Arraya Insights

November 25, 2019 by Arraya Insights

Can you see your organization dubbing its network a “strategic enabler?” You might not have to imagine too hard because it soon could become reality according to Gartner. The research and advisory giant found more than 60% of organizations believe their network will be seen as a core facilitator of digital strategies by 2023. That’s a substantial leap from the less than 20% who see it as such today. Moreover, it opens the door to two additional questions. First, what’s driving this change? Second, what needs to be done to prepare networks for the increasingly central business role they project to fill in the coming years?

Cisco explored this topic in an expansive research paper, the 2020 Global Networking Trends Report. With the help of our own Network and Security experts, we focused on 5 trends from the report that seem destined to put the business network top of mind over the next few years.

Cyber Security – In the coming years, cyber security will need to be infused into every facet of the business, including the network – if it hasn’t been already. The risk of not doing so? One estimate puts the price tag for more than half (53%) of cyber security incidents above $500,000. The network can be leaned on to help identify and contain threats. It also must be able to connect and support highly-advanced tools and workflows designed to match the sophistication and scope of those used by attackers.
Applications – It’s nothing new to say applications have become, in many cases, an indispensable part of employees’ workdays. Yet, quite a bit about applications remains in flux. Some are finding new homes either in the cloud or on the network’s edge. Others are fragmenting, transforming into decentralized “microservices.” Still others are being virtualized. Across the board, development windows are shrinking as demand for new applications increases. Networks must adjust on the fly to continue supporting an application landscape that is constantly changing.
Internet of Things – By 2022, experts predict the number of IoT-connected devices will hit 14.6 billion. That’s nearly double the current population of the planet (7.7 billion). Even now, the incredible amount of connected devices entering the workplace can prove overwhelming for admins and the network alike. Managing and securing these devices requires a network that can easily scale. It must also be able to identify, classify and apply policies to devices with minimal hands-on interaction, allowing admins to focus on higher value projects.
Artificial Intelligence – Experts believe that by 2021 there could be as many as 700 million containers hosted on the network edge while as much as 50% of workloads could exist outside of data centers. The flexibility to move between the cloud, the network’s edge and traditional housing is seen by many as essential to enabling, supporting and securing the full and wide-ranging capabilities of Artificial Intelligence in modern workplaces.
Mobility – Observers expect 42% annual growth in business mobile traffic from 2017-2022. Leading the charge for this growth will be employees’ changing work habits. It will also be spurred on by the rise of IoT, as discussed above. Networks will need to be able to support a steady stream of new devices and log-in locations while also juggling user experience with maintaining workload security.

Powering the future of your organization’s network

With those five trends likely dictating the direction of corporate networks for years to come, the questions remains, how can organizations prepare? There are numerous upgrade paths available for organizations to pursue. One our team recommends looking into is Cisco’s Software-Defined Access (SD-A) solution.

Still early in its lifecycle, SD-A separates network functionality from the hardware which backs it. SD-A also leverages Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) to deliver hands-free provisioning and maintenance capabilities. This allows SD-A-powered networks to be more flexible and easier to manage, two traits which make it perfect for the landscape to come.

While SD-A may be relatively new, another of the technologies behind it has an already-established track record. Cisco’s Catalyst 9000 switches were first introduced back at Cisco Live 2017 and they represent a logical entry point to SD-A. Not only were the switches built with SD-A in mind, but they come bundled with Cisco DNA Center licensing. All of this ingrained functionality should position organizations to seamlessly pivot to a more advanced and transformational solution, such as SD-A, as demand on their network grows.

Next Steps: Deciding if SD-A, Catalyst 9000 switches should be on your radar

Want to explore SD-A, the Catalyst 9000 series or how to ensure your organization’s network is ready to adapt to the evolving needs of your industry? Start a conversation with our network and security team today by visiting: https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/.

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November 20, 2019 by Arraya Insights

Earlier this month, members of the Arraya team traveled to Las Vegas to attend Cisco Partner Summit 2019. This annual gathering gives partners like Arraya a valuable opportunity to network with peers while learning about the technologies and solutions coming next from Cisco. There was no shortage of newsworthy moments at this year’s event – including, if we do say so ourselves, Arraya’s big win in the Transformation/Innovation Partner of the Year category. For this post, however, we decided to focus one series of announcements concerning Cisco’s collaboration hardware portfolio.

Cisco Webex Desk Pro

Dubbed the “instant office,” Cisco’s Webex Desk Pro made its debut during a presentation by Amy Chang, EVP/GM, Cisco Collaboration and Sri Srinivasan, SVP/GM, Webex Meetings, Teams, Calling & Devices). The pair literally pulled the tarp off the all-in-one desktop collaboration platform and then – with a remote assist from Prema Rao, a Cisco Engineering Manager located in Norway – showed off some of what makes it unique.

Rao demonstrated how the Webex Desk Pro’s camera automatically adjusts to follow the presenter. When Rao stood up from her desk, the device’s HD camera tilted up in response. When she sat back down, it tilted down to a more neutral position. Next, Rao engaged the Cisco Webex Desk Pro’s background blur feature to show how the device can hide messy or inappropriate backdrops during live meetings (Webex-hosted or otherwise). She followed that by using the Webex Desk Pro to swap out her office entirely, digitally replacing it with a more impressive city skyline view.

On top of those video conferencing capabilities, the Webex Desk Pro supports digital whiteboarding with a dedicated stylus. Content created on the device is automatically transferred into and saved in Webex Teams. Cisco’s AI-based Webex Assistant feature also has a home on the Webex Desk Pro and the device includes a 4K display, a noise-cancelling microphone and the connection capabilities needed to act as a complete desktop solution.

Cisco Webex Room Panorama

Following the Webex Desk Pro demonstration, Srinivasan showcased another new solution in the Webex device family: the Webex Room Panorama. Srinivasan summed up this massive device as a “new, modern, immersive experience for C-suites and boardrooms” before connecting with a group of Cisco executives (again in Norway) to show it in action.

This multi-screen device erases geographic barriers, allowing decision-makers separated by a few miles or entire oceans to feel as though they were in the same room. Onscreen, Cisco’s Norwegian team highlighted key capabilities of the Webex Room Panorama, including facial recognition and name labels. They also enlisted a group of vocalists to show how the device’s directional sound can make meeting attendees feel like they’re “in the room” with each other regardless of physical location.

Here’s a quick rundown of what powers the Webex Room Panorama experience:

Two 82-inch Samsung 8K displays for meeting video and one 65-inch 4K display for presentation video
Four 5K cameras
Cisco Touch 10 controller
Directional audio capabilities backed by 4 bass modules
3 table microphones

Cisco 730 Series Headsets

The final collaboration hardware announcement we want to cover deals with a much smaller piece of hardware than the Webex Room Panorama: headsets. Specifically, we want to look at Cisco’s new 730 series headsets. Modern work environments can be hectic and they’re full of potential distractions. The new 730 series headsets are intended to eliminate distractions and allow employees to focus on what really matters.

Cisco’s 730 series features:

a boom-free design that can hone a speaker’s voice and set it apart from the white noise
full Bluetooth connectivity
notifications to prevent a meeting attendee from unknowingly talking while muted
adjustable noise-canceling settings that let users switch between adaptive noise canceling and ambient mode

Next Steps: Modernize your collaboration hardware

There were plenty of other items unveiled during Cisco Partner Summit 2019 that our team can’t wait to share with yours. To learn more about any of the above hardware announcements – or anything else from Cisco Partner Summit 2019 – head over to: https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/.

Have some thoughts you’d like to share about this post? We want to hear from you! Leave us a comment on this or any of our blog posts through social media. Arraya can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. While you’re there, follow us to stay updated on our industry insights and unique IT events.

November 18, 2019 by Arraya Insights

There’s a great amount of interest in custom-built applications – and quite a few common misconceptions about them as well. Arraya’s Application Development team has encountered many of these, from concerns about complexity, use cases, and more. During this five-part series, our team will seek to dispel some of the more frequent misunderstandings about custom-built applications in order to shed some light on a sometimes murky process and solution.

Time is often cited as the biggest barrier standing between organizations and custom-built application, one that accomplishes everything they need from it. This leads them to look to out-of-box applications that may only get them 75% of the way to a goal. One of the reasons this myth has persisted is likely a lack of transparency in the app dev process itself.

The reality is that custom IT projects tend to have three parts. These might be split further for project organization, but ultimately it remains these three: planning, development, and delivery.

While it’s easiest to understand that time investment in development will be the largest chunk for nearly all projects, it can be easy to overlook the importance of the planning stage and how greatly it can impact the other two phases. This up-front investment of time is critical to having a clear handle on the components that will follow and that everyone meets expectations along the way. With good planning and management, most smaller development projects can be done in 2-4 total weeks; this may also include days where there is no billed work on a project due to holidays, vacation time, or other issues which prevented work on a day or two.

Obviously larger, more involved projects will consume more time, but a surprising amount can be done relatively quickly. Additionally, as projects are planned on larger scales, so too is the headcount involved to make sure that work is completed by a target date.

As with our consideration of the cost-benefit analysis of custom development, here too, our decision on proceeding with a project or not should be viewed in terms of what’s gained for what is invested. While this isn’t always a clear one for one equation (unlike the financial side from part one), there’s often an equitable case to be made for the benefits.

Let us consider an example where the direct equation would be abstract, but where the benefit over time would be clear and easy to demonstrate. In our example, a company wants to spend a week’s worth of time setting up and training their workers on using OneDrive to consolidate shared documents by department, as a replacement for a series of traditional network drive repositories.

Now, we can all relate to the scenario where we need a form or document and there’s that brief moment of “Is this the latest document?” or “Does this have the revisions from last month?”; followed by the inevitable hunt for who “owns” that document and finding out what you need to know. For the investment of a week of time, in our scenario, we’d be switching our example company over to a system where the “live” version of the document could be edited, approved, and distributed within departments with a constant connection sync. Rob in accounting made a change? No problem, everyone has Rob’s latest version of the expense report now. Sara changed the contract wording? Legal already has the updates on their end.

So we take this time; the time wasted tracking down information about the documents and work already done, and for the investment of that project time, we’re eliminating it (not to mention the frustration and hair pulling by employees – hopefully their own). Now, we’re not saying every project time frame can be justified, just as not every project is feasible for every company. However, there’s often a consideration to be made before we look at a timeline and go “Where am I going to find the time to dedicate time to this?” That consideration is what the long term payout will be and if that payout makes it easier to overlook the initial investment of time.

Want to learn more about Arraya’s Application Development services? Visit https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/ to open up a dialogue with us today!

November 11, 2019 by Arraya Insights

More or the same, but probably not less. That projects to be the story of technology budgets in 2020 according to Spiceworks’ 2020 State of IT survey. Nearly half of participants (44%) said they expect technology budgets to increase in the new year while another 44% believe they will stay the same. For those who expect it, what’s behind that increase? “A need to upgrade outdated infrastructure” was the clear leader, ringing true to 64% of participants. That put it well ahead of the next most cited factors, “increased security concerns” and “employee growth” (cited by 47% each). Upgrades are undoubtedly a wise way to spend growing budgets, but just as with any other change, there are risks involved.

As technology environments are upgraded and refined, they grow more complex. Sometimes, they can even grow too complex. New technologies and licenses get layered on top of existing ones. This can cause costly redundancies, allowing legacy technologies to continue consuming valuable resources unnoticed. That’s to say nothing of the fact that new or upgraded solutions may not always work effortlessly alongside those already in the environment.

With technology upgrades on the minds of many, one item needs to be added to IT’s already crowded agenda prior to year’s end. This step can lead to more efficient, successful enhancements.

Preventing excess IT complexity

Before embarking on an upgrade, IT should first conduct an organization-wide technology assessment. The idea is to gain a more detailed understanding of the organization’s current IT landscape. This process should be used to document the full range of assets an organization controls, its licensing obligations and its staffing picture.

The knowledge drawn from an IT assessment can help protect against excess complexity as well as:

the so-called “technical debt” that can arise from moving too quickly to implement new solutions or upgrades, leading to costly and time-consuming rework later on
on-site shortages of the skills and expertise needed to continue managing and maintaining environments, both in their current iteration and as they pass through multiple versions
knowledge gaps pertaining to the contents of the environment and the way in which these solutions integrate with each other, which can lead to inefficient or incorrect upgrade paths as well as overlooked areas of improvement

Next Steps: Gain insights that promote more efficient IT upgrades

Of course, it’s easy to suggest performing this kind of comprehensive analysis. It’s a totally different story to find the time and the resources to execute it. That’s where Arraya Solutions can help. Our IT Assessment Service can assist any organization with mapping out the nuances of their IT environment. Every engagement is led by our team of subject matter experts as well as an experienced project manager and is able to be customized to meet the needs and objectives of individual organizations. Upon completion of the assessment, Arraya’s team can continue working shoulder-to-shoulder with key stakeholders to put the lessons learned into practice.

Want to find out more about Arraya’s IT Assessment Service or any of the other ways in which our team can help you build an even more secure and efficient IT posture? Visit https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/ to open up a dialogue with our team today!

November 7, 2019 by Arraya Insights

There’s a great amount of interest in custom-built applications – and quite a few misconceptions about them as well. Arraya’s Application Development team has encountered many of these, from concerns about complexity, use cases, and more. During this five-part series, our team will seek to dispel some of the more common misunderstandings about custom-built applications and shed light on a sometimes murky topic.

There is often an assumption that custom development work in general is far too expensive to be a worthwhile consideration. While this work is certainly not free, the value of investing in your own custom solution versus an existing product or a purely in-house effort needs to be measured in the advantages and savings afforded to your organization instead of purely by dollars and cents. Additionally, with modern development techniques and a good staff behind it, this process is often far shorter and thus less expensive than people assume.

Since custom development can cover virtually anything, let’s consider an example. You have a cloud solution; let’s say in Office 365 with SharePoint Online and Exchange. Your company regularly receives proposals and bids mailed in to a variety of your procurement department’s members. With the usual issue of people being human or out of the office, sometimes these important documents sit in an inbox waiting for someone to notice and address them, causing missed opportunities and expired deals.

One solution to this would be to create a custom tool and workflow in SharePoint Online and Exchange to field all of these incoming documents, sort them into a library and send notifications to the approvers who need to review these documents ASAP. The documents might also be sorted into views based on vendor, product type, or any other elements that could be realistically imagined.

Consider, if you will, what the immediate impact of having this system in place does. Incoming material is directed to a single email address, documents are accepted, processed, and placed in the right location by the system, and users are sent notifications when they are actually needed to take action. Though it may vary, a project of this nature could take a matter of weeks to complete and the cost is magnitudes less than expanding staff headcount or rolling out extensive training to have an augmented policy followed. For this investment, efficiency and ease of use have been improved while generally making the lives of those employees just a bit easier.

Beyond this, the better use of time and the reduction in lost opportunities will easily outweigh the single capital investment in the process, let alone when combined with the monetary value of your company doing business in a more cost effective manner. Even if we’re talking about saving an hour per week for 10 employees; you’re talking about 520 hours per year (less reduction to account for time away from the job). It doesn’t take long to see where these adjustments, even small ones, can add up significantly versus the cost of a project.

Want to learn more about Arraya’s Application Development services? Visit https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/ to open up a dialogue with us today!

October 22, 2019 by Arraya Insights

Last Thursday, Arraya Solutions held our 9^th annual Open House & Technology Day, however, 20 was the real number of the evening. The Open House is typically one of Arraya’s keystone events, however, this year held extra significance as it served to recognize Arraya’s 20^th anniversary. To help mark the occasion, the company welcomed a special guest, one who embodies the passion Arraya seeks to bring to every customer engagement: Philadelphia Eagles’ legend, #20 himself, Brian Dawkins.

“When I think about my longevity and the things I had to do in order not just to play for the Philadelphia Eagles but to play in the NFL period, there’s things I had to do. Focuses I had to have,” Dawkins said during an inspiring keynote address. He went on to share stories and lessons learned from his professional and personal lives that illuminated the habits as well as the mindset he developed which ultimately led to and sustained his success. Afterwards, Dawkins spent time signing autographs and taking pictures with attendees.

This year’s Open House was held in the Silos Ballroom of the Normandy Farm Hotel & Conference Center in Blue Bell, PA. The venue, which blends rustic and upscale, was a change of pace from recent Open House events, which for the last four years have been held at Arraya’s Plymouth Meeting headquarters. Given the special occasion, the venue change felt especially appropriate.

As with every Open House, relationships were at the forefront. “I could easily go around the room, looking at all of these faces, and tell a story about what you’ve done, either as a customer, partner, or employee, the contribution you’ve made to get us to where we are today,” Dan Lifshutz, Arraya’s CEO and co-founder, said during his own remarks.

Lifshutz also described how Arraya was able to overcome the odds and thrive for two decades when so many other businesses of similar sizes and specialization stumble. “People ask us all the time, how did you do it? We got lucky, sure. But the truth is, there was a lot more than that. We were guided by the three Ps: people, passion, and partners.”

He went on to break down the meaning behind each of these three elements. “The people, I alluded to earlier: It’s everyone here. We can’t possibly do what we do and go after our mission, without good people around us. Passion – All of us, from our engineers to our support folks, has a strong passion for technology and for customer service. Lastly, partners refers to our customer partners and our vendor partners. Our relationship is such that we all need to work together to succeed.”

On the topic of partnership, Lifshutz also made sure to call out the vendors who helped make the evening possible: Cisco, Cohesity, Dell EMC, IBM Security, Microsoft, Rubrik, StealthBits Technologies, Varonis, and VMware.

David Bakker, Arraya’s CTO and co-founder, reaffirmed the paramount importance of relationships in a video tribute to 20 years of Arraya. “Technology is easy, Bakker said. “If you want to go on AWS, Azure, GCP, you want to keep it on prem, if you want to build a Kubernetes stretch cluster across the world, we can do it. That’s the easy part. It’s really figuring out what’s the right solution for the customer.”

Lifshutz followed up on that thread from his fellow co-founder, adding: “We realize that’s part of our differentiation and we can’t wait to get after it for another 20 years.”

October 15, 2019 by Arraya Insights

Don’t think VMC on AWS is a good fit for your organization? That may have been the case at one point. However, VMware has rolled out roughly 25 updates of varying scope and function to VMC on AWS since last August. With some help from our Data Center team, we decided to cover one particular string of updates that could inspire you to take another look at VMC on AWS.

Before we go any further, however, first let’s talk about the problem those updates were deployed to solve. It’s no secret that storage and compute needs don’t always grow in tandem. This presented an issue for organizations using VMC on AWS. Organizations that needed more storage space could add hosts to their environment, but this would pump up both their storage and compute capacity. Since VMC on AWS is billed on a per-host basis, organizations would see their monthly bills go up on account of adding storage space they needed and compute capacity they didn’t.

As a solution, this one wasn’t all that great. Faced with this possibility, organizations with less predictable or linear growth would simply write off VMC on AWS as an option. Then, VMware and Amazon released Elastic vSAN.

Elastic vSAN: A better, more cost effective storage solution

Unveiled earlier this year, Elastic vSAN is a union of VMware’s vSAN and Amazon’s Elastic Block Store (EBS) technologies. ESB provides secure, reliable, and scalable block storage supported by Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. Elastic vSAN merges that with the enterprise-grade storage virtualization capabilities of vSAN.

The result is a much better answer for organizations in need of more VMC on AWS storage that would rather not incur the expense of adding hosts (and unnecessary compute capacity). Elastic vSAN makes it possible for organizations to decide early on how much per-host storage space they’ll require. VMC on AWS takes that information and populates a cluster automatically and accordingly, using native AWS tools like ESB to help carry the storage load.

Arraya’s Data Center team members have been big on the upside offered by Elastic vSAN for some time. In fact, they made sure to highlight it as one of the VMC on AWS features to watch in a blog post from this past spring. Their enthusiasm has only increased since that point.

What’s new with Elastic vSAN?

At this year’s VMworld conference, VMware announced the availability of Elastic vSAN in its fullest form to date. During the event, VMware debuted Elastic vSAN support for scaling up the storage capacity of AWS cluster hosts post-deployment. It’s worth noting this is a one-way street in that capacity can be scaled up but not down. Still, as we outlined above, this ability can make a big difference in organizational data center road maps moving forward.

Also, Elastic vSAN’s global footprint has grown in recent weeks. Upon its initial release, Elastic vSAN was only available in four AWS regions, specifically: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe Central (Frankfurt). That is no longer the case, however, as VMware and Amazon have brought Elastic vSAN to nine new regions, including US West (N. California) as well as regions in Asia, Europe, and Canada.

Given the evolution of Elastic vSAN so far, it seems the Arraya team isn’t the only one excited about what the solution has to offer.

Next steps: Is VMC on AWS right for you now?

Elastic vSAN’s ability to right-size storage capacity and cloud expenses promises to open VMC on AWS’s doors to organizations that may have otherwise been left out. If yours is ready to take another look (or a first look!) at VMC on AWS, Arraya’s Data Center team is here to help. Our experts will work with your team to analyze your existing environment and organizational objectives to determine if VMC on AWS is actually the right path. If you’d like to schedule an assessment or learn more about Elastic vSAN or VMC on AWS, reach out to us at: https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/.

Want to leave us a comment on this or any of our blog posts? You can always reach Arraya Solutions through social media. Look for us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. While you’re there, follow us to stay up to date on our industry insights and unique IT events.

October 10, 2019 by Arraya Insights

Are your organization’s on-premises files destined for life in a cloud-based platform, like Microsoft’s OneDrive for Business? It’s a common second step – after email – in many cloud journeys. It’s also one that, if not handled carefully, can lead to disruptions or worse, data loss.

Arraya’s Cloud and Workspace team has helped execute countless versions of this migration. Along the way, they’ve learned a thing or two about what it takes to make these moves as successful and as efficient as possible. We sat down with our team in order to learn more about making a smooth transition into OneDrive for Business.

Here are three steps they recommend taking prior to moving files offsite and into Microsoft’s OneDrive for Business or another cloud-based home.

Inventory existing file shares. Before setting out on a cloud migration, admins must make sure they have a complete picture of their existing on-prem environment. Digital sprawl has forced many organizations to upgrade and expand their storage environment on the fly, leading to a scenario where some files are stored here, some are stored there, etc. Moving forward without first mapping this system out can lead to choppy or unfinished migrations.
Consider file sizes. Part of pre-migration prep should involve looking at the size of the files earmarked for the cloud. Large files are naturally going to take longer to move. Organizations will need to adjust their project expectations to account for a number of larger files or maybe even alter their plan entirely. Failing to do so could cause delays, unavailable files, and ultimately sky-high user or customer frustrations.
Establish clear and appropriate naming conventions. This step can tie back to the first one on our list. If they haven’t done so already, organizations need to define clear file and folder naming conventions. This makes that first phase of a migration so much easier to perform. However, the benefits go beyond the initial migration. Logical naming conventions can make it easier for end users to navigate an environment and for admins to maintain it. Those with a more scattershot approach to naming should consider using the migration as an opportunity to change course. Additionally, attention should be paid to ensure a file’s name, in terms of length, characters used, etc., is compatible with its proposed landing spot.

Next Steps: Ensure a successful OneDrive for Business migration

Need a hand planning or executing your own move to cloud-based versions of file shares such as OneDrive for Business or SharePoint? Our Cloud and Workspace team can help. They have the experience and insights needed to steer projects around potential pitfalls, ensuring a smooth and secure journey to the cloud. You can open up the lines of communication with them today by heading to https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/.

Have some thoughts on this post? As always, we want to hear from you! Leave us a comment on this or any of our blog posts by way of social media. Arraya can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. While you’re there, follow us to stay up to date on our industry insights and unique IT learning opportunities.

October 8, 2019 by Arraya Insights

It’s finally happening – private channels have come to Microsoft Teams! The ability to create private channels within a given team has been a wish list item for Teams users and admins – and, likely, for Microsoft itself – for a considerable amount time. As of the end of last month, that wish has become a reality.

At Arraya, we count ourselves among those who’ve long clamored for private channels. Let’s take a look at why this feature has us and others so excited as well as what it means for those new to the Teams platform and early adopters alike.

What are private channels anyway?

First, let’s take a second to catch up those who haven’t been flooding Microsoft inboxes and message boards with requests for private channels. Essentially, this features will allow users and admins to create separate, invite-only lines of communication within a team. As it stood previously, all communication threads inside of a team were visible to every member of that team. This made it impossible for, say, leadership level resources to have a sidebar conversation within a team. Instead, they would need to create an entirely new team. At a time when many organizations are looking to streamline their Teams environment, being forced to create more teams isn’t very appealing. Private channels will provide a much-needed alternative. The important thing to note is that team owners can see all channels, private or otherwise, within their team. Members of that team, however, will only be able to see channels to which they’ve been granted access.

What will this take to enable?

Here’s an answer admins in particular will enjoy: nothing! There are no technical reconfigurations necessary to activate private channels. Microsoft began the process of rolling the feature out worldwide in early September. That’s the technical side. There are some things organizations may want to look at from a policy and general Teams management perspective. For example, organizations are advised to create or revisit policies and procedures governing and pertaining to channel creation. Furthermore, the inclusion of private channels may allow organizations to eliminate teams that can now exist as a channel.

Can I opt out?

There’s a ton of enthusiasm surrounding private channels but that doesn’t mean they’re for everyone. Some organizations may be, for whatever reason, unable to take advantage of this feature. While they can’t opt out from the private channel update, they can turn the feature off. Admins can disable private channels by following these steps:

In the Microsoft Teams admin center, click on Teams, then select Teams policies
Click Add
Enter a name and policy description
Use the slider next to Create private channels to deactivate (or reactivate) this feature
Click Save

This same basic process can also be followed to allow or prevent users to discover private teams in searches or to disallow it.

Next Steps: Learn more about private channels and Microsoft Teams

Is your organization weighing its options regarding the communication and collaboration platforms on the market? Or are you already using Teams? Either way, Arraya can help. Our experts can provide the strategic insights and hands-on skills necessary to help you build a more efficient collaboration environments.

If you’d like to talk more about private channels, Teams or how Arraya’s Microsoft Teams Governance and Compliance Services can help you take back control of your Teams environment, visit https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/. Our Cloud and Workspace Team is ready to answer any questions you might have.

Have some thoughts about this post? We want to hear from you! Leave us a comment on this or any of our blog posts through social media. Arraya can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. While you’re there, follow us to stay updated on our industry insights and unique IT events.

September 25, 2019 by Arraya Insights

Here’s an encouraging stat: Nearly all (99%) of email-based threats like phishing are totally harmless in and of themselves. In order to become dangerous, they require some type of user interaction, whether that’s clicking on a link, opening an attachment, etc. Yet, email remains a highly popular and lucrative attack vector. In fact, phishing ranks as the leading cause of data breaches according to Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report. What do these two things tell us? Cyber criminals have gotten very good at getting users to interact with compromised messages.

There’s a clear, finely-tuned psychological element behind that success rate. Criminals have learned how to manipulate people into behaving in a certain way. Researchers from the University of Florida and Google picked apart this phenomenon in order to learn what makes these attacks so effective. One reason is that phishing targets the part of the brain dedicated to making quick decisions. Researchers noted how people agonize over important decisions while others are made automatically, without thinking. For most, clicking on links in emails falls into that second camp. They don’t take the time to stop and think “Is this something I should be doing?” It’s a reflex.

Phishing attacks may also play off a target’s emotions. Those same researchers found people with higher levels of stress tended to be more skeptical and were better at sniffing out scams. Attackers also know this and often program against it. Some phishing campaigns are structured to put victims in a good mood, thus lowering their stress level (and their guard!). That, in turn, makes them more likely to click on a link or attachment.

Another way attackers look to slip past a person’s defenses is by impersonating a source the victim trusts. In some cases this might be a boss or another authority figure. That trusted source could also be a company. Security firm Vade Secure regularly publishes a list of the companies most often impersonated during phishing attacks. The latest leaders in the clubhouse? Microsoft, PayPal, Facebook, Netflix and Bank of America. Microsoft, with its highly-valuable Office 365 credentials, has held the top spot on this list for five quarters running. Actually, this exact collection of companies made up the top five last quarter as well, only in a different order.

Masquerading convincingly as Microsoft isn’t just a psychological endeavor. It also requires some heavy-lifting on the technology side. Criminals have taken to swiping code from legitimate Microsoft websites and using it to make the line between their attack and the real thing almost imperceptible to even the most eagle-eyed, battle-hardened user.

5 telltale signs of phishing emails

While the picture painted above is pretty bleak, things are most certainly not hopeless. There’s plenty that organizations – and end users – can do to protect themselves. The best thing is to slow down. Sure, that’s easier said than done. Before a user interacts with an email – remember, 99% of the time, interaction is key – have them mentally run through a checklist of common phishing warning signs. This can slow them down just enough to get ahead of attackers.

Excessive or suspicious typos. At first glance, typos can be easy to miss. Also, they may not even be an indicator of a threat, just that the person on the other end of the email was in a hurry. Still, too many misspellings and misspellings in certain places are major red flags. That “@micorsoft” domain name in the sender’s email address might not be instantly noticeable at first, but it’s a near-certain indicator of a threat. Other typos, like continually misspelling a company or contact’s name are worth noting.
Uncommon groupings. Users tend to see the same names popping up in messages they’re CC’d on. It could be other people in their department, people they’re working on a project with, etc. They should be suspicious if they’re suddenly CC’d on a message with a group of names they don’t usually see. If the collection of names appears random or if it has a rudimentary pattern (like all of the last names start with the same letter), users may want to look at it more closely – or even better, send it to the security team for further analysis.
Misleading hyperlinks. When it comes to phishing attacks, the truth is often in the hyperlinks. Encourage users to hover their cursor over a hyperlink prior to clicking on it. They should look for telltale signs of foul play like web addresses that don’t match the supposed sender. Typos again come into play. Attackers will often purposefully misspell something to make a fraudulent site look legit. For example: rnicrosft.com instead of microsoft.com.
Unrequested follow ups. Something can’t be dangerous if it’s just following up an earlier message, right? Attackers love to exploit that line of thinking by creating bogus subject lines that make threats appear to be nothing more than harmless responses to a user’s original message. If a user doesn’t recall sending that initial email, and there’s no sign of it in his or her sent mail folder, there’s a good chance that message should be regarded as a threat.
Unusual behavior. There’s a rhythm to the average workday and no one knows that better than the user who lives it each week. He or she knows when to expect given messages and requests. That’s not to say surprises don’t happen. However, if a billing request comes through in the middle of the night, one that usually arrives safely during business hours, users may want to think twice before interacting with it in any way.

Next steps: Give your organization the tools it needs to fight phishing attempts

Really, the best defense users have against phishing attempts is their gut. If something feels wrong, then there’s no harm in calling in the experts to check it out. The key is giving them the knowledge to recognize threats and empowering them to slow down and assess a situation before reacting. Arraya’s Cyber Security team can help facilitate the training users need to be ready for the worst today’s cyber criminals have to offer. Visit https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/ to open up a dialogue with our team today!