With the increase of SaaS apps in the workplace, it can take hours to just offboard one employee. Its time to tackle this issue, and offboard fast, and securely.
Many companies have started to experience the consequences of non-existent, insufficient or poorly implemented data security plans. The absence of ‘proper IT’ to serve the diversity of information management, analysis and human-centric workflow requirements that exist in the office has created a paucity of unsecured business-critical information held in spreadsheets and micro-databases beyond the governance of IT teams. For most organizations, up to 60% of business critical information is found in these unsecured office environments.
When Less is More: Why Small Companies Should Think Outside the(Red/Yellow) B...GFI Software
In their “Sector Insight” research study, Aberdeen Group investigated the considerations small business should take when selecting anti-malware solutions. Read this research paper to learn why Aberdeen recommends small businesses be open to endpoint security solutions from vendors other than McAfee and Symantec.
As the price of storage and bandwidth continues to drop fast, Cloud-based services are becoming more and more attractive to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) which are seeking to reduce licensing costs, avoid recruiting IT staff and focus fully on their core responsibility - growing the business.
The 2014 Report on the State of Data Backup for SMBs reveals key insights around data backup, security and recovery as a result of a survey conducted during the first quarter of 2014 by Carbonite, Inc. Discover the 5 key themes to improve your SMB’s data backup, security and recovery in 2014 and beyond!
Many small and medium sized businesses are still unaware of the threats that exist. This guide to security threats for SMBs outlines the most common threats and how they can be dealt with.
The 2014 Report on the State of Data Backup for SMBs reveals key insights around data backup, security and recovery as a result of a survey conducted during the first quarter of 2014 by Carbonite, Inc. Discover the 5 key themes to improve your SMB’s data backup, security and recovery in 2014 and beyond.
VIPRE Business Takes a Bite out of BloatwareGFI Software
The remedy to bloatware is a better, more efficient product that is specifically engineered to scan, detect and remove myriad security threats without impacting performance and taking a big bite out of the IT capital expenditure budgets. Learn about the scope of the malware problem and strategies that can help you defend against evolving malware threats.
Many companies have started to experience the consequences of non-existent, insufficient or poorly implemented data security plans. The absence of ‘proper IT’ to serve the diversity of information management, analysis and human-centric workflow requirements that exist in the office has created a paucity of unsecured business-critical information held in spreadsheets and micro-databases beyond the governance of IT teams. For most organizations, up to 60% of business critical information is found in these unsecured office environments.
When Less is More: Why Small Companies Should Think Outside the(Red/Yellow) B...GFI Software
In their “Sector Insight” research study, Aberdeen Group investigated the considerations small business should take when selecting anti-malware solutions. Read this research paper to learn why Aberdeen recommends small businesses be open to endpoint security solutions from vendors other than McAfee and Symantec.
As the price of storage and bandwidth continues to drop fast, Cloud-based services are becoming more and more attractive to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) which are seeking to reduce licensing costs, avoid recruiting IT staff and focus fully on their core responsibility - growing the business.
The 2014 Report on the State of Data Backup for SMBs reveals key insights around data backup, security and recovery as a result of a survey conducted during the first quarter of 2014 by Carbonite, Inc. Discover the 5 key themes to improve your SMB’s data backup, security and recovery in 2014 and beyond!
Many small and medium sized businesses are still unaware of the threats that exist. This guide to security threats for SMBs outlines the most common threats and how they can be dealt with.
The 2014 Report on the State of Data Backup for SMBs reveals key insights around data backup, security and recovery as a result of a survey conducted during the first quarter of 2014 by Carbonite, Inc. Discover the 5 key themes to improve your SMB’s data backup, security and recovery in 2014 and beyond.
VIPRE Business Takes a Bite out of BloatwareGFI Software
The remedy to bloatware is a better, more efficient product that is specifically engineered to scan, detect and remove myriad security threats without impacting performance and taking a big bite out of the IT capital expenditure budgets. Learn about the scope of the malware problem and strategies that can help you defend against evolving malware threats.
How to tell if that pop-up window is offering you a rogue anti-malware productGFI Software
Rogue anti-malware products are a bane for every Internet user, especially those who have little or no technical knowhow. These are hundreds of scare ware ‘products’ on the Internet. This white paper examines this type of scam, explains how they work, what to look out for and how to prevent your computer from being infected.
Discussion on how Certified Fraud Examiners (CFE's) can utilize Security Analytics to improve data security, compliance, and productivity within organizations.
Highlights include:
Employee Fraud Trends
Data Security Trends
Compliance Trends
Productivity Loss
Tools
Financial Needs
BYOD
ROAR
Litigation
Spoliation
The Trust Paradox: Access Management and Trust in an Insecure AgeEMC
This white paper discusses the results of a CIO UK survey on a“Trust Paradox,” defined as employees and business partners being both the weakest link in an organization’s security as well as trusted agents in achieving the company’s goals.
This whitepaper sets out the 1E view of user empowerment in the organization, together with how and why we think innovative companies are deploying user-empowerment solutions to drive down costs, drive up productivity and encourage their users to become more self sufficient in the face of the rising consumerization of IT.
The complete guide on how to prevent an IT security breach.
Some of the tips include:
♦ Why keeping a clean desk matters
♦ How to avoid email threats, including five ways to block phishing attack
♦ How your employees can secure their mobile devices
♦ Website browsing best practices.
Managing and administering software updates remains one of the most challenging and resource-intensive tasks an IT Department undertakes on a daily basis. This white paper examines the important role played by patch management to help organizations keep their PC real estate fully up-to-date with the latest security patches, without unduly compromising reliability, productivity, security and data integrity.
Today, secure remote access must support the increased demands of productivity, mobility and business continuity. Learn why traditional VPNs are not up to the task and why remote desktop access is superior for cost-effectively achieving enterprise-wide remote access and mobility.
1. How often do you see non-sanctioned cloud services in use?
2. Are we protecting ourselves against insider threats?
3. Do we have a cyber security task force in place?
4. Is our BYOD policy secure?
5. Do you feel limited by your security budget or staff size?
Protecting Corporate Information in the CloudSymantec
Keeping Your Data Safe: Protecting Corporate Information in the Cloud is an insights-driven thought leadership study conducted by WSJ. Custom Studios in collaboration with Symantec Corporation. The goal of this research is to better understand worldwide cloud adoption across leading organizations and the challenges associated with its use. This survey also explores attitudes toward security as well as the behaviors that can lead to potential data loss and security breaches.
An online survey was conducted from February to March 2015 among 360 global business and IT executives with 180 respondents from the United States, 60 from the United Kingdom, 60 from Germany and 60 from Japan. Of these, 15% are CEOs, presidents or owners; 14% are CIOs/CTOs/CSOs; 5% are other C-level executives; 13% are heads of business units or EVPs/VPs/directors; 23% are IT/security professionals; and 30% are managers or other business professionals (e.g., engineering, research and development, sales, legal and compliance, etc.).
BBA 3551, Information Systems Management 1 Course Lea.docxaryan532920
BBA 3551, Information Systems Management 1
Course Learning Outcomes for Unit VIII
Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
3. Examine the importance of mobile systems and securing information and knowledge.
Reading Assignment
Chapter 12:
Information Security Management
Unit Lesson
In the last unit, we discussed outsourcing, the functions and organization of the IS department, and user
rights and responsibilities. In this final unit, we will focus on security threats to information systems.
PRIDE and System Security
PRIDE processes privacy settings on the server and returns a code that indicates which of the four privacy
levels defined for PRIDE govern a particular individual with a particular report/data requestor. By processing
settings on the server, those settings are not exposed to the Internet. The return code is, however, and the
operational system should probably use https for both the code and to return the report. This was not done in
the prototype, though.
The relationship between patients and PRIDE participants is N:M. One patient has potentially many
organizations, and an organization has potentially many patients. What this means is that a patient has a
relationship, potentially, to many participants of a given type: many doctors, many health clubs, many
insurance companies, and even many employers. In addition, a patient has a relationship to, potentially, many
types of participants.
Given the N:M relationships, a natural place to put privacy settings is in the intersection table. That table
serves, intuitively, as an opacity filter between a given patient and a given doctor (or other
person/organization).
The tension in the dialog between Maggie and Ajit at the beginning of Chapter 12 regarding what terminology
to use with Dr. Flores is intended to set up a discussion from both perspectives. It is a common problem for
techies when talking with business professionals: How much technical language should I use? It is important
to use enough to demonstrate competency, but not so much as to drown the businessperson in terminology.
Using the Ethics Guide: Securing Privacy
In this chapter, we discuss three categories of criteria for evaluating business actions and employee
behaviors:
legal
ethical (categorical imperative or utilitarianism)
good business practice
UNIT VIII STUDY GUIDE
Information Security Management
BBA 3551, Information Systems Management 2
We can clearly see the differences in these criteria with regard to data security. A doctor’s office that does not
create systems to comply with HIPAA is violating the law. An e-commerce business that collects customer
data and sells it to spammers is behaving unethically (by either ethical perspective). An e-commerce business
that is lackadaisical about securing its customers data is engaging in poor business practices.
Even still, business professionals today need t ...
Provisioning users is an important part of granting workers access to all documents, applications, and data they require to do their job. Poor provisioning can lead to problems with employee onboarding and offboarding. This can cause strained relationships and unneeded stress within the organization. Employees can become frustrated if they don't have the information they need. Poor offboarding or too many access rights can lead to frustration in governance, security, and compliance.
What is more important? You run the risk of inconsistent, insecure and sloppy user provisioning that could compromise your business' data and systems.
What's User Provisioning?
Provisioning is an easy concept. Provisioning is the act of creating, updating and deleting accounts and users to manage your IT infrastructure.
This can make it difficult for a growing company to keep up. Depending on how large your workforce is, you may see new employees arrive and leave. People from different departments may need access to different data and applications.
Why use manual user provisioning?
Automated provisioning is widely recognized as the gold standard. It's the most efficient, convenient, and secure way for IT departments approach user provisioning. Some companies may feel the need to do provisioning manually. This decision may become more difficult as a company grows.
For a variety of reasons, an IT department may resort to manual user provisioning. If the company is small and has low provisioning volumes, this may be a viable option. It was simple to track and manage. Perhaps the infrastructure-software and hardware-for automated provisioning was once unavailable, or when it became available, other demands on IT staff meant automating provisioning was not prioritized. Maybe IT management didn't have the time or budget to order the parts they needed. Or, perhaps they were unable to deploy the parts. Not least, it is possible that legacy applications and resources are not capable of supporting automated, API-driven user provisioning.
What are some of the potential risks associated with manual user provisioning?
When given manual tasks, humans are bound to make mistakes. People can forget things, make mistakes, communicate poorly, become overwhelmed by multiple priorities or projects and have trouble adapting to changes.
When your company was founded, there were only a few employees. It is difficult to spend enough time getting to know each worker with today's larger workforce. The roles change as more people are hired. More people are leaving and changing jobs, which means that there is more to provision, as well as accounts that need to be deprovisioned.
There are many reasons why provisioning demand may spike. You can roll out new apps, replace old ones with modern ones, merge or buy another company or sell a part of your business. During difficult times, you may have to fire employees.
How to tell if that pop-up window is offering you a rogue anti-malware productGFI Software
Rogue anti-malware products are a bane for every Internet user, especially those who have little or no technical knowhow. These are hundreds of scare ware ‘products’ on the Internet. This white paper examines this type of scam, explains how they work, what to look out for and how to prevent your computer from being infected.
Discussion on how Certified Fraud Examiners (CFE's) can utilize Security Analytics to improve data security, compliance, and productivity within organizations.
Highlights include:
Employee Fraud Trends
Data Security Trends
Compliance Trends
Productivity Loss
Tools
Financial Needs
BYOD
ROAR
Litigation
Spoliation
The Trust Paradox: Access Management and Trust in an Insecure AgeEMC
This white paper discusses the results of a CIO UK survey on a“Trust Paradox,” defined as employees and business partners being both the weakest link in an organization’s security as well as trusted agents in achieving the company’s goals.
This whitepaper sets out the 1E view of user empowerment in the organization, together with how and why we think innovative companies are deploying user-empowerment solutions to drive down costs, drive up productivity and encourage their users to become more self sufficient in the face of the rising consumerization of IT.
The complete guide on how to prevent an IT security breach.
Some of the tips include:
♦ Why keeping a clean desk matters
♦ How to avoid email threats, including five ways to block phishing attack
♦ How your employees can secure their mobile devices
♦ Website browsing best practices.
Managing and administering software updates remains one of the most challenging and resource-intensive tasks an IT Department undertakes on a daily basis. This white paper examines the important role played by patch management to help organizations keep their PC real estate fully up-to-date with the latest security patches, without unduly compromising reliability, productivity, security and data integrity.
Today, secure remote access must support the increased demands of productivity, mobility and business continuity. Learn why traditional VPNs are not up to the task and why remote desktop access is superior for cost-effectively achieving enterprise-wide remote access and mobility.
1. How often do you see non-sanctioned cloud services in use?
2. Are we protecting ourselves against insider threats?
3. Do we have a cyber security task force in place?
4. Is our BYOD policy secure?
5. Do you feel limited by your security budget or staff size?
Protecting Corporate Information in the CloudSymantec
Keeping Your Data Safe: Protecting Corporate Information in the Cloud is an insights-driven thought leadership study conducted by WSJ. Custom Studios in collaboration with Symantec Corporation. The goal of this research is to better understand worldwide cloud adoption across leading organizations and the challenges associated with its use. This survey also explores attitudes toward security as well as the behaviors that can lead to potential data loss and security breaches.
An online survey was conducted from February to March 2015 among 360 global business and IT executives with 180 respondents from the United States, 60 from the United Kingdom, 60 from Germany and 60 from Japan. Of these, 15% are CEOs, presidents or owners; 14% are CIOs/CTOs/CSOs; 5% are other C-level executives; 13% are heads of business units or EVPs/VPs/directors; 23% are IT/security professionals; and 30% are managers or other business professionals (e.g., engineering, research and development, sales, legal and compliance, etc.).
BBA 3551, Information Systems Management 1 Course Lea.docxaryan532920
BBA 3551, Information Systems Management 1
Course Learning Outcomes for Unit VIII
Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
3. Examine the importance of mobile systems and securing information and knowledge.
Reading Assignment
Chapter 12:
Information Security Management
Unit Lesson
In the last unit, we discussed outsourcing, the functions and organization of the IS department, and user
rights and responsibilities. In this final unit, we will focus on security threats to information systems.
PRIDE and System Security
PRIDE processes privacy settings on the server and returns a code that indicates which of the four privacy
levels defined for PRIDE govern a particular individual with a particular report/data requestor. By processing
settings on the server, those settings are not exposed to the Internet. The return code is, however, and the
operational system should probably use https for both the code and to return the report. This was not done in
the prototype, though.
The relationship between patients and PRIDE participants is N:M. One patient has potentially many
organizations, and an organization has potentially many patients. What this means is that a patient has a
relationship, potentially, to many participants of a given type: many doctors, many health clubs, many
insurance companies, and even many employers. In addition, a patient has a relationship to, potentially, many
types of participants.
Given the N:M relationships, a natural place to put privacy settings is in the intersection table. That table
serves, intuitively, as an opacity filter between a given patient and a given doctor (or other
person/organization).
The tension in the dialog between Maggie and Ajit at the beginning of Chapter 12 regarding what terminology
to use with Dr. Flores is intended to set up a discussion from both perspectives. It is a common problem for
techies when talking with business professionals: How much technical language should I use? It is important
to use enough to demonstrate competency, but not so much as to drown the businessperson in terminology.
Using the Ethics Guide: Securing Privacy
In this chapter, we discuss three categories of criteria for evaluating business actions and employee
behaviors:
legal
ethical (categorical imperative or utilitarianism)
good business practice
UNIT VIII STUDY GUIDE
Information Security Management
BBA 3551, Information Systems Management 2
We can clearly see the differences in these criteria with regard to data security. A doctor’s office that does not
create systems to comply with HIPAA is violating the law. An e-commerce business that collects customer
data and sells it to spammers is behaving unethically (by either ethical perspective). An e-commerce business
that is lackadaisical about securing its customers data is engaging in poor business practices.
Even still, business professionals today need t ...
Provisioning users is an important part of granting workers access to all documents, applications, and data they require to do their job. Poor provisioning can lead to problems with employee onboarding and offboarding. This can cause strained relationships and unneeded stress within the organization. Employees can become frustrated if they don't have the information they need. Poor offboarding or too many access rights can lead to frustration in governance, security, and compliance.
What is more important? You run the risk of inconsistent, insecure and sloppy user provisioning that could compromise your business' data and systems.
What's User Provisioning?
Provisioning is an easy concept. Provisioning is the act of creating, updating and deleting accounts and users to manage your IT infrastructure.
This can make it difficult for a growing company to keep up. Depending on how large your workforce is, you may see new employees arrive and leave. People from different departments may need access to different data and applications.
Why use manual user provisioning?
Automated provisioning is widely recognized as the gold standard. It's the most efficient, convenient, and secure way for IT departments approach user provisioning. Some companies may feel the need to do provisioning manually. This decision may become more difficult as a company grows.
For a variety of reasons, an IT department may resort to manual user provisioning. If the company is small and has low provisioning volumes, this may be a viable option. It was simple to track and manage. Perhaps the infrastructure-software and hardware-for automated provisioning was once unavailable, or when it became available, other demands on IT staff meant automating provisioning was not prioritized. Maybe IT management didn't have the time or budget to order the parts they needed. Or, perhaps they were unable to deploy the parts. Not least, it is possible that legacy applications and resources are not capable of supporting automated, API-driven user provisioning.
What are some of the potential risks associated with manual user provisioning?
When given manual tasks, humans are bound to make mistakes. People can forget things, make mistakes, communicate poorly, become overwhelmed by multiple priorities or projects and have trouble adapting to changes.
When your company was founded, there were only a few employees. It is difficult to spend enough time getting to know each worker with today's larger workforce. The roles change as more people are hired. More people are leaving and changing jobs, which means that there is more to provision, as well as accounts that need to be deprovisioned.
There are many reasons why provisioning demand may spike. You can roll out new apps, replace old ones with modern ones, merge or buy another company or sell a part of your business. During difficult times, you may have to fire employees.
Exploring new mobile and cloud platforms without a governance .docxssuser454af01
Exploring new mobile and cloud platforms without a governance strategy can
have consequences.
At the beginning of my IT career, I witnessed a number of decisions and project management practices which, at the
time, just didn't seem to make sense. But I was young, and I often thought to myself that the people involved must have
some other reasoning, some justification for their actions that I was just not privy to.
In short, I remained quiet when I should have spoken up. What two decades of experience has taught me is that there
is rarely reasoning or justification behind actions that, at a gut-level, are clearly bad IT practices. We inherently
recognize when common sense has taken a back seat.
There is most definitely a dark side to BYOD. For the most part, I am an advocate for the consumerization of IT (using
non-standard apps and tools as a way to increase end user engagement and productivity) and support the bring-your-
own-device model.
However, as a seasoned manager and IT operations leader, I recognize the risks that come with the model if
organizations do not properly plan out their strategies, putting sufficient protections and governance practices in place
to manage the potential risks that could come from these unsupported devices and applications. End users often want
what’s NEW, but there are valid reasons for imposing and enforcing safeguards when giving mobile business users
access to your otherwise secure, scalable, and compliant systems.
Some people equate governance with bureaucracy and hierarchical systems, but those perceptions often come from a
lack of appreciation for the potential risks involved. Governance is about checks and balances -- supporting the tools
and systems your end users want, but in a way that is manageable and which follows defined protocols.
Examples of rogue IT practices
A (http://harmon.ie/blog/new-survey-reveals-mobile-rogue-it-costing-us-organizations-almost-2b)recent uSamp survey
(http://harmon.ie/blog/new-survey-reveals-mobile-rogue-it-costing-us-organizations-almost-2b) found that 41% of US mobile business
users have used unsanctioned services to share or sync files, despite 87% saying they are aware that their company
has a document sharing policy that prohibits this practice. And, 27% of mobile business users who “went rogue”,
reported immediate and direct repercussions, from lost business to expensive lawsuits and financial penalties that cost
$2 billion.
While most IT professionals understand these risks viscerally, some business users need to crash and burn before
they are willing to adjust their risky behaviors, which is not a message your employer wants to hear. Luckily, there is
another way: learning from the mistakes of others. This month, I am one of six mobile security and IT experts judging a
(http://www.rogueitstories.com/)"Rogue IT" contest (http://www.rogueitstories.com/). We’re collecting anonymous stories from the
community ...
The complete guide for staying protected online.
Some of the tips include:
♦ Why keeping a clean desk matters
♦ How to avoid email threats, including five ways to block phishing attack
♦ How your employees can secure their mobile devices
♦ Website browsing best practices.
It is never possible to guarantee that a company is totally secure or that a breach will not occur, however implementing the latest tools and providing ongoing, end-user education will minimize those risks and allow companies to focus more on growing their business rather than repairing it.
Replies Required for below Posting 1 user security awarene.docxsodhi3
Replies Required for below :
Posting 1 : user security awareness is the most important element of an organization as we know a single email can result in a multi-million dollar loss through a breach in very short time. that is the primary reason many large organizations have a specific division who deal with the security whose prime task is it identify and prevent security breaches and most interestingly companies like Facebook have one million dollar price reward for ethically breaching their security which helps them identify more ways and prevent them before they occur. speaking of which user security deals with various levels of users as mentioned below.
1. New employees
2. Company executives
3. Traveling Employees
4. IT Employees
5. For all employees
Security awareness should be covered focusing the four above mentioned categories using real-world examples like classroom training, and circulating latest updates in security patches and also articles or suggestions as well as visual examples about security awareness. Training employees by pasting most important security preventions every employee must consider in order to prevent security breach and pasting lastest updates about security measurements in common areas across office space and conduct brainstorm sessions with individual senior staff members to understand their needs and how to apply security awareness across teams.
and second thing is to secure customers who are the core revenue generating people to an organization and its organization's duty to secure customers. The customer is the benefit of any organization. At the present time, where online security turns into an essential, the association must view client's profitable data that movements between the server and the site. By building security culture, the association can spur clients, contractual workers, representatives. A fulfilled client dependably functions as a mouth exposure and will fill in as an advantage of the organization. The association can guarantee their clients that the amount they think about their web assurance. The association ought to likewise distribute a note of wellbeing safety measure on the site for clients while collaborating with the web world.
Posting 2:
Security is a key human thought that has ended up being harder to portray and approve in the Information Age. In rough social requests, security was compelled to ensuring the prosperity of the get-together's people and guaranteeing physical resources. As society has grown more mind-boggling, the centrality of sharing and securing the fundamental resource of data has extended. Before the extension of present-day trades, data security was confined to controlling physical access to oral or created correspondences. The essentials of data security drove social requests to make innovative techniques for guaranteeing their data.
Changes in security systems can be direct. Society needs to execute any new security innovation as a get-together, whic ...
Data is an important assets for an enterprise. Data must be protected against loss and destruction. In IT field huge data is being exchanged among multiple people at every moment. During sharing of the data, there are huge chances of data vulnerability, leakage or alteration. So, to prevent these problems, a survey on data leakage detection system has been done. This paper talks about the concept, causes and techniques to detect the data leakage. Businesses processes facts and figures to turn raw data into useful information. This information is used by businesses to generate and improve revenue at every mile stone. Thus, along with data availability and accessibility data security is also very important.
Discussion 300 wordsSearch scholar.google.com or your textbookhuttenangela
Discussion 300 words
Search "scholar.google.com" or your textbook. Discuss how organizations have faced the challenges that incident handlers are challenged with in identifying incidents when resources have been moved to a cloud environment.
Reply to classmate 1: 275 words
Incident Handlers Challenges
The cloud computer helps the people to share their distributed resources which are related to different business organizations. Cloud computing helps business organizations in managing their business around the globe. The cloud computing application helps business organizations in expanding their business at a large level. It can be assessed on web devices from anywhere. Nowadays cloud computing helps the business organizations in meeting the demands of their customers more efficiently. The malicious cloud system has been noticed by the incident handlers which is a core concern for the business organization. Nowadays every business organization is using cloud computing in order to manage their important data and information of the business. The business organization is facing many incidents in their organization which can directly affect the working of their business. The main challenge that has been faced by the incident handlers is the accuracy in identification (John W. Rittinghouse, 2017).
The number of challenges that faced in the cloud environment are as follows:-
1. Challenge of denial of services: - The first main challenge that has been faced by the incident handler is the denial of services. There are various incidents of service attacks which can create a bogus request for preventing the system within the stipulated time. Such physical attack creates a challenge of service denial for the system.
2. Challenge of malicious code: - The second main challenge which can be faced by the incident handler is the challenge of malicious code. It can quickly affect the number of workstations in the business organization. It effects the working of the business organization.
3. Challenge of unauthorized access:- The third main challenge which is being faced by the incident handler is the unauthorized access of the system by the third party in the business organization. It can affect important data and information about the business. The attackers can access the system by the unauthorized way and steal the important data of the business organization.
4. Challenge of inappropriate use:- The fourth main challenge which may be faced by the incident handlers is the challenge of inappropriate use of the system. In the business organization, any employee can provide the illegal copies of the software to the other company employees. They can take advantage of the data and can misuse it.
5. Cloud service provider challenge:- The fifth main challenge that can be faced by the incident handler is the cloud service providers. This situation occurs when there is no control over the actions provided by cloud service provid ...
What is IT supposed to provision access to in 2016? What is important and how can you increase your business's security and efficiency in the process? This guide explains.
The 2020 State of SaaSOps finds that as more companies adjust to the realities of managing SaaS at scale, SaaSOps will evolve into a core IT discipline—influencing strategic priorities, technology investments, and even job titles and career paths. Get the report for key findings and insights into the future of IT.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Corporate Engineer: The New IT AdminBetterCloud
The notion that IT is only important when stuff breaks is outdated. IT is now the gatekeeper and enabler of business solutions and productivity. Join Blair Sammons, Lead of Corporate Engineering at Weedmaps, for a deep dive into the core skills you need as the IT industry shifts and how to leverage these skills to uplevel your career.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Smart Scaling through Automation: How to Scale Without Adding...BetterCloud
Anthony Ancheta, manager of IT at Lime, and James Kang, manager, IT operations at Udemy, both BetterCloud customers, will show you how to leverage automation in BetterCloud to empower your teams to do more without adding IT headcount.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Enabling Productivity with Agile SecurityBetterCloud
It’s a fine line to give users control over settings and their data, but not too much control. In this session, you’ll learn how Chad Ponder, VP Technology Service and Support at United Capital, Mark Bowling, Remote Chief Information Security Officer at United Capital, and Colin McCarthy, VP of Global IT at Essence, are creating workflows that give their users the flexibility they need to do their jobs, without compromising security.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Lessons in IT LeadershipBetterCloud
Successful IT leaders are continually seeking ways of making their teams more productive, impactful and business-relevant and advancing their own careers in the process. In this closing keynote, seven-time CIO and author Mark Settle will focus on the key organizational and personal competencies required to succeed in the 2020s.
ALTITUDE 2019 | Automate Your Team Out of (Boring) Jobs with SaaS OperationsBetterCloud
Drafting a detailed business case is an effective way to get the approval and support of senior management to implement new initiatives and purchase new software. Join this session with Karel vanBeekom, IT manager at Justworks, for a first-hand account about the benefits of SaaS Operations tools and how to write a business proposal that will justify a purchase to higher-ups from an experienced IT leader.
The Day 2 opening keynote, led by BetterCloud’s Chief Product Officer, Jim Brennan, shares BetterCloud’s vision, demonstrates new product announcements, and presents our strategic roadmap. Jim will present on BetterCloud’s product pillars and the top use cases this functionality will enable.
SaaSOps isn’t just a set of technologies—it’s a movement! In his opening keynote, BetterCloud CEO David Politis will discuss how SaaSOps is changing IT’s role, the new challenges it solves, and how it unlocks the promise of SaaS. A panel of modern-day CIOs - Paul Chapman (Box), Uy Ut (Accel), and Eric Tan (Coupa) - moderated by Harry Moseley, CIO of Zoom, will discuss their SaaSOps journeys and share their best advice for you—the CIOs of tomorrow.
IT is faced with more and more security vulnerabilities that they do not even know about, thanks to the influx of SaaS apps in the workplace. Learn how to combat these vulnerabilities to create a secured SaaS environment.
451 Research Report: BetterCloud Pioneers the Emerging SaaS Operations Manage...BetterCloud
SaaS applications are proliferating within and across enterprises in all industries. BetterCloud addresses a new IT challenge – how to automate and govern the IT administrative blind spots related to the use of multiple SaaS applications.
The 10 Commandments of the SaaS-Powered WorkplaceBetterCloud
There are no rules engraved in stone for how to run modern day IT. But what if there were? What would they say? In this presentation, BetterCloud explores 10 foundational principles (plus a bonus one for good measure) that every IT professional should follow to find success in the age of the SaaS-Powered Workplace.
Due to technological advancements, the role of IT is in constant flux. The 10 commandments outlined in this webinar will serve as core tenets for you and your organization, regardless of the technology you use, your role, experience, industry, or any other variable. This presentation will not only define these fundamental rules, but we’ll also provide actionable takeaways for you to implement immediately.
The presentation covers:
- The mindset of the modern day IT professional
- 10 fundamental rules every IT professional must follow
- How to future-proof your IT environment
Watch the video for this presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT1XI9eCViA&t=721s
The 2016 State of Cloud IT Report by BetterCloud
The Cloud Changes Everything
Work as we know it is transforming. Today, all businesses are technology enabled, regardless of size, industry, or location. But merely using technology no longer guarantees you remain competitive. As digital natives flood the global workforce, businesses are met with a decision: resist new norms or provide the latest technology to their employees.
We are in the midst of a technological shift not seen since the launch of Microsoft Office and the invention of the Internet. The world of IT is at a tipping point, and at the center are IT professionals experiencing once-in-a-career shifts in their roles and responsibilities. For years, IT has been mischaracterized as solely an internal support team; if something breaks, IT is there with the fix. In 2016, IT professionals are beginning to offload their routine work to cloud software and service providers, giving them more time to focus on strategic work.
The skills required to be a successful IT professional in the modern, cloud-first workplace are far different than they once were. Cloud IT is coming of age, and it’s going to affect every organization and IT professional in the world, much faster than you think.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Elevating Tactical DDD Patterns Through Object CalisthenicsDorra BARTAGUIZ
After immersing yourself in the blue book and its red counterpart, attending DDD-focused conferences, and applying tactical patterns, you're left with a crucial question: How do I ensure my design is effective? Tactical patterns within Domain-Driven Design (DDD) serve as guiding principles for creating clear and manageable domain models. However, achieving success with these patterns requires additional guidance. Interestingly, we've observed that a set of constraints initially designed for training purposes remarkably aligns with effective pattern implementation, offering a more ‘mechanical’ approach. Let's explore together how Object Calisthenics can elevate the design of your tactical DDD patterns, offering concrete help for those venturing into DDD for the first time!
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Securing your Kubernetes cluster_ a step-by-step guide to success !KatiaHIMEUR1
Today, after several years of existence, an extremely active community and an ultra-dynamic ecosystem, Kubernetes has established itself as the de facto standard in container orchestration. Thanks to a wide range of managed services, it has never been so easy to set up a ready-to-use Kubernetes cluster.
However, this ease of use means that the subject of security in Kubernetes is often left for later, or even neglected. This exposes companies to significant risks.
In this talk, I'll show you step-by-step how to secure your Kubernetes cluster for greater peace of mind and reliability.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
When stars align: studies in data quality, knowledge graphs, and machine lear...
BetterCloud Whitepaper: Offboarding Inefficiencies and Security Threats
1. W H I T E P A P E R
Identifying and
Eliminating Employee
Offboarding
Inefficiencies and
Security Threats
2. info@bettercloud.com | (888) 999-0805 2
Table of Contents
Offboarding as an Organizational Issue ................................................... 3
3 Reasons Modern Day Offboarding
is Getting More Complex ............................................................................. 4
The Top 4 Threats Posed by Improper Offboarding
(and How to Address Each) ......................................................................... 6
5 Key Benefits of Orchestrated Offboarding ......................................... 10
Case Study: SaaS Offboarding Orchestration
in the World of High-Tech Venture Capital ............................................. 12
3. info@bettercloud.com | (888) 999-0805 3
Offboarding as an Organizational Issue
First of all, we want to
offer our apologies for any
inconvenience. Unfortunately,
an ex-administrator has
deleted all customer data and
wiped most servers. Because
of this, we took the necessary
steps to temporarily take our
network offline.”
Message posted on verelox.com after
an improper offboarding incident.
“
As of this writing, Verelox, a virtual and
dedicated server provider, has yet to relaunch
its site after an ex-employee was improperly
offboarded. That’s 30+ days with no website,
likely leading to severe losses of both
customers and revenue.
It’s time for everyone, from investors to IT, to own
up to a harsh truth. Neglect is no longer an option.
Verelox is a victim of a phenomenon that shows
zero mercy, turning successful companies into
skeletal ruins (see also: RealityCheckNetwork).
How is it possible that this little talked about
topic that is a vital operating aspect of every
organization is often masquerading as a
checklist chore for a newly hired IT admin?
Every department and every employee
has (or will one day soon) be affected by
offboarding.
But a closer examination shows that
offboarding departing employees has
become extremely complicated in today’s
modern workplaces. Data lives in multiple
siloed applications, some sanctioned by IT and
some not, and often there is no way for IT to
take action quickly enough (if at all) to prevent
potential catastrophes like those above during
offboarding.
Executives should care because offboarding
affects the bottom line, under the guise of
data breaches, failed compliance, hindered
productivity, data loss, and even loss of
revenue. Every employee should care because
improper offboarding can cost them their jobs,
lead to identity theft, litigation, and lifelong
negative career impacts.
It’s time to know the threats off offboarding and
start working toward a solution.
4. info@bettercloud.com | (888) 999-0805 4
3 Reasons Modern Day Offboarding
is Getting More Complex
The Gig
Economy
The employee that sticks around for 10-plus years
is a rare one indeed. It’s common now to change
jobs after couple of years. In fact, the Bureau
of Labor Statistics confirms that as of 2016, the
average employee changes jobs every 4.2 years,
down 9% from just two years prior. This number is
only going to decrease in the future.
This type of turnover is nothing new. But
the technology involved is. SaaS has altered
the playing field, and as a result, most
companies approach to offboarding is ad
hoc. Despite the frequency, inevitability,
and potential to cause chaos, offboarding is
nothing more than a PDF checklist.
What’s more, with the rise of freelancers,
contractors, and consultants, “turnover” is more
prevalent than ever. So much so that the trend
has been dubbed the “gig” economy. Already,
freelancers make up 35% of the U.S. workforce.
By 2020 (less than three years away), experts
believe this number could rise to nearly 50%.
What happens when companies are working
with too many freelancers, granting access to
data and applications, but failing to revoke it?
SaaS technology continues to make it easier
than ever to collaborate. New apps like
Google Drive, Dropbox, and Slack encourage
sharing and make collaboration simple.
While this drives productivity, it also allows
data to flow freely (sometimes outside your
organization) and makes that data difficult to
track down and control.
This new style of workforce and the tendency to
change jobs every few years is a growing concern,
adding complexity to an already challenging task.
1 2Sheer Volume of
Applications
Creates Additional Risk
According to an Intermedia and Osterman
Research report, 89% of ex-employees
retain access to email accounts, Salesforce,
SharePoint, and other sensitive corporate
applications, including some applications
not often considered sensitive but that have
the potential to damage a company’s brand
(Facebook) or bank account (PayPal). And
49% actually log into an account after leaving
the company.
What does this mean for organizations?
• Without a policy in place to prevent
it, ex-employees can usually access
applications and company data.
• Odds are high (over 50%) that if they can
access it, they will.
• Even the most well-intentioned people
will try to leave with company data,
whether it’s on purpose or not.
Preventing access to approved applications
is one thing, but imagine offboarding an
influential employee who worked extensively
with applications IT didn’t know existed? How
would a company get that information back?
They can ask nicely, but that’s about the extent
of their power.
Whether it’s frowned upon, or even
forbidden, employees will rarely place
security above productivity. That’s why
security controls are necessary.
Exiting employees should never take data
or application access with them when
5. info@bettercloud.com | (888) 999-0805 5
3
they leave. This exposure not only makes
companies vulnerable to data breaches,
but it also opens the door for compliance
issues, productivity loss, and potentially
even lost revenue or destruction of
shareholder value.
Data Sprawl Across
Applications
Creates Complexity
Today, data is created at an unprecedented
rate. It’s common for employees to send and
receive more close to 3,000 emails a month.
Executives might receive more than 10,000.
Within days of being hired, an employee
will likely have access to thousands of
company documents. They’ll gain access
to applications, forward emails or share
documents with personal accounts, and
handle sensitive data on personal devices
using unsecured Wi-Fi networks.
For years, executives (and productivity
application vendors) have focused on driving
productivity through increased collaboration.
But the result, when not executed with the full
oversight of IT, is high productivity coupled
with significant security exposures. In other
words, almost zero control for IT.
It’s a multi-SaaS maelstrom, and it makes
processes like employee offboarding
extremely difficult to plan for, let alone
execute, properly.
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The Top 4 Threats Posed by Improper
Offboarding (and How to Address Each)
Offboarding begins long before an employee’s
last day. Or at least it should.
However, the vast majority of companies think
about offboarding when it becomes a problem,
not before. But what happens if neglect becomes
the only strategy?
The results are potentially devastating. A simple
offboarding error can cost an entire IT team their
jobs, not to mention C-level executives. Knowing
the risks and taking preventative and proactive
actions to protect data won’t go unnoticed,
especially if the complexity and value of those
measures are articulated.
Offboarding is a dirty job, but somebody has to do
it. And that somebody needs to do it right.
Exiting Employee Steals
or Inappropriately
Accesses Company Data
with Malicious Intent
A data breach is likely the first thought that
occurs when discussing offboarding risks.
Afterall, a departing employee is likely to leave a
company on less than amicable terms.
This is called an insider threat, and it’s one of
the most common causes of data breaches.
For companies that want to avoid this threat,
there are many preventative measures that can
be taken, many of which take place prior to
“offboarding” even officially begins.
Here are a few common preventative practices:
Step 1 - Prevent email forwarding and sharing
files to personal accounts.
Offboarding should start begins before it really
ever begins. For most employees, it’s not a big
deal to take valuable information with them
when they switch jobs. Sometimes it’s harmless.
Employees simply forwarding personal notes
or other miscellaneous emails. But other times,
intellectual property is stolen. Even customer
and employee personally identifiable information
(PII) can slip through the cracks. Compliance can
become a major concern. Policies can (and in
many cases should) be in place to prevent this
type of behavior.
Step 2 - Reset shared passwords.
At most companies, and in most departments,
there are common passwords that are used for
shared accounts. These are spread via word
of mouth or made accessible in password
managers. They are often simple to remember.
When an employee exits, they don’t suddenly
forget these commonly known passwords. IT
should take it on themselves to reset these
passwords during offboarding. A password
manager like LastPass can make this process
easier to execute, as well as add an extra layer
of security by enforcing very complex passwords
because no one needs to remember them in the
first place.
Step 3 - Revoke access to all applications.
It should take just seconds, not minutes, hours,
or days for IT to revoke access to applications
as soon as an employee exits. Failure to do so
is a severe concern. An ex-employee with bad
intentions can wreak havoc on purpose. An
ex-employee with good intentions can wreak
havoc by accident. Either way, revoking access
to all applications should be done in a timely
(i.e. immediate) fashion. Be sure to examine
which applications may retain authentication
through OAuth tokens even after a user’s
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password is changed on the account. There are
countless examples (here’s one) of users staying
signed in to applications via OAuth even after
their password has been changed.
Step 4 - Collect and/or wipe data from
devices.
Much like revoking access to applications,
immediately when an employee walks out the
door, company data should be removed from
mobile devices, whether they are owned by
the company or the ex-employee. Without
doing so, a company is vulnerable. There are a
variety of mobile device management solutions
on the market to help enforce a policy here,
although stock solutions like G Suite’s device
management controls are often enough these
days, if your company is not dealing with much
sensitive information in offline files. However,
you still need to automate the execution
of these steps in order to protect against
exposure.
Compliance
Violations
or Breaches of
Confidentiality Due to
Administrative Errors
There are a number of industry regulations and
compliance standards that apply to offboarding,
not to mention the fact that offboarding almost
universally deals with information that’s confidential
to the organization or even to the individual. And IT
is responsible for making all of this work.
To reduce the risk of administrative errors,
compliance violations, and breaches of
confidentiality during the offboarding process,
companies must use technology that enables
them to:
Step 1 - Employ a granular least privilege
model (even outside of IT).
When it comes to compliance, IT should consider
a least privilege approach, meaning anyone in
the organization only has the access necessary
to do their jobs and nothing more. If an IT team
member or other functional role involved in
offboarding (such as HR) does not need access
to the contents of a user’s files, or to certain sets
of sensitive information, then don’t give them the
opportunity to cause harm (intentionally or by
accident) by providing access to this information
simply because they are involved in offboarding.
Stick to least privilege vigorously. This approach
will help companies avoid potential privacy and
confidentiality violations, as well as eliminate
many compliance concerns.
Step 2 - Prevent unnecessary exposure of
sensitive information.
Sensitive information like social security numbers
and banking details are all involved in the
offboarding process. To prevent unnecessary
distribution, regular expression DLP policies
can help ensure sensitive information isn’t
accidentally shared with co-workers (and even
external parties). Situations like these are not only
likely compliance violations, but also lawsuits
waiting to happen.
Step 3 - Ensure your systems leave detailed
audit logs.
If a company is about to undergo a security
audit or is renewing or seeking a security
certification or attestation, offboarding process
execution may be scrutinized. Auditors may ask
for companies to provide detailed records of
the offboarding procedures. These logs should
contain what actions were taken, who took
them, and when they were taken. Detailed audit
logs make this audit process easy, and any lack
of detail is nearly impossible to remediate.
Step 4 - Retain data and create reliable
backups.
In many legal cases and with many service
level agreements (SLAs), companies are
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required to retain data for many years (some
companies retain it indefinitely). Accidental
deletion of accounts or improper back ups will
lead to data loss and potential legal issues. This
isn’t anything any admin or company wants to
experience. Many services are purpose-built to
prevent this from happening.
Step 5 - Wipe only corporate data off of
employee-owned devices.
Mobile device management (MDM), gives IT the
power to remotely wipe devices. Mistakenly,
devices can be wiped of all data, both personal
and corporate. This creates a serious legal
situation if the proper agreements have not
been signed. There are horror stories of IT
admins wiping devices that contain nearly
finished novels or photos of newborns.
Obviously, blame is shared in these scenarios,
but in the end, it’s IT that faces the most scrutiny
and the company that pays up.
Unnecessarily High
Expenses Due to
Unused Licenses and
Unknown Recurring
Payments
Odds are you are paying for licenses and
possibly even applications that aren’t being
used. Whether due to fear of data loss or lack of
time, many companies are stuck in an expensive
limbo when it comes to SaaS license spend. IT
can put policies in place to prevent this.
Whether it’s idle licenses, unused storage, or
devices collecting dust, many of these expenses
are the result of incomplete offboarding
processes. Since offboarding is often a multi-
phase process, the final steps can fall through
the cracks.
Step 1 - Set a threshold on suspended
licenses.
Depending on the application, companies may
be billed for licenses sitting in a suspended
state. A single SaaS application license may
cost a company around $50 a year — not a
big deal. But many companies never clean up
suspended licenses and are simply throwing
away thousands of dollars a month. Companies
should keep tabs on licenses assigned to
former employees. One quick way to do this is
set a threshold on the number of suspended
licenses you’re willing to permit in each given
SaaS application (based on how they bill for
these licenses).
Step 2 - Prohibit employees from using
company cards for unapproved applications.
This is a surprisingly common cost that flies
under the radar. It’s common across many
departments and there is really no easy
answer. A solid solution: Sit with the Finance
team and review every SaaS license paid for
through a company credit card. Then, make
a decision on whether or not IT should bring
unapproved apps under their control or stop
paying for them. If a user goes around IT and
is expensing SaaS apps on their own card,
a simple solution to curb this behavior is to
warn employees that SaaS apps on personal
cards will no longer be reimbursed.
Step 3 - Free up and reassign suspended
licenses.
In most SaaS applications, when you fully
delete a user you are left with a license
that can be assigned to another employee,
and you may or may not be paying for that
license while it’s not assigned. Be sure to use
these licenses first when onboarding new
employees. And some SaaS applications,
like G Suite, even offer special license types
for former employees. In G Suite these are
called Vault Former Employee licenses (note:
this particular license type is only available to
former Postini customers), and reduce license
costs while retaining user data.
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Productivity
LossCausedby
Miscommunication and
Lack of Documentation
When change occurs, business activities are
interrupted and productivity stalls. But the impact
of change caused by offboarding can be lessened.
Step 1 - Document important processes.
While this might not fall under “data loss” or
“offboarding” in the traditional sense, it is
a potential threat that must be considered.
Companies should seek to change the way
employees operate and encourage constant
documentation. This is a top-down issue that
executives (as well as IT leaders) should push for.
Step 2 - Avoid ad hoc scripts and
undocumented automations.
If the employee is in IT and relies heavily on
custom-built scripts to automate certain tasks,
those scripts will inevitably break and require
maintenance. Companies should bring own their
automations, meaning the ability to execute, alter,
and update them should pass seamlessly from
one employee to the next. If not, the employee
can leave a company in a difficult position should
they leave.
Step 3 - Ensure successful file ownership
transfers.
File ownership is tricky when it comes to SaaS
applications like Google Drive, Dropbox, and
others. If important documents are transferred
to the wrong person, it creates a huge
headache for IT and everyone who needs to
access those files.
Step 4 - Handle email with care.
One of the most common points of failure
during offboarding is email. Should the ex-
employee’s entire email be accessible by the
employee’s manager? Or should all future
emails be forwarded to a certain person?
What exactly should the autoresponder say?
How long should an autoresponder remain
active? These questions vary greatly from
employee to employee. The answer is likely a
decision that can only be made through open
communication.
Step 5 - Manage calendars and resources.
When an employee exits, it’s especially difficult
to handle anything related to calendars and
resources. While it might seem small, a booked
resource that goes unused is a wasted expense
and could have been used in a more productive
way. On top of that, if a user is deleted, any
recurring meetings or secondary calendars that
user owns will be deleted as well.
Step 6 - Build orchestrated offboarding
processes.
Too much time is wasted in IT doing
manual, repetitive tasks. If offboarding is
done manually and correctly, it will likely
take a significant amount of time. Admins
will have to go into each application’s
admin console and deprovision a user.
Automating tasks is helpful, but when
they’re compiled together, something much
more powerful is created.
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5 Key Benefits of Orchestrated Offboarding
There’s a misconception that deprovisioning and
offboarding are the same.
However, deprovisioning is just one small aspect
of the greater offboarding process, which is much
more complex than simply cutting off access to an
application. (For example, think about document
transfers, device wipes, autoresponders, inbox
delegation, etc..)
Based on customer research, the offboarding
process for a single G Suite user consists of 28
manual steps, on average.
This manual workload is exactly why companies
can no longer ignore the increasing complexity
and growing number of threats associated with
offboarding. As more applications are adopted, a
more strategic approach is necessary. Fortunately,
platforms built for multi-SaaS environments exist
to help companies manage SaaS applications and
simplify offboarding through orchestration.
But outside of IT, many employees don’t
understand the ROI of orchestration. This list will
help you explain the benefits to anyone.
Reduces Human
Error and Improves
Offboarding Precision
Orchestration and automation remove the
human element from offboarding process
execution, greatly reducing the probability of
error. Additionally, offboarding procedures will
routinely change. The more manual the process,
the more room there is for mistakes. Well-
polished orchestrated offboarding operates with
precision. What needs to be done gets done.
Every time, exactly when expected, without fail.
No matter what.
1
Provides Clean
Audit Logs for
Compliance and Internal
Review
Audits aren’t fun for anyone. Companies fail
audits because of improper offboarding, whether
that’s caused by a lack of documentation or poor
execution. A solution that enables orchestration,
offers a user interface, and ensure every change
and action is recorded makes passing an audit
much simpler. It’s a huge time saver because
companies don’t have to dig into the admin
consoles of a bunch of apps to duct tape audit
logs together. Orchestration also makes it
easier to spot an error should it occur. It’s like
finding a broken link in a chain instead of a
needle in a haystack.
Enables Iterative,
Scalable
Customization that
Evolves as Companies
Change
Offboarding best practices from four years
ago look totally different than today’s best
practices. Technology has forced companies
to adapt. Orchestration enables IT to keep
up with the pace of change by allowing
for iterative change instead of just adding
another step to an already time-consuming
process. Orchestrated offboarding is about
tweaks, as opposed to overhauls. A new step
is just another automated action. It’s simply
an iteration of an existing workflow.
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Carries Out Many
Vital Offboarding
Steps in Seconds
Many companies do offboarding 100% right,
however, it takes too long. With orchestrated
offboarding, companies can perform a flurry
of tasks almost instantly. Not only does this
free up valuable time, but it also reduces risks
by performing important security-related
tasks automatically and in quick succession.
After all, every minute an exiting employee
can still access company data is another
minute a company is at risk of a data or
compliance breach.
4 5Offers Simplicity
and Control Over
Offboarding Processes
Offboarding isn’t simple. If it were, people
wouldn’t shy away from it so much. With
more automation, and fewer dashboards
involved, offboarding becomes less
taxing from a documentation and training
perspective. If a member of a team leaves,
a new person should be able to pick
things up immediately. If not, a company
is probably dependent on the capabilities
of a single employee. It must be simpler.
Orchestration is the answer.
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Case Study:
SaaS Offboarding Orchestration in
the World of High-Tech Venture Capital
The Necessity of Precise and Immediate
Offboarding
“Thirty seconds.”
That’s how much time Ryan Donnon needs
before he can confidently look an investor in the
eye and say: “We’re good. Everything sensitive
is protected.”
That’s effective offboarding.
Donnon works as the IT and data manager
at First Round Capital, a top-tier early-stage
venture capital firm with over $700mm in
capital under management, and 6 IPOs and 92
acquisitions under its belt. Due to the nature
of the business, employees handle sensitive
financials and proprietary information on a
daily basis and thus Ryan understands the
importance of offboarding.
Data simply cannot be publicly exposed.
Mistakes and delays aren’t an option.
“If there’s ever a fire drill and someone needs
to be offboarded immediately, I can’t say to a
partner or a supervisor, ‘It’ll be two hours until
their access is revoked.’”
As a result, Donnon has created a fully
orchestrated offboarding process, which helps
him ensure precision, immediacy, and reliability.
As soon as an employee exits the building,
Donnon’s offboarding process, which takes only
a “couple of clicks” to complete, revokes access
to SaaS applications like Salesforce, Slack, and
G Suite.
Ryan Donnon
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Eliminating Exposure with Offboarding
Orchestration
Like many IT professionals, Donnon agrees that
the shift to SaaS has produced new opportunities
and challenges. The challenges are particularly
noticeable with offboarding, he says.
“SaaS creates a lot of exposure for me when
employees leave the company.”
Using BetterCloud, Donnon eliminates this
exposure in seconds.
When an employee exits, Donnon “fires off a
BetterCloud workflow,” which does a “bunch
of things” he used to have to remember to do
manually.
“The workflow immediately removes them from
all groups, deactivates two-factor authentication,
resets their password, and revokes
authentication tokens for all of the applications
that the employee has connected to their
account. And most recently, I’ve updated the
workflow to actually deactivate their Salesforce
account as well,” he says. While most of these
steps are relatively simple tasks, each must be
performed immediately when an employee is
offboarded, making the workflow orchestration
a critical value-add.
“I think offboarding, as opposed to onboarding,
is where I have the most exposure. If I mess
up, forget a step and an ex-employee still has
access to company data, that’s where I could
hurt my reputation the most.”
Next, because First Round Capital uses SAML
for most applications other than G Suite, he “kills
the ex-employee’s Okta account,” which “pretty
much cuts off access to everything else.” Donnon
views BetterCloud and Okta as entirely different,
but complementary solutions. “Even if you use
some deprovisioning stuff in Okta, it still can’t
do everything that you need to do that I feel like
BetterCloud really makes easier.”
Most of the typically manual work associated
with offboarding is automated through these
processes. Donnon says that after seeing this
orchestration in action, it’s hard not to say:
“Wow. IT’s really got it together.”
Ryan’s
offboarding
workflow in
BetterCloud
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Handling the Dynamic Variables
Offboarding isn’t all about cutting off access. Of
course, companies want to take care of physical
access and assets, too. Turning off keycard
access and collecting company devices are
necessary steps that Donnon takes.
But on top of that, exiting employees often
possess information others may need.
Donnon uses a checklist to help establish a
timeline and manage the variables. “Everyone
is going to be different,” he says. Offboarding
a partner, for example, is going to be a much
more complex scenario than an employee who
was in and out in less than six months. How to
handle email is one aspect of offboarding that
varies more than any other.
Leading up to the employee’s last day,
communication, establishing personal
relationships, and doing the upfront “legwork”
are all key, says Donnon.
“You don’t want to be reaching out to people
[to get information you need to fully offboard
them] for the first few months after somebody
exits.”
Ryan’s
offboarding
checklist
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The Final Steps
For the first two weeks after an employee leaves,
the account is limbo, says Donnon. (G Suite
cannot serve up an auto-reply if an employee is
suspended or deleted.) “I use the BetterCloud
interface to set the auto-reply.”
At the end of the two weeks, Donnon goes into
BetterCloud again.
He takes care of what many forget: recurring
calendar events, which often may be
consuming shared resources like conference
rooms. “If an ex-employee is the owner of
any recurring events, I need to work with
either their manager or the person that
replaced them to figure out who I should
transfer those events to.” If not, this can be an
especially excruciating task to perform after
the fact. “Google does not have a great way
to transfer recurring events from a deleted
user,” says Donnon.
Next, Donnon backs up the account, transfers
all of their shared Google Docs (typically to
their manager), and then, unlike many G Suite
admins, will actually delete their email account.
(Many companies choose to suspend accounts
for various reasons, but deleting a user will
reduce costs, since Google does charge for
suspended users.)
With a standard two weeks’ notice, the entire
offboarding process happens over the course of
a month.
Donnon takes care of his part in a matter of
minutes.
16. A B O U T B E T T E R C L O U D
BetterCloud is the first Multi-SaaS Management Platform, enabling IT to centralize, orchestrate, and
operationalize day-to-day administration and control across SaaS applications. Every day, thousands
of customers rely on BetterCloud to centralize data and controls, surface operational intelligence,
orchestrate complex actions, and delegate custom administrator privileges across SaaS applications.
BetterCloud is headquartered in New York City with engineering offices in Atlanta, GA. For more
information, please visit www.bettercloud.com.
Demo BetterCloud today.
info@bettercloud.com | (888) 999-0805