IT OPERATIONS

Shannon May, Photos: Adobe Stock, Unsplash

Help desk tickets like “can’t log in,” or “computer is slow,” or “I spilled a Stanley Cup’s worth of coffee on my laptop,” might offer more useful information than you might assume.

When analyzed for metrics like volume, sentiment, and seasonality, help desk data can reveal larger tech problems and warning signals within the organization—including broken processes or workflows that could use a little automation.

Categories. Before you can spot troubling trends, you need informative, well-defined categories, according to Robert Rohrman, SVP of IT infrastructure at certifications and training body CompTIA. Increases in specific ticket types allow IT pros to zoom in on specific areas of need.

“If you just see a spike in ‘software,’ what is that really telling you?” Rohrman said. Software, he added, could mean a marketing team’s platform, Excel, or video-editing tool.

Trend spotter.—BH

      

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CYBERSECURITY

Francis Scialabba

Like your friend who’s tuned into NFL RedZone every Sunday, threat actors these days are on many channels at once.

In these “omnichannel” or “multichannel” attacks, an adversary might send a fake password-reset email, then phone a minute later, pretending to be the help desk. They may even follow up with a message on an internal comms platform. By reaching out on three different channels, there’s a greater chance an attacker may appear authentic, especially to a harried employee.

“They’re very calculated pathways meant to create trust,” Chris Nyhuis, co-founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm Vigilant, said of this attack tactic.

This year, vendor security teams have disclosed instances of attackers using multiple communication methods in quick succession. For instance, Microsoft, in September, revealed a convincing combination of social engineering and realistic infrastructure to collect targeted data.

But multichannel attacks require a bit of legwork.—BH

      

CLOUD

Shannon May

We’ve all been there. Your website is hit by a spike in traffic and suddenly, you’re faced with one burning question: How will you increase your server capacity?

For IT pros seeking a temporary fix, vertical scaling may be the answer. Vertical scaling (a.k.a., “scaling up”) is when more resources (RAM, CPU, etc.) are added to a system or server to increase its capacity, as opposed to upping capacity through additional machines. (The latter is known as horizontal scaling.)

“The way I like to think about it is just maximizing a single host or server or instance to get the most out of that one thing instead of creating a more complicated environment with multiple redundant hosts,” Ben Bernstein, manager of cybersecurity advisors at Huntress, told IT Brew.

What’s it good for? According to Osmar Olivo, senior director of product management and core database at MongoDB, a company may choose to scale up because it is often quicker and simpler than horizontal scaling.

The best times to scale up.—BM

      

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patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 49.8%. That’s the proportion of tech pros who suspect or were able to confirm that an agent in their organization took unintended, unexpected, or unauthorized action within the past year. (ITPro)

Quote: “What companies are facing today is an AI zoo—dozens of unsanctioned LLMs in daily use across the workforce, each one widening the organization’s exposure to data leaks and security breaches.”—Andrius Buinovskis, NordLayer VP of product strategy, on the shadow AI problem (TechRadar)

Read: Goodbye, Columbus neoclouds? (The Register)

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