Integrating ServiceNow with Anakage Cobots can significantly enhance IT Service Management (ITSM) capabilities, making processes more efficient and user-friendly. Streamlining ITSM with ServiceNow and Anakage Cobots promotes self-service, automates routine tasks, and ensures comprehensive tracking and documentation of user interactions. Below are three types of integration with ServiceNow:

Pre-Ticket Creation Integration

Before a user creates a ticket, they are directed to interact with Anakage Cobots. This integration aims to promote self-service within the ITSM system by providing users with solutions through the cobots, potentially deflecting the need to create a ticket. The methods vary based on organizational culture and capacity to manage changes:

• Knowledge Base Articles: Hyperlinks to Anakage Cobots are embedded within KB articles. Users can read the article and click on the link to use the cobots for automatic issue resolution.

• Get Help: Similar to the Knowledge Base, users seeking help are provided hyperlinks to Anakage Cobots, guiding them to solve issues automatically.

• Virtual Agent: In response to specific user queries, the Virtual Agent provides links to Anakage Cobots, assisting users in resolving their issues.
• Anakage Home Page: A hyperlink on the main ServiceNow page redirects users to a page listing all available automated/guided solutions and cobots.

• While Creating a Ticket:
  • Hyperlink Solutions: Hyperlinks to all solutions for the selected category are available to users before they create a ticket.

• • Embedded Anakage Self-Help Portal: The Anakage Self-Help Portal is embedded within ServiceNow, providing direct access to automated solutions.

Post-Cobot Interaction Integration

After a user interacts with Anakage Cobots, if the issue is not resolved, a ticket is automatically created in ServiceNow in an open state. If the issue is resolved, a ticket is still created but in a closed state. This ensures proper tracking and documentation of all user interactions and resolutions, thereby streamlining ITSM with ServiceNow and Anakage Cobots.

Automated Action Integration

When the intent of the user is well-defined during ticket creation, certain actions can be executed automatically without further intervention. For example:

• Software Installation: As soon as the user raises a ticket for software installation, the software is automatically installed without further steps needed from the user.
• Software Uninstallation: Any software needing uninstallation can also be handled in a similar workflow.

By leveraging these integrations, organizations can streamline their ITSM processes, reduce manual intervention, and enhance the overall user experience.

• Learn more about ServiceNow
• Explore Anakage Cobots
• ServiceNow Integration Guide
• ITSM Best Practices

In today’s digital world, organizations face an ever-increasing number of security threats. One of the most common threats is the use of unauthorized USB port devices like USB ports etc to steal data or infect systems with malware.

To protect themselves from these threats, organizations need to implement endpoint compliance measures that restrict access to USB ports. However, doing so can often be a challenge, as it can increase IT overhead and make it difficult for employees to do their jobs.

In this blog post, we will discuss how organizations can maintain endpoint compliance by restricting USB port access without increasing IT overhead.

What is endpoint compliance?

Endpoint compliance is the practice of ensuring that all devices connected to an organization’s network meet certain security standards. This includes ensuring that devices are up to date with the latest security patches, have strong passwords, and are configured to restrict access to unauthorized users.

Also Read: Non Compliance Detection and Auto Remediation

Why is endpoint compliance important?

Endpoint compliance is important because it helps to protect organizations from a variety of security threats. For example, if a device is not up to date with the latest security patches, it may be vulnerable to attack by malware. Similarly, if a device has a weak password, it may be easy for an attacker to gain access to it.

How can organizations restrict USB port access?

There are multiple ways that organizations can restrict USB port access. One common approach is to use a USB port blocker. A Universal Service Bus port blocker is a device that physically prevents unauthorized devices from being plugged into a USB port.

Another approach is to use software to restrict Universal Service Bus port access. This software can be used to block all USB devices, or only to allow certain types of devices to be used.

How can organizations restrict USB port access without increasing IT overhead?

There are numerous ways that organizations can restrict Universal Service Bus port access without increasing IT overhead. One approach is to use a cloud-based solution. Cloud-based solutions are easy to deploy and manage, and they can be scaled to meet the needs of any organization.

Another approach is to use a solution integrated with the organization’s existing security infrastructure. This can help to reduce the amount of time and effort that IT staff need to spend managing USB port access.

Benefits of restricting USB port access

There are many benefits to restricting USB port access. These benefits include:

• Reduced risk of data theft: By restricting access to USB ports, organizations can reduce the risk of data being stolen from their systems.
• Reduced risk of malware infection: By restricting access to USB ports, organizations can reduce the risk of their systems being infected with malware.
• Improved compliance: By restricting access to USB ports, organizations can improve their compliance with security regulations.

Challenges of restricting USB port access

There are many challenges that organizations face when restricting USB port access. These challenges include:

• User resistance: Employees may resist having their access to USB ports restricted. This is because they may need to use Universal Service Bus ports for their jobs.
• Increased IT overhead: Restricting USB port access can increase the amount of time and effort that IT staff need to spend managing security.
• Reduced productivity: If employees are not able to use USB ports, it may reduce their productivity.

Best practices for restricting USB port access

There are many best practices that organizations can follow when restricting USB port access. These best practices include:

1. Communicate with employees: It is important to communicate with employees about the reasons for restricting Universal Service Bus port access. This will help to reduce resistance from employees.
2. Implement a phased approach: Organizations should implement a phased approach to restricting Universal Service Bus port access. This will help to minimize disruption to employees.
3. Use a flexible solution: Organizations should use a flexible solution that allows them to restrict access to USB ports on a case-by-case basis. This will help to ensure that employees are still able to do their jobs.

Check out: Employee Engagement Platform – Effective Employee Communication Platform

Conclusion

Restricting USB port access is an important part of endpoint compliance. By following the best practices outlined in this blog post, organizations can restrict USB port access without increasing IT overhead or reducing productivity.

Additional tips for restricting USB port access without increasing IT overhead

In addition to the best practices outlined above, there are various other things that organizations can do to restrict port access without increasing IT overhead. These include:

Use a whitelist: Organizations can use a whitelist to allow only certain types of USB devices to be used. This can help to reduce the risk of unauthorized devices being used to steal data or infect systems with malware.

Use a blacklist: Organizations can use a blacklist to block specific USB devices from being used. This can be helpful if an organization knows that.

References:

Kingston Technology. “How to Allow USB Drive Access Without Compromising Endpoint Security.” Read more…

Microsoft Tech Community. “Block USB in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Intune.” Read more….

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IT Team work is hard. They are owners for almost all the hardware, software , network, devices, tools and systems used in an organization. There is no denying the fact that at some stage you will think about automation. Anakage is helping IT Teams to automate their end user support. While helping our partners typically we also help them to take a holistic view of their automation agenda using our methodology, processes and tools. Below are some of the points to think over in your automation journey –

1. Finding what to automate is first thing you should think about. Data is important, follow the quote “In God we trust, all others must bring data”. Pull up as much data as you can gather and find ways of analyzing it. Use some freely available tools on internet to analyze your data quickly but do not forget to mask sensitive and personal data before taking it online. When in doubt refer internal policies before taking these data out. Do not use intuition or your gut feeling at this stage. Sometimes just using a plain word counter tool will reveal so much information. Incident and Service request data will come handy for analysis at this stage.
2. Take this opportunity to think hard if it is time to optimize the process itself rather than automating it. Think of doing RCA and eliminating the root cause rather than automating the faulty process. Take a wholistic view, automation is not only RPA or scripting, many times it could be a new tool which was never used by IT Team in organization. If you have a password reset tool that cannot be accessed by an employee if he is locked out then what is the use of tool.
3. Set realistic goals. Everything starts small and trying to perfect everything in all manner before go live is too ambitious. Start as soon as possible, measure and iterate. Keep goals like we will reduce incidents by 10% in six months rather than just saying we will reduce incidents.
4. Do not underestimate power of End Users – They are different than what they use to be. Involve End Users in your automation, think beyond process and backend automation. May times end users are forgotten or out rightly dismissed in this plan. Most common refrain is – “We know our users, they will never do it“. The skillset of new age workforce is different and if you provide them correct information and tools they will take care of themselves.  Available tools project very narrow view of how an end user can help in IT automation.
5. Should you reinvent the wheel. Scripting is not automation. Scripting is easy, it can take care of few initial cases but the components needed for an automation platform to measure, iterate, build, scale is not something which can be build inhouse using scripting. Then there are lot on non-functional requirements like security, performance, design etc. is best left to experts.
6. Understand levels of automation that can be achieved. There is plethora of options available – scripting, RPA Tools, bots, ML and AI based cognitive platforms among many. Based on what you want to automate choose right technology. Each tool will market themselves but it is on you to decide what is best fit.
7. Understand your stakeholders. They can be sponsors, decision makers, users etc.
8. Handle low hanging fruits first. Release MVPs (not half baked) early and frequently. Take baby steps, create POCs, validate, scale, measure and iterate.
9. Build a business case and roadmap. Not all will happen on day 1 but have a complete plan.
10. Measure your outcomes. Do not try approach which you cannot measure.
11. Build vs Procure – Based on how many off the shelve automation cases you can use from day 1, effort, time to go live, number of automation cases to be done, skillset of team and ultimately total cost of ownership decide whether you should build or procure.
12. Set up right team. You will realize that finding full time resources from within IT Team is very difficult as escalations can come in at any time and priorities will shift soon. Find people who are eager to go overboard and is passionate about new things. Maintaining balance between ultra short term and project goals is key to success. Also include early adopters/champions in the team to take feedback.
13. Go Live and scale.

Anakage has been helping organizations realize full potential in their IT automation journey by helping them to take holistic view of the process using our tools right from data analysis to 100s of off the shelve end user support automation cases that can be used from day 1, and integration cases to automate their service request fulfilment besides other processes as they progress. Contact us to get a demo and walkthrough of the tool.

Introduction

End point Non-Compliance detection & auto-remediation app  is a Windows OS client-server application where compliance criteria across multiple Agents installed at end points can be monitored and any deviation rectified automatically. All detected non-compliance and remediation status across multiple Products is reported in one single view providing Enterprise wide view.

Compliance Parameters details

The dashboard displays Product wise a set of monitored parameters and settings as detected at end points. The product categories on which compliance parameters are configurable can be categorized as following:

• Protection: Antivirus, Firewall, Hard drive encryption
• Operating system: Windows
• Software: Java, Chrome, Browser, MS Office, Flash
• Network: Secure web etc.
• Data Loss Prevention: Symantec
• System: Patching, Disc space
• Communication management and tracking: Video or any text-based reminder with action enforcement mechanisms on end users

Illustrative view of Products and monitored Parameters

The following is the summary of the available metrics and corresponding configurations

How the Platform works

Deployment mode

Anakage compliance platform provides both agent based (installed at end point) and agent less (by scheduled push through SCCM or through distribution platforms) solutions

• Agent Less Solution deployment

Compliance exe runs on the end points at the schedule specified from SCCM and after run and post actions, it self destructs leaving zero footprints. So no exe installation is required at the end points. And all the performed compliance task actions get reported on the reporting portal.

• Agent Based Solution deployment

Agent based exe is installed at the end points (installation can be done through SCCM or other software distribution tools) and checks compliance status at predefined intervals.

Features

1. Regulatory Remediation Integration: Compliance remediation with both scheduled and manual triggering

Not only it collects and report compliance status, Compliance remediation and automation platform comes with the capability to remediate issues for certain metric parameters. Solution fixation can be either scheduled (agent initiated) or manual (admin initiated). The manual solution fixation can be invoked from admin portal.

In admin portal, all the compliance parameter statuses get reported. For a particular compliance parameter, i.e. antivirus scan compliant- if there are a few end points which are not antivirus scan compliant, it will appear as ‘fail’ entries.

If the ‘fail’ button is clicked, it will show the details of the end points for which the compliance failed.  Admin can manually trigger compliance solution for the ‘fail’ entries by clicking on the ‘Fix’ button.

Upon clicking the ‘Fix’ button , a screen will come up allowing admin to select end points and action type.

2. Complete Enterprise wide Compliance Reporting in one single dashboard

All the predefined compliance parameters can be monitored from one central dashboard without any need for scripting or coding.

3. Multi attribute Reporting and Visualization

In the reporting portal, it is possible to view the report from different aspects- compliance status for different products with the corresponding end point and location facility/business unit details helping admin to follow the evolution of the compliance status and check if the overall compliance is improving or regressing. Options of reporting at Solution level, individual Product parameter level besides Facility, geography or Business unit wise are also available

• Overall Product wise report

It shows the product wise drop down for which the compliance status is checked.

• Product parameter (compliance parameters predefined for each product) wise report

Under any product it shows the particular parameter compliance status which are configured. Like for ‘secure web’ product, the compliance parameters are ‘installed’ (installed properly or not) or ‘version’ (version updated or not) – against these parameters it will show the compliance status.

• Compliance before and after status report

There are options to have dashboards showing the compliance status at Parameter level before and after running the compliance exe (weather manual or scheduled). If some parameter shows ‘false’ (non compliant) before running the exe (in initial data), it gets remediated (if possible) and the taken actions also gets reported (in final data).

• Location facility wise report

It shows the compliance data for different locations or business units providing a precise view of compliance for different segments of the organization.

All these reports can be downloaded from the portal and on the basis of the report; the IT Ops/Info Sec can inform engineers to take required actions.

Experience Non Compliance Detection and Auto Remediation and discover what Anakage can do for your organization.

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We’re all aware of need for IT compliance and know that organizations processing sensitive and confidential information must follow a set of rules, standards, and processes protecting customer and user information. This generally involves presence of certain software like anti-virus, data monitoring agents etc to be in a healthy state on a end-point.

How should you maintain compliance in your IT infrastructure ?

• Make sure for your Anti virus its version, definition, scan frequency, last scan, firewall is enabled
• Your data is encrypted using correct encryption method
• Make sure common softwares like Java, Reader, Flash are of proper version to minimize security loopholes
• Your machines have latest patches

There is constant effort made by organizations to verify end-point compliance via L1 support teams. However, often the constant compliance drills can become overwhelming, especially in organizations where the sheer quantity of system controls can feel beyond a team’s reach. As a result organisations are in need of IT compliance automation solution for reducing L1 support & dealing compliance issues remotely.

How is compliance actually maintained in organisations ?

• They extract list of non compliant using existing tools like SCCM, Anti virus
• They try to make them compliant by using SCCM
• For remaining machines they do it manually
• Typically this cycle is anywhere between 1-2 weeks with no realtime mechanism to see the effectiveness
• Due to time lag there are many false positives resulting in wasted effort

Case Study – IT Compliance Automation

The Problem

A consulting major, in spite of having best traditional PCLM tools like SCCM, was facing regular compliance issues which resulted in a large number of ticket generation. If a machine had turned into a state of non-compliance, the user id of the employee was disabled temporarily. As a result, it required a L1 support engineer to manually locate the machine and resolve the issue. However, in some cases where the machine is unreachable, for example if an employee is working from home, the issue remained unresolved until he/she physically went to office. So, they asked for solution that can automatically detect and perform remediation of compliance issues effectively on premise as well as remotely and reduce the need for human involvement.

The Effective Solution

The goal for Anakage was to come up with a solution that could replicate the tasks a L1 engineer would do if machine was reported as non-compliant. It should also report initial and final states of the machine before and after running the solution on different parameters.

The first hurdle to implement the solution from infrastructure point of view was how to distribute the solution to the non-compliant endpoints. This was resolved by the presence of SCCM connectivity which was used to send solutions to machines and also run the solution with appropriate privileges.

One of the checkpoint of compliance was presence and healthy state of Symantec Endpoint Protection. This included a number of checks like having correct version of Symantec, running and automatic state of Symantec service, up to date virus definitions, regular scans should be performed etc for a end-point to be considered healthy for Symantec checkpoint. So the solution executable will check initial states, for instance correct version, service states, custom rules according to company policies etc and send the report for it to web portal. If initial detection finds the state of the machine to be unhealthy on some parameter, it will start to act appropriately. If a fresh installation of a software is required, it will automatically download a copy of software with the correct version that can be specific to a region also and install it. Post taking all the necessary actions, it will again check the health on all the parameters and report to the web portal. After the work of solution executable is completed, it removes itself and the other extracted files from the end-point.

Outcome

Today, having such a solution in place provides management with a detailed status of machine health with real-time reporting on web portal and also to fix the machine if required without having need of human intervention. Most effective discovery was that false positives were taking most of the manual efforts by L1 engineers. The team must not spend time on such cases. The remaining cases are fixed automatically. Whatever cannot be fixed is dispatched to L1 team to resolve manually. This has led to a drastic decrease in number of compliance related tickets and escalations being made regarding the same.   

Issue:

It may happen that we frequently may need to speed up system performance. In this blog you will learn how to speed up system performance.

Do you want Windows to operate more quickly?   You can try out these methods in just a few minutes, and your machine will be speedier and less prone to performance and system problems.

Environment: 

Speed up system performance

Solution:

1. Change your power settings

You’re slowing down your PC if you’re utilizing Windows 10’s “Power saver” strategy. To save energy, this plan lowers your PC’s performance. (Power saver plans are common on even desktop PCs.) Changing your power plan from “Power saver” to “High performance” or “Balanced” will enhance your performance immediately.

1. Go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options.
2. You may view two options: “Balanced (recommended)” and “Power saver.”

Note: Other plans, including ones branded by the manufacturer, may be available depending on your make and model.

3. To change your power setting, go to the Control Panel and select the one you want, then click apply. .

“High performance” provides the best performance but consumes the most power; “Balanced” strikes a balance between power consumption and improved performance. “Power saver” does everything it can to maximize battery life. Laptop users should select “Balanced” when unplugged  and “High performance” when connected to a power source.

  2. Disable programs that run on startup

A major reason for your system being slow is that you have too many background programs running – ones you rarely or never use. Your PC will run more smoothly if you stop them from operating.

1. To begin, open the Task Manager. Select Task Manager by right-clicking the lower-right area of your screen.
2. Select the Startup tab from the drop-down menu. When you start Windows, you’ll see a list of the apps and services that start up.
3. Right-click a program or service and select “Disable” to prevent it from starting at startup.

Note: This does not completely deactivate the program; it merely prevents it from launching at startup. You may still use it after launching it manually.

Now that you’ve picked all of the programs you wish to disable at startup, the next time you restart your computer, the system will be much less concerned with them.

  3. Use ReadyBoost to speed up disk caching

1. First, plug a USB flash drive into one of your PC’s USB ports.

Note: The flash drive must support at least USB 2.0 or USB 3. The faster your flash drive, the higher speed boost you will get. For optimal performance, search for a flash drive that is at least double the size of your PC’s RAM.

2. Open File Explorer and go to “This PC.”
3. Right-click and go to Properties > ReadyBoost tab.

4. Turn on ReadyBoost
5. You will be asked whether you want to use the flash drive as a cache.
6. Select “Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost” and click Apply and select OK.

Note: When you select the ReadyBoost tab and get the notice “This device cannot be used for ReadyBoost,” that implies your flash drive doesn’t satisfy ReadyBoost’s minimum performance specifications, and you’ll need to put in a new one with better configuration and a higher storage amount.

Conclusion:

The above steps can help speed up system performances, Anakage Proactive Cobot which is an agent at the end point, can speed up the system with the above-mentioned steps and also it can monitor the system at the specific time period, keeping the user or an engineer at bay.

Anakage also has user guided solution from offline cobot which could guide the user by opening the live application and eventually reducing the efforts to follow the above procedure.

Click here to see a video on “Anakage IT Help Desk Chatbot Integrated with Microsoft Teams | Chatbot which Acts” There is much more you can automate, check out our website for more details.

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