So the time has come to do something, something that you have put off for so long, and something that is haunted you by previous experiences, but something that can no longer be avoided. You’ve been watching modern threats easily compromise similar businesses, modern demands challenge your shrinking IT department and complex requirements stretch the budget beyond imagine. However, you need to do something. Of course you need to move everything to the cloud, because (of course) that is what everyone else is doing, you need to rollout Windows 10, because – well – you should… and you need to convert all application to SaaS, because – why wouldn’t you? All good in theory, but in practice do any of these fit your current business requirements and how would the business adapt to the changes they pose? When you think of it like that, a simple in place upgrade sounds far more beneficial – or is it? In this article, we will investigate whether now (more than ever) is an opportunity to re-imagine the ways you deliver IT services to your customers (end users).
Would Current Challenges be solved?
I find in many infrastructure projects that the notion as to why the project is being performed has been lost – it usually results in the answer “because everyone else is doing it”. The first challenge is to ascertain the Current Operating Model and Target Operating Model, then decide whether benefits are going to be realised. I have been witness to so many transformation projects that result in a shiny new version of the same mess and challenges. Embrace this opportunity to identify the pitfalls in the IT service and analyse different approaches to tackling the issue. Take DLP for example; most businesses will opt for endpoint encryption and fire walling to prevent data leakage, however this requires that every endpoint be suitably protected and bound by the virtual walls, leading to a restrictive experience and complex environment that could be easily exploited. A different approach would be to protect this data at source, thus negating the complex endpoint security requirements and boundaries. In this model data is useless unless it is in the right location and in the right security context.
Its a Balancing Act
Its been a long battle between IT security and business requirements, often the wrong one wins either compromising the security or hindering the end user from productivity. In a more agile environment the business and IT should work closer together and tackle these collectively.
- User Empowerment: Access modern IT services outside the traditional business environment, promoting productivity and greater collaboration.
- Consumerisation: Consumer solutions e.g. Dropbox start to be utilised without properly understanding the risks to the business.
- Software Updates: Take advantage of a compression in software development cycles, to deliver greater capability and functionality.
- Fluid Workspace: Provide IT services to any user, on any device, in any location and at any time, whilst ensuring security policies are maintained.
Take this opportunity to address some of the requirements and challenges and strategically make decisions based on the target model and dare to think differently that may even turn your IT systems into a solution enabler for the business.
Modern Threats demand Modern Approaches
A theme throughout my posts has been relating to security and at which point this is applied. Too often this is seen as an endpoint solution, leaving vulnerabilities throughout the whole environment before data has got anywhere near an endpoint device. I am not suggesting that endpoint security no longer has a place, more that protection should start at the source, not the destination. By enforcing protection from the start greatly reduces the attack surface and increases the ability to mitigate any data breach.
By utilising the power of AI, Cloud and automation, sensitive data can be automatically detected, categorised, labelled, protected and monitored in such a manner no longer requires all end users to understand the data policies. Usually data breaches are unintentional and caused by end user error, by having the systems detect these potential breaches and acting upon them before they become a threat greatly increases the data protection. With legislations now in place e.g. GDPR, this should be at the top of all businesses risk register.
Like Sheep
Take this opportunity (as part of the Target operating Model analysis) to re-evaluate how services are delivered to end users and whether this still meets their requirements. Do you now have flexible working, hot desking, soft phones, remote working or real-time collaboration requirements. Do you have issues with deploying software, patches or operating systems to distributed systems? What about supporting remote users with simple support tasks e.g. remote control or password resets? These modern challenges can be easily overcome by embracing and enhancing technology that is probably already deployed in your environment, but perhaps not to its fullest potential.
Empowering users to become their own 1st line of support vastly reduces the dependency on a service desk. By providing self service password recovery, self service app deployment and even self service machine recovery can increase productivity, reduce downtime and reduce costs for support.
By using dynamic management, automatic deployment and modern data protection techniques, you business can truly benefit and turn your IT department into service centre to be proud of.