Arraya Insights

April 30, 2019 by Arraya Insights

Since the tail end of last year, our Data Center team has been helping us unpack the hype surrounding VMC on AWS. So far, through three blog posts, we’ve covered how this partnership simplifies data center migrations, introduces new layers of security through NSX microsegmentation, and alleviates some common disaster recovery pain points. The final topic our team wants to explore as part of this series concerns VMC on AWS tools native to the solutions and how they contribute to the hype surrounding it and the value it can provide.

The catalog of AWS native tools is nothing short of daunting. Diving into every unique application and its associated use cases would require its own blog series. Instead, our team decided to focus on three tools that, from their perspective, generate the most positive industry buzz.

Each of the following VMC on AWS tools is available to those using VMware and Amazon’s cloud service. After we look into each one, our team will also preview a feature on its way to VMC on AWS. This upcoming feature could soon join the ranks of the most talked about and leveraged.

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Managing organizational databases is a time and resource-intensive job. Staying on top of security, monitoring performance, backup – all of these tasks (and more) can eat up much of an admin’s workday. The longer that admin is tied up with necessary, but routine, maintenance tasks, the less time he or she has for projects that push the business forward.

Amazon RDS through VMC on AWS provides a database as-a-service experience, allowing organizations to free database admins by automating the time-consuming tasks above. RDS can also automate failover, minimizing downtime in the event of a worst-case scenario.

When it’s time for an application to scale, RDS can help there too. It can provide the room apps need to scale, requiring little more than a few clicks to provision the necessary compute or storage assets. RDS also works across the most popular database engines on the market, including SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and more. This ensures operational continuity as organizations can continue using the tools with which they’re most familiar.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

For many modern organizations, complexity has become a defining characteristic of the data center. Skyrocketing demands surrounding capacity, durability, etc. have pushed some to pursue best-of-breed solutions to those problems. However, a piecemeal approach can result in environments that are increasingly difficult for IT pros to manage and secure.

The name of Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) feature says it all. This Amazon native tool can deliver vast, easily scalable quantities of reliable object-based storage to VMC on AWS shops. Organizations can relocate as much as they choose into S3, paying only for the space they use. That data can be anything, including backups, IoT-generated analytics and beyond, all with a guaranteed durability of eleven 9s (99.999999999%).

Also, S3 enables unmatched, granular data control. Admins can manage their data at either the account, bucket, or object level. It doesn’t matter if they’re replicating, auditing, or performing some other management task. They can do so across any level.

Elastic vSAN

The last presently available feature our Data Center team wanted to highlight is also one of the most recent additions to the VMC on AWS tool chest. The hardware upon which customers’ VMC on AWS deployments are built comes with a fixed amount of useable block storage. However, among adopters there was a growing demand for more storage space and more compute power to go along with it.

Enter Elastic vSAN. This tool combines Amazon’s Elastic Block Store with VMware’s vSAN storage solution. Organizations can use this feature to expand their available storage capacity using Amazon’s own native block storage.

Furthermore, Elastic vSAN is able to reduce downtime in the event of a problem through its auto-remediation feature. If an issue affects a given host, a replacement will become available and automatically incorporated to ensure service continuity.

Coming Soon: VMC on AWS Outposts

Finally, VMC on AWS Outposts is a new tool set to arrive during the second half of 2019. For a variety of reasons, not all data is able to reside in the public cloud. VMC on AWS Outposts intends to bring a SDDC infrastructure as-a-service experience to these otherwise grounded data sets.

As part of VMC on AWS Outposts, organizations will gain access to software-defined services covering compute, storage, security, and more. This solution will be able to run VMs, containers, and Kubernetes-based apps in the hybrid cloud, one based inside either a customer’s own data center or at a designated co-lo facility.

Next Steps: Further your VMC on AWS knowledge and skills

Want to learn more about VMC on AWS tools or the solution as a whole? You can reach out to our Data Center team at any time by heading to https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/.

VMC on AWS will also be one of the featured topics at the 5th Annual Arraya Tech Summit. This by techs, for techs event features a full day of deep dives into the topics and trends impacting today’s IT professional. The session, VMC on AWS and What It Might Mean for the Present (& Future) of the Data Center, will focus extensively on VMC on AWS as the true hybrid cloud solution. Attendees will gain a greater understanding of VMC on AWS’s role in the evolution of the data center, particularly as it pertains to disaster recovery, hybrid integration, and cyber security.

The Arraya Tech Summit will take place on June 6th at the Sheraton Valley Forge in King of Prussia, PA. To learn more or reserve your spot, visit: https://events.arrayasolutions.com/.

April 26, 2019 by Arraya Insights

Cloud migrations continue driving technology spend skyward and there’s no shortage of studies demonstrating that fact. Earlier this year, we published a blog post citing Gartner research projecting overall IT spend to grow by 3.2% worldwide and cloud-specific spend to rise by 17.5%. Since then, we’ve come across others, including CIO/IDG’s Tech Poll: Tech Priorities 2019, which found more than half (57%) of IT executives expected their budgets to go up, with 67% crediting the cloud for that growth. Despite the abundance of buzzy research, for many of the workloads that move to the cloud, the journey to the public cloud has proved to be disappointingly circular.

IDC’s 2018 Cloud and AI Adoption Survey showed 80% of IT decision-makers have seen their organizations relocate data or applications from the public cloud to either a private cloud or simply an on premises environment. Moreover, respondents said they plan to migrate 50% of their applications out of the public cloud, preferring to house them in either an on-premises or private cloud environment. IDC cited security concerns (19%), performance issues (14%), and cost (12%) as being chiefly responsible for cloud repatriation initiatives.

Of course, going to the public cloud only to come back onsite again is not ideal. It’s costly, particularly if an on-premises environment needs to be re-provisioned to accommodate that influx of data. Onsite workloads lose that easy scalability that motivates so many cloud migrations in the first place. Also, it’s incorrect to assume either onsite or private cloud-based workflows are automatically more secure than those that reside in the public cloud. Few organizations have the technological prowess, let alone the budgets, possessed by leading cloud vendors like Microsoft and AWS. They’re bigger targets, sure. They’re also way out in front of the pack as far as cyber security goes.

‘Ruthlessly’ preventing cloud repatriation

So, in short, cloud repatriation may not even actually solve the problems leading organizations to consider it. Instead, the better plan is to take more strategic approach the cloud. The U.S. Army recently shared some advice on how it does exactly that.

At FCW’s recent Cloud Summit, Thomas Sasala (Director of Operations and Architecture and Chief Data Officer at the Headquarters, Department of the Army, Office of the Chief Information Officer [CIO]/G-6) discussed the U.S. Army’s strategy for optimizing cloud migrations. During his session, Sasala laid out a tactic that could prove instrumental to avoiding future cloud repatriation.

Sasala emphasized that the cloud isn’t the right home for every workload. Too many organizations believe the opposite to be true. Then, they fall into the trap of moving everything into the cloud, spiking their costs and slowing their migrations only to be ultimately disappointed by the result. Rather than cramming everything they can into the cloud, they must be more “ruthless” when it comes to migrations. Sasala recommends leveraging what he and his team describe as “ruthless rationalization.”

Before a workload moves to the cloud, Sasala and his team seek to tie it to a provable, mission-critical justification. If they can’t come up with one, the workload remains onsite. The key is to be truly ruthless, picking apart false conclusions or flimsy arguments. This is something Sasala feels is possible only with the full support of organizational leadership. Without that high-level support, it’s too easy to circumvent, ignore, or overrun the policy.

Next Steps: Lean on the insights and expertise of a cloud partner

Need a hand plotting your cloud migration? Or, are you still waiting to experience the upsides envisioned during your initial planning? Arraya can help. Our Cloud Optimize services empower organizations to thrive in the cloud, no matter where they are on the journey. Our experts will work alongside you to find the right cloud provider for your needs, optimize your ongoing cloud spend, or reveal hidden operational inefficiencies. Please visit https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/ to learn more about what Cloud Optimize can do for your organization.

We want to hear from you! Let us know what you think of this blog 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 with our industry insights and unique IT learning opportunities.

April 11, 2019 by Arraya Insights

SharePoint Online can go a long way toward boosting organizational efficiency – however not all of its most helpful features are configured out of box. Some may not even appear to exist at all. The latter is true of one of SharePoint on-prem’s more-popular capabilities: incoming email. While this time and headache-saving ability doesn’t exist in SharePoint Online yet, you can spin up an approximation of it. Even better, doing so doesn’t require a deep understanding of and devotion to all things SharePoint.

Before we get into how to bring this feature (more or less) to SharePoint Online, let’s talk a little more about why you’d want to do so. As mentioned above, it can save time and headaches. How? Incoming email allows users to email documents directly to a SharePoint library instead of to another user. This ensures key business documents will be available to those who need them – even if a contact forgets to include everyone on the initial email.

So, how can we bring an incoming email-like feature to SharePoint Online? We sat down with our Application Services team to get their advice on how to make it happen.

Enabling incoming email in SharePoint Online

There are actually a couple of ways to realize this functionality, but our team recommends leveraging Microsoft Flow. Here’s a step-by-step look at what you’ll need to do:

Step 1: Create a shared mailbox in Office 365. First, you’ll need to spin up a new mailbox and tie it to a SharePoint document library. Shared mailboxes make the most sense because they don’t require their own license, but a user mailbox will also work. Tip: For new mailboxes, use an address that reflects its purpose, e.g., SOWs@company.com.

Step 2: Select a Flow. This step sounds like it may involve some heavy lifting, but the template for enabling SharePoint incoming email already exists. To use it, click “Explore Templates” and then search for “save my email attachment to SharePoint document library” within Microsoft Flow. From there, you’ll be able to create the Flow. However, that’s not quite all.

Step 3: Configure the mailbox side of the Flow. Even though the process exists, there are still some adjustments to be made. Start by adding the newly-created shared mailbox from Step 1 to the process using the “Add new connection” option. After that, click on the folder next to the text box reading “Mail folder to check for new emails.” Inside this window, select “Inbox” as well as set any appropriate triggers, e.g., “Has Attachment” and “Includes Attachment” to ensure the Flow triggers as intended.

Step 4: Configure the SharePoint piece of the Flow. With half of the Flow set, let’s look at the SharePoint side of things. Here’s what you need to do to ensure attachments are routed to the correct folder. In the “Apply to each attachment on the email” window, you’ll be able to designate the address of the desired SharePoint site in the Site Address bar. Then, enter its destination into the Folder Path field.

That’s it! You’ll want to test out the process with a dummy email and attachment to ensure everything is functioning correctly before turning it loose in the wild. However, if you followed the steps above, you should be able to enjoy all of those benefits of incoming email that we discussed above while in SharePoint Online.

Next steps: Get the most out of your SharePoint environment

Interested in learning more about how to optimize your SharePoint environment? Arraya’s SharePoint Development Services cover all aspects of building and maintaining a reliable, cutting-edge and cloud-based collaborative environment. Our team of SharePoint experts can work with stakeholders to design and support a SharePoint platform that can boost organization-wide efficiency and help businesses gain a leg up on their competition. We’d love to start a conversation around how we can help you reach your goals. Get started here.

April 9, 2019 by Arraya Insights

Cognitive collaboration from Cisco is a new initiative designed to alleviate headaches surrounding a workday staple: meetings. Nothing brings employees from all teams and levels of an organization together quite like being annoyed by meetings. In that way, they’ve become something of a great corporate unifier. While it’s unlikely Cisco’s cognitive collaboration effort will transform meetings into anyone’s favorite time of day, the tech giant has its sights on making them more productive and efficient – and less painful.

First, let’s start by figuring out what Cisco means by cognitive collaboration anyway. Essentially, it refers to a collection of upcoming features intended to bring greater context and intelligence to Webex meetings. It accomplishes this by blending artificial intelligence and machine learning with Cisco’s Webex platform.

Here’s a closer look at some of the new features coming soon to Webex meetings and how they address some of the most frustrating parts of meetings:

Automatically put a face to a name. It’s tough to remember who’s who when facing a room (or screen) full of unfamiliar people. Also, traditional roundtable introductions can drain precious time from packed agendas. Cisco cognitive collaboration solves these challenges by leveraging in-room sensors and facial recognition technology to identify meeting attendees automatically. Onscreen, a bubble will appear underneath each person containing his or her name and title.
Go beyond just a face and a name. Plenty of work goes into prepping for a meeting. In a study conducted by Dimensional Research, nearly 30% of respondents said they devote up to 5 hours a week to researching people and companies before meeting with them. Cognitive collaboration is capable of handling this research itself. Its people insights tool mines the public internet to find helpful information on attendees and displays its findings in an onscreen window next to attendees. This provides that additional layer of familiarity without the need for time-consuming pre-meeting research.
A hands-free way to get things done. Digital assistants are a fixture in many personal lives and they are becoming an expectation in the workplace. Cisco’s cognitive collaboration brings the hands-free, voice-activated convenience of digital assistants to Webex meetings. All it takes is a simple “Hey Webex!” or “OK, Webex …” and attendees can launch meetings, reach out to relevant contacts or even gain insights into the status of a resource, like room availability.
Get up and running faster. There’s a little more to most meetings these days than walking down to the nearest conference room. In fact, that same Dimensional Research study found more than four-in-ten (43%) employees have struggled at some point to join an online meeting. Additionally, 70% of people who set up meetings say participants tend to arrive late. Cisco’s cognitive collaboration can prevent start up delays through a couple of different methods. When a scheduled meeting’s start time gets close, the digital assistant can check with attendees and connect them if they’re ready. Furthermore, a feature called Proactive Join can leverage a person’s calendar and smart device to track when they enter a meeting room and automatically ask them if they’d like to join the online portion.

Next Steps: Let Cisco cognitive collaboration transform your meetings

Cisco plans to roll all of these capabilities and more out over the next several months. If you’d like to dive deeper in to any of the above topics, or find out how to bring cognitive collaboration to your organization, reach out to Arraya today! Our engineers have years of experience helping customers of all shapes and sizes design and build the right communication and collaboration environment for them. Start a dialogue now by visiting: https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/.

Also, don’t forget, you can leave us a comment on this or any of our blogs through 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.

April 5, 2019 by Arraya Insights

In Dell EMC’s 2018 Global Data Protection Index, 95% of organizations surveyed admitted facing at least one data protection challenge, but it’s that other 5% that has us worried. Data protection is becoming an existential issue. It’s hard to imagine any business feeling confident enough to call themselves challenge-free. It raises the question, are those organizations ready for anything, data protection-wise, or are they overestimating their capabilities? Is an unnoticed, unaddressed challenge waiting to do significant damage?

From the outside, it’s impossible to say if the confidence demonstrated by that 5% is justified. However, there’s no doubt about the consequences of failing to keep data secure. Elsewhere, the study revealed companies had lost, on average, 2.13TB of data over the last year, a total carrying a price tag of just shy of a million dollars. That’s in addition to suffering an average of 20 hours of unplanned downtime in the last 12 months, costing them more than $526K.

Given the costs incurred by those whose data protection efforts have come up short, let’s go back to the challenges faced by the majority of survey participants. We’ll look at where others are struggling in order to help you see where your own efforts stack up.

7 all-too-common data protection challenges

According to Dell EMC’s research, the most common data protection challenges faced by modern organizations are:

Overly complex data protection solutions. Just under half of participants (46%) struggled to feel comfortable managing or operating the various technologies making up their data protection environment.
Excessive costs triggered by rapid data growth. Once again, nearly half (46%) of those surveyed found it difficult to keep up with the costs of backing up the ever-increasing amount of data their organizations take in.
Industry-wide technology innovations outpacing protection capabilities. Solutions like machine learning and artificial intelligence have a lot to offer modern organizations. However, roughly 45% said those solutions – and similar innovations – have exceeded what traditional approaches to data protection can handle.
Internal progress outpacing protection capabilities. The allure of DevOps and the cloud have allowed organizations to take massive steps forward in terms of productivity, but they’ve also forced 40% of participants on their heels as far as data protection is concerned.
Ensuring compliance with strict regulations. Just over 4-in-10 (41%) of participants have struggled to manage the pressures generated by staying compliant with the vast and diverse web of industry and government regulations encircling their organizations.
Internal technologies and architectures fall short. For 35% of those surveyed, there’s a will to succeed with data protection, but not a way as of yet. These IT pros have seen their efforts on that front stymied by poor-performing hardware or clogged networks.
Overstuffed internal databases. The final challenge standing between 31% of respondents and their data protection objectives was overtaxing due to growing organizational databases.

Next steps: Ensure your data protection capabilities are up to snuff

Is your organization one of the 95% of companies struggling to overcome one or more of the above challenges? Or, if you count yourself among the 5% of those not facing any, when’s the last time you tested that mindset? Arraya’s Data Management experts can help. Our team has helped organizations of all shapes and sizes audit their data security obligations as well as design and deploy environments engineered to address their challenges. Start a conversation with them today: https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/.

You can learn more about one of the leading data protection solutions by joining us on April 11th at the Dell EMC offices in Conshohocken, PA. Arraya will be holding a guided test drive of the tech giant’s Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA). Dell EMC’s IDPA provides reliable, efficient data protection across a variety of use cases, including cloud, hyperconverged and multi-site. During this full day session, attendees will gain a technical and a tactical understanding of IDPA’s role in data protection. To reserve your spot for this exclusive event, head to: https://www.arrayasolutions.com//event/dell-emc-idpa-test-drive/.

We want to hear from you! Leave us a comment on this or any of our posts through social media. Arraya can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Also, remember to follow us to stay up to date on our industry insights and unique IT learning opportunities.

April 1, 2019 by Arraya Insights

Is VMC on AWS really worth the hype? Late last year, we posed that question to the members of Arraya’s Data Center team and they set out to answer it over the course of a series of blog posts, each looking at a different facet of the VMC on AWS platform. To date, we’ve covered how VMC on AWS can alleviate disaster recovery pain points and un-complicate hybrid cloud management. Both of these are sizeable issues, however, there is a proverbial elephant in the room we have yet to address. For many, it’s where cloud conversations begin and, unfortunately, can end.

More than three-quarters (77%) of technology pros say security is a challenge raised by the cloud – almost three-in-ten (29%) call it a significant one. That’s the case according to RightScale’s 2018 State of the Cloud Report. Security isn’t only a barrier to entry. It continues to be a challenge even as organizations move further along in their cloud journeys. A separate study, the State of Hybrid Cloud Security: 2019 conducted by Firemon, found 60% of IT pros struggling to keep up with the rapid movement of business services into the cloud. This may have exposed some of those workloads to attack.

Given that security is a critical part of every technology conversation, particularly those involving the cloud, we thought the time was right to tackle this subject in regard to VMC on AWS. To do so, we’ll need to take a trip back to last summer and revisit a significant VMware announcement.

Bringing NSX-T and microsegmentation to VMC on AWS

During the summer of 2018, VMware and Amazon brought the network and security management capabilities of NSX to workloads hosted on AWS by introducing support for NSX-T. As a result of this change, microsegmentation can now be a part of the VMC on AWS conversation moving forward. Admins can leverage NSX-T’s distributed firewall to deploy microsegmentation policies at the virtual machine-level. This is possible internally, within the same L2 network, or across multiple L3 networks.

However, microsegmentation isn’t the only new ability coming to the platform thanks to the introduction of NSX-T. Here are five other ways the NSX-T update is making VMC on AWS simpler, smarter and more secure:

Security Groups – Admins can now group objects to ensure a more exact and consistent application of security policies. Groups can cover a variety of criteria, including IP address, VM instance, VM name or VM security tag. This promotes a greater security without increasing hands-on work.
Streamlined Configuration – Segmentation, as well as VMC on AWS’s networking and security functions, can now be managed directly through the console itself. This makes it easier for admins to manage the flow of traffic within their network. Plus, they can do so without installing extra plug-ins as was previously the case.
Automated Route Recognition – Admins can configure networks connecting in-house deployments and VMC on AWS so that they’re automatically recognizable by traffic. Beyond just simplifying the process, this can also help prevent errors caused by hands-on network management. Furthermore, NSX-T allows admins to add greater redundancy (and reliability) into their networks through the use of IPSec VPN and boarder gateway protocol (BGP) configuration.
Increased Network Connectivity – NSX-T joins together the compute gateway and management gateway as an out-of-box feature, meaning there’s no need to deploy any additional VPN technology to achieve this interoperability. Admins can deploy a variety of functionality on the compute side and have it seamlessly interact with supporting infrastructure.
Simplified Traffic Management – The NSX-T update doesn’t only reduce the need for supplementary VPN technology in terms of connectivity, it also, in some cases, can eliminate it. NSX-T redesigned traffic flow so most of it can traverse the AWS Direct Connect Virtual Interfaces instead of VPN. This includes all data traveling between onsite infrastructure and VMC on AWS.

Next Steps: Take the VMC on AWS discussion outside our blog

Have you been following along with our ongoing VMC on AWS series? Let’s turn this into a two-way conversation. Visit https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/ to engage with Arraya’s Data Center team today. Our experts can offer insights into whether VMC on AWS could bolster your cyber security efforts. They can help you analyze your business needs and determine if VMC on AWS really is the right fit.

Want to share your two cents on this topic? Leave us a comment on this or any of our blogs through social media. Arraya can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. While you’re there, follow us to stay up to date with our industry insights and unique IT learning opportunities.

March 21, 2019 by Arraya Insights

January 14, 2020 is either the day that Windows 7 goes end of support or it’s just another Tuesday. If your organization isn’t in that second camp yet, you are far from alone. A recent survey from Computer Weekly and TechTarget found just over half of IT pros (52%) see upgrading Windows as their top desktop project. This upgrade has held the top spot for several years running on this list. Given that the clock is ticking on Windows 7, the 2020 version will likely see a new champion crowned.

If you haven’t already, it’s time to start stoking the “life after Windows 7” conversations inside your organization. These discussions typically go one of two directions and our Cloud and Workspace team members are no strangers to either. Depending on the path your company chooses, here are some follow up questions that need to be asked and answered.

Decision #1: We’re migrating to Windows 10.

Sure, there are other landing spots besides Windows 10, but options such as Windows 8.1 are already outside of mainstream support. As the most modern, secure version of Windows available, Windows 10 makes the most sense for organizations looking to leave Windows 7 behind. Yet, there are some points to nail down beforehand, including:

“Are we prepared to keep up with Windows 10 updates?” Windows 10’s upgrade schedule works a little differently than what most IT teams have encountered. Essentially, a new version of Windows 10 comes out every six months and has a limited support period. This means IT will need to update user devices far more regularly than they needed to previously. By no means should this be a deal-breaker. It’s just something to be aware of and strategize for early on.
“How will our apps respond?” No organization wants to find itself unexpectedly unable to use a mission critical app due to a desktop upgrade. Concerns about exactly that have caused many to drag their feet rather than embrace Windows 10. IT teams and business units must set aside time to take stock of the apps the company relies upon and test them for compatibility. Note: Microsoft’s new Desktop App Assure program has taken some of the bite out of this topic. According to Chris Jackson, a Principal Program Manager in the Experiences and Devices Group,“if an app works on a previous version of Windows and, when you update to the latest version of Windows 10, it stops working, we’ll fix it for free.”
“Are we open to a hardware refresh?” Industry consensus states that older devices and Windows 10 don’t always play nice. As such, if a move to Windows 10 is in the cards so too may be a hardware refresh. Organizations will need to make sure their IT teams (and budgets) are prepared to handle the added complexity this step introduces. If not, it may mean working with a partner to shoulder the workload or rolling Windows 10 out in strategically determined waves.

Decision #2: We’re sticking with Windows 7 … for now.

As most in technology know, the end doesn’t always really mean the end. There are options available to organizations that, for whatever reason, are unable to make the move to Windows 10 yet. These organizations will be able to continue to use a legacy solution safely as they make the necessary arrangements for their long-term desktop future. Those pursuing this path should consider:

“Should we choose Windows 7 Extended Support?” Organizations looking to keep Windows 7 after January 14, 2020 can do so, but it will cost them. Windows 7 Extended Support tacks an additional three years onto Window 7’s shelf life, providing access to critical security updates. The cost of this service varies depending on the licensing, but one thing is consistent. Windows 7 Extended Support gets more expensive each year organizations use it, something that will need to be budgeted for accordingly.
“Is Windows Virtual Desktop a better fit for us?” Powered by Azure, Windows Virtual Desktop can serve as a pipeline for Windows 7 security updates after January 14, 2020. Organizations that choose this option won’t pay explicitly for the additional support, however they will need to pay for Windows Virtual Desktop itself. The thing is, this platform is available in several Microsoft bundles, making it a potentially more appealing option than bolting on Windows 7 Extended Support.

Next Steps: Planning for Windows 7 End of Support and Beyond

Our team of Workspace and Cloud experts can help you design and execute a successful post-Windows 7 strategy. Through our AutoPilot and Intune Acceleration service, they can not only jump start your Windows 10 upgrade but enable you to manage your device fleet from the cloud. Visit https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/ to start a dialogue with them today.

We want to hear from you! Leave us a comment on this or any of our blogs by way of social media. Arraya can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Also, remember to follow us to stay up to date on our industry insights and unique IT learning opportunities.

March 13, 2019 by Arraya Insights

Last week, Citrix became the latest victim of a high-profile data breach while Equifax, a perennial cyber security punching bag, was raked over the coals by Congress. Both stories represent valuable learning opportunities for organizations seeking to avoid a similar fate. Let’s review each story, then we’ll share some insights into how companies can protect themselves.

Passwords exploited to trigger Citrix data breach

In a recent blog post, Citrix CSIO Stan Black announced the global software provider was investigating unauthorized access to its organizational network. Black’s brief post stuck to the basics of the incident. It detailed how, earlier this month, the FBI alerted Citrix that international cyber criminals had breached the company’s defenses. Later, the post mentioned that attackers utilized a technique called password-spraying. Basically, they attempted to access a large number of accounts using a small list of common passwords. Once inside, they used this initial foothold to gain greater access to Citrix’s network. Also in his post, Black confirmed that, while the company’s investigation is ongoing, it appears attackers accessed and downloaded business documents.

Industry news outlets and observers shared a few more details. For example, Resecurity, a security firm that claims to have alerted Citrix of the situation back in December, identified the attackers as the Iranian-backed IRIDIUM, which has made a name for itself targeting governments, utilities, and technology companies. Additionally, the firm believes attackers accessed at least 6TB of sensitive internal Citrix data, including emails. For its part, Citrix did stress there’s no sign the breach touched any products or services.

Resecurity also theorized the attack was a decade in the making. According to the firm, IRIDIUM hackers may have been lurking inside Citrix’s network for nearly ten years. They also believe the actual theft took place over two months, timed to coincide with the holiday season.

Equifax called out by Congress for its data breach

Since suffering a data breach dubbed “the biggest failure to safeguard public data to date” in 2017, Equifax has been locked in the angry glare of the American public and media. Most recently, it was the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’ turn to tee off on the credit bureau. In a rare display of bipartisanship, the subcommittee tore into Equifax via a recently released report.

Among the report’s most cringe-worthy moments? A critique leveled against Equifax for allowing a “broad culture of complacency toward cyber security preparedness” to take root. No business wants that reputation in 2019. Not even one that consumers are powerless to disassociate themselves from. The subcommittee’s report comes at a time when demand for a national cyber security and data privacy standard is on the rise. Although, it remains to be seen exactly what, if anything, will come of this increased call for data regulation.

4 security best practices Citrix & Equifax may have overlooked

No organization wants to end up the victim of a data breach, but in at least one way, Citrix and Equifax can count themselves lucky. Why? Both of these organizations are large enough to take these incidents on the chin and survive. Not all businesses can say the same. In fact, research from the National Cyber Security Alliance indicates 60% of SMBs burned by cyber criminals go out of business within six months. Given the existential threat posed by data breaches, we wanted to highlight a few areas where Citrix and Equifax fell short in order to help others avoid doing the same:

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) – Techniques like password-spraying are only effective as standalone methods of attack if 2FA isn’t in place. Best practice is to roll out 2FA for all users, at every business level. This ensures hackers are going to have to work much harder to breach an organization’s perimeter defenses.
Patching schedules – When IT gets busy, patching schedules are an easy thing to set aside. Easy, but not safe. The risks of doing so are demonstrated by Equifax’s incident and were put on blast in Congress’s report. If onsite IT doesn’t have the bandwidth to set and stick to a patching schedule, it’s important to seek out a partner who can help.
Password policies – Common passwords, like those found on the list likely employed by Citrix’s password-spraying attackers, should never be allowed. Policies governing the complexity and lifespan of passwords may not be popular. However, pushing users to leverage stronger codes is an easy way to improve organizational security.
Security culture – Congress publicly decried Equifax’s complacent cyber security culture. Inevitably, security culture starts at the top. Executive leaders should participate in the security process and, whenever possible, demonstrate public support for password policies, 2FA, etc.

Next Steps: Putting lessons learned from Citrix & Equifax into action

Want to learn more about how to keep your organization’s data out of the wrong hands and its name out of the (negative) headlines? Arraya Solutions Cyber Security team can help provide the vision as well as the hands-on expertise needed to do both. Strike up a conversation with them today by visiting https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/.

Also, you can leave us a comment on this or any of our blogs through social media. Arraya can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Remember to follow us to stay up to date on our industry insights and unique IT learning opportunities.

March 7, 2019 by Arraya Insights

On a scale of “We haven’t started yet” to “We’ve reached operational maturity,” how would you describe your efforts to transform into a digital workplace? Most, according to CMS Wire and DWG’s latest State of the Digital Workplace report, believe they remain in the early stages (46%). That’s the case even though almost three-quarters of respondents (74%) ranked digital workplace initiatives as somewhere between important and extremely important in terms of priority. Despite the enthusiasm, plenty seem to be struggling to move further along in the process. When researchers checked into the reasons for this, they encountered an all-too-familiar road block.

Financial constraints landed atop the challenges most often faced by IT leaders pursuing the digital workplace, cited by 34.8% of participants. Peppered throughout the rest of the list were obstacles shaped by corporate culture. This included issues such as competing initiatives or departments (28%), siloed systems and data (26.8%), lack of cross-departmental collaboration (17.1%), and a lack of executive support (10.4%). While the power of the purse is likely to remain outside of IT’s jurisdiction, the above cultural challenges may soon be very much within its reach.

Research and analysis giant Gartner predicts that in just two years, technology leaders and HR could have the exact same amount of responsibility for molding organizational culture. This evolution is a byproduct of the increasingly central role technology plays within modern businesses. Now, the decisions made by technology leaders influence all parts of an organization, right down to the ways in which co-workers interact.

Creating a digital workplace-friendly culture

So, how can technology leaders leverage their growing cultural influence to remove those barriers to digital workplace adoption? Here are some ideas inspired by Arraya’s own experiences in the digital transformation space as well as by additional research from Gartner.

Give users a voice. Make user needs front and center in the technology decision-making process. Leaders should solicit feedback directly from users and use that to align technology initiatives with actual pain points. Changes that don’t sync up in this way may end not be worth pursing after all.
Step outside of IT. Technology decisions may look a little different when viewed through the eyes of, say, finance or marketing. Enlist representatives from all departments impacted by a change to participate as early as possible in the process. Whether it’s initial planning or pilot testing, doing so can make sure users are on board when a change rolls out.
Put the past away. The processes or solutions that have always worked for a business or a team aren’t necessarily always going to work. IT leaders should encourage suggestions from all teams that challenge the status quo. Positive results in the past shouldn’t be a reason to avoid change. Even better results could be waiting.
Showcase success stories. There will always be some level of suspicion surrounding change. One way to reduce that to the lowest amount possible is to put wins on display. So, following a pilot test, distribute the upsides experienced by those inside the test group to the rest of the company. This proves the benefits promised are more than mere hype.
Engage at the top. End user support is essential for changes to take root, but so too is the backing of executive leadership. C-level leaders can speak to the strategic vision behind digital workplace initiatives. Also, support from the top can demonstrate to the rest of the organization long term commitment to a change.

Next Steps: Furthering your own digital transformation journey

There’s a lot of value in progressing beyond the early stages of a digital workplace transformation. Arraya Solutions can do more than connect you with the tools needed to bring the digital workplace to life. We also have the strategic expertise necessary to lay the foundation for – and execute – real, meaningful business changes. Visit https://www.arrayasolutions.com//contact-us/ to start a conversation with our team of digital transformation and workplace experts today.

As always, feel free to leave us a comment on this or any of our blogs through social media. Arraya can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Remember to follow us to stay up to date on our industry insights and unique IT learning opportunities.