IT challenges during Covid19 | How to stabilize your IT services

IT, digital challenges and new way of working through, by Covid19

           

Many IT services and their reach is changing bcoz of current world situation

We will discuss how you can overcome and improve with some of the areas related to IT services & its operation.

 

1.    Team management strategy, support measures

·       What job our team competent at.

·       Which work you can take to cloud

o   Mail services

o   Essential portals, ticketing system, reporting of servers

·       Ticketing system in place for better accountability, work allotment

 

2.    Communication tools

·       In person meeting should be replaced with Zoom/WebEx/MS Teams/Go-to-meeting etc.

·       Save on travel and avoid on public transport usage also

·       Save on time and quicker result

 

3.    Financial transactions

·       Opt for online financial transaction

o   NEFT, RTGS, UPI

·       Bank to bank & bank to client

·       Digital and Contactless Payments

 

4.    Cyber security

·       Install perimeters, gateway, network, servers, datacenter level protection and security appliance

·       Assessment of your devices, equipment, servers and endpoints

·       User awareness & training on security

·       VA-PT test for critical and essentials services, servers

·       Check compliance level for better updates and patches

·       Always need to be up to date with OS & firmware (n-1 stable) strategy

 

5.    On premise and cloud

·       Determine which can on be remain onsite and which on remote, on cloud

 

6.    Support

·       Tools, tackle for remote support, work from home (WFH) users

·       Enable vpn for better security, resource access

·       E-consulting will be done thru vendor, support partner and OEM

 

7.    Digital transformation

·       Identify - to transform to digital work

·       Automation thru digital adoption

·       Data analytics by cloud based solution

·       Smart manufacturing adoption will take place

·       Machine condition monitoring (for OEE)

 

 

 

 

8.    Hardware

·       Check your network, firewall, anti-APT, servers, backup

·       End user computing –thin client, VDI, Cloud-VDI

·       Hyper converge system

·       Storage system

 

9.    Software

·       Re-check if required software are available

·       Need to procure, kindly go for it

·       ERP

·       Design & Engineering software

 

10.           Others

·       Robotics

·       3D printing

·       Big data & analytics

·       Learning & Training

·       BCP / DR for your organization

 

 

11.           Robotics automation

·       Manual processes can be converted to RPA (robotics process automation)

·       Save a lot of time and avoid mistakes

·       Use robots and drones to avoid touch and spread of any infection

·       Contactless cameras and attendance system – cover 10 feet distance – remote working technology

·       3D printing for quicker and Additive, Subtractive manufacturing

 

12.           Big data and analytics

·       By using data lake and data bricks huge data massaged for output

·       Analytics help in quicker and better decisions on output and results

 

13.           Learning & training

·       Helping into remote leaning

·       One session can be joined by as many

 

14.           Supply chain enable via

·       Industry 4.0 – real-time status from machines

·       IoT – progress update daily

·       Block chain – end to end tracking, ownership

·       Big data – huge data manageability

·       Cloud computing – On the fly deploy and compute anything

 

15.           New demand

·       5G – high internet speed

·       Digitalization adoption increase

 

16.           IT staff capability check – competency matrix

·       Is team capable to handle task from remote

·       Is your business dependent on support partner, vendor only?

·       Consider worst scenario, check readiness

 

17.           DR / BCP

·       Disaster recovery – before 9/11 it was terms

·       After that Business continuity plan (BCP)

·       Better in cloud, as during city, country, world lock-down who helped help for on premise

 

18.           Backup

·       Cloud should have one copy of your

·       Onsite or offsite data protection

·       Data compliance as per ISO 27001

 

 

Consider zero trust approach now.

This is applicable to all sectors companies and industries.

 

 

comment and let me know which area you have already implemented and taken care; any area you want to take in detail please suggest.

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Checklist of recommended best practices for your office email server | Mail server, email support management - check-list and assessment steps | email server security

We as IT professional play multiple roles and wearing different types of hats as system administrator, network admin, linux admin, email admin, support manager etc. many times.

Responsibility of these individuals are larger and critical while supporting information technology environment hence sharing article on mail servers check-list and its assessment.

Here describing check-list for email servers' administrator and service provider which help to get check essential actions, check for services availability, confidentiality and integrity.

Email system is back-bone any enterprise and organization, interruption in email service may cause a big delay in many business decisions and may cause financial loss.

Points	Requirement for
1. Enable SPF	Prevent email spoofing
2. Enable DKIM	Make emails trustworthy
3. Enable DMARC	Utilize SPF and DKIM at best
4. Anti-Spam Filter	Block spam before users see it
5. Relaying protection	Prevent unauthorized use
6. Enable Throttling protection	Prevent spamming and blacklisting
7. Restrict Local Email Domain	Prevent sender domain forgery, fraud
8. Check Attachment Restrictions	Prevent malicious attachments
9. Log check and history	Know what’s happening and what happened
10. Consider Email Encryption	Guarantee privacy of email data; SSL enable web mail and client
11. Enable DNSSEC	Prevent unauthorized DNS changes
12. Educate & train community	Security starts with people; training & awareness
13. Regularly Test Configurations	Prevent configuration point
14. Antivirus gateway	To filter threats at perimeter
15. RRD check	Round robin check for DNS records
16. MX record	Validate MX records timely
17. Domain check	Expiry of domain
18. VA-PT for domains	Check external & internal vulnerability
19. Security audit	Regular check security and updates
20. Check Phishing awareness	Test thru phishing attack and review  for protection, awareness
21. Password policy	Stringent password policy, at least 14 (complex) characters length
22. Mail access restriction	Check allowed protocols and restrict it at min. requirement
23. Auto FWD restriction	Validate regular and apply restriction
24. IDs validation	Users and its access validation
25. IP black listing	Check regularly for IP blacklist

For any such type of services check and assessment and for guidance you can contact via email and comment in blog.

I will revert with solution and action items.