IGEL: To be a sustainable business in 2024, we must look at IT as a whole

Security and sustainability can go hand-in-hand

Features By Craig Hale published 5 October 2024

At the recent IGEL Disrupt conference, the interconnected natures of security and sustainability emerged to create a promising outlook for businesses looking to stay ahead of the curve.

As organizations race to meet increasingly stringent environmental targets, the message from IGEL was clear – security and sustainability are no longer separate concerns, and combining both approaches can drive significant value for businesses.

Alongside discussions surrounding the recent CrowdStrike outage and other endpoint vulnerabilities, it quickly became apparent that adopting the right cybersecurity products can help enterprises make more efficient use of their hardware and energy resources.

Critically, protecting endpoints with secure operating systems proved instrumental to enabling long-term sustainability by reducing product refresh cycles, which will undoubtedly be welcome news not just on the sustainability front, but when it comes to budgets, too.

Blurring the lines between endpoint security and sustainability strategies

In an era of increasing cybersecurity threats and mounting pressure from governments and regulatory bodies such as the newly introduced Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive driven by the European Union, organizations are being pushed to sustainable hardware optimization practices like reducing e-waste and resource consumption in order to remain compliant.

Another key message from the event was how secure operating systems can dramatically reduce product refresh cycles by prolonging the lifespan of devices, both reducing e-waste and lessening the financial burden of regular hardware upgrades.

Recent Intel research suggests the typical company upgrades its hardware every three to four years, but by tackling the cause of this frequency, companies can reduce it.

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