Monday 29 June 2020

What is Network Operations Center (NOC) Services and why to go for it?


The Network Operations Center (NOC) is a big improvement if MSPs or organizations want to run their IT services without investing a lot of local IT staff. The Network Operations Center is one or more centralized locations from which network monitoring experts manage and control the entire IT infrastructure using remote monitoring and management tools. Managed service providers use NOC services to ensure that their networks are operational without interruption or less. NOC services help detect and resolve alerts immediately before they become a problem. Plus, easily monitor and control global clients with securely connected networks.

NOC specialists are fully aware of current events and alarms that may affect the networks or systems for which they are responsible. They are often placed with multiple desktops, essentially displaying very important alert details, ongoing incidents, and network performance to keep IT services up and running. A certified team with experience in various technologies, it actively protects things like DDoS attacks, network outages, power outages, and black hole routing. NOC experts not only provide core network stability, but also provide remote assistance, support, hardware configuration (such as firewalls and routers, purchased by a customer), and vendor coordination for customers.

Control on Process and Procedures

It is the best practice to control processes and procedures in managed IT departments. At NOC Support, this is the key point that each member of the expert network must follow defined standard operating procedures and procedures. NOC services perform many tasks to make the network and its most valuable endpoints safe and secure in every way. The installation and deployment of any application should follow standard operating procedures to avoid future problems.

Security and Support 

Managed IT departments and their customers are most concerned about security, which is on the list of best guidelines for NOC services. They are well trained and expert in these activities to connect endpoints in a very secure way using various remote management and monitoring (RMM) tools. Each RMM is activated with bi-directional authentication to prevent any violation and make it secure enough. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) should not worry about endpoint connections due to increased security and support for NOC services.

Reliable and profitable

NOC services are very reliable and profitable in every way. Today, not everyone knows how much local IT staff costs. Additionally, it is highly inconvenient for local IT staff to manage multiple tasks at the same time that the NOC team can perform in comparison. NOC services maintain and follow the priority service level agreement. Monitoring and managing the network 24/7 from the central point is advantageous for all managed service providers (MSPs) and other IT clients, as they are available at a very reasonable cost.

The highest quality with the latest infrastructure:

Customer satisfaction is in their profession. NOC services never compromise their quality. To optimize the IT infrastructure for their clients, they use the latest technology tools and superior infrastructure to deliver services more efficiently. It is their cornerstone that Managed IT Services and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) literally need.

Certified and experienced experts reduce risk

Create your own style with NOC services by reducing risk in IT infrastructure. They set the threshold and trigger the alarm before it becomes a troublesome approach. Contact NOC support and protect your network with certified engineers monitoring 24x7 respectively. They review each of the alerts and generate an RCA to analyze and resolve them so that it never creates a problem in the future.

Administrative task during production and after hours.

In the IT field, it is common to have work outside office hours to avoid any network interruption. It is a continuous activity to perform administrative tasks outside of production hours. This type of task was quite easy with the help of NOC services. In most cases, they plan core activity outside of business hours and perform their critical tasks that require no downtime, in production hours.

24-hour network monitoring and support
Clients do not have to worry about their services, day or night, because NOC Services do their job 24 hours a day. It is an uncomplicated and painless act of NOC Services to monitor continuous Networks. 24/7 support reduces any unforeseen incident on the network and keeps them in perfect working order.


Noc Agile Services

Are you looking for NOC services? NocAgile services are available for the best level of NOC support at the most affordable prices with highly certified and experienced professionals. We deal with managed service providers (MSP) as well as medium and small business clients with reasonable rates. 24/7 network monitoring and managed IT services with phenomenal means are always provided.

Why the services of NocAgile?

A team of well-trained and experienced staff, working with global clients for over 10 years, monitoring and managing thousands of devices really makes a big difference to the rest. We work with various remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools, ticket systems and threat detection tools equipped with the latest technologies. 24/7 network monitoring and phone support available when needed.

Get support as internal virtual staff and contact them at any time through instant messaging, email or phone call. We understand the importance of IT services and are always ready to provide our best customer support. The best NOC services with NocAgile with 24x7 support and 100% availability.


Three key responsibilities of the IT helpdesk


For many companies, the IT help desk serves as a front or front for the IT organization. It handles employee issues and service requests, managing most, if not all, communications between end users and the IT organization. The helpdesk is a key player in providing IT services to the business and has a number of responsibilities that must be assumed to be successful.

In this blog post, I explain three of the main responsibilities of IT Helpdesk Services and offer suggestions on how best to fulfill them.

Provide excellent customer service.

First, when employees have a superior customer experience in their personal lives (and have the same expectations in the workplace), the number one responsibility of any IT help desk should be to meet the needs of end users. while providing excellent customer service.

That said, it is easy for IT to overcome this hurdle because they are too focused inside, help desk policies and processes (and how they are implemented) serve the first teams. Customer techniques.

However, we hope that your help desk exists to serve the end users of your organization and the roles they play. Therefore, it is their needs that you put before those of others. This should include providing your customers with the information they need, solving their tickets efficiently, communicating with them about problems and changes affecting the company, and generally being readily available when they need them. in your house

End users will ultimately want to be treated as human beings, rather than being administrators of IT resources and ideally as (IT support) customers.

Provide accurate reports that demonstrate performance, drive improvement, and avoid problems.
Reporting is an essential activity for any IT support service.

Reports can show the performance of help desk staff (both individually and collectively), the number of incoming incidents, and company requests, whether or not Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are adhered to, resolution they don't return enough tickets quickly etc. They can also highlight issues that cause repeated accidents, identify ticket trends, and show escalations in progress.

Reports are also useful for tracking data and performance over time, and you should use them to show how IT support levels are improving.

Share and use your collective knowledge

Knowledge management and knowledge base capabilities are a great way to share the knowledge gathered by IT support services, both individually and collectively. A knowledge base will provide relevant information to end users and technical teams. Knowledge base articles in the knowledge base can also be role-based, which means that they are only accessible to those who need them and can be authorized to use them. By sharing knowledge, the helpdesk can avoid incoming calls, reduce ticket volumes and workloads, and simplify the lives of customers and agents.


Thursday 25 June 2020

Managed Services Best practices


What are managed services best practices? There are several globally recognized best practice standards in the IT industry. If you outsource technical support, you should look for best practices for managed service providers that meet these industry standards. This article will help you understand what these standards are and how they can help your business.

What is ITIL? How does it affect best practices for managed services?

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library, commonly known as ITIL, is a set of international and comprehensive guidelines. It is always included in best practices for managed services. ITIL creates a framework for a company's IT requirements. Use a basic structure to align all IT processes with the company's core goals and values. It is a systematic approach to evaluate and manage the IT department of a company of any size. The best managed service providers adhere to ITIL to ensure that their clients receive first-class service.

What is ISO 20000?

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 20000 are the global standards that follow the best practices proposed in ITIL. This two-part standard contains specifications for IT administration and a code of conduct for IT departments. Businesses can become ISO 20000 certified through an audit that verifies their entire IT system. This is another aspect of best practices for managed services.

How best practices for managed services can help your business

ISO 20000 and ITIL can provide very specific guidelines and formulas for success in IT. By following its best practices, a company can create a laser-like approach to efficiency. While a company can try to follow the ITIL plan or become ISO 20000 certified, using best practices for managed services as a springboard can make the process much easier.

Outsourcing for best practices

Why should you use best practices for managed services best practices instead of using them alone? Both ITIL and ISO 20000 can seem overwhelming. Both include comprehensive processes that delve into all areas of an IT department. A managed service provider (MSP) already has the knowledge and experience to apply these standards. Therefore, they can easily integrate best practices for managed services. This also saves the rest of the company during the process.

Find an IT company that follows best practices for managed services

Not all MSPs use best practices for managed services. If complying with international standards is a goal for your business, you need to make sure you find a supplier that can do it. Many MSPs will openly advertise this as part of their services. Of course, if you select different providers, the easiest way to find out is to simply ask. It is an important question to ask during the evaluation process to select an MSP.

Finding a provider that complies with best practices for managed services is not enough. As you consider the future of your business, consider how following best practices can improve your efficiency over time. Be sure to ask each MSP you consider about best practices for managed services and how they can be used to improve your business.


In-House vs. Outsourced Cybersecurity operations Center Capabilities


Cybersecurity Operations Centers have become an essential element in detecting threats. Here you can find out if you want to create or outsource these functions internally.

The term Outsource cybersecurity operations is simple: in companies, operations refer to everything a company does to fulfill its mission. However, to do this, the business must also protect the resources necessary to achieve its goals, and this is where cyber security comes into play.

Online information and resources must be protected, and cyber security operations are the organizational processes necessary to protect the entire company, and especially its information resources, from cyber security threats.

Outsourced Cybersecurity operations have one overarching goal: to protect company information, websites, databases, business processes, and communications. It does this by monitoring what is happening on and off the network to identify activities that may represent malicious activities or threats.

Many networks have grown in response to emerging technologies and changing requirements, so cybersecurity no longer has a uniform master plan. The Internet disrupted everything and forced companies to urgently improve their security measures and bring them together under one roof. The volume of alerts generated by Intrusion Detection / Prevention Systems (IDSes / IPSes), firewalls and other systems forced companies to take a closer look at their security infrastructure. The companies not only feared that a lack of trained personnel would cause the warnings not to be analyzed, but also feared that the large number of warnings was simply too large to be diagnosed in time. Companies were afraid of what they did not know from a threat monitoring perspective.

Outsourcing operations versus internal cybersecurity operations

There are two possible approaches for these organizations to create an operational role for cybersecurity: outsourcing or internal construction.

By outsourcing cybersecurity operations, security analysis capabilities can be provided while a company is building its own in-house cybersecurity operations center.
Outsourcing the cybersecurity feature is a sensible way to monitor network alerts. Basically, outsourcing cybersecurity operations involves entering into a contract with a managed security service provider to analyze network alerts for possible malicious behavior. The MSSP rejects those who are not malicious and informs those who can actually be harmful.

Outsourcing pros

  • Trained staff. The MSSP has personnel available, which saves the organization time and costs of hiring and training the people necessary for the analysis.
  • The MSSP also has the facilities and tools to get the job done. This saves more time and upfront costs of building an internal operations center for cyber security.
  • Smart Analysis By outsourcing cyber security operations, security analysis capabilities can be provided while a company is building its own in-house cyber security operations center.

Disadvantages and outsourcing questions to the MSSP

  • How much analysis will the MSSP provide? Outsourcing the cybersecurity function generally does not provide functions that involve multi-level alert analysis or incident response service. Instead, many outsourced cybersecurity operations only offer the equivalent of analyzing level 1 cybersecurity operations.
  • The MSSP can only analyze a subset of the warning logs generated by an organization. Warnings from applications, such as databases and web applications, may be outside your area of ​​expertise. If the MSSP is also a provider of tools or hardware, you may only be able to analyze the records of your own products.
  • What happens to warnings that the MSSP cannot erase? Who will analyze these possible threats in detail? An organization still needs some internal parsing features to process the fewest warnings that the MSSP cannot easily eliminate and therefore return to the customer.

For some companies, a complete and permanent outsourcing of cybersecurity operations is a desirable option. This is a sensible approach, especially for government organizations, where the acquisition, training, and management of people and facilities, as well as cost prediction, is preferably done under a service contract rather than internally. Government organizations may also have significant cyber security compliance obligations when it is appropriate to delegate government mandates to a contractor.

In-House Cybersecurity Operations Center

Building an internal cybersecurity operations center provides the ultimate control over cybersecurity operations and the best way to obtain the services a business needs. Building an internal cybersecurity operations center can also lay the foundation for building future comprehensive cybersecurity services, including vulnerability management, incident response services, external and internal threat management services, and threat detection. .

Compared to outsourcing the cyber security feature, creating internal features has the following advantages and disadvantages.

In-House pros

  • Adaptation of operations to requirements. Design security operations and monitoring functions that best meet the needs of the business.
  • Establishment of a uniform security strategy. An in-house cybersecurity operations center can provide the foundation for a comprehensive security, threat, and incident response function.

Disadvantage

  • Planning and implementation. The time required to set up an internal cybersecurity operations center can easily be one year and is likely to be longer.
  • Appropriate staff. Hiring employees with the right skills, training and experience, or developing and training existing in-house employees can be time consuming and expensive.

As with many cybersecurity decisions, the right approach for many companies is to strike the right balance between internal management of cybersecurity operations and outsourcing to an MSSP.

A sensible option, especially for companies intending to develop an internal cybersecurity role, is to take advantage of the speed of outsourcing as the company develops its own cybersecurity operations. Outsourcing can provide at least some of the cybersecurity services needed today, and the company can use the trained and experienced staff of an MSSP to create the services it wants to provide.


Tuesday 23 June 2020

Three key responsibilities of the IT helpdesk


For many companies, the IT help desk serves as a front or front for the IT organization. It handles employee issues and service requests, managing most, if not all, communications between end users and the IT organization. The helpdesk is a key player in providing IT services to the business and has a number of responsibilities that must be assumed to be successful.

In this blog post, I explain three of the main responsibilities of IT Helpdesk Services and offer suggestions on how best to fulfill them.

Provide excellent customer service.

First, when employees have a superior customer experience in their personal lives (and have the same expectations in the workplace), the number one responsibility of any IT help desk should be to meet the needs of end users. while providing excellent customer service.

That said, it is easy for IT to overcome this hurdle because they are too focused inside, help desk policies and processes (and how they are implemented) serve the first teams. Customer techniques.

However, we hope that your help desk exists to serve the end users of your organization and the roles they play. Therefore, it is their needs that you put before those of others. This should include providing your customers with the information they need, solving their tickets efficiently, communicating with them about problems and changes affecting the company, and generally being readily available when they need them. in your house

End users will ultimately want to be treated as human beings, rather than being administrators of IT resources and ideally as (IT support) customers.

Provide accurate reports that demonstrate performance, drive improvement, and avoid problems.
Reporting is an essential activity for any IT support service.

Reports can show the performance of help desk staff (both individually and collectively), the number of incoming incidents, and company requests, whether or not Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are adhered to, resolution they don't return enough tickets quickly etc. They can also highlight issues that cause repeated accidents, identify ticket trends, and show escalations in progress.

Reports are also useful for tracking data and performance over time, and you should use them to show how IT support levels are improving.

Share and use your collective knowledge

Knowledge management and knowledge base capabilities are a great way to share the knowledge gathered by IT support services, both individually and collectively. A knowledge base will provide relevant information to end users and technical teams. Knowledge base articles in the knowledge base can also be role-based, which means that they are only accessible to those who need them and can be authorized to use them. By sharing knowledge, the helpdesk can avoid incoming calls, reduce ticket volumes and workloads, and simplify the lives of customers and agents.

Network Monitoring Tools & its Services for Business


NOC speaks in the Network Operations Center. It is a united area where managers can filter and manage executives and commitments. A NOC filters its structure to ensure that everything works in a viable way and can alert you in case of a serious problem.

NOC monitoring as a service

Verification by NOC because attendance reduces individual time. For some, monitoring the internal framework is not available due to the limited spending and resource plan. NOC is the perfect game plan.

What are the advantages of the Network Monitoring Center?

NOC Server Monitoring is probably the best device for your IT staff. Estimating redistributed NOC or SOC 24x7 organizations can definitely influence your business in several ways

The best free network monitoring tools

Open source options are great, but remember that the use of open source verification requires a significant level of cooperation in the best network monitoring tools. Open source requires extensive speculation of time and resources to learn, present, design, and use. Assets can be created using network media or an incoming IT pool. The next thought is security, which becomes a problem if your organization enforces strict security rules. Quick custom settings may not be available unless you require some investment to create. Or, you may not encounter basic security issues in the review process.

ICINGA2

Icinga 2 is an open source observation framework that verifies the accessibility of your system assets, illuminates customers about gaps, and produces runtime information for more details. Versatile and extensible, Icinga 2 can filter huge and complex situations in different areas.
Many organizations have been using NAGIOS for a long time and have now moved to Icinga2.




NAGIOS CORE

Nagios is one of the best known and most widely used free system verification devices. System administrators love Nagios because they do it all. In any case, it tends to be worked by the Nagios group of people.

There are two forms of Nagios. Nagios Core is free and open source software, and Nagios XI is a commercial instrument that depends on Nagios Core, but with additional strengths. Nagios is open for its dynamic advancement network and its support for additional external elements. You can create and use additional external elements, such as executable logs or Perl and shell content, to filter and collect metrics for all computers and scheduling used on a system.

Thorny plants

The thorny plant is a system observation instrument that allows you to collect information for all purposes on any component of the system, including management and exchange frameworks, firewalls, load balancers and servers, and locate this information on solid charts. In case you have a device, it is conceivable that the dynamic designer of Cacti Network has made a verification design for it.

ZABBIX

Zabbix is ​​probably the most widely used open source observation tool after Nagios. Complex configuration, Zabbix® supports a clear and simple graphical interface that encourages organization. You control the procedure.

Sunday 21 June 2020

What Does an IT Service Desk do?


The primary role of an IT service center is to serve as the primary point of contact for monitoring / owning incidents, responding to user requests/questions, and providing a communication channel between other service management functions and the community of services. users. In addition to these essential functions, the service center often plays an active role in capturing change requests, managing third-party support contracts, managing software licenses, and helping with problem management.

In some organizations, the service desk is integrated with other business processes, such as:

  • Employee integration
  • Integration acquisition
  • Data access management
  • Integration and disconnection of suppliers/partners.
  • Reports and metric management
  • Business continuity management
  • Infrastructure/service monitoring

Benefits of an IT Service Desk

Savings and scalability

Cost savings and scalability are the two most common benefits companies look for when implementing an IT support service. A well-staffed, well-staffed service center can handle much of your routine IT work. The service center offers organizations a relatively inexpensive option to transfer the simple work of expensive engineering teams and subject matter experts, allowing them to focus on activities that add more value to the business. The service center can also provide the company with a means to provide ongoing support to global operations and distributed user communities.

A finger on the pulse of user sentiment

The service center is the starting point for many key IT processes and services, and as such is often the primary interface between users, business processes, and the IT departments that activate them. Monitoring this interaction provides valuable insight into user satisfaction, service sentiment, and unmet features and needs that IT departments may address in the future.

Early warning of possible problems.

Due to the volume of problems and requests handled by the service center, with the appropriate data and tools to assess patterns and trends, the organization can use the service center as a monitoring tool to identify and resolve preventive service problems. " early warning system "provided by the service center can enable proactive problem management, preventive maintenance and service modifications to reduce the impact of interruptions and service degradation on users.

IT Service Desk Best Practices

Businesses have operated IT service centers for many years, and some of the best practices have emerged from these operations.

Customer commitment
  • Examine the customer's behavior and expectations to make sure they understand your needs.
  • Provide a 24-hour self-help portal for the end user (even when their service center is closed)
  • Use SLAs and priority / severity rankings to differentiate requests so you can answer the most critical questions first
  • Try to resolve issues at the first point of engagement and avoid transfers, escalations and the need for reminders
  • Conduct regular customer satisfaction surveys to understand what your customers think about the services they receive

Service Desk Management and Reports
  • Use real-time support reports, dashboards, and analytics to monitor operations and initiate corrective action before problems become problems.
  • Make sure the escalation and transfer processes are clear and well understood to avoid lost SLAs
  • Take advantage of the analytical capabilities of your ITSM system to reduce the time and effort required to generate reports
  • Make sure management is experienced in your service center operations to better understand what service center staff are doing and the challenges they face
  • Treat service center staff as professional communicators and problem solvers, giving them the tools they need to succeed

Use of technology to support the computer support service
  • Implement service request workflow capabilities in your support software to help orchestrate escalations and transfers
  • Provide automation capabilities for common user requests (login, password reset, etc.)
  • Use your service center software to facilitate and record communications between agents and requesters.
  • Integrate your Service Desk systems into your larger ITSM to provide agents better access to information about the IT environment

Knowledge management
  • Implement a knowledge management system to capture knowledge in a location accessible to multiple people.
  • Provide answers to frequently asked questions directly to end users, eliminating the need to contact an agent
  • Keep your knowledge records up-to-date and accurate by reviewing and purging knowledge records frequently