and also consider implementing a rapid containment strategy. Ransomware Containment tools are becoming a critical part of this overall strategy.”

Mark Campbell, Sr. Director, Cigent adds this comment:

   “It is not surprising to see Education and Manufacturing at the top of the list for ransomware targets. Both verticals often operate legacy operational infrastructure and lack adequate cybersecurity controls. The combination of their interconnected systems and a general lack of cybersecurity awareness among staff make them ideal targets for attackers.

   “Once inside, the attackers can move laterally to gain additional access to strategic systems to exfiltrate data and execute ransomware. Stopping initial access is the single most effective cybersecurity measure and MFA is a proven, cost-effective control to thwart initial access. And, in most cases, can be implemented on top of existing systems using their users’ phones.”

Troy Batterberry, CEO and Founder, EchoMark follows with this:

   “Threats to our critical infrastructure and attacks on education, manufacturing, healthcare, and public administration sectors emphasize the need for greater attention to cybersecurity. The fact that nearly one-third of successful adversary access methods were through compromised credentials and the exploitation of public-facing applications is a clear call for organizations to reinforce their frontline defenses and enforce strict security measures such as MFA and other password policies.

   “However, these security changes aren’t enough on their own. Employees must be trained to recognize and respond appropriately to threats, especially as it relates to their roles and responsibilities within their organization. These are not just technical measures but fundamental aspects of an organization’s security culture. If companies desire to empower their people to work effectively, there must be protective measures in place to safeguard intellectual property, devices, accounts, and any other areas that employees can access and manage, to enable the secure flow of information.”

MFA or better yet a passwordless solution is a great way to secure your network. Not having one of these systems, or ensuring that it is properly configured is a sure route to getting pwned.

Cisco today launched Smart Agent for Cisco AppDynamics, enabling agent lifecycle management, dramatically simplifying application instrumentation for full-stack observability through intelligent agent automation and management, and helping customers onboard new applications faster. Customers can identify out-of-date agents and upgrade them in minutes with an easy-to-use centralized agent management user interface. 

As applications become more distributed, modular and scalable, technologists find themselves managing an explosion in the number of agents. While in many companies, the operations teams are dealing with agents in the tens of thousands, those at large enterprises often handle hundreds of thousands of agents, depending on the number and type of applications being observed. Due to the sheer volume of agents — and the time-consuming and complex nature of updating them — many organizations fail to upgrade to the latest versions in a timely fashion. This leaves them with old and unsupported agents, without the latest functionality, and at risk from security vulnerabilities that have been mitigated in the most recent agent releases.  

IT infrastructure and operations teams require powerful insights to help cut through this increasing complexity, and with Smart Agent for Cisco AppDynamics, customers can: 

• Simplify the process of installing and upgrading agents: New UI-driven process intelligently automates the installation and upgrade of agents, simplifying the process to just a few clicks. This allows customers to upgrade multiple agents at one time, freeing up resources and talent to focus on the management of application performance. 
• Access new capabilities faster with push-button upgrades: Smart Agent makes it easy to maintain compliance and upgrade agents on a regular basis, ensuring customers have the latest versions and access to new functionality, while minimizing risk of security vulnerabilities. Smart Agent can roll-back or upgrade agents at scale with speed and agility, allowing operations teams to perform these tasks through the UI rather than manual actions on each host. 
• Gain valuable application performance and business insights at speed: Complicated process discovery and time-consuming agent deployments can make it challenging to obtain the visibility and insight into application performance that is needed to deliver optimal user experience and business outcomes. Smart Agent automates the new application instrumentation process with a single agent install that discovers all the processes running on the host, and automatically instruments the full-stack with the agents needed, as governed by a company’s own policies. Smart Agent auto-discovery and auto-deployment enables customers to start collecting data and visualize application topography in minutes instead of days. 

Smart Agent for Cisco AppDynamics is now generally available. Customers can visit our Smart Agent webpage for more information or schedule a time to speak with us. The auto-deployment functionality will be generally available in CYQ2 2024.  

Register here for the Smart Agent for Cisco AppDynamics webinar on February 14 to learn more.

By Gregg Ostrowski, CTO Advisor, Cisco Observability

As technologists eagerly anticipate a well-deserved break to celebrate the holiday season with loved ones, they‘re also facing pressure to ensure that applications and digital services are performing at an optimal level during seasonal spikes in demand. The challenge is ensuring applications and digital services, from online shopping to messaging platforms and banking applications, perform seamlessly. With consumer expectations for digital experiences higher than ever, technologists know that any slip up in application performance will lead to customers deleting applications and turning their backs on brands forever. 

Recent research by Cisco AppDynamics, surveying over 1,000 Canadians, revealed that 51 per cent consider applications and digital services essential to an enjoyable holiday. Additionally, 48 per cent of Canadians anticipate greater reliance on digital services this holiday season than in previous years.

The problem is, however, that when applications don’t perform as they should, it really can dampen the holiday mood. At a time when tensions can already be running high, consumers are likely to react with fury towards any brand whose application lets them down and lessens their festive spirit.

Applications going on the naughty list this year

While traditional concerns such as power outages and travel delays may be the biggest holiday worries, a new nightmare has emerged due to the importance of applications and digital services. In Canada, 71 per cent of people use digital applications to connect with loved ones during the holidays and 66 per cent rely on banking and insurance apps for last-minute payments and transfers.

Canadian consumers identify potential scenarios that could spoil their festive spirit, with worry about banking applications failing to process important payments and messaging platforms disrupting communications with distant friends and family. In fact, 61 per cent of Canadians fear their banking apps might go down during the holidays, hindering crucial transitions. When it comes to connecting with friends and family, 51 per cent worry that messaging apps might fail, leaving them unable to communicate with loved ones. 

However, people will direct the most outrage towards the brands behind any application that lets them down. 40 per cent of consumers claim they won’t be able to forgive an application that fails to perform properly. Whether it’s slow loading pages, payment issues or downtime, they’ll immediately delete the offensive application and vow never to use it again.

Brands need application observability to optimize holiday opportunities

As brands approach this critical time of the year, they are walking a metaphoric tightrope. If they can deliver innovative, intuitive, secure and seamless digital experiences, they have an unprecedented opportunity to take advantage of heightened application demand, attracting new customers and driving sales. But if applications fail to perform, there will be a loss of customers, revenue and a tarnished reputation.

Organizations in all sectors urgently need to ensure their IT teams have the right tools and insights to manage application availability, performance and security, particularly at a time when their applications will be experiencing massive increase in demand. Technologists therefore need application observability to generate full visibility across their hybrid application landscapes, including both cloud native and on-premises environments.

With application observability, technologists can rapidly detect, understand and resolve issues. And by correlating application availability, performance and security data with key business metrics, they can prioritize the issues which could damage the end user experience.

Consumers around the world simply won’t tolerate poor digital experiences this holiday season, and brands will need to do whatever it takes to keep their applications off the naughty list!

Recent research from Cisco reveals consumers will be using more applications and digital services this holiday season than ever before with 51% of Canadians believing digital services are important to have an enjoyable holiday. Whether it’s streaming movies and music, connecting with friends and family, keeping up to date with news, or managing finances, consumers will be relying on a huge number of applications as they celebrate. 

This increased usage also means added pressure for brands to make sure their applications run smoothly, if they don’t want to end up on the naughty list! Here are some other key findings from the latest survey:  

• 61% of Canadians are worried about a banking application not working, meaning they can’t make an important payment 
• 55% are concerned about a messaging platform failing so they can’t share festive greetings with friends and family 
• 41% are anxious about the possibility of a retail application going down so that they can’t buy a last-minute gift or order ingredients for their holiday cooking 

People’s reactions to any poorly performing application will be far from festive! Therefore, the stakes have been raised for application owners over the holiday season. On the one hand, they have a huge opportunity to accommodate an unprecedented demand for digital services – those that can deliver innovative, intuitive, secure and seamless digital experiences, perfectly positioned to attract new customers. Alternatively, applications that fail people this time of year risk losing customers, revenue, and reputation. 

Check out this blog post for additional findings from Cisco.