Access IT Automation Blog

Last year was a record year for cybersecurity breaches, malware attacks, and data leaks — and if the first few months are any indication, this year will bring on a new slew of record-breaking incidents as well.

But it isn't only the record-breaking headlines you should worry about. While massive data breaches, like last year's Target and Equifax incidents, get the most media attention, it is easy to assume that smaller businesses or organizations that haven't been targeted yet won't be under attack soon.

When considering endpoint management automation, it is hard to know what you are getting into. There are various solutions that all have a slightly different angle and focus. Oftentimes, it is only afterwards that you realize you should have paid more attention to a specific feature that turns out to be crucial or made a certain integration a must-have requirement in the Request-for-Proposal process. 

But one thing is for sure: you will want to make sure that you pick an IT automation solution that is future-proof, scalable and agile enough. In the past few years, I found that it really comes down to four main considerations:

• Your new solution needs to integrate with your existing infrastructure to provide an end-to-end solution. 
• It needs to be extremely flexible and customizable to fit your needs — today and in the future — while centralizing fixes in an ever-growing repository. 
• IT automation should also allow smart targeting by a large range of filters to enable you to apply automation to a few, to most, or to all of your devices. 
• Lastly, it should be easy to use for your administrative staff as well as your end users to encourage adoption and wide-spread usage. 

Let's have a closer look at each of those points below.

One of the biggest objections that IT professionals and executives face when trying to sell Endpoint Management Automation is: "WHY do we need it?" While the question from an executive management point of view is understandable, it can be frustrating as well. Deep down you are convinced of the benefits this will bring, but how can you convince them?

The good news is that this objection is easily answered by cold, hard numbers that can prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that implementing endpoint management automation isn't only a good idea, but will show tangible business results in terms of hard and soft saves. 

While every situation is unique, there are some crucial IT help desk key performance indicators that allow you to create a waterproof business case quickly and easily. 

How many times this month have you had users complain about a crashed Word session? I venture to guess, too many times! An important application like Word crashing is frustrating for any non-technical end user — but it also slows them down significantly, leading to hours of reduced if not completely stalled productivity.

Between trying to fix it themselves and asking their co-workers for help before finally opening up an IT ticket, 20 to 30 minutes might have already passed unproductively. Once the ticket is created, the user has to wait for the fix to be deployed. Depending on IT's workload and the priority of the user / problem, this can take several hours. No wonder your employees would rather clean toilets! 

Getting end users bought in and excited about moving to Windows 10 isn't always easy — not to speak of getting them on-board and actively engaged in a new Windows 10 version every six months! 

However, for many organizations, active user engagement is the key to Windows-as-a-Service deployment success. Instead of forcing updates on their end users, these companies, these enterprises are turning the tables and deliberately giving the end user not only a say as to when he or she wants to upgrade, but also the opportunity to play an active role in ensuring that everything is done to their satisfaction. 

Today, I want to walk you through three ways that you, as the IT help desk, can ensure that your users are getting the best user experience possible on "Day 1" of the upgrade.

Earlier this year, in April 2018, the US Department of Defense (DOD) reached a massive milestone that was a long, looong time coming: the (almost) completion of the Windows 10 migration!

Microsoft had announced in February 2016 that the DOD was committed to migrate all of its over four million devices to Windows 10 within one year (target deadline of  January 2017) — "an unprecedented move for a customer with the size and complexity of the DoD", as Microsoft called it.

For an agency that was spending approximately $38 billion annually on cyber-security and IT to protect sensitive security data that if breached or leaked could pose a service national security risk, running machines on unsupported or unsafe operating systems, such as Windows XP and Windows 7, is a disaster waiting to happen. 

Given the unimaginable complexity of their environment, it is a huge achievement — and an incredibly important one: The number one goal was "to strengthen our cyber security posture while concurrently streamlining the IT operating environment."

Looking at the migration project more carefully, there are very valuable lessons that we can learn for our "regular" Windows 10 migration and Servicing management! We picked out the five most impactful ones:

Meet AppScan — the newest member of the Access IT Automation product family!

AppScan is a light-weight compatibility testing module that gives end users, such as packagers or application owners, insight into whether or not their app is suitable for AppV or AppVolumes based on simple criteria. Simply upload the MSI in question to find out if the application has boot time services, no shortcuts and meets other criteria that would impact its suitability.

 If you have been thinking about scheduling your Access Agent demo and seeing our endpoint management automation tool in action, you probably have a million questions. While some of those probably pertain to your company's unique situation, a lot of questions are asked by almost everyone whom we give a product demo for.

These are very important and they have to be answered, but we feel your time with us is much better spent talking about your special concerns, so we answered the most frequently asked generic questions today so you don't have to ask them.

2018 started off with a big bang for the IT industry because the newly-discovered CPU flaws, Meltdown and Spectre, could affect almost any processors in computers and mobile devices made in the past 20 years.

This is especially scary since these flaws can be exploited to gain access to encryption keys, passwords and other sensitive information by breaking the critical operating system memory defenses and then bypassing fundamental isolation layers — including those used by virtualization and container technologies!

Flaws like these quickly become part of a hacker's standard toolkit and it's only a question of time when these get exploited by ransomware attacks or in other malicious scenarios. Now Microsoft and other OS and CPU manufacturers are scrambling to create patches to fix the flaws — which in turn means IT has to hustle to deploy these patches as soon as possible.

Raise your hand if your organization experienced network slowdowns or even an outage in the past 12 months.

Now, what if I told you that every time this happens, it costs your business anywhere from $1 million (typical mid-size company) up to  $60 million (large enterprises) a year? A recent IHS study found that the actual costs to fix the downtime issues amount to only about 5% of that cost — the other 95% are caused through loss of productivity (78%) and lost revenue (17%)!