Infographic: The Cybersecurity Bell Curve

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As written on enterprise.microsoft.com
We all understand the importance of good personal hygiene, right? It keeps us from getting ostracized at school, it makes us more attractive to the opposite sex, and most importantly it helps us stay happy and healthy.
Just as brushing our teeth is vital to our individual health, maintaining basic cybersecurity hygiene is critical for the well being of businesses. The overwhelming majority of cyberattacks are the result of computer hackers taking advantage of opportunities that stem from businesses neglecting basic security hygiene. Running an outdated operating system (OS) or antivirus software may not seem like a big deal, but it could provide hackers the window they need to access sensitive corporate information.
Fortunately, investing in the latest technology and revisiting cybersecurity basics can safeguard against roughly 98% of what hackers are doing today. Learn how a renewed focus on security basics can bolster your cyber defense and keep your business happy and healthy in The Cybersecurity Bell Curve infographic.

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The future looks bright for IT workers

the future looks bright for IT workers - managed solution

By Sarah K. White as written on cio.com
Business are starting to invest more in IT, and that means they're also investing in IT workers. A study from Brilliant found that Q4 hiring for IT has remained steady, as businesses search for qualified tech workers.
The IT skills gap and talent shortage remains an ongoing business challenge as technology becomes the cornerstone of nearly every industry. That shift means there is a bigger demand for tech pros with specific skill sets; and companies are hiring qualified individuals faster than schools can graduate candidates with the right skills.
A recent survey from Brilliant, a staffing firm that specializes in temporary staffing, permanent search, and management resources for accounting, finance and information technologies, in conjunction with Richard Curtin, director of Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan, found that companies are still hiring in the IT industry, and businesses are looking to fill open positions. The survey looked at data from human resources and hiring manager professionals across a number of industries to find out what their hiring goals are, and how they've changed over the previous quarters.
The study found that open and unfilled IT positions dropped compared to the Q2 2015 hiring forecast, from 58 percent of companies in Q2 to 33 percent in Q4. The largest growth in jobs occurred in technical services, at 15 percent, which includes jobs such as help desk personnel and desktop support. There was a decline in openings for software and database administration positions, including jobs in big data. And businesses are looking to fill these openings immediately with only 4 percent of respondents suggesting they want to wait until after Q4 to hire.
"The biggest challenge is that there continues to be a limited supply of talented IT professionals. Therefore, we anticipate an increased pressure on salaries and wages. As a result, the compensation for IT professionals will continue to increase, while companies will be forced to increase spend on IT. Further, this increase in demand for IT professionals will also lead to more companies willing to hire interim or contract professionals rather than hire on a permanent basis," according to Jim Wong, CEO of Brilliant.

A job seekers market

The upside to the skills gap is that those who do have the right skills are in a good position to find the best job offer. Essentially, it's a tech job-seekers market and companies are moving to attract people with competitive offers and perks.
The most recent study found that 37 percent of respondents said they were turning to temporary professionals to fill the skills gap. This is decline in temporary workers from the Q2 hiring study, which found that 63 percent of businesses were using temp hires. The study suggests that this decrease points to successful hiring in the past and the overall decline in projected openings for additional IT staff.

Not the lack of skills you might think

While there is certainly a lack of qualified candidates with skills ranging in big data to cloud to Internet of Things, those aren't necessarily the skills hiring managers are most looking for. The study found that the biggest skillset gap wasn't in any specific area or industry of tech, but rather hiring managers were looking for the right "soft skills." At the top of the list, 25 percent said they were looking for workers with expertise in certain areas, but did not specify which areas. Next on the list, 25 percent were concerned with finding a "cultural fit," which is a 10 percent increase from the last two quarters. Beyond that, 18 percent said they were looking for individuals with problem-solving skills as well as communication skills.

The best place to find tech job seekers

Landing the right candidates is one thing, but it's another to figure out the best place to find qualified candidates. The most popular source in recent years has typically been, and continues to be, the more traditional route of search and recruitment firms. And for IT workers, referrals and word of mouth are another highly popular way to land the right talent, with 20 percent saying they hired the bulk of workers through these channels in Q4.
In Q3, 17 percent of companies cited online job boards as their main source of hiring, but that increased to 19 percent in Q4. Interestingly, in Q3, 13 percent of companies said they hired the bulk of workers through social media, but that has since dropped down to 6 percent in Q4. Meanwhile, companies citing resumes submitted via the company website as the source for new hires increased from 7 percent in Q3 to 11 percent in Q4 for the IT sector.

Technology prompting more hires

Technology drives nearly every industry and, as a result, business leaders are starting to view IT in a different light. IT is no longer simply the department that handles networks, hardware and business software. It's become a cornerstone of innovation as more workers rely on technology day to day.
"Companies view technology as an investment as opposed to an expense. Technology can create efficiencies and allow businesses to scale without having to add fixed costs. Businesses know they can get an ROI through investing in technology," says Wong.
And part of that investment can be seen in an uptick in companies reporting that they don't plan to reduce their IT teams. The survey found that 64 percent of businesses report they do not have plans to change the size of their current IT teams, whether through firing or hiring employees. However, 12 percent of businesses still report that they plan to increase the size of their teams, while only 7 percent report a plan decrease; 17 percent are unsure.
Wong also says that the data suggests that companies are turning to technology to improve business practices, make departments more efficient and stay ahead of the curve. Leaders are starting to view technology as a way to save costs in the long run by increasing overall productivity and efficiency. "Essentially, companies want to be able to do more with less," Wong says. Overall, it's simply good news for IT workers, and even temporary or contract employees, as businesses begin a shift towards investing in their careers.
"In sum, the demands for IT professionals mean higher compensation and wages, increased investments by companies to pay more for qualified professionals, and more reasons to hire temporary or contract professionals to fill those IT roles," says Wong.

Why businesses are turning to managed IT services

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outsourcing IT - managed solution

Why businesses are turning to managed IT services

More organizations are turning over certain IT functions to managed service providers, freeing internal IT staff to focus on strategic IT projects

As written by @Thor Olavsrud on CIO.com
Organizations are increasingly turning to managed service providers (MSPs) to handle elements of their IT needs as part of a collaborative arrangement with the internal IT department, according to new research from IT industry trade association CompTIA.
MSPs have been around for a long time, but adoption has been relatively low. As late as last year CompTIA found that only 3-in-10 organizations had any of their IT in the hands of an MSP, says Carolyn April, senior director, Industry Analysis, at CompTIA. But more than two-thirds of companies surveyed for CompTIA's Fourth Annual Trends in Managed Services Study, released Monday, say they have used the services of an outside IT firm within the past 12 months.
Companies have become more familiar with managed services and are turning to them for management of certain IT functions, particularly email hosting, customer relationship management (CRM) applications, storage, backup and recovery and network monitoring.
"While one-time projects account for some of these engagements, a significant portion is ongoing management of one or more IT functions by a managed services provider," says April, who is also author of the report. "There is a much higher degree of familiarity with the term 'managed services' and greater adoption."

Top MSPs extending their reach

Some upper echelon services are offering managed services around data analytics, business intelligence (BI) and advanced application monitoring — and April says there is increasing demand in those areas — but most MSPs have yet to extend beyond their heritage in managing network infrastructure and basic software infrastructure.
"I think mobile is an area where the channel is getting some traction but they're really not tapping the full opportunity there," she adds.
Part of the awareness problem in the past has been a definitional one, April says. In these days of software-as-a-service (SaaS), the customers (and sometimes providers) remain unclear about what actually constitutes a managed service.
"I think the definitional issue is an enormous one," she says. "It's one of the things that has made it extremely difficult to market size the managed services space and determine adoption rates."
The MSP community hasn't done the best job communicating the benefits of managed services to end users, April notes, though the fact that usage has nearly doubled in the past year suggests they've begun to do better.

Partners, not replacements

It is also important to note that while companies are increasingly relying on outside providers for part of their IT needs, MSPs generally complement rather than replace internal IT.
"Very few of these companies get rid of their IT staffs just because they join up with an MSP," April says.
Instead, especially in larger companies, bringing an MSP into the mix frees up existing IT staff to focus on more strategic projects.
"It elevates the IT staff and brings them out of the shadows within the organization," she says. "It allows them to focus on a custom app dev project or cloud initiative — something highly strategic. I think that's a win-win for your IT staff."
That also highlights that the reasons that organizations turn to MSPs have begun to change. In the past, April says, cost savings were seen as the primary benefit of MSPs. Now, she says, cost benefits are considered table stakes and customers are looking for additional benefits like generating revenue and helping the company become more efficient. Even security has evolved from being considered a roadblock to using MSPs to a reason for doing so.
April explains that companies have shifted their views over security as it has become clear that security problems are often the result of human error by internal staff.

Why IT turns to MSPs

CompTIA found that improving the efficiency and reliability of IT operations was a main driving factor for going with an MSP for 56 percent of companies with 100 or more employees and 47 percent of companies with fewer than 100 employees.
Enhanced security and compliance was a driving factor for 38 percent of companies of all sizes. ROI/cost savings was a driving factor for 33 percent of companies with 100 or more employees and 28 percent of companies with fewer than 100 employees.
The trade association found that six-in-10 respondents that consider their technology usage advanced are using an MSP for physical security services. Also, 63 percent of the same group are using an MSP for application monitoring. The managed services that are lowest in demand to date are videoconferencing, mobile device management and audio/visual services.

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Fujitsu has served up Microsoft’s Skype for Business unified communications platform to the New Zealand Government, utilising its place on the Government Telecommunications-as-a-Service panel.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Fujitsu delivers Microsoft’s Skype for Business to NZ Govt

EXCLUSIVE: Fujitsu delivers Microsoft’s Skype for Business to NZ Govt

“Citizens and businesses will now be able to use Skype to message, talk to, and video call Government agencies."

As written by James Henderson (New Zealand Reseller News) on computerworld.co.nz

Fujitsu has served up Microsoft’s Skype for Business unified communications platform to the New Zealand Government, utilizing its place on the Government Telecommunications-as-a-Service panel.

As reported by Computerworld New Zealand, Fujitsu was appointed as one of 12 Government telecommunications providers in November, tasked with provide leading unified communications solutions and services.

As such, the tech company partnered with Microsoft in New Zealand to create a GoCommunicate, a Government unified communications service based on Microsoft’s Skype for Business solution.

Designed to remove costly traditional telephone systems, Fujitsu’s GoCommunicate provides agencies with an integrated service that brings together IT and communications for a monthly fee per user.

“Outside of a beneficial commercial model, GoCommunicate helps connect Government, citizens, and business using a common and familiar tool,” says Stuart Stitt, Managing Director, Fujitsu New Zealand.

“Citizens and businesses will now be able to use Skype to message, talk to, and video call Government agencies.”

Stitt believes the convergence of IT and telecommunications hasn’t always been reflected in the industry commercial models, with traditional telecommunications companies dominating voice calling services, despite the rise of new-world services such as Skype at home.

“GoCommunicate brings the familiarity of Skype into the business world, and enables seamless communications between citizens and agencies using Skype for Business,” he adds.

Under the IT Managed Services (ITMS) panel, many government agencies already use Fujitsu’s Service Aggregation capability for managing ICT vendor environments.

With the launch of TaaS, Mike Bullock - General Manager of Sales, Fujitsu New Zealand, says agencies are now able to use Fujitsu’s mature Service Aggregation capability to manage and coordinate telecommunication providers, enabling agencies to select the best providers in each area.

“This helps to break the stronghold of the major telecommunications providers and promotes greater competition and innovation for the New Zealand market,” Bullock explains.

For Bullock, the recently updated ITMS service, DaaS, and now TaaS enables agencies to receive a full end-to-end ICT service from Fujitsu without the overheads of a lengthy and expensive procurement process.

“This reduces the cost for both the industry and agencies, enabling agencies to focus their efforts on using technology to engage with citizens and businesses, making the public sector more efficient and faster moving,” he adds.

Locally, Fujitsu is a major provider of outsourced ICT services to the New Zealand Government, and globally, a key alliance partner of Microsoft.

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Watch the video recap of last week's Job Shadow Event at Managed Solution. Clairemont High School Information Technology Academy students had fun contributing to the filming, photographing and editing of the video recap from the event.

On December 8, 2015, Managed Solution hosted a Job Shadow Event for 60 students from Clairemont High School to learn first-hand critical IT skills through Junior Achievement's job shadow initiative. The collaboration kicked off Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 8- 11) which encourages students to pursue careers in STEM-related industries.
Sean Ferrel, CEO and founder of Managed Solution welcomed students, told them about the fastest growing IT company in Southern California and shared his journey of how he got to where he is today. After Ferrel answered career questions, students were split into groups to visit six project-based activities led by Managed Solution employees.
The educational job shadow program included sessions/activities on app development, coding/web design, channel partner marketing, project management, technical cloud development and video production.
Clairemont High School Information Technology Academy students had fun naming their groups and contributing to the filming, photographing and editing of the video recap from the event.
Read the press release: https://managedsolut.wpengine.com/clairemont-high-school-students-learn-critical-it-skills-through-managed-solutions-and-junior-achievement-job-shadow-initiative/
View more photos from the event on our Facebook page here.

The rise of access management in education

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The rise of access management in education

By Dean Wiech as written on Exclusive.multibriefs.com
The often-undiscussed importance that administrative technology has on school districts might be tantamount to suggesting that the only use for technology in a school district is in its classroom. There are far-reaching solutions that provide overwhelming benefits to the classroom, even if these technologies are not used to deliver homework to mobile devices or tally the marks of a classroom's population.
The day-to-day management of software solutions and management protocols have a dramatic impact on educational entities. And there's more to the management of learning technologies than simply passing out tablets to students.
The IT technologies required to power a school district are often not covered, yet there's a whole world of information technology and systems working in every district in the country that are doing more for the students served by the well-publicized technology of the classroom.
California's Chino Valley Unified School District has user accounts that let students access class discussions and syllabuses by email, let staff access grading systems, and even allow parents to communicate with teachers and view student grades. The challenges of managing these 34,000 user accounts was growing increasingly difficult and time-consuming for the school district.
The management of all user accounts was an entirely manual process, creating enormous inefficiencies for district IT leaders. They lacked any clear standards and consistency, and third-party scripts did nothing to simplify the situation or help with the management of accounts in other applications, such as Renaissance Learning, Riverdeep, Orchard and Easy Grade Pro.
Constant growth and limited staffing to manage the problem created a breaking point, meaning a change was needed. The district needed to streamline and find a solution allowing it the ability to automate its entire user-account life cycle.
Moving to an access management solution to automatically manage user account creation and deletion across the district and securely delegate day-to-day administrative tasks to employees proved to be the secret ingredient in the sauce. Automating operations to run in the background along with the ability to integrate the student information database and other applications saved countless hours for the IT staff each day.
The user-account provisioning process, including account creation with all group memberships, was also fully automated. As a result, students use the same user name across all applications and can use one login credential to access all accounts required by the district. Additionally, from the start of a school term or student's entrance into a school, all access points are set up correctly the first time and all subsequent updates are automatic.
Giving staff the ability to manage user access and system rights had an immediate impact for the entire district. Teachers can now solve problems with student accounts — such as a forgotten password or locked-out user account — without any technical training or administrative privileges. What used to take hours to solve involving the IT department, now takes seconds with the click of a single button.
Likewise, Culver City Unified School District, in Culver City, California, had trouble with managing an overwhelming amount of account creation and management manually. The district encompasses four elementary schools, two middle schools, two high schools and several other schools, such as a language program and adult education. Among the 10 schools, they manage 800 staff members and more than 7,000 students.
The process was slow. It was extremely inefficient. In the summer of 2014, the district leadership decided it wanted to implement Google Apps for its staff and students to enhance the learning experience.
"We had originally planned to do manual exports and imports through our SIS and Google manually," Robert Quinn, technology director at the school district said. But district leadership quickly realized this would be a tremendous undertaking.
Quinn was proactive. He decided the district should look into a solution that would assist with the account creation and management process. Contacting a professional peer at a nearby school district, Quinn was told to explore access and automated password management solutions.
With the technology, Culver City USD has been able to automate its entire account management process so that no manual action is required. When a new student begins at the district, that student's information is simply entered into the student information system, and all necessary accounts and access rights are automatically created in the school's role management system. Students automatically receive a Google Apps account, and they are placed in the appropriate groups, class systems and any other actions or groups required of the district.
"When a new student joins the district, within 24 hours they have their accounts created and everything set up for them," Quinn said. "(The access management system) has been a huge life-saver for me. It probably has saved hours of my work schedule every week."
The newly automated processes ensure students quickly have their necessary accounts created and updated throughout the school year so they are able to engage in their classroom activities and after-school work. They can also engage in the education process by simply uploading documents and assignments required of the coursework.
"The teachers love how easily student accounts are created," Quinn said."They probably don't realize how difficult it would be without the access management solution."
This is no small problem, and it likely is bigger than many of the in-classroom technology solutions or issues often and overzealously covered. Access management is larger than the sample offered by Chino Valley and Culver City, and the thousands of other entities that suffer from overwhelming management and burden of these "tiny" issues.
Hutto Independent School District serves 5,411 children in the greater Hutto area of Texas. The area near Austin is one of the fastest-growing in the state.
Hutto ISD sought a secure a solution that would allow the IT staff to proactively manage its users rather than work in a reactive cycle. Hutto administrative staff had been manually creating and managing user accounts to systems and applications.
Data was often out of sync and insecure, and master info cleanups were disorganized and inconsistent. Likewise, managing more than 6,300 user accounts — students, faculty and staff — became time-consuming and forced the district to consider adding a software solution that would provide automated support and could connect with the district's Skyward student information system.
Travis Brown, network administrator for Hutto ISD, said the access management system's connection to Skyward has "saved our district considerable man hours and resources by connecting to the Skyward Student Information System to be able to automatically manage our user accounts, and we began saving immediately."
Faced with increasing budget constraints, it was important to Hutto district leaders that they chose a solution that was efficient, but cost-efficient, and could show ROI within weeks, not months or years. They also needed to implement a solution that was scalable as they increase in size and bring on new technologies for their users. They also decided they needed a solution that could have a user-managed Web portal that would take some tasks off the IT plate and put it in the hands of the faculty and staff.
Hutto ISD implemented an access management solution to manage bulk user creation, modifications and deletions. What was once a manual process has now become an automated project that runs daily for the school district.
The access management solution also has allowed the IT staff to push password reset questions and user modifications to the staff via Web portal. The Web portal lets faculty and staff reset student passwords without having to wait for an IT staff member to fulfill the request. This, on average, is saving two to three hours per request. And, because passwords can be reset by the faculty and staff, there is little to no down time for students.
Hutto ISD also added the provisioning of user accounts to Google Apps. By implementing a Google Apps user provisioning project to connect AD and Google Apps they will continue to advance technology to the school district in a smart, proactive way without exhausting man hours or additional resources. The connection to Google Apps projects will run daily with the previous synchronization projects.
The point of these technology implementations is there are many more complex issues with IT and technology challenges within school districts than are often discussed or covered. While the in-classroom technology is the current sexy topic, it's only one small portion of the challenges faced by districts throughout the country.
Additionally, without such "internal" solutions to handle many of these management and access issues, students wouldn't be able to use their devices and other technologies in the classroom anyway.

Source: http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/the-rise-of-access-management-in-educatio

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PTI has released the results of the State of City and County IT 2015: The IT Organization and Operations national survey

survey managed solution

PTI presents this executive summary that outlines the results of the State of City and County IT 2015: The IT Organization and Operations national survey.
In August, 2015 local government technology executives representing cities and counties of all sizes were asked to respond to the survey.

Highlights from the 2015 survey:

( Download the Survey Report )
Source: http://www.pti.org

Local IT budgets on the rise, but staffing concerns loom large

budgetincreasestaffwoes managed solution

Local IT budgets on the rise, but staffing concerns loom large

By Jonathan Lutton as written on Gcn.com
IT budgets are on the rise for many cities and counties, but technology executives in those local governments still have concerns about investment levels in certain key areas -- and in their ability to retain top talent.
Those trends are among the findings in a new survey by the Public Technology Institute and Deltek. Nearly 300 city and county IT executives were polled on their funding, organizational issues, staff and training needs, technology trends and relations with the vendor community.

Percentage of city/county IT leaders who expect budgets to increase
graph Local IT budgets on the rise, but staffing concerns loom large

When asked how top government leaders view IT spending, 63 percent of respondents said their bosses view IT budgets as an "investment for saving money in other business areas." And while more respondents (47 percent) expect their funding to remain the same than to increase (44 percent), just 9 percent were bracing for IT budget cuts.
Concerns remain, however, about funding levels for certain categories of IT investments -- and especially for in-house IT staff.

Percentage of who believe an IT category is inadequately funded.
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Levels of concern regarding loss of in-house IT staff over the next year.

 Answer Options Not Sure Very Low  Low Average High Very High
 Hiring away by private-sector  6%  15%  20%  23%  28%  8%
 Hiring away by public-sector  5%  15%  25%  31%  18%  6%
 Retirement of staff  9%  28%  15%  23%  15%  10%
 Staff quitting  5%  25%  31% 24% 10%  5%
 Eliminating positions due to budget cuts  7%  39%  28%  15% 7%  4%

 

Nearly three-quarters of executives responded that their budgets for staff development, training, travel and education will remain the same in the coming year. And more than 70 percent of respondents said they were either dissatisfied, very dissatisfied or unsure in their ability to attract and hire architects / system designers, security / risk assurance personnel as well as developers / programmers.
Source: http://gcn.com/articles/2015/09/18/snapshot-pti-concerns.aspx?s=gcntech_210915