Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Whether you’re supporting remote teams or working in a hybrid environment, IT asset management (ITAM) is a critical practice to the business and your service management strategy. If you’ve been following our ITAM series and are delivering services to employees, you most likely have an understanding of the ITAM essentials and questions to keep in mind when developing a strategy. Now in this blog, I’ll guide you on the journey to take your strategy to the next level.

Depending on the business, there’s a myriad of IT assets to keep track of and doing it manually can be taxing. An IT asset management system allows IT pros to monitor all the hardware and software introduced into the business and when those assets exit. When a service desk has details on each IT asset, where it resides, and its owner, IT pros can provide continuity of service and better manage service costs. IT assets can be physical, digital, software, and in the cloud.

Supporting legacy applications is problematic for several reasons. These aging systems are becoming increasingly obsolete and difficult to maintain. They use outdated software languages and unsupported hardware parts—some as much as 50 years old. As they age, they introduce cybersecurity risk and are less effective at accomplishing their intended purpose. While achieving application modernization isn’t without its challenges, the benefits are considerable.

Since 2004, October has been designated by the National Cybersecurity Alliance as National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM). Immediately, the mind wanders to supercomputers creating unbreakable algorithms against adversaries with unlimited compute power. This virtual landscape is happening today, and the arms race on both sides is something we’ll have to grapple with for the foreseeable future.

Network alerts are a crucial aspect of network performance monitoring, as they’re designed to provide IT admins with quick insight into network issues, allowing for faster troubleshooting. As such, network alerts should be a key consideration for businesses choosing their network alert software.

It’s the witching hour and the night is cold. Something feels eerie—it seems calm, but you’re not sold. You turn your computer on and to your despair, Through the garishness of the screen It was sitting there. That service desk ticket. The one you thought was finally resolved But it’s back, and with a vengeance Ready to wreak havoc on all involved. This is just the beginning of your nightmare And the scariest part, you haven’t even read.

Heaven on Earth would be a world with no outages. No slow load times. No failed switches or routers. No bandwidth issues. Just peace and quiet. But if nothing were to go wrong on a daily basis, what would IT pros spend their time doing? Outages make up a large part of an IT pro’s job. Monitoring networks and finding the source of outages can be time-consuming and take away effort from other tasks.

Protecting your identity is becoming more and more difficult. Though many people don’t stop to consider it, even the most minor conveniences can go hand in hand with an incredible amount of privacy loss. For example, Amazon recently debuted new hand scanners in stores in Seattle where you can scan your palm to make a purchase.

Every year brings new opportunities for federal IT professionals to reduce risk by addressing threats—both existing and emerging—with new tools, technologies, and tactics. This year has proven to be a little different, with the emergence of COVID-19 forcing federal agencies to make the jump to remote work. Although the world at large is currently working from home, bad actors from criminals to nation-state actors are still working, too.