SolarWinds, an industry-leading provider of simple, powerful, and secure IT management software, and a Triple Award Winner in the 2021 ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Awards Program recently nominated to compete in the 2022 ‘ASTORS’ Awards Program, has released new survey results examining the state of the technology job market amid industry-wide labor shortages and hiring challenges.

To coincide with the eighth-annual IT Pro Day, the survey found despite a potential economic downturn, more than two-thirds of tech and IT professionals said they’re completely confident in their career choices.

But with the “great resignation” resulting in tens of millions of employees leaving the workforce or changing jobs, only half of the survey respondents felt their companies have been adequately staffed in recent years.

To counter these staffing issues and recruit during a historically tight labor market, 59 percent of respondents said their company has added more flexibility in hours and work location, while a third (33 percent) said their employer has increased pay.

Meanwhile, when asked what’s most important to them in their careers, IT pros ranked salary and work-life balance highest.

Key IT Pro Day survey findings:

• More than two-thirds (67 percent) of IT pros surveyed say they’re completely confident about their career choice, even in the face of a potential economic downturn.

• However, a third (33 percent) did say they’re at least a little worried about their job futures.

• 22 percent started a new job within the last year, and a full 51 percent said they’d at least considered doing so.

• But less than a third (34 percent) of those who changed positions said they loved their new job. 15 percent said their new position is worse than their previous one, while 54% said their new role is about the same.

• When asked to rank what’s most important to them in their careers, pay, and work-life balance were the top two responses chosen by IT pros.

• However, nearly a third (31 percent) of respondents say they don’t feel fairly compensated in their role, and only 4 percent believe they’re overpaid.

• Respondents were split on whether their companies had been staffed appropriately over the last two years, with half (50 percent) saying they feel like they’re doing two jobs and the other half (50 percent) replying their company is staffed adequately.

• But for those respondents who feel their company is understaffed, relief may not be coming right away—46 percent of respondents say their company has now either slowed or frozen hiring amid a potential economic slowdown.

“The new SolarWinds survey makes clear IT and technology sectors haven’t been immune to the staffing challenges posed by the ‘great resignation’ and pandemic,” explains Thomas LaRock, SolarWinds Head Geek™.

“This is particularly challenging for IT teams because they’re not only feeling understaffed but also are expected to do more with less as network environments become increasingly complicated.”

“Remote work and hybrid and multi-cloud environments have made it extremely difficult to keep networks—and businesses—running smoothly, but these IT pros show up every day to get the job done.”

SolarWinds is also announcing the winners of this year’s IT Pro Day Awards, now in its third year of recognizing IT pros, whose work is vital to the success and continued operation of each and every organization, their efforts can often be taken for granted.

(IT Pros are required to handle a lot during their workday. In appreciation of IT pros everywhere, SolarWinds has created this humorous take on what happens when end users overreact to a problem. Courtesy of SolarWinds Inc., and YouTube.)

Each honoree has demonstrated commitment to their role and excellence in their profession despite increased workloads, the challenges posed by remote work, and the rapid implementation of new tools and technologies like AI.

SolarWinds 2022 IT Pro Day Award Winners:

Rookie of the Year: Sebastian Gonzalez (United States)

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  Sebastian works at Rock Energy Systems in Wisconsin. He’s graduating this year with a Bachelor’s Degree in Data Analytics and Data Management from Western Governors University.

• Though he has only been with Rock Energy for nine months, Sebastian has had the opportunity to make an immediate impact on the team. He’s managed to quickly develop his technical and professional skills while gaining extensive hands-on experience in the field.

• Sebastian is excited to apply his growing knowledge to new scenarios and, use cases as he continues to further his career in IT.

Rockstar of the Year: Tim Techathuvanan (United States)

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  Tim has been programming professionally since he was a teenager.

• He took a few years off to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin before returning to programming as a quantitative analyst for a hedge fund.

• After a few years at the SEC and another stint in finance, he decided to retire from that career and start a new one automating IT administration. He is currently enjoying his work automating virtual server management for the National Institutes of Health and learning new things every day.

IT Mentor of the Year: Zia Ur Rehman (Pakistan)

• Zia Ur Rehman, a tech enthusiast and an entrepreneur with multiple startups, is on the road to becoming a tech industry veteran.

• He started this journey with Cleodora – a tech startup.

• Having mentored multiple ventures on the way, he made his mark as the CEO of ‘CodesOrbit‘ and is currently vested in transforming the world with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning as the Co-Founder of “RevolveAI” – a trailblazing firm specializing in core AI and machine learning technologies.

• Having pooled a decade of experience in “ideapreneurship” with an unquenchable desire to bring innovation, Zia passionately engages with young minds and mentors them toward leadership.

Trailblazer Award: Damstra Insights team (Australia, India, and the Philippines) 

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  The Damstra Insights team is a customer-focused engineering team that knows the transformative power that comes to a business when its vast stores of data are unlocked, and actionable insights are revealed.

• The team consists of data engineers, BI analysts, product managers, and QA experts.

• Nothing delights us more than to know our work has the real potential to reduce risk in heavy industries, which in turn ensures workers around the world go safely back home to their families each day.

IT Pro Day was established by SolarWinds to recognize the essential, and often unseen, work these IT pros achieve around the world on a daily basis.

To read more, visit www.itproday.org.

(IT Pros are required to handle a lot during their workday. In appreciation of IT pros everywhere, SolarWinds has created this humorous take on what happens when end users overreact to a problem. Courtesy of SolarWinds Inc., and YouTube.)

SolarWinds is a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software. Its products give organizations worldwide, regardless of type, size, or complexity, the power to monitor and manage their IT services, infrastructures, and applications; whether on-premises, in the cloud or via hybrid models.

SolarWinds continuously engages with technology professionals, IT service and operations professionals, DevOps professionals, and managed services providers (MSPs), to understand the challenges they face in maintaining high-performing and highly available IT infrastructures and applications.

The insights gained from them, in places like its THWACK® community, allow SolarWinds to solve well-understood IT management challenges in the ways technology professionals want them solved.

SolarWinds‘ focus on the user and commitment to excellence in end-to-end hybrid IT management has established SolarWinds as a worldwide leader in solutions for network and IT service management, application performance, and managed services.

To Learn More, please visit SolarWinds at www.solarwinds.com/.

SolarWinds Worldwide Returns to Compete in 2022 ‘ASTORS’ Awards Program

American Security Today’s Annual ‘ASTORS’ Awards is the preeminent U.S. Homeland Security Awards Program, and now in its Seventh Year, recognizes industry leaders of Physical and Border Security, Cybersecurity, Emergency Preparedness – Management and Response, Law Enforcement, First Responders, as well as federal, state and municipal government agencies in the acknowledgment of their outstanding efforts to Keep our Nation Secure.

SolarWinds Worldwide (First of Three)

• Best Security Incident & Event Management (SIEM)

  • • SolarWinds Security Event Manager

• Threats to IT networks continue to accelerate and evolve and while enterprising hackers from external sources test the robustness of network security parameters, internal threats in the form of careless and malicious insiders remain a major and ongoing concern.

• It is critical that agencies take steps to combat these threats—and SolarWinds® Security Event Manager (SEM), formerly Log & Event Manager is a powerful weapon. This comprehensive SIEM solution delivers dynamic, real-time log collection and analysis for immediate and actionable threat intelligence.

(See a brief, high-level overview of the capabilities of SolarWinds Security Event Manager and how you can use the SIEM tool to detect threats, quickly respond to cyber incidents, and report compliance from a consolidated interface. Courtesy of Solarwinds Worldwide and YouTube.)

• SEM can capture and analyze log data in real-time from multiple sources and specific incidents, allowing users to quickly identify and remediate threats, uncover policy violations, and resolve vital network issues, and users can quickly shut down breached systems, block IP addresses, kill unexpected processes, and disable user accounts.

• SEM includes an easy-to-use, point-and-click interface and data visualization tools to quickly search log data, perform event forensics, and identify the cause of security incidents or network problems.

• Like all SolarWinds software, SEM is built to scale and can support IT environments of all sizes, and employs a node-based license model that allows users to stay within their planned budgets as they deploy and expand their IT infrastructures across multiple data centers and geographies. 

• SolarWinds SEM is used by nearly every U.S. federal civilian agency, DoD branch, and intelligence agency. It is available on the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule and other contract vehicles.

SolarWinds Worldwide (Second of Three)

• Best Network Security Solution

• • • SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager

• Successful threat mitigation requires continuous real-time monitoring of network configuration changes and potential policy violations, and alerts for automated detection and remediation of harmful security violations is essential.

• SolarWinds® Network Configuration Manager (NCM) offers compliance auditing and leverages baselines and differential viewers to help ensure that devices are configured correctly, with an automated change control workflow, bulk configuration updates, and automatic vulnerability assessments to help teams efficiently identify and fix vulnerabilities – all in a single solution.

• NCM offers several unique and powerful features to help agency IT professionals protect against vulnerabilities and prevent unauthorized network configuration changes, and uses Cisco® IOS® and ASA vulnerability scanning and NIST FISMA, DISA STIGs, and DSS PCI compliance assessments to improve network security.

• The software itself features hundreds of built-in compliance reports to help meet major auditing authority requirements, including DISA STIGs, NIST FISMA, and more, and THWACK®, SolarWinds’ online user community, provides a number of free report templates that can be used to prepare for an inspection.

• NCM is built for IT environments of all sizes and can easily scale to meet growing infrastructure needs. Licensing depends on the total number of devices an IT pro manages, including firewalls, routers, switches, or any other device that supports remote access and a command line interface.

(Increase visibility to your network devices with SolarWinds® Network Configuration Manager. Save time and improve network reliability by automating network configuration and change management to reduce configuration errors, recover quickly from downtime, and improve security and compliance. Courtesy of SolarWinds and YouTube.)

SolarWinds Worldwide (Third of Three)

• Best IT Access Control & Authentication System

• • • SolarWinds Access Rights Manager

• SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) is designed to assist IT and security admins to understand and act on high-risk access and minimize the impact of insider threats.

• SolarWinds ARM enhances security by monitoring, analyzing, and auditing Active Directory®, Azure AD, Exchange™, SharePoint, OneDrive, and file servers to see what changes have been made, by whom, and when those changes occurred, and customized reports can be generated to demonstrate compliance with most regulatory requirements.

• The solution also provisions and deprovisions users using role-specific templates to help assure conformity of access privilege delegation in alignment with security policies.

• ARM helps prevent data leaks and unauthorized changes to sensitive files and data through visualization of permissions on file servers. 

• SolarWinds ARM reduces IT workload through a web-based self-service portal, put access rights of data in the hands of data owners instead of admins.

(SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) helps IT and Security Admins meet compliance requirements with centralized provisioning, de-provisioning, management, and audit of user permissions and access to systems, data, and files while protecting their organizations from internal security breaches. Courtesy of SolarWinds and YouTube.)

• *SolarWinds has now been recognized with Multiple Awards in all Six Annual ‘ASTORS’ Awards Programs.

Last Weeks Accepting Nominations in the 2022 ‘ASTORS Homeland Security Awards

Final Entries are being accepted for the 2022 ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Awards at https://americansecuritytoday.com/ast-awards/.

Comprehensive List of Categories Include:

Access Control/ Identification	Personal/Protective Equipment	Law Enforcement Counter Terrorism
Perimeter Barrier/ Deterrent System	Interagency Interdiction Operation	Cloud Computing/Storage Solution
Facial/IRIS Recognition	Body Worn Video Product	Cyber Security
Video Surveillance/VMS	Mobile Technology	Anti-Malware
Audio Analytics	Disaster Preparedness	ID Management
Thermal/Infrared Camera	Mass Notification System	Fire & Safety
Metal/Weapon Detection	Rescue Operations	Critical Infrastructure
License Plate Recognition	Detection Products	COVID Innovations
Workforce Management	Government Security Programs	And Many Others to Choose From!

Don’t see a Direct Hit for your Product, Agency or Organization?

Submit your category recommendation for consideration to Michael Madsen, AST Publisher, at: mmadsen@americansecuritytoday.com.

Homeland Security remains at the forefront of our national conversation as we experience an immigration crisis along our southern border, and crime rates that are dramatically higher than before the Pandemic across the United States.

These challenges have become a national priority with an influx of investments in innovative new technologies and systems.

The pinnacle of the Annual ‘ASTORS’ Awards Program is the Annual ‘ASTORS’ Awards Presentation Luncheon, an exclusive, affordable, gourmet, full-course plated meal event, in the heart of New York City, held at the International Security Conference & Exposition (ISC East) since it’s inception in 2017.

And who better to address the aforementioned challenges, and initiatives to meet today’s threat landscape than Deputy Executive Assistant Commissioner (DEAC) Diane J. Sabatino of the Office of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the opening keynote speaker at the much-anticipated 2022 ‘ASTORS’ Awards Presentation Luncheon, on Wednesday, November 16th, 2022.

As the DEAC of the Office of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Mrs. Sabatino leads more than 31,000 employees and oversees an annual operating budget of $6.5 billion.

Register for the 2022 ‘ASTORS’ Luncheon Today

(Hear a recent interview with Deputy Executive Assistant Commissioner (DEAC) Diane J. Sabatino held at Identity Week Europe on leveraging biometric comparison technology in U.S. air, maritime, and land border environments for the security of passengers, enhancing the customer experience and limiting the transmission of biological pathogens while respecting personal privacies and educating the public as the CBP further expands the implementation of biometrics to keep up with threats to the aviation and other border sectors. These new technological tools are there to automate administrative functions so that the most valuable component of the process, the officers, are able to focus on critical issues as they arise. Courtesy of evie kim sing and YouTube. Posted on Jul 13, 2022.)

Enter, American Security Today, the #1 publication and media platform in the Government Security and Homeland Security fields with a circulation of over 75,000 readers and many tens of thousands more visiting our AST Website at www.americansecuritytoday.com each month.

The continually evolving ‘ASTORS’ Awards Program will emphasize the trail of Accomplished Women in Leadership in 2022, as well as the Significance and Positive Impact of Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in our Next Generation of Government and Industry Leaders. #MentorshipMatters

So be on the lookout for Special Guests, Presenters, Book Opportunities, and Attendees at the 2022 ‘ASTORS’ Awards Presentation Luncheon in November of 2022 in NYC!

Learn More…

Final Weeks for Nominations in 2022 ‘ASTORS Homeland Security Awards