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Why You Need Unified Access Management and Single Sign-on (SSO)

Posted on by Bluewave

It used to be that most work was done inside the corporate firewall and behind the safety net of the VPN. However, the world today has become much more mobile, collaborative, and cloud-based. In fact, today approximately 71% of services in the average enterprise are cloud-based services, meaning most applications are available from anywhere. (Source: Skyhigh Networks).

As applications continue to be added to the cloud application layer, delivering secure access and maintaining credential oversight for employees, partners, and clients have gone from challenging to downright overwhelming.

That’s why Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions are taking center stage. Industry analysts, including Gartner, defines IAM as the security discipline that enables the right individuals to access the right resources at the right times for the right reasons. (Source: Gartner).

Leading IAM solutions today ensure secure Single Sign-on (SSO) and access control to mission-critical resources, while also providing an enhanced user experience, improved operational efficiency, and a framework for maintaining compliance and data protection from hackers. Let’s look at the ‘must have’ IAM capabilities and why unified access management will be instrumental in going forward.

  • Unified access management – Today most modern IT architectures are made up of on-premise applications, cloud, mobility, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The challenge becomes securing access for a hearty mix of these applications on various networks and devices by a range of users.Unified access management solutions can help link this heterogeneous environment, connecting all users to their preferred applications in an efficient way, without creating silos or opening potential security gaps. Unified access solutions are different from conventional IAM solutions because they are cloud-driven and can serve users from anywhere in the world and use any network.
  • Single sign-on or SSO – It’s well known that individuals have anywhere from 10 to 15 different passwords to remember for work applications. Having multiple passwords to manage not only causes frustration to employees, it produces a significant drain on IT help desks’ time (hunting down and resetting user IDs and passwords). Multiple passwords also increase security vulnerabilities. Risks are higher with numerous passwords to juggle because most people choose simple passwords or write them down to avoid the dreaded password reset. As part of an IAM or unified access management solution, single sign-on eliminates many of these issues. Instead of each application having its own set of usernames and passwords, with SSO users go through one centralized, company-branded login screen. Not only does this simplify access for employees and others logging in, IT managers have a labor-saving portal to view users, see their activities and to manage password policies. They also have a cohesive process for onboarding new employees or terminating access when required. Designed to centrally control authentication for one network domain, with SSO IT managers can close potential breaks in security that could lead to malware attacks.
  • Identify federation – Identity federation takes SSO to the next level and it’s important for enterprises that use multiple Security-as-a-Service (SaaS) products because it allows individuals to gain access to applications without exposing their credentials to the SaaS provider. Identity federation or federated SSO enables cross-domain authentication across multiple networks. These capabilities mean that IT managers can maintain centralized control of user authentication. As a result, anytime a user attempts to access a SaaS application site they are redirected back to the company’s SSO screen. The process also gives the internal IT team an audit trail to maintain control over their identity management.
  • Multi-factor authentication – Multi-factor authentication is another component of identity and access management that gives a deeper level of identity and credential authentication to ensure correct people have access to the enterprise applications and services. Today’s leading multi-factor authentication solutions include several factors, such as a specific account image, as well as validation options around multiple areas, including:
    • What the user knows (i.e. their password)
    • What a user has (i.e. their devices associated with a user’s profile)
    • What a user does (i.e. individual’s behaviors and patterns)
    • User’s location
    • Additional safeguards, such as virtualized keyboards and passcodes sent to mobile devices can also be added

What started out as a job securing access to applications on-premise, has evolved dramatically leaving IT responsible for managing access to multiple application environments, including on-premise apps as well as SaaS cloud apps. A unified access management approach is necessary because it simplifies and secures access to SaaS and on-premise applications, as well as a wide range of networks and devices.

If you’d like to learn more about your options when it comes to single sign-on and identity and access management, talk to Bluewave today.

We can evaluate your environment and make recommendations for smart access control solutions that can centralize security controls, improve efficiencies, and keep your employees, partners and customers connected and productive.

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3 Steps to Simplify Application Migration to the Cloud

Posted on by Bluewave

Cloud Migration is mandatory

Migrating enterprise applications to the cloud is now mandatory for companies that wish to lead in this digital world. Enterprise applications now support more users than ever — an increase driven by opening them up to support customer interaction with the enterprise. Doing so enables customer-facing applications and processes to have all of the data and business logic they need to deliver enhanced experiences to customers and other stakeholders. Cloud Migration may increase compute, storage and network infrastructure requirements.

For most organizations, that means migrating those applications to the cloud, as the traditional data center deployments were not sized nor built for such expansion and variable workloads. Migration is not difficult — if planning is executed properly. The right platform choices can also increase speed and reduce risk. Below are three basic steps every enterprise should take in advance of cloud migration.

Step one: Carefully assess your application inventory

Many enterprises with some history in business have an application portfolio inventory that looks something like this:

  • Modern apps, including microservices, cloud native, mobile — 10 %
  • Legacy apps, including client-server, mainframe, UNIX/C — 30 %
  • Everything else, including Java, Java Enterprise Edition-based, .NET, web applications — 60 %

A proper assessment will categorize each app with an assessment of the “ecosystem” around it, which means understanding physical and virtual server configurations, network topology, security and compliance requirements, and existing support and data dependencies. Once that’s done, enterprises will understand where to begin for maximum results. In our experience, the greatest opportunity lies in the third category. Moving these applications to the right public or private cloud can result in enhanced agility, ability to support customer-facing processes and their variable workloads, and serious savings.

Step two: Build a list and create a plan

The goal is to migrate and modernize that third app category, while minimizing complexity, addressing challenges and optimizing economics. First, decide which cloud makes sense for which app. For example, more cloud-native applications without dependencies outside of the immediate application stack, are good candidates for managed public cloud. Others, with more complex relationships in the data center ecosystem, are better suited and can be moved faster and with less risk to managed private cloud as a service.

Step three: Migrate quickly to cover costs and realize savings

While being conservative might seem the most cost-effective path to the cloud, too often that approach ends up costing more in the long run. That’s because during a migration, organizations are running two infrastructures, incurring costs on both sides. A speedy migration with mitigated risks is the fastest path to cover costs, find savings and improve business results. And while, with rigorous planning, migrating without assistance is possible, more enterprises find that enlisting a partner with deep expertise in public, private and hybrid cloud options offers the most guaranteed and fastest path to success.

Bluewave partners with leading providers such as Rackspace to help guide companies through successful migrations. They offer professional services that allow experts to deliver customized and optimized outcomes based on a customer’s specific application inventory and dependencies. Their customers deliver superior experiences, see significant agility improvements, and gain operational cost savings of up to 60 percent after migrating their applications. These benefits are driven in large part from hardware utilization efficiencies, better administration tools and self-service use. With the right strategic partner, low risk and speedy migrations that yield these kinds of savings can self-fund your transformation and drive continuous modernization.

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Telecom Industry Issues: Where Did Things Go Wrong?

Posted on by Bluewave

There have always been issues with the telecom industry, but those issues are now more apparent than ever before following the pandemic. Why? Businesses are having to pivot their approach to mobility, technology, and security in ways they never anticipated and many networks weren’t built for. As a result, more people than ever are trying to figure out where things went wrong and how to right those wrongs for a clear path forward.

The Two Questions to Ask When Faced with Telecom Industry Issues

As a company that has been involved in consulting on, selling, and implementing voice, data, and network services for two decades now, we’ve recently heard two pressing questions:

  1. What happened to the telecom world, and where did it go wrong?
  2. Why does it seem more difficult than ever to get anything done in the world of telecom?

If you’ve been asking these or similar questions, you’re not alone, and you absolutely shouldn’t ignore the urge to find answers. The urgency of answering these questions has only increased since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and more organizations than ever are coming to us seeking help. Here’s what we tell them about how things got so bad and how we’re working to make it better.

Telecommunication Industry Challenges at the Beginning of the 21st Century

In the early 2000s, there was a clear delineation between telecom vendors, value added resellers (VARs), and the telecom carrier or broker. Vendors and VARs were selling the applications, software, or network infrastructure appliances while the telecom carriers and brokers sold voice and data connectivity (via Frame Relay, MPLS, the internet, etc.). Everyone had a focus area of specialization and expertise.

In contrast to today, things were relatively simple back then, but it was still extremely difficult for businesses to manage these services. The lack of talent required to implement the network and understand the complexity of invoices from telecom providers made it difficult to properly manage these services. It wasn’t uncommon for service installation to be significantly delayed or for customers to be unknowingly charged or overbilled.

To solve these inefficiencies, managed service providers (MSPs) and telecom expense management (TEM) firms were born.

Understanding the Telecom Industry: Competition in the Marketplace

As MSPs, TEM providers, and VARs evolved to take on more market share, carriers began competing with them by selling managed networks that included routers and switches. This competition drove prices down, which was great for a business’s bottom line but not so much for improving the customer experience or streamlining implementation.

Before this competition led to changes in the marketplace, roles within the industry were clearly delineated, even when a carrier provided the equipment or managed services. Voice and network transport were one segment, while the applications and tools running on the network required a completely different set of expertise and knowledge.

As a result, many organizations siloed services and had a dedicated individual or team specializing in email, voice, data, conference, database development, security, etc.

A Problem of the Past: Too Many People in the Room

Like many businesses do, providers also siloed services based on expertise and specialization. A decade or more ago, an entire army of individuals would show up to promise the support of a telecom provider. You had sales representatives, account managers, inside account managers, billing specialists, contract specialists, implementation specialists, voice specialists, data specialists, conferencing specialists, security specialists, mobility specialists, and more!

While the number of people in the room may have been overwhelming, at least you knew you had a list of experts you could always reach out to and find a solution to your problem. Even then, with a whole army on their side, clients frequently complained about how difficult it was to get things done, but reflecting on it now, it was much easier, and that reality highlights how astray the telecom industry has gone.

The market had to change as the technology matured and organizations couldn’t support such a large group, especially when many skill sets are no longer required since some technologies have become obsolete.

However, that still doesn’t change the fact that things are just as difficult to get done as in the past. In fact, it’s more difficult than ever to get things done in the telecom world, and the COVID pandemic has demonstrated just how bad the situation really is.

Start with a Telecom Assessment. We’re experts at catching the technology bloat most enterprises have come to accept.

Why Telecom Is More Difficult Than Ever Before

For someone working in IT, their job is more difficult than ever. IT is no longer seen as a cost center but as a tool, yet it is still treated like a cost center. While there are more tools available at one’s fingertips than ever before, there are now more applications that need to be understood and managed.

Since technologies are no longer siloed and separated across specialists as they once were, the amount of knowledge someone in IT has to possess is not only greater than it ever has been—they’re also under more scrutiny from employers.

Being a specialist in the IT realm is now nearly impossible. IT staff members have to constantly educate themselves on rapidly changing technology while their employers ask them to always do more with less.

That’s become the uphill battle IT teams continually struggle with: make sure everything is working properly and never goes down, but at the same time, educate themselves, secure the network, manage employee devices and applications, all while overseeing costs, contracts, services, and vendors. The challenge only grows more complicated by the day.

The Problem Today: Too Few People in the Room

While we’re continually asking more of our IT teams, we have to remember that the day-to-day support of the army of experts mentioned above is no longer there. Just as IT managers are asked to do more, so are a carrier’s sales team. They’re being asked to sell, manage accounts, and provide support.

That’s largely what has shaped the customer experience today. You have a billing question, a contract question, or you just want information regarding the inventory of your services. The only person who can provide what you need? The sales representative.

When the problem was once that there were too many people in the room, the issue has now become that there aren’t enough.

How Bluewave Rights What’s Wrong with Technology Today

As a strategic advisor of technology services, our job at Bluewave is to learn and understand your project requirements and then identify the providers that can meet and support those requirements. After selecting the right providers, we help procure, source, and manage those services in conjunction with your day-to-day operations.

Ultimately, we help you save time, resources, and money by absorbing the challenges of identifying, implementing, and managing those technology services.

The value we bring? We’ve sat on both sides of the table, working for a wide range of clients and carriers to ensure everyone speaks the same language and reads from the same page. You don’t have to worry about telecom industry issues with Bluewave on your side of the table.

If that sounds like something your organization could benefit from, schedule a Telecom Assessment today to learn more.

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Digital Hostile Takeovers are on the Rise

Posted on by Bluewave

Cyber security threats are constantly evolving, but in the last seven months, a calculated and vicious new strain of attack has emerged; sophisticated enough to take down large business organizations.

At Vigilant, one of our leading security partners, they’ve been seeing sophisticated new threat actors that operate in a very systematic way to actually dismantle an organization. These threat actors operate with patience; the attack may take months or even a year. The goal is to quietly learn as much about an organization, so they can eventually turn off all operations and lock down the organization. Once locked down, they hold the company hostage until a sum, sometimes in the millions of dollars, is paid.

How These Attacks Are Carried Out

  • Attacker(s) come through an open port on a firewall, or a vulnerability in a system. They can also come through users, clicking on a link.
  • The attacker then quickly pivots to another system, and in most cases, deploys an easy to identify virus or malware on the original system as a decoy. This triggers the IT Department of the attacked organization to run antivirus on it or re-image the machine, taking them off the track of the attacker and destroying evidence.
  • The attacker then puts hooks in 25+ machines so they can retain consistent control.
  • Next, the attacker gains control of key servers, identifies backup systems and where they are stored, file servers, takes over email and learns the financial status of the organization. (This last step may take months and up to a year)
  • Once the attacker(s) has taken control of key systems and feels they have learned enough to be able to take the company down, they lock down all networking, firewalls, email servers, file servers, manufacturing lines and authentication servers – essentially taking the company and turning it off.
  • The attacker will then hold the company ransom and will leave it disabled until a ransom is paid.

Since the beginning of the year, Vigilant has been approached by eight organizations that were attacked in this manner. In one case, the total consequences included data loss, a significant decrease in customers and great financial loss, including the ransom they paid that was in the millions. Vigilant doesn’t typically recommend paying the ransom, but the threat actor had been in the customer’s network a long time and dismantled the environment pretty successfully. The backups were completely erased, so the customer needed to get back up and running. Vigilant was able to cordon off the infrastructure and allow the client to rebuild everything quickly, in a way that was 100 percent secure. This company was facing significant fines for being down, so time was of the essence. However, this was a good case. Other companies have simply gone out of business.

How To Mitigate These Attacks

  • Act now – there isn’t time to find a place in your budget next year, there isn’t time to find a place in a project plan. This is a serious danger that can take you out of business overnight.
  • Deploy detection and prevention technology that is not “off the shelves.” Commoditized technology, that is based on widespread accessible technology, will cause you to be behind the attacker because they have access to the same technology.
  • Obtain threat intelligence that is curated and specific to your organization.
  • Move detection of SIEM and Firewall technologies as these are easily visible and attackable to threat actors.
  • Ensure that you have a team of highly qualified analysts consistently hunting and looking at your network and system traffic for threats. I do not mean Artificial Intelligence or automatic detection, I mean actual people investigating. If you can’t afford or do not have the expertise to build a team it is important to outsource to a Managed Security Provider.

Our cyber security partners, such as Vigilant, provide custom technology that can be deployed into your entire organization within 24-48 hours fully configured, and provide a full team of analysts as a service, who investigate all traffic and find threats when they are still small – before your organization is held captive. Cyber security providers investigate in near real-time all layers of communication in your organization, globally, to determine where threats are taking place and to stop them. In addition to a continuous verification of data, companies such as Vigilant record all traffic forensically like a DVR, so the actual network state of your organization can be rewound, paused, and investigated, tracking the threat actor faster than they can move through your organization.

Please reach out if you would like to schedule time with one of our leading cyber security partners to conduct an initial security assessment to identify any gaps and begin the remediation process immediately before your company is held captive.

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Telework Best Practices: Mobility Challenges in the Age of Working from Home

Posted on by Bluewave

To some extent, all enterprises are struggling with mobility challenges as more employees work from home full-time than ever before. If your organization is facing new or evolving issues related to mobility, that’s no surprise, but you’re probably wondering what you can do about it. Here’s what you need to know about telework.

An Overview of New and Evolving Mobility Challenges for Telework

Enterprises of all sizes are encountering broader technology challenges due to more employees working remotely than in the past, particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many workers into working from home who previously didn’t. As a result, organizations have had to rethink and refocus their approach to mobility, but to different degrees. In our experience, two types of clients have struggled with mobility challenges:

  1. Businesses that had already migrated to the cloud prior to COVID
  2. Premise-based organizations that hadn’t migrated to the cloud before the pandemic

That’s right—even organizations that had already migrated some or all of their network operations to a cloud environment encountered mobility challenges as they transitioned to a fully remote business model. However, since cloud architecture goes hand-in-hand with business agility and mobility, these organizations faced fewer initial challenges and recovered faster than those without a cloud model. While many cloud-based organizations have recovered from the initial mobility challenges, that doesn’t mean they still didn’t encounter them or that they don’t have to worry about developing challenges in the future. Across the board, we’ve seen organizations at every level struggle with:

Network Performance Challenges

Leading up to the pandemic, most enterprises already knew that their on-premise infrastructure was built and optimized to handle day-to-day network traffic. What they didn’t necessarily know is if their employees’ home or off-site networks were capable of meeting those same demands. As a result, all organizations have inevitably encountered the challenges of employees’ home networks not always aligning with application network requirements.

Endpoint Security Challenges

As with network uptime, it’s much easier to manage endpoint security when all devices are actively connected to a business’s core network. You can flag device vulnerabilities, keep antivirus definitions up to date, and monitor for suspicious activity. Without the right tools in place, it’s been impossible for organizations to achieve that same level of security and visibility into vulnerabilities when everyone’s connected to a different network. With increased mobility comes decreased network visibility—unless you partner with the experts at Bluewave.

Best Practice: Network Performance

It’s easier to guarantee network performance and guard against downtime when everyone’s working on the same network, but what do you do when they’re not? Now, if one employee’s home network goes down, the business may not be affected, but individual employees are. To solve this problem, more companies are prioritizing mobile connectivity that provides remote workers with hotspots and failover services as backup when their primary network fails.

Best Practice: Endpoint Security

Organizations that had already migrated to the cloud leading up to the pandemic were better equipped to respond to the security risks that come with a less structured network model, as cloud services help bridge the gap between mobility and security. However, the primary option for on-premise networks has been to rely on a virtual private network (VPN) to ensure secure access, but by doing so, end users often struggle with poor network speeds. As a result, unified endpoint management has become the best way to consolidate network security, delivering the same level of security whether workers are in the office or working remotely.

What Mobility Challenges Are Still on the Horizon?

While network performance and endpoint security are two of the most significant challenges organizations face with a more mobile workforce, that doesn’t mean solving the issues outlined above exempts you from challenges moving forward. One of the biggest unknowns businesses currently face is about what they’re going to do when they return to the office. Most businesses have had to make significant changes to their network to accommodate telework and mobile employees.

That’s often required restructuring and refocusing network resources around mobility, so a business’s network infrastructure may not be equipped to deal with the new performance requirements when everybody’s back in the office and collectively using massive amounts of bandwidth again. If businesses fail to account for this factor now, they’re going to run into a similar set of problems that they dealt with at the outset of the pandemic.

How Can Bluewave Help Overcome Mobility Challenges?

At Bluewave, whenever we’re talking about mobility, we’re always thinking in terms of visibility. That’s because your business’s mobility platform has the potential to introduce more hidden vulnerabilities than any other layer of your network. Fortunately, our experts make it easy to achieve visibility today with a Telecom Assessment while aligning ongoing strategies with managed mobility services. Schedule your assessment to get started.

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5 High-Value Features of Hosted PBX

Posted on by Bluewave

Whether you run a multinational corporation or a startup, communication is key to survival and success. Many organizations, regardless of size or industry, still rely on legacy PBX phone systems as the backbone for their corporate communications.

However, these systems are ill-equipped to handle the complex communications needs of today’s businesses. And as workforces become increasingly more mobile and both the fiscal and operational needs of your organization change, it’s imperative to make sure your communications systems have all the features and functions you need today and into the future.

So, as you evaluate the strength of your current environment or consider upgrading to a newer one, here are 5 of the most valuable features hosted PBX solutions have to offer:

Central system configuration and administration

What it is: Unlike old phone systems that required their own rooms and a bunch of boxes to manage, hosted PBX systems are cloud-based and can be fully managed from a central customer portal. The admin portals make it easy to oversee, change, add extensions and employees, and monitor all system functions–with the added bonus of on-demand support from your vendor.

Why you need it: No matter the size of your business, you and your employees have better things to worry about whether your communications system is working properly. Companies of all sizes, in every industry, benefit from the time savings and reduced installation costs of up to 70% with cloud-based, done-for-you phone systems that you can customize and manage without a ton of special training, expertise, or expensive hardware that become obsolete and a cost burden in a couple of years.

Automated Attendant

What it is: Call answering with an automated attendant replaces the need to staff a reception desk or hire a call answering service. Call answering features in hosted PBX services include an auto attendant, dial-by-name directories, and even a do not disturb feature to help callers find their preferred contact–even if he or she isn’t immediately available.

Why you need it: There are better uses of employee time and company resources than staffing and training dedicated receptionists. Re-allocate time and as much as $35,000 per year ordinarily spent on low-impact activities toward higher-value tasks like answering support tickets faster, connecting with prospective customers sooner, or collaborating with colleagues to build a better business.

Collaboration

What it is: In today’s business environment, conferencing and remote collaboration are must-haves. Hosted PBX solutions deliver an array of integrated video, audio, and desktop sharing tools that allow you to host your own advanced video or teleconferences, pre-schedule on-demand events, and even record the conferences for future playback to help you take control of your meetings even before they even start–without having to manage all infrastructure yourself.

Why you need it: You can’t be everywhere at once, despite what your customers and prospects expect. Conferencing–both teleconferencing and video collaboration–helps to dramatically extend the reach of your business to be more places for more people and collaborate in real time with geographically dispersed teams–all without having to add a big number to your travel budget. Conferencing gives smaller businesses the added bonus of appearing larger and more responsive without hiring additional employees or otherwise increasing overhead.

Employee mobility

What it is: It’s no secret that more employees are working from someplace other than the office than ever before. Hosted PBX services support employee mobility and the ability to work from home, during a commute, at a hotel or another office from virtually any device. Employee mobility sends calls to multiple locations at once, meaning you and your team can answer no matter where you are at the moment.

Why you need it: Whether it’s because they feel more productive working from a coffee shop or they’re out in the field working with customers, your business can’t afford to have employees tethered to their desks. And when you factor in that 91% of workers believe they “get more work done when working remotely,” you’ll be hard-pressed to come up with a reason for not at least providing some off-site connectivity for them.

Call routing/ACD queueing

What it is: Hosted PBX solutions expedite your callers’ journey through your phone system keep them engaged, connected, and on the line. With call routing capabilities, your system comes equipped with virtual extensions for every employee, “follow-me routing” to allow direct calling to a specific desk or mobile devices, and even skill-based routing logic to make sure your caller is getting the right person or team, at the right time.

Why you need it: like with call answering, your customers and prospects don’t want to spend their valuable time tracking down someone to help answer their questions. Hosted PBX solutions automate many of the most tedious aspects of phone communication, providing a smoother, more efficient, and superior customer experience.

Hosted PBX solutions are a far cry from your old, boxed-in phone systems. They’re fully equipped with all the bells, whistles, and special features your business needs to remain connected and competitive in an increasingly complex, instant gratification world.

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