THREE STEPS TO MORE EFFICIENT IT AND FASTER DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

INTRODUCTION 1

SECTION 1: AUTOMATE TO ENABLE SPECIALIZATION 2

SECTION 2: AUTOMATE TO SUPPORT FRANKENSTEIN IT 5

SECTION 3: AUTOMATE TO KEEP PACE WITH THE THREAT LANDSCAPE 6

SECTION 4: WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A SOLUTION 7

CONTENTS

IT leaders at midsize organizations undergoing digital transformation are finding that their IT teams, even if fully staffed, don’t have the bandwidth or expertise to take on new initiatives—or the security those projects require.

One way IT leaders can support business growth and digitization is to free up their overburdened teams. Leading analyst firm Gartner recommends three steps to free up resources:

§ “Strive to keep IT systems and processes simple and standard, unless this impedes business success and differentiation.”

§ “Select IT solutions that can be implemented, managed and supported with minimal resources.”

§ “Transition repetitive IT support and operational tasks from manual to self-service and automated processes.”1

We believe these three recommendations are interrelated. The automation of processes can ensure simplification and standardization, while the technology selected for automation should be manageable and supportable with minimal resources. And they can be readily applied to each of your primary areas of responsibility—IT operations, security monitoring, and compliance reporting.

INTRODUCTION

1 Gartner. Three Steps to Free Up Resources in Midmarket IT Organizations. February 2017.

1 INTRODUCTION

01

IT teams must accomplish a lot with relatively few people. They manage IT systems, respond to security incidents, and handle annual compliance reviews. Therefore, most teams are comprised of generalists, reacting to the issues of each day with little time to take the longer view.

However, we believe by following Gartner’s recommendations, these teams can standardize routine operations and automate everyday functions such as IT and security system monitoring. with the right technology.

In doing so, IT leaders are able to:

§ Free up staff time by that tool identifying and proactively resolving impending issues before they become a large fire drill.

§ Spend some of that newly available time developing a side specialty that can help drive the business going forward; transforming the team from generalists to specialists.

§ Use that specialization and time to plan strategic projects

AUTOMATE TO ENABLE SPECIALIZATION

that will continue to transform the traditional business to a digital one.

EXPERT TIP: Look for monitoring solutions that will dynamically discover systems, allow them to be associated with the business services they power, and proactively identify issues before they occur, rather than simply alerting on them afterwards.

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT A small IT team responsible for the point-of-sale (POS) systems in 26 luxury-brand retail stores, as well as IT in the corporate office, struggled to glean insight from all of the logs available. A strong remote monitoring system, for both IT and security, with clear alerts was critical. Regardless of whether POS systems go down due to a system or missed security incident, sales would be impacted. They implemented Fortinet FortiSIEM for centralized monitoring, with alerts integrated with their support ticket system for automated response.

2 AUTOMATE TO ENABLE SPECIALIZATION

02

Automating operations is exceptionally valuable to the ongoing operation—and ultimate redesign—of the hodgepodge of IT systems that typically accumulates over time.

In such situations, automated monitoring is again a major bonus in that an intelligent monitoring tool:

§ Can make sense of systems not as well understood by newer staff.

§ Should notify of potential system issues in advance, providing time for the most knowledgeable team member to identify the proper fix.

§ Frees up staff time to understand the new technologies and architectures necessary to take the business forward.

AUTOMATE TO SUPPORT FRANKENSTEIN IT

EXPERT TIP: Look for solutions that support homegrown in addition to off-the-shelf systems, with an ability to customize monitoring for nonstandard infrastructure.

CUSTOMER USE CASE SPOTLIGHT A major avionics system provider had challenges unique to their industry. “We’re basically looking for indicators of compromise (IOCs), and with these IOCs coming from an aircraft, it’s not your traditional infrastructure where it’s very cookie-cutter. We have different types of assets on an aircraft that do not necessarily communicate in the same manner as traditional data center equipment. We patented specific correlation rules implemented by FortiSIEM that would indicate an IOC aboard an aircraft, and it’s those events we want to be notified about.”

3 AUTOMATE TO SUPPORT FRANKENSTEIN IT

03

As with IT systems, security systems have often been added over time from different vendors and in varying form factors. With myriad disparate security products, it’s difficult and time-consuming to understand security risks across the whole network. At the same time, industry and other regulations continue to change and indeed spawn new compliance requirements.

In both cases, an automated approach to security monitoring (and indeed security overall) offers significant advantages including:

§ A central view of all security systems: aggregating, analyzing, and alerting on information from a single console, without the need to understand and navigate multiple dashboards.

§ The ability to integrate with ticketing systems and automate response workflow to efficiently respond to incidents.

AUTOMATE TO KEEP PACE WITH THE THREAT LANDSCAPE

§ Ongoing insight into current compliance status, as well as issues to address, ahead of compliance audits.

EXPERT TIP: Look for solutions that offer both security and IT system monitoring, as well as ones that speed security response and compliance reporting.

CUSTOMER USE CASE SPOTLIGHT A 300-employee finance firm with a two-person IT/security shop has been growing their business, their network, and their security requirements. Among other things, they needed a clear view of security across the organization. Further, instead of selecting a separate performance monitoring tool, they went with a SIEM that could cover that too. As a result, they established an automated system with FortiSIEM to stay ahead of security and availability issues, rather than coming into the office one day to a full-blown fire drill.

4 AUTOMATE TO KEEP PACE WITH THE THREAT LANDSCAPE

04

As Gartner notes, “To get the most out of their teams, CIOs in midmarket IT organizations must find ways to repurpose staff to projects that deliver more value to the business.”2 We believe the most effective way to do that is by automating the routine monitoring and critical response functions with a simple to deploy, manage, and maintain system. In addition to freeing staff up to develop specializations and redesign systems that will power an increasingly digital business, it will also improve the uptime and security of core services and data.

Be sure to look for solutions that will dynamically discover and proactively monitor off-the-shelf as well as custom systems. (While most monitoring solutions will do a reasonable job supporting common IT systems, they often require significant customization to support nonstandard IT components.) Then allow those systems to be associated with the business services they enable, cover IT and security systems, and guide fast response to issues in order to power your digital business.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A SOLUTION

This is the approach that Fortinet’s FortiSIEM has taken in delivering a unified solution that provides:

§ Automated discovery, monitoring, and alerting of both common and custom IT services with out-of-the-box parsers, plus the ability to easily create new ones on the fly.

§ Business service-oriented groups and dashboards to monitor end-user services powered by underlying IT.

§ Advanced analytics to proactively monitor and identify security incidents, along with predefined mitigation libraries to automate response.

§ Hundreds of prebuilt compliance templates to easily assess and demonstrate adherence to regulations.

§ Granular role-based access control to define and separate functional responsibilities across IT and security from a single platform.

2 Gartner. Three Steps to Free Up Resources in Midmarket IT Organizations. February 2017.

5 WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A SOLUTION

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