Over the past several years, enterprise IT teams moved faster than at any point in recent history. AI pilots launched, cloud adoption accelerated, security stacks expanded, and automation initiatives multiplied across nearly every organization.

That speed delivered innovation, but it also produced environments that are increasingly complex, difficult to operate, and harder to govern at scale.

As organizations look toward 2026, priorities are changing. Boards and executive teams are no longer rewarding experimentation for its own sake. They are demanding reliability, security, cost control, and measurable outcomes. Industry analysts including Gartner, Forrester, IDC, Deloitte, and PwC consistently describe this moment as a shift from experimentation to enterprise IT execution.

The IT trends shaping 2026 reflect how organizations are responding to this shift in practice. As AI moves into production, architectural limits surface. Long-held cloud assumptions are challenged, and as environments distribute across clouds, data centers, and edge locations, security models must adapt, with each trend building on the one before it as execution challenges emerge at scale.

Trend #1: AI Grows Up From Innovation Theater to Everyday Operations (AI in Production)

What the trend is: AI is moving from isolated pilots and innovation programs into core, production business operations across both IT and business functions.

Why this is happening now: Board pressure, operational risk, and the demand for measurable ROI have ended tolerance for unmanaged experimentation.

What organizations are doing now: Industry analysts including Gartner, Forrester, IDC, McKinsey, Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, EY, and IBM converge on the same conclusion for 2026: AI is the forefront of initiatives. Gartner frames AI as a platform capability that reshapes operating models, while Forrester predicts enterprises will slow or defer uncontrolled AI spending until governance and ROI are provable. IDC and McKinsey reinforce that the fastest-growing AI investments are focused on production use cases in IT operations, security, software development, finance, human resources, and customer-facing business workflows, rather than experimental projects.

What organizations are actively de-prioritizing

• Endless AI pilots without production ownership
• AI tools operating outside security and identity controls
• Shadow AI adoption without auditability or accountability

No technology illustrates the shift from experimentation to execution more clearly than AI.

Over the past several years, AI dominated budgets and headlines. Organizations experimented with chatbots, analytics models, and generative tools that were often disconnected from core systems. While many initiatives delivered insight or short-term efficiency, relatively few produced durable, repeatable value at enterprise scale.

What organizations learned is that AI pilots without operational integration do not fail quietly. They introduce parallel systems, ungoverned decision-making, new security exposure, and operational dependencies that become difficult to justify once AI begins influencing financial performance, workforce decisions, or customer outcomes.

By 2026, that experimentation phase is largely over.

AI investment is now concentrating in operational domains where reliability, consistency, and integration matter more than novelty. Instead of isolated pilots, AI is being embedded directly into systems that run organizations day to day. This includes financial forecasting and anomaly detection, HR workforce planning and recruiting, customer service operations, IT operations, and security response, all operating under defined governance and accountability.

This shift is occurring because early experimentation proved potential value while also exposing risk. Boards and executives now demand measurable outcomes, forcing AI into production workflows where it must operate predictably under real-world constraints.

What organizations are doing now: AI in IT Operations (AIOps)

In IT operations, AI is increasingly used to analyze telemetry across infrastructure, applications, and networks. Rather than waiting for outages to generate tickets, teams apply AI-driven operations to identify patterns that signal impending failures.

Industry research cited by Gartner and IDC shows that mature AIOps environments can reduce mean time to resolution by roughly 30 to 50 percent, primarily by accelerating root cause identification and remediation.

AI is compensating for scale that human teams can no longer manage alone.

What organizations are doing now: AI in Security Operations

Security teams routinely process thousands of alerts per day, many of which go uninvestigated due to staffing constraints and alert fatigue. Forrester and IBM emphasize that AI-driven correlation and prioritization are now essential for effective security operations.

AI reduces noise, prioritizes credible threats, and automates first-response actions, allowing analysts to focus on judgment .

What organizations are doing now: AI in Software Development

Development teams increasingly use AI for code assistance, test generation, security scanning, and documentation. Deloitte and Accenture note that the primary value is not speed alone, but reduced delivery risk and improved consistency across teams.

AI delivers value when it is treated as infrastructure, not experimentation.

As AI becomes embedded in day-to-day operations, many organizations encounter a second, less visible constraint: whether their underlying architecture can actually support it at scale.

Trend #2: AI Readiness Exposes Architectural Reality in Enterprise IT Execution

What the trend is: AI initiatives are exposing long-standing architectural weaknesses across infrastructure, data, and integration.

Why this is happening now: Production-scale AI workloads stress systems in ways experimentation never did.

What organizations are doing now: As AI moves from experimentation into production, many organizations encounter that the model itself is rarely the hardest part.

, data quality, integration, and governance quickly emerge as the real constraints. This is not because AI is fundamentally different, but because it amplifies weaknesses that already exist in enterprise IT environments.

AI workloads are compute-intensive, data-hungry, and unpredictable. They stress infrastructure differently than traditional applications, with uneven utilization patterns, heightened sensitivity to latency, and strong dependence on data locality. Fragmented data pipelines, constrained storage architectures, and underperforming networks erode AI value long before business teams see results.

In practice, AI often exposes architectural debt that had gone unaddressed for years. Many initiatives stall not because models underperform, but because the underlying environment cannot support them reliably or securely at scale.

As these constraints surface, organizations are being forced to take an end-to-end view of architecture that connects infrastructure, data, operations, and risk into a single conversation. That realization is reshaping how enterprises think about cloud.

Trend #3: Hybrid Cloud Replaces Cloud-First Dogma

What the trend is: Hybrid and multicloud are now permanent operating models rather than transitional states.

Why this is happening now: Cost volatility, data gravity, and regulatory pressure have exposed the limits of cloud-first strategies.

What organizations are doing now: Industry analysts including Gartner, IDC, Deloitte, PwC, IBM, and EY describe hybrid and multicloud as the default enterprise operating model by 2026. IDC notes that cloud spending growth is shifting from expansion to optimization, while Gartner emphasizes workload placement decisions over migration velocity.

What organizations are actively de-prioritizing

• Blanket cloud-first mandates
• Lift-and-shift migrations without cost or performance optimization
• Single-cloud dependency strategies

For much of the last decade, cloud-first mandates were treated as a marker of modernization. Moving workloads to the cloud signaled agility, innovation, and speed.

In practice, many organizations migrated workloads without fully evaluating long-term cost, performance, or regulatory implications. Provisioning was fast and experimentation was easy, but governance often lagged behind adoption. Industry studies consistently show that more than 60 percent of enterprises now exceed their cloud budgets annually.

By 2026, organizations are moving away from cloud-first ideology in favor of cloud-appropriate decision-making. Hybrid and multicloud environments are no longer temporary stages. They represent the steady-state model for enterprise IT.

What organizations are doing now: FinOps Becomes a Core Capability

Guidance from the FinOps Foundation and Gartner highlights that FinOps now spans public cloud, SaaS, licensing, and AI workloads. Cost governance has become continuous, architectural, and cross-functional rather than reactive.

The distinction is in well-architected environments versus poorly governed ones.

As environments span public cloud, private infrastructure, and edge locations, long-standing security assumptions are also being reexamined.

Trend #4: Security Evolves Beyond the Perimeter Through Identity and IT Governance

What the trend is: Enterprise security is shifting from perimeter-only defense to models centered on identity, behavior, and controlled access.

Why this is happening now: Distributed users, workloads, and AI systems have made location-based trust unreliable.

What organizations are doing now: Industry analysts including Gartner, Forrester, IBM, PwC, Deloitte, and EY consistently highlight that identity-based attacks account for the majority of modern breaches, and that lateral movement is the primary driver of impact once attackers gain access.

What organizations are actively de-prioritizing

• Security models that rely solely on network location
• Implicit trust based on where a connection originates
• Annual or point-in-time security assessments

As environments have become more distributed, security teams have had to rethink how trust is established and enforced.

Firewalls remain a critical control and a core part of enterprise security strategy. They continue to provide essential inspection, segmentation, and threat prevention at scale. What has changed is not the importance of firewalls, but the role they play within a broader security model.

Users, applications, workloads, APIs, and devices now operate across clouds, data centers, and edge environments. In this reality, security strategies focus less on defining a single perimeter and more on controlling access, limiting lateral movement, and reducing blast radius when incidents occur.

What organizations are doing now: Zero Trust Becomes Operational

Research from Forrester and Gartner emphasizes continuous verification across users, workloads, and services rather than one-time access decisions.

For many organizations, Zero Trust began as a way to modernize remote access and reduce reliance on VPNs. As those initiatives matured, a practical challenge emerged. Early Zero Trust and ZTNA implementations often focused on user access and assumed modern identity systems and managed endpoints.

Organizations are now extending Zero Trust principles to work alongside firewall platforms and network controls, applying consistent policy enforcement across users, devices, applications, and systems. This approach strengthens firewall effectiveness by ensuring that access decisions are context-aware and continuously evaluated.

This evolution is especially important for environments that include unmanaged devices, legacy applications, and operational systems where traditional identity or endpoint controls are limited. By combining firewall-based segmentation with Zero Trust access controls, organizations can better contain lateral movement and reduce the impact of compromise.

Zero Trust is no longer treated as a standalone project. It is becoming an operational layer that complements and enhances existing security investments.

Trend #5: Platforms Replace Best-of-Breed Sprawl in Enterprise IT Execution

What the trend is: Enterprises are consolidating fragmented tools into integrated platforms.

Why this is happening now: Operational complexity and ongoing talent constraints have made tool sprawl unsustainable.

What organizations are doing now: For years, best-of-breed strategies dominated enterprise IT. Organizations selected the strongest tool in each category and stitched them together through custom integrations and manual processes.

Over time, this approach created environments that were difficult to operate, expensive to secure, and heavily dependent on scarce expertise. Large enterprises now routinely manage dozens of overlapping infrastructure, networking, and security tools, each adding integration overhead and operational friction.

As these environments expanded, the challenge shifted from acquiring capability to operating it. Teams spent increasing amounts of time maintaining integrations, reconciling data across tools, and troubleshooting handoffs instead of delivering business outcomes.

By 2026, CIOs are prioritizing platforms over point solutions not because individual features no longer matter, but because integration, visibility, and operability matter more. Platforms provide shared data models, unified policy enforcement, and consistent operational workflows across domains.

This shift has also elevated the importance of vendor strategy and partner execution. Consolidation succeeds only when platforms are selected with a clear architectural intent and when integration is designed and validated rather than assumed. Organizations increasingly evaluate vendors based on how well their platforms interoperate and rely on trusted partners to build the connective tissue that turns platform capability into operational reality.

Even with platforms in place, however, the scale and pace of modern environments exceed what manual operations can support.

Trend #6: Automation Shifts from Efficiency to Survival at Scale

What the trend is: Automation has become essential for keeping modern IT environments stable and operational at scale.

Why this is happening now: The growth of infrastructure, applications, and security controls has outpaced human capacity, making manual operations a source of risk rather than control.

What organizations are doing now: Automation is not new. What has changed is its role.

In the past, automation was primarily used to improve efficiency and reduce repetitive tasks. Today, it is being used to prevent failure at scale.

Specifically, automation has shifted:

• From task-level scripting to system-level workflows
• From optional acceleration to operational control
• From individual ownership to shared, governed platforms
• From speed-first execution to risk-aware execution

Modern environments are too large, too dynamic, and too interconnected for manual intervention to remain reliable. The volume of systems, alerts, configurations, and dependencies now exceeds what human teams can manage consistently.

As a result, organizations are embedding automation directly into infrastructure, security, networking, and application operations. Automated workflows detect issues earlier, enforce policy consistently, and initiate response actions before problems escalate.

At the same time, experience has shown that uncontrolled automation can amplify errors and propagate failures.

The focus therefore shifted to automation with guardrails. Automated actions are bounded, observable, and reversible, allowing teams to maintain speed without surrendering control.

Automation is now keeping complex environments from breaking. Even with automation in place, execution still depends on people. Automation changes how teams operate, not whether they are needed.

Trend #7: Talent Shortages Drive New Enterprise IT Operating Models

What the trend is: Enterprises are adopting co-delivery and partner-augmented execution models to sustain modern IT environments.

Why this is happening now: Persistent skill shortages and rising execution pressure have made both fully in-house and fully outsourced models ineffective.

What organizations are doing now: Despite advances in AI and automation, people remain central to IT success. At the same time, the gap between the skills required to operate modern environments and the talent available to do so continues to widen.

Historically, organizations gravitated toward one of two extremes. Some attempted to do everything in-house, which breaks down under staffing constraints and burnout. Others relied heavily on outsourcing, which often reduced control, slowed decision-making, and eroded institutional knowledge.

That model no longer works.

Instead, enterprises are adopting co-delivery operating models that blend internal ownership with targeted external execution. In these models, internal teams retain responsibility for strategy, architecture, security, and accountability, while partners provide execution support, specialized expertise, surge capacity, and structured knowledge transfer.

What has changed is not the use of partners, but how they are used:

• From staff replacement to capability augmentation
• From transactional projects to ongoing execution support
• From dependency to deliberate knowledge transfer

This shift elevates the importance of trust, governance, and resilience across everything organizations deploy. Partners are expected to operate within defined architectural and security frameworks rather than alongside them.

Co-delivery models allow organizations to move faster without losing control, absorb change without breaking teams, and scale execution without creating long-term dependency.

Trend #8: Trust, IT Governance, and Resilience Are Built In

What the trend is: Governance, auditability, and resilience are being designed into systems from the start rather than added after deployment.

Why this is happening now: AI adoption, regulatory pressure, and increased board oversight require provable control, accountability, and operational discipline.

What organizations are doing now

Industry analysts across Gartner, IBM, Deloitte, PwC, EY, Accenture, McKinsey, Forrester, and IDC consistently describe governance as the gating factor for scaling AI, hybrid cloud, and automation. Without auditability, data lineage, policy enforcement, and clear accountability, initiatives stall before reaching sustained production impact.

What changed is the tolerance for ambiguity.

Trust must demonstrate continuously through observable controls and measurable outcomes.

As a result, organizations are prioritizing governance-first approaches across their environments. This includes embedding policy enforcement, auditability, and resilience directly into infrastructure, platforms, automation workflows, and security architectures rather than layering them on later.

Resilience has also moved to the foreground. Systems are increasingly designed with the expectation of disruption, whether from cyber incidents, operational failure, or regulatory scrutiny. The goal is no longer to prevent every failure, but to limit impact, recover quickly, and maintain control under pressure.

Organizations are investing in environments that can be monitored, evaluated, and defended over time. Success is measured not by how quickly systems are deployed, but by how reliably they can be operated, governed, and adapted as conditions change.

What These Trends Mean for Execution

Taken together, these trends reinforce a single reality. Execution now matters more than intent.

The IT trends shaping 2026 tell a consistent story. Enterprises are moving away from ideology and toward execution. Away from complexity for its own sake and toward systems that can be operated, secured, and evolved with confidence.

AI, hybrid cloud, Zero Trust, platforms, automation, and new operating models all deliver value only when they are implemented with architectural discipline, operational foresight, and governance built in from the start.

Technology creates value only when it can be run reliably, securely, and predictably in the real world under real constraints, with real people, and real consequences.

The organizations that succeed will not be those that adopt the most tools. They will be the ones that design IT environments capable of absorbing change without breaking.

How WEI Helps Organizations Execute Their 2026 IT Objectives

As enterprises move from experimentation to execution, success depends on whether strategies can be translated into systems that operate reliably under real-world conditions.

WEI helps organizations execute their 2026 IT objectives by designing, validating, and operationalizing IT environments that can be governed, secured, and sustained over time. With more than two decades of engineering experience, WEI works alongside enterprise teams to align AI readiness, hybrid cloud architecture, security, automation, and operational governance into cohesive systems rather than isolated initiatives.

WEI鈥檚 approach is vendor-agnostic and architecture-first. Highly certified engineers design environments based on business requirements, regulatory constraints, and operational realities rather than product bias, which becomes especially important as AI and automation move into core operations.

Execution challenges most often emerge at integration points. WEI focuses on building and validating the connective tissue that allows platforms to function together at scale, reducing risk as environments span cloud, data center, and edge locations.

WEI designs with day-two operations and resilience in mind. Monitoring, governance, and lifecycle management are addressed from the start, with automation applied using guardrails to preserve control as complexity grows.

People remain central to execution. To address the widespread IT skills gap and sustain modern environments, WEI offers a Technical Apprenticeship for Diverse Candidates service. This program recruits and trains early-career talent tailored to specific organizational needs, immersing apprentices in real technology stacks and mentoring them to be effective contributors. transition into full-time roles with clients, helping organizations build sustainable, diverse, and job-ready technical talent pipelines that reduce onboarding time and long-term staffing risk.

If your organization is evaluating how to meet its 2026 IT objectives without adding unnecessary complexity or risk, WEI can help identify execution gaps and define practical paths forward.

Contact WEI to start a conversation about executing your 2026 IT strategy with confidence.

The post 2026 IT Trends: Enterprise IT Is Moving From Experimentation To Execution appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

When I speak with IT and business leaders, including CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, CFOs, and Directors, the topic of managed services almost always invites strong opinions. It is not surprising. For years, managed services were often associated with rigid outsourcing contracts, inconsistent results, and a loss of control. 

Thankfully, the managed services environment has matured. Modern MSPs are not designed to replace IT teams. They are built to extend and empower them. Despite this shift, I continue to encounter common misconceptions that cause hesitation, or even outright resistance, from organizations considering a managed services model. 

If these myths are still influencing your team鈥檚 thinking, they may be standing in the way of strategic progress. Let me walk you through the most common myths and the truths behind them鈥he same truths I鈥檝e seen play out with clients firsthand. 

Myth #1: “We鈥檒l lose control of our IT environment.” 

This is the most common concern I hear, and understandably so. No leader wants to hand over the keys to an external partner without knowing what they will get in return. 

In reality, partnering with a managed services provider should enhance your control, not erode it. A quality provider will help you establish clear governance upfront. That means defining escalation paths, creating detailed runbooks, aligning on service-level expectations, and mapping responsibilities on both sides. You remain in charge of the strategy. The MSP executes according to your standards and on your terms. 

In our proven work at WEI, we鈥檝e long insisted on structured onboarding for exactly this reason. We build a foundation of alignment that keeps our clients in full command of their technology environments. With the right processes and visibility in place, leaders often find they have more oversight than before. 

Myth #2: “A managed services provider will replace our internal IT team.” 

This misconception often triggers defensiveness from within the organization. IT professionals may fear that managed services are a prelude to downsizing. That fear can stall conversations before they even start. 

The truth is that managed services are most effective when they complement the in-house team. No MSP can replace the business-specific expertise and institutional knowledge that internal IT staff bring to the table. What a good MSP can do is relieve that team of the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that prevent them from working strategically. Think monitoring, patching, break/fix support, and help desk overflow. 

When internal teams are no longer buried under routine maintenance, they can shift their focus to more valuable work, cloud modernization, automation projects, or developing sorely needed innovation across the business. This is not theory. I have seen clients transform from reactive to strategic simply by offloading the operational burden. 

Myth #3: “Managed services are too expensive for our budget.” 

Cost is always a concern. I have worked with many CFOs and CIOs who initially view managed services as an added line item rather than a cost-saving measure. But this belief often stems from comparing managed services to internal labor costs in a vacuum. 

In practice, managed services can reduce total IT costs over time. Instead of unpredictable capital and staffing expenses, you get consistent, forecastable operating costs. You also avoid the overhead of hiring and retaining specialized IT roles that may only be needed intermittently. The result is better financial planning and a stronger cost-to-value ratio. 

What is more, you are not just paying for labor. You are gaining access to proven tools, automation, and expertise that most teams cannot afford to replicate in-house.  

Myth #4: “Outsourcing IT operations increases our security risk.” 

Cybersecurity is understandably a sensitive issue. No one wants to expose their infrastructure or data to unnecessary risk. And the idea of letting an outside provider into your environment can raise red flags. 

However, a capable MSP should improve your security posture, not weaken it. They should bring proven processes, continuous monitoring, threat detection, and regulatory expertise to the engagement. Even the largest of enterprises do not always have the bandwidth to maintain a 24/7 Security Operations Center. An MSP can offer that coverage on day one. 

We take security as seriously as our clients do. During onboarding, we assess patching policies, access controls, compliance frameworks, and incident response protocols. WEI implements guardrails from the beginning. Security is not an afterthought; it is a core part of the engagement. 

Myth #5: “All MSPs are the same.” 

This may be the most dangerous myth of all. Assuming that all providers deliver the same value leads to commoditization, and eventually, poor decisions. 

Not all MSPs operate at the same level. Some push cookie-cutter service packages. Others lack the ability to integrate with your team or adapt to your business processes. That is not a true partnership. 

The right provider will take the time to understand your environment, your goals, and your constraints. They will build a managed services model that fits your organization and not one that forces you into a box. That level of alignment starts on day one, which is why our onboarding process at WEI includes stakeholder mapping, tool configuration, knowledge transfer, and success metrics. WEI is only interested in delivering outcomes, not volume. 

Final Thought 

If you are a technology or business leader still wrestling with outdated assumptions about managed services, I encourage you to revisit the conversation. The modern MSP is not there to take over your team. It is there to enable your team to do their best work. 

With the right partnership, you can reduce operational complexity, improve service delivery, and give your IT staff room to innovate. In today鈥檚 environment, that is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. 

Have you had to address these myths within your organization? I welcome your thoughts and experiences. Reach out to me , or visit Managed Services at wei.com.听

The post Five Managed Services Myths That Could Be Holding Your IT Strategy Back听 appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Even the most capable IT departments can find themselves stretched thin. Strategic initiatives, user support, vendor oversight, and infrastructure maintenance are all competing for attention. For many leaders, it feels like there鈥檚 never enough time or resources to get ahead. 

At its core, managed services means offloading specific IT functions to a third-party partner so internal teams can focus on more strategic work. These services often include things like infrastructure monitoring, patching, backup management, help desk support, and network operations. But simply handing off tasks isn鈥檛 the goal. Real value comes when the managed services model is structured to deliver outcomes, improve visibility, and reduce risk over time. 

But let鈥檚 be clear, it鈥檚 not just about outsourcing IT operations. It鈥檚 about how that partnership is structured, how it’s governed, and whether it actually helps your team focus on what matters most. At WEI, we help clients take control of the entire managed services experience from the start. 

A Good MSP Should Support Your Team, Not Replace It

Let鈥檚 address a common misconception. A managed services provider is not there to take over your IT department. The right one should operate as an extension of your team. 

The experts at WEI help clients offload the tasks that slow your people down, like patching, monitoring, backups, and basic troubleshooting. That gives your internal staff precious time back for what matters organizationally, creating value and doing work that energizes them. 

We’ve seen firsthand how this shift can unlock capacity and renew focus. IT professionals who were stuck in reactive support are now driving cloud migrations, analytics projects, and automation strategies. That鈥檚 the kind of outcome we aim for. 

IT Leaders Need An Advocate, Not Another Vendor

CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs are being asked to do more every year. At the same time, expectations for service delivery, cost optimization, and risk reduction rise annually. You don鈥檛 need another hands-off vendor. You need a strategic partner who understands your environment and protects your outcomes. 

This is the space WEI fills. We manage your entire managed services lifecycle, from onboarding and configuration to performance tracking and provider accountability. You stay in control while we handle the day-to-day operations, tool governance, and coordination between service layers. 

Many of our clients have multiple MSPs in place. We unify them under a single operating model with defined workflows, integrated reporting, and centralized escalation. Instead of spending time coordinating vendors, you can focus on business outcomes. 

Why IT Executives Choose A WEI-Led Managed Services Model

• Cost predictability and ROI: Our engagements are built around clear, recurring costs with no surprises. We help clients build financial models that tie IT investment to outcomes. The result is less waste and stronger cost-to-value ratios. 

• Security with accountability: We evaluate and validate each provider鈥檚 approach to patching, monitoring, and response. Then we monitor their execution to make sure it aligns with your enterprise risk profile. 

• 24/7 support without building a NOC: You gain around-the-clock coverage from certified engineers without having to build or staff your own operations center. 

Onboarding Is Where Success Begins 

The most overlooked part of any managed services engagement is onboarding. It sets the tone for the relationship. Done poorly, it creates confusion and mistrust. Done right, it builds confidence and momentum. 

Here鈥檚 what onboarding looks like when WEI leads it: 

• Baseline IT assessment to review infrastructure, licenses, policies, and existing gaps 

• Kickoff planning to align stakeholders and define handoffs, escalation paths, and expectations 

• Tool deployment that includes access reviews, training sessions, and clear documentation 

• Real-time updates and communication through a dedicated onboarding lead 

We don鈥檛 just plug in and walk away. We walk with you until the process is fully understood, and your team is comfortable operating with new support structures in place. 

Where WEI Can Help

WEI provides managed services across a wide range of IT domains. Whether you need targeted support or a full-service model, we help you reduce operational burden while improving resilience and cost control. Our managed services portfolio includes: 

• Cloud & Infrastructure: IaaS and PaaS management, backup and DR as a service, private and hybrid cloud, infrastructure lifecycle management, and cloud FinOps support 

• Network & Connectivity: SD-WAN, edge compute, unified communications, carrier management, LAN and wireless network operations 

• Cybersecurity & Risk: Managed detection and response, SIEM and SOC services, patching, compliance-as-a-service, and identity and access management 

• Digital Workforce Enablement: Endpoint and service desk support, VDI, mobile device management, hybrid work enablement, and collaboration tools 

• Data, Apps & Automation: Managed AI/ML operations, analytics, app hosting, platform automation, and API integration 

• Strategic Services: Staff augmentation, ERP procurement integration, secure IT asset disposition, custom dashboards and ticketing, and training and knowledge transfer 

These services are not standalone offerings. They鈥檙e all part of an integrated model that WEI manages on your behalf so your team can stay focused on growth and innovation. 

My Closing Thoughts: You Deserve A Model That Puts You In Control

Managed services should not take control away from IT leadership. If anything, they should give it back. With WEI, your team stays in charge of strategy, and we handle the tools, training, oversight, and coordination. 

The goal is simple. Free your team to innovate while we help deliver operational excellence. 

If your current model isn鈥檛 delivering predictable outcomes, strong governance, and real strategic value, then it鈥檚 time for a new approach. We鈥檇 be happy to show you what that looks like. , or visit Managed Services at wei.com. 

The post From Overhead to Outcome: A Smarter Approach to Managed Services with WEI听听 appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Kubernetes has become a key technology for enterprises modernizing their application infrastructure. As Nutanix highlighted in their , adoption has grown beyond cloud-native companies. Organizations now use Kubernetes to support both stateful and stateless workloads across hybrid and multi-cluster environments.

As Kubernetes use grows, enterprises face new requirements around deployment, management, and security. Nutanix and WEI provide a proven approach that helps organizations meet current needs while building a strong foundation for future goals.

Meeting Modern Demands with Kubernetes and Nutanix

Enterprise adoption of Kubernetes continues to accelerate. Nutanix identifies several trends that are shaping how organizations put Kubernetes to work:

• Stateful applications are increasingly containerized, requiring dependable storage, data protection, and consistent operations.
• Hybrid and multi-cluster architectures are now common, with workloads running across data centers, public clouds, and edge locations.
• Security and compliance have become central, as organizations align operations with regulatory and internal standards.
• Platform choice and independence help enterprises avoid lock-in and maintain control over their technology path.

Nutanix solutions address these priorities through integrated capabilities:

• The Nutanix Cloud Native AOS platform provides enterprise-level storage for Kubernetes, including support for persistent volumes, replication, and data protection to support key workloads.
• The Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP), built with Canonical鈥檚 Ubuntu Pro, provides a hardened Kubernetes stack with automated lifecycle management, security features such as kernel hardening and live patching, and integration with Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP) for reliable data services.

NKP: New Capabilities for Unified Kubernetes Management

The 2024 release of NKP introduced important capabilities to support modern Kubernetes operations while helping organizations manage both traditional and containerized workloads on a common platform.

Key features include:

• Unified management of virtual machines and Kubernetes clusters, helping IT teams support both types of workloads through a single toolset.
• Open API support, enabling integration with existing CI/CD pipelines, monitoring systems, and service meshes so teams can continue using familiar tools.
• Policy-based governance, allowing administrators to apply access controls, resource limits, and compliance rules consistently across environments.
• Built-in observability and troubleshooting tools, giving teams the information they need to address performance issues and keep operations steady.

The Role of Nutanix Cloud Platform

NCP supports NKP by bringing together compute, storage, networking, security, and database services in one platform that works across on-premises data centers and public clouds. Proven benefits of this integration include:

• Unified data services, allowing Kubernetes clusters managed by NKP to use the same storage, database services, and data protection capabilities as other workloads.
• Consistent operations, helping organizations apply the same practices and controls across all environments without unnecessary duplication of infrastructure or effort.

This approach helps enterprises reduce operational friction and maintain reliable performance across all parts of their IT environment.

The WEI Advantage: From Planning to Production

Nutanix provides the technology foundation, and WEI ensures that it is ready for use from day one.

Our customers are the beneficiaries of:

• Deployments that are pre-configured in WEI鈥檚 labs, with updates and customer-specific settings applied.
• Testing that confirms interoperability and readiness for production.
• Simulations that verify performance, security, and compliance needs are met.
• Disaster recovery, backup, and access controls that are integrated as part of the deployment.
• Architecture that supports hybrid and multi-cluster operations while preserving platform choice.

WEI also provides planning, deployment support, and training so internal teams are equipped to manage NKP and Kubernetes with confidence.

Real-World Impact: Nutanix, NKP, and WEI in Action

Organizations across industries have seen measurable results from working with Nutanix and WEI:

• A healthcare leader deployed more than 2,000 Nutanix nodes across 70+ global sites. WEI prepared and tested these systems to support multi-cluster operations and hybrid models. This effort helped the customer meet timelines for application deployment while reducing operational risk.
• A financial institution modernized its data center using Nutanix AHV and disaster recovery solutions. This supported secure operations for stateful applications and helped the institution maintain compliance.
• A financial services customer adopted Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on Azure, with WEI designing and delivering a hybrid Kubernetes solution that aligned with Azure spending commitments and improved cloud resource management.

In each case, WEI helped ensure that Nutanix solutions were ready for production use and aligned to both technical and business goals.

Watch: Get Your Picks In With WEI & Nutanix

Looking Ahead: Preparing for the Future of Kubernetes

As organizations look ahead, Kubernetes will remain central to how they support innovation, from AI and machine learning initiatives to IoT applications at the edge. The possibilities are exciting, but they also bring new decisions and challenges for IT teams. Nutanix continues to build its platform with these opportunities in mind, providing tools that help organizations move forward with confidence.

With Nutanix Cloud Platform as the foundation, enterprises can manage Kubernetes clusters with consistent data services, security practices, and operational controls, whether their workloads run in the data center, in the cloud, or at the edge.

At WEI, we believe success with new technology is about more than getting systems live. It鈥檚 about making sure they deliver lasting value. That is why our team works closely with customers, providing guidance, deployment support, and training tailored to their goals.

Together, Nutanix and WEI are committed to helping enterprises build solutions that are not only ready for today鈥檚 demands, but also prepared to support the opportunities ahead. Contact our experts to learn more.

Next Steps: A leading federal credit union faced aging infrastructure, rising costs, and scalability challenges that jeopardized the reliability of its critical systems. To modernize its IT environment, they partnered with WEI to deploy a Nutanix-based hyperconverged solution, replacing outdated hardware and ensuring future growth with enhanced disaster recovery capabilities. and learn how WEI can transform your IT infrastructure!

The post Achieving Container Goals with Confidence: The Nutanix and WEI Partnership appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Sustainability is moving from boardroom aspiration to IT execution. CIOs are uniquely positioned to lead that charge, and it starts with only a few high-impact moves. 

Enterprise sustainability initiatives are evolving, and IT is at the forefront of this transformation. From energy consumption and equipment waste to vendor partnerships and cloud strategy, IT operations carry a substantial environmental footprint. 

As organizations double down on their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) commitments, CIOs play a critical role. In fact, . The good news? Sustainable IT doesn鈥檛 require a complete overhaul. 

5 Ways CIOs Can Build a More Sustainable IT Environment in 2025

1. Adopt Cloud-First Policies with Green Providers

Key actions: Prioritize cloud providers with renewable-powered data centers, use sustainability-focused SLAs, and adopt cloud-native tools to track emissions. highlights how cloud migrations, particularly to providers utilizing renewable energy and energy-efficient cooling, have enabled enterprises to reduce operational costs and environmental impact. These gains stem from the efficiencies and green technologies that leading cloud vendors have implemented on a large scale.

Key benefits:

• Reduced operational costs
• Smaller carbon footprint
• Improved alignment with ESG goals

Adopting a cloud-first approach extends beyond modernization; it’s a step toward both environmental and financial sustainability. Moving workloads to the cloud reduces your carbon footprint. Not all providers are equal, leading hyperscalers to invest in renewable energy, water-saving cooling, and carbon-neutral data centers. A cloud-first policy with sustainability-focused SLAs ensures efficient and eco-friendly IT operations.

Quick stat: Google Cloud operates at 1.1 PUE, one of the lowest in the industry, powered by 100% renewable energy.

2. Establish Device Buyback and Recycling Programs

Implementation checklist: Partner with OEMs and ITAD providers, establish buyback and refurbishment policies, and educate users on device return practices. By extending the life of devices and reducing landfill waste, CIOs can simultaneously cut procurement costs and improve ESG metrics. Partnering with vendors that support sustainable lifecycle services ensures responsible device retirement and promotes a greener IT footprint.

Key strategies:

• Partner with OEMs and ITAD (IT Asset Disposition) providers
• Promote buyback and refurbishment internally.
• Utilize certified recyclers for the end-of-life management of devices.

Pro tip: Standardizing device models enhances repairability and resale value, thereby improving sustainability.

3. Optimize Data Center Energy with AI-Powered DCIM Tools

Benefits of DCIM: Gain insights into real-time energy consumption, optimize cooling with AI tools, and uncover underutilized hardware for improved capacity planning. DCIM tools (Data Center Infrastructure Management) not only uncover energy-saving opportunities but also help IT leaders make data-driven decisions about power distribution and hardware utilization. Integrating AI-powered analytics with DCIM can further enhance efficiencies, reduce PUE, and support an agile, green IT environment.

Core functions of DCIM:

• Real-time monitoring of energy and power density
• Visualization of underused assets
• AI-driven workload optimization

Dell Example: A mid-sized financial services company reduced energy costs by 18% within a year of deploying AI-powered DCIM.

4. Switch to Energy-Star Certified Infrastructure

Dell鈥檚 research highlights the benefits of using ENERGY STAR-certified hardware, showing that organizations experience significant reductions in both cooling costs and energy consumption.

When refreshing servers, storage, and networking gear, it’s essential to choose equipment that meets ENERGY STAR or similar energy-efficiency standards. These certified components use less power and generate less heat, which in turn reduces the cooling requirements of data centers.

Additionally, industry ESG findings suggest that companies standardizing on ENERGY STAR-certified equipment can achieve substantial savings in energy and cooling costs. This approach is often aligned with utility rebate programs, offering a clear return on investment.

As data centers become more complex and larger, each watt saved adds up. Therefore, opting for energy-efficient hardware isn’t just an environmentally conscious decision; it鈥檚 also a strategic one.

Bonus: Many utility providers offer rebates or financial incentives to businesses that invest in certified energy-efficient equipment, helping offset the upfront costs while encouraging greener operations.

5. Build Sustainability into IT Vendor Scorecards

CIOs can boost sustainability by incorporating ESG metrics, like emissions reporting, environmental certifications, and e-waste recovery organization, into vendor evaluations. Leading vendors now publish emissions data and sustainability benchmarks; integrating these into procurement scorecards promotes transparency and accountability. Including ESG criteria in RFPs and ongoing assessments ensures partners align with your environmental goals. Prioritize vendors with clear sustainability roadmaps, emissions tracking, and ethical sourcing practices to strengthen your organization’s ESG impact.

What to include: Carbon emissions reporting, environmental certifications, e-waste handling, and green logistics.

Measuring Success: The KPIs That Matter

Sustainability efforts are only as strong as the metrics that back them. CIOs should establish clear KPIs such as:

• Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)
• IT asset recovery rate
• Carbon offset percentage
• Renewable energy usage
• Lifecycle extension per device class

How WEI Is Driving IT Sustainability

At WEI, sustainability is not a buzzword; it’s embedded into how we operate and deliver IT solutions. Our Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability (CRS) Plan outlines aggressive goals in energy efficiency, environmental impact, and community involvement. From deploying HVAC economizers that cut cooling needs by 90% during peak seasons to sourcing Energy Star-certified equipment and utilizing LED lighting throughout our facilities, we are reducing our carbon footprint one initiative at a time.

Our delivery strategies reduce fuel use by 50%, and we’re committed to exploring solar and wind energy options to offset emissions further. Additionally, WEI works closely with clients to integrate sustainable IT practices into their infrastructure, whether advising on green cloud migrations, optimizing data centers, or selecting eco-conscious vendors.

Next Steps

To build a sustainable IT environment, begin with a clear roadmap that strikes a balance between quick wins and long-term goals.

Start with an audit:

• Identify energy-intensive systems.
• Track underutilized assets and inefficient workflows.
• Use DCIM, cloud calculators, and asset inventories to assess impact.

With this baseline, refresh procurement policies and prioritize green-certified vendors. Look for partners committed to sustainability, not just compliance.

• Leverage solutions like ENERGY STAR-certified infrastructure, AI-powered DCIM, and cloud-first architecture to align environmental and ROI goals.
• Cultural change matters too; embedding ESG into procurement and operations drives smarter, climate-conscious decisions.

Ready to act?
WEI can help turn your ESG goals into measurable outcomes through tailored DCIM and cloud-first strategies.

Final Thoughts

IT sustainability is no longer a fringe conversation. It’s now a strategic imperative and a business differentiator. Dell鈥檚 2024 ESG report confirmed that sustainable IT investments can simultaneously reduce environmental impact and improve operational efficiency. At WEI, the right technology and strategy lowers emissions, reduces costs, and supports employee well-being.

WEI鈥檚 Corporate Responsibility Plan demonstrates what鈥檚 possible, from reducing HVAC energy use by 90% to adopting LED lighting and smart delivery routing. Our commitment to green IT initiatives shows we鈥檙e practicing sustainability, not just talking about it.

As enterprises prepare for 2025, sustainability should be central to every IT roadmap. These five strategies provide CIOs with a blueprint for a greener, more responsible IT future, without compromising performance or cost. The path to sustainable IT is already underway.

Next Steps: Between AI adoption, hybrid cloud, and cyber threats, your next storage refresh needs to do more than just expand capacity…it must futureproof your infrastructure.

This exclusive tech brief from WEI and Dell Technologies breaks down everything you should demand from your next storage solution. Download our exclusive tech brief, 

The post 5 Ways CIOs Can Build a More Sustainable IT Environment in 2025 appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Henry Ford showed the world the scalable advantage of assembly lines. Building a single car in your garage is certainly feasible, especially for a one-of-a-kind vehicle. However, this approach is impractical for mass production. Ford’s assembly line revolutionized manufacturing by enabling cars to be produced efficiently and at scale, making them accessible to the masses.鈥�

Configuration as Code (CaC) is the equivalent of introducing an assembly line to deploy and manage your system configurations across your enterprise. A CaC approach transforms traditional configuration deployments into repeatable, automated, and scalable events. Rather than manually configuring each system, you can define the process once and replicate it efficiently across your multitude of environments, whether managing tens, hundreds, or thousands of systems. 

Watch: Introduction to CaC with Daniel Perrinez

A Close Look at CaC 

The founding principle of CaC is that configuration data is now treated as versioned artifacts. This allows for better tracking and iteration of changes. System configurations are defined in files and stored in source code repositories to ensure they are structured and version controlled. See our previous introductory blog on Git to learn more.  

CaC leverages these managed system settings to automate deployments across various environments to maintain consistency and reduce errors. It can be applied to a wide range of systems, including firewalls, switches, servers, and cloud infrastructure. 

While Git serves as the collaborative repository for tracking changes, CaC automation tools such as鈥痀AML,鈥疉nsible, and鈥疨owerShell鈥痑re used to define and deploy configurations. These tools allow teams to manage infrastructure declaratively for readability and sharing. 

To better understand what CaC is fully capable of, let鈥檚 consider a real-life example of CaC.  

Scenario #1: Configuring VLANs 

Let鈥檚 take something as simple as creating or consolidating VLANs on switches. It is an easy task for an experienced network admin. You can create a VLAN within a minute on a designated switch. Let鈥檚 say you wanted to consolidate two VLANs into one – add another minute. But now let鈥檚 scale this task out to an entire fleet of 500 switches across different environments. Sure, you could copy and paste the code but now you introduce some challenges: 

• Human Error: Copy-pasting CLI commands risks typos or misconfigurations (e.g., incorrect VLAN IDs or trunk ports).听
• Lack of Visibility: No centralized tracking of changes or failures across devices.听

This traditional CLI approach hits its limitation quickly as the number of switches increases. However, using a configuration as code approach now transforms the process into a scalable, auditable workflow using a one-two punch: 

Version Control with Git: 

Store VLAN configurations in a Git repository (e.g.,鈥痸lans.yaml), to enable: 

• Change Tracking: Compare revisions to see when VLAN 30 and 40 were merged into VLAN 50.听
• Collaboration: Teams review changes via pull requests, catching errors鈥�before鈥痙eployment.听
• Rollbacks: Revert to a known-good state if issues arise.听

Automated Deployment with Ansible: 

• By defining configurations in YAML files, Ansible ensures that the settings are consistently applied across all switches and ensures configurations are applied only if needed听
• Use Ansible playbooks to deploy VLAN configurations with real-time feedback to show the success or failure of the deployment along with error details.听

Configuration as Code does more than just save you time in this case. It reduces risk, improves collaboration, and transforms network operations from reactive to reliable and repeatable. 

Watch: What Is HPE Private Cloud AI?

Advantages of CaC 

The above scenario clearly demonstrated some of the key advantages of a configuration as code approach for large enterprises: 

• CaC allows system settings to be managed and versioned in a source code repository like Git where configuration changes can be tracked and reverted if necessary鈥�
• Defining system settings in files and automating their application ensures that configurations are consistent across different environments鈥�
• CaC enables the reproducibility of configurations which makes it easy to replicate environments for testing, development, and production鈥�

• CaC reduces manual errors by automating the process of configuring systems using tools like Ansible听听
• The agentless architecture of Ansible makes it highly scalable and efficient in managing configurations across large environments, whether it’s tens, hundreds, or thousands of nodes.

Scenario #2: Creating VMs in AWS 

Creating several VMs in AWS is a relatively simple task. It is part of the beauty of using a cloud portal. Creating three VMs can be completed within a dozen clicks or so. This includes things such as selecting options like OS, instance type, key pairs, storage, and a few tags. While this process is manageable for small-scale tasks, it becomes inefficient and error prone when scaled to hundreds of VMs or multiple environments such as dev, test and production. Relying on the manual creation of VMs using a GUI interface increases the likelihood of inconsistencies and forgotten configurations.  

Automated Method Using Terraform 鈥業nfrastructure as Code鈥� (IaC): 

鈥淚nfrastructure as Code鈥� is a subset of 鈥淐onfiguration as Code鈥� and largely achieves the same goals. Terraform IaC allows defining cloud resources, like VM configurations, in a single code file. Key attributes like instance count, types, and tags are stored in version-controlled files (e.g., Git). Tags defined in the Terraform configuration are used for tracking and categorizing cloud resources.  

The advantages of this approach are: 

• Ensures all configurations are consistent across environments听
• Easily deploys hundreds of VMs without additional effort听
• Eliminates repetitive manual input, and facilitates collaboration by enabling teams to review and track changes over time听
• Tags and configurations are stored in code, ensuring standardization and reducing human error听

CaC Best Practices 

Here is a list of CaC best practices to ensure you are getting the most out of your projects: 

• Those just getting into CaC should use an integrated development environment (IDE). A great choice is Visual Studio Code. It鈥檚 widely supported and it is free.听
• Auto-check your code using tools like linters.听
• Use Git to encourage greater developer collaboration and code review. Git ensures that configuration changes are tracked and can be reverted if necessary听
• Don鈥檛 start from scratch. Both Terraform and Ansible offer published templates to get you started. You can also go to Github or Gitlab and search for the code you need because chances are it is mostly written already by someone else in the community.听听

Configuration as Code is fundamentally about working smarter, not harder. By minimizing the risk of human error, streamlining scalability, and offering a transparent audit trail for changes, CaC enhances efficiency and consistency across IT operations. CaC can help transform how your IT teams operate to ensure a future-ready IT ecosystem that can easily evolve and scale with your business.  

The post Work Smarter, Not Harder: Transform IT with Configuration as Code appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Enterprise IT leaders face constant pressure to deliver results that matter, yet many strategies still begin with the wrong question: 鈥淲hat servers do we need?鈥� before asking 鈥淲hat business result are we trying to achieve?鈥� That architecture-first mindset flips priorities and often leads to rigid environments, unpredictable costs, and disconnected initiatives.

The better question isn鈥檛 what to build; it鈥檚 why you鈥檙e building in the first place. By starting with business outcomes rather than infrastructure, you position IT as a driver of progress instead of a cost center. That鈥檚 the mindset behind outcome-focused strategies, and why WEI supports the HPE GreenLake approach, which has gained traction among forward-thinking organizations.

Podcast: Real Customer Outcomes With HPE GreenLake

Limitations Of Architecture-First Thinking

Traditional IT planning often begins with technology: selecting compute, storage, and networking solutions based on projected capacity. Without clear alignment to business goals, these decisions introduce long-term issues:

• Unclear ROI: Technology investments lack measurable outcomes, making it difficult to justify spend.
• Overprovisioning: Fear of underperformance leads teams to overspend on infrastructure that sits idle.
• Operational burden: Managing multi-vendor systems and constant updates drains time and talent.
• Delayed results: By the time infrastructure is deployed, business needs may have already shifted, and this happens all too often without proper IT guidance.

Start With The Outcome, Then Build The Right Support Around It

Shifting IT strategy from an infrastructure-first to an outcome-first approach is more than a philosophical change. It鈥檚 a practical move that enables measurable business impact. Instead of starting with server specs or license counts, more IT leaders are now asking a better question: what business result are we trying to achieve?

This approach is at the core of HPE GreenLake as-a-Service. One HPE customer that embraced it offered paid proof-of-concept environments for its software. Their usage patterns were unpredictable: some months were heavy with customer activity, others were idle. Traditional CapEx planning led to overbuilding, miscalculating pricing, and difficulty aligning costs with real demand.

Switching to HPE GreenLake gave them clear, real-time visibility into infrastructure consumption. With that insight, they could:

• Track spending and resource utilization per environment
• Adjust customer pricing based on actual infrastructure costs
• Add or reduce capacity based on real-time demand, not assumptions

This shift helped the company avoid unnecessary purchases and charge their customers more accurately. They also benefited from HPE鈥檚 fixed-rate service agreement. When a key memory module was discontinued and replaced with a more expensive alternative, the customer paid no additional cost 鈥� something that wouldn鈥檛 have been possible under a traditional purchase model.

Supporting this transition was a dedicated . The CSM played a critical role, helping the organization interpret usage trends and plan capacity needs in response to sporadic onboarding cycles, and not predictable growth. This partnership was not just technical support; it was a strategic engagement rooted in understanding the customer鈥檚 unique workloads and goals.

According to TSIA, companies using CSMs in as-a-service models see . In this case, that model worked and the customer鈥檚 continued use of HPE GreenLake years later is proof that long-term engagement can drive lasting impact.

Why Outcome-First IT Planning Works

Outcome-first IT planning is gaining momentum because it shifts the focus from hardware decisions to business value. HPE GreenLake is built specifically for this model, offering IT as-a-Service through a pay-per-use structure that aligns infrastructure with real demand. Instead of investing in unused capacity or scrambling to scale, your organization only pays for what it uses: on-premises, at the edge, or in colocation.

This approach helps solve a range of challenges, from budget unpredictability to resource constraints. For example, one financial institution built a 400-petabyte data analytics platform with to support its security operations. The consumption-based model allowed them to scale without rearchitecting, while maintaining full control of sensitive data in a private cloud environment.

With HPE GreenLake, outcome-first planning includes built-in tools that support long-term success:

• CSMs: Guide strategy based on actual growth, not projections. According to TSIA, organizations with CSMs report stronger adoption and renewal rates.
• Predictable billing: Fixed-rate agreements protect you from hardware pricing fluctuations.
• Unified support: Multiple technologies are consolidated under a single GreenLake agreement to streamline management. Case in point: a healthcare organization recovering from a ransomware attack partnered with WEI and HPE to rebuild its IT environment. Together, the teams integrated backup and virtualization solutions into a unified strategy, delivered under one monthly bill. HPE managed vendor coordination, while WEI led project execution and provided professional services. By centralizing the solution, WEI helped streamline deployment, eliminate vendor silos, and give the organization full visibility and control over its infrastructure. Acting as both a consulting partner and implementation lead, WEI developed the strategy, managed cross-vendor alignment, and ensured the solution was built and executed according to the customer鈥檚 specific goals. This level of coordination and support proved essential in reducing complexity and enabling faster recovery.

The brings it all together. What began as a basic reporting tool now functions as a comprehensive marketplace. You can deploy workloads, view usage by service or department, and manage licensing, all in one interface.

With Gartner projecting that 60% of enterprises will adopt pay-per-use infrastructure by 2026, the shift is already underway. Organizations adopting outcome-first strategies with HPE GreenLake are seeing better alignment and reported cost savings of.

Watch: Becoming An Insights-Driven Enterprise With HPE Storage 疯情AV

The Value Of A Strategic Partner In Outcome-Driven IT

Moving to an outcome-first IT model demands strategic alignment, hands-on support, and expert guidance. That鈥檚 where a trusted HPE GreenLake solutions provider makes the difference. Instead of asking what hardware you need, start asking:

• What result do we need to deliver?
• How do we align IT services to business priorities?
• What support will we need as our organization grows?

At WEI, we help enterprise organizations build IT strategies around their goals, not around hardware. As a partner, we guide every phase: from identifying business outcomes to designing, deploying, and managing the right technology stack.

With HPE GreenLake as-a-Service, IT leaders gain:

• Transparent, consumption-based billing
• Modular expansion without procurement delays
• Ongoing guidance from a dedicated Customer Success Manager

This support ensures your IT investments remain aligned with business needs. It also frees internal teams to focus on innovation instead of infrastructure management.

Final Thoughts

Your role as an IT leader is no longer just about managing infrastructure; it鈥檚 about delivering impact. This requires a new way of thinking: one where your strategy begins with outcomes, not architecture.

HPE GreenLake, delivered through a solutions provider like WEI, enables this shift. You gain financial transparency, responsive support, and a model that grows with you. You also free your team from managing systems so they can focus on what matters most: moving the business forward.

Ready to shift from infrastructure-first thinking to outcome-driven IT? Schedule a consultation with our team today to start building your IT strategy around the results you need, and not the gear you鈥檙e told to buy.

Next Steps: Download WEI’s executive brief,  The asset expands on the tangible ways that real companies have come to use scalable intelligent storage to achieve a very real impact on their operations and bottom line.

Determining whether this type of solution fits the most pressing needs of your environment may be another story, however. That鈥檚 why there are several intelligent storage solutions worth exploring in this landscape.

The post Rethinking IT Strategy: Why Outcomes Matter More Than Architecture appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

The growing complexity of cybersecurity threats makes traditional SOC methods less effective. The overwhelming volume of data and constant alerts can lead to analyst burnout and delayed response times. GenAI offers a solution by modernizing SOC operations, streamlining alert triage, and optimizing log management workflows.

Industry experts have highlighted , emphasizing how AI is driving SOC modernization through transformation, AI-driven applications, data modernization, and log management. We explore these insights and how GenAI for cybersecurity can help enterprise SOC teams be more efficient.

Watch: AI In The SOC – Cutting Through The Noise With GenAI And Smarter Logs

Transforming The SOC With AI

The constant influx of alerts makes it challenging for SOC teams to differentiate between genuine threats and false positives. Analysts often spend excessive time constructing queries and deciphering data, rather than addressing critical incidents.

AI in security operations speeds up threat detection by automating routine tasks. Rather than manually reviewing alerts, analysts can rely on AI-driven threat detection to identify patterns and prioritize incidents. This shift allows teams to concentrate on strategic security initiatives instead of getting bogged down in repetitive processes.

Key advantages of AI in the SOC include the following:

• Faster alert analysis: AI quickly reviews tons of past incident data and matches it with current alerts. This gives security analysts valuable context and actionable intelligence so they can quickly find the root cause of an alert, assess its potential impact, and determine the proper response. The result is drastically reduced investigation time and faster threat containment.
• Automated triage: AI-powered tools classify and prioritize threat alerts based on their severity and potential impact on the organization. Automating the triage process ensures that security analysts see the most critical and urgent threats first, allowing them to allocate their time and resources effectively. This reduces the risk of overlooking critical alerts and improves the overall efficiency of the SOC.
• Less alert fatigue: AI refines detection capabilities, thus reducing false positives. By continuously learning from past data and adapting its algorithms, AI more accurately identifies genuine threats and filters out noise, resulting in fewer alerts and improved threat detection accuracy.

As AI plays a larger role in SOC modernization, ensuring security data is properly processed before reaching analysis tools is essential. Without structure and optimization, analysts can become overwhelmed by raw data.

疯情AV that refine data processing help SOC teams focus on meaningful insights. , for example, improves data management by filtering, routing, and enriching security data before it reaches SIEM and SOAR tools. This ensures analysts work with high-value data instead of excessive, unstructured information.

Watch: WEI Roundtable Discussion – Cyber Warfare & Beyond

Practical AI Applications In The SOC

AI is becoming an integral part of SOC operations, helping teams achieve efficiency across multiple areas. From AI-driven threat detection to smarter security logs, automation is transforming the way security teams analyze data, prioritize threats, and respond to incidents. One particularly impactful application is using GenAI to simplify query generation. Analysts frequently struggle with complex queries, slowing down investigations. AI streamlines this process by enabling a conversational approach to data retrieval.

Other AI use cases in the SOC include:

• Threat hunting: AI identifies suspicious behaviors based on past attack patterns.
• Incident response: AI-powered automation speeds up remediation actions, reducing response times.
• Policy enforcement: AI ensures compliance by monitoring deviations in access logs and configurations.

Managing and analyzing vast amounts of security data is time-consuming for SOC teams, often diverting attention from critical threats. Efficient tools for query building and log analysis can help streamline this process, making it easier for analysts to access relevant insights without unnecessary delays.

One such capability comes from Cribl, which offers solutions designed to simplify data exploration. provides intelligent search and summarization tools, enabling analysts to quickly extract key insights from large datasets without manually sifting through extensive logs.

Watch: Harnessing A Diverse Talent Pipeline For Cybersecurity Personnel

Data Modernization In Security

SOC teams generate and store massive amounts of security data, but not all of it is useful and relevant. The challenge is determining what data to retain and how to store it cost-effectively.

Rather than storing everything, AI in the SOC helps create smarter security logs by filtering out unnecessary data while preserving valuable insights. This data modernization has several benefits:

• Better governance: AI categorizes data and retains only what’s relevant.
• Efficient storage: AI-driven data summarization reduces log sizes without sacrificing critical information.
• Improved query performance: Well-structured data enables faster searches and analysis.

Organizations need reliable data processing solutions while maintaining compliance. Cribl supports this with tools like Cribl Stream and , which normalize and compress security logs before storage, reducing storage demands and helping maintain compliance.

Optimizing Log Management For Efficiency

As security data expands at an estimated 28% CAGR, organizations need to reevaluate their log management strategies. AI can play a key role in security operations by summarizing logs and reducing noise, making the vast amount of data more manageable. Smarter log management strategies include:

• Log compression and truncation: AI reduces redundant data, lowering storage costs.
• Dynamic retention policies: AI prioritizes storing logs that are critical for investigations while archiving less relevant data in cost-effective storage.
• Automated data classification: AI categorizes logs based on security relevance, making retrieval easier.

For example, AI can condense large volumes of NetFlow data from switches into a concise summary of key network activity. Cribl offers tools to support these strategies, enabling organizations to refine their log management strategies. With tools that help route logs intelligently and store high-volume logs in cost-effective locations, SOC teams can avoid overwhelming their SIEM and analytics systems while maintaining access to meaningful security insights.

Final Thoughts

GenAI is reshaping security operations by automating threat detection, improving alert triage, and optimizing data management. AI-driven threat detection reduces alert fatigue, while smarter security logs help SOC teams focus on valuable insights. As enterprises face growing cyber threats, integrating AI into security operations is now a practical requirement to address sophisticated attacks and data challenges.

WEI鈥檚 team of cybersecurity experts helps organizations implement AI-driven SOC modernization strategies. From smarter log management to AI-powered automation, we guide enterprises in optimizing security workflows. If you鈥檙e looking to integrate AI-driven solutions in your SOC, reach out to WEI today and take the first step toward a more efficient security operation.

Next Steps: Protecting your organization from cyber threats requires a proactive approach and the right expertise. 

Led by WEI鈥檚 cybersecurity experts and partnering with industry leaders, our available cyber assessments provide the insights needed to strengthen your defenses. Whether you need to identify vulnerabilities, test your incident response capabilities, or develop a long-term security strategy, our team is here to help. Click here to access our assessment services. 

The post Unlocking Smarter Security Logs And SOC Operations With GenAI appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Imagine a bustling train station at rush hour, where every train represents important data rushing through the network. If the tracks aren鈥檛 properly maintained, delays and confusion are inevitable. In the same way, a modern warehouse depends on reliable and advanced private network solutions such as private LTE and private 5G to ensure every piece of information reaches its destination without interruption.

In this blog article, we explore how advanced private network solutions transform the warehousing vertical, boosting operational efficiency and security while laying a strong foundation for the future of warehouse IT infrastructure.

Watch: How Retailers Can Regain Agility With Wireless WAN

The Critical Role Of Private Networks

Warehouses are dynamic spaces with expanding layouts, countless connected devices, and demands for 24/7/365 connectivity. Traditional Wi-Fi, once sufficient, now struggles under the weight of growing device loads and shifting operational zones.

Warehouses face several challenges, including:

• Coverage limitations: The constant movement of equipment, goods, and personnel can disrupt traditional Wi-Fi networks.
• Costly infrastructure: Maintaining numerous access points and fiber installations to cover large warehouse spaces can be expensive.
• Security concerns: Standard Wi-Fi networks may expose sensitive operational data to risks such as hacking and unauthorized access.

Advanced private network solutions such as private LTE and private 5G address these concerns and provide dedicated, dependable coverage to transform warehouse connectivity. By creating a controlled environment where devices remain connected regardless of location or movement, these solutions enhance day-to-day operations and support integrating technologies like IoT, robotics, and advanced video monitoring.

Enhancing Connectivity With Private LTE And Private 5G

Private LTE and 5G are leading the way in delivering resilient network connections in environments where interruptions can cost time and money. The key advantages of these private network solutions in the warehouse include:

• Uninterrupted coverage: Fewer access points allow devices to move across the warehouse without the typical connectivity hiccups seen in Wi-Fi systems.
• Centralized network management: IT teams can monitor and control network traffic, latency, and security policies from a single dashboard, simplifying everyday operations.
• Enhanced security: These networks operate on a dedicated spectrum and utilize private SIMs, protecting against unauthorized access and potential cyberattacks.

For example, (formerly known as Cradlepoint) highlighted how warehouse operators who transitioned to NetCloud Private Networks enjoyed enhanced coverage and mobility. Workers experienced uninterrupted , enabling efficient order fulfillment even as they moved throughout the facility. Real-world examples of these networks in action show warehouses benefit from connectivity that is as easy to use as traditional Wi-Fi and far more reliable, which is critical for maintaining productivity in a bustling environment.

Efficiency Gains And Cost Savings Through Advanced Private Networks

Cost efficiency is a vital concern in warehouse operations. Facilities adopting advanced private network solutions have seen substantial financial benefits. One study even reported a , all thanks to automation enabled by private cellular networks.

This cost savings comes from several factors:

• Reduced infrastructure costs: Private networks require fewer access points than traditional Wi-Fi setups, lowering initial setup expenses and ongoing maintenance costs.
• Streamlined operations: Improved network reliability means fewer operational interruptions, less downtime, and higher overall productivity.
• Optimized bandwidth allocation: With private LTE for warehouses, bandwidth can be allocated to critical applications like real-time analytics and automated guided vehicles (AGVs), ensuring key systems remain operational during peak times.

Watch: WEI Campus Capabilities – Warehouse

Strengthening Security And Control In Warehouse IT Infrastructure

Keeping things secure is essential when it comes to warehouse IT infrastructure. Four key security benefits of private LTE networks in warehouses include:

1. Enhanced access control: Warehouse IT teams can manage which devices and users can access the network using SIM-based authentication, thereby significantly reducing the risk of unauthorized connections.
2. Reduced external threats: Operating on a closed system, private LTE networks isolate the warehouse from many public internet-based risks, such as DDoS attacks.
3. Data privacy and encryption: Keeping critical data within the warehouse鈥檚 internal systems and employing end-to-end encryption minimizes the risk of eavesdropping and data breaches.
4. : The ability to tailor security measures, including encryption standards and traffic monitoring, guarantees network defenses meet the specific needs of each warehouse.

These security enhancements provide peace of mind for warehouse managers and IT teams, ensuring operations remain protected even as the number of connected devices increases.

Integrating Advanced Private Network 疯情AV Into Your Warehouse

Successfully integrating advanced private network solutions requires a strategic approach to complement existing warehouse systems. Effective integration typically involves the following:

• Custom network architecture: A network setup specifically optimized for large warehouses delivers continuous connectivity and a solid foundation for entire warehouse connectivity.
• Comprehensive support and monitoring: Specialized engineers provide round-the-clock monitoring and support to address any issues promptly.
• Smooth integration with existing systems: Experts work to ensure that new private network solutions, including private LTE for warehouses and private 5G warehousing options, blend smoothly with existing systems, thus minimizing downtime during the transition.

Through partnerships with industry leaders like Ericsson Enterprise Wireless and experts from WEI, custom network architectures are designed to meet the unique challenges of large, dynamic warehouses. This shift towards advanced private network solutions offers a persuasive pathway for IT managers and decision-makers.

With improved security, cost efficiency, and reliable connectivity, these networks lay the groundwork for a more productive, secure, and future-ready warehouse IT infrastructure.

Final Thoughts

As warehouses continue to serve as critical logistics and supply chain management hubs, ensuring they operate on secure networks is essential. Advanced private network solutions facilitate uninterrupted data flow, boost operational efficiency, and protect sensitive information. By moving away from traditional Wi-Fi systems and investing in dedicated private networks, facilities can achieve smoother operations, lower costs, and enhanced security.

If you鈥檙e ready to optimize your warehouse connectivity and transform your warehouse IT infrastructure, consider how advanced private network solutions can revolutionize your operations. Reach out to our experts whose extensive experience in warehouse connectivity can help tailor a solution suitable for your unique operational needs.

Next Steps: In today鈥檚 modern warehousing environment, traditional Wi-Fi networks fall short in large, complex spaces. In partnership with Ericsson Enterprise Wireless 疯情AV, WEI鈥檚 advanced private network solutions offer the performance, security, and cost efficiency needed to transform your operations.

Discover how private LTE and 5G networks can redefine your warehouse efficiency, supporting IoT, automation, and logistics seamlessly. Download our free tech brief today,

The post Enhance Warehouse Connectivity With These Advanced Private Networking 疯情AV appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

In today’s hybrid workforce, businesses need technology that not only empowers employees to work from anywhere but does so with ironclad security measures. HP Digital Workspace, powered by HP Anyware, is a comprehensive solution that addresses this need by delivering high-performance virtual work environments.

When complemented with zero trust principles, HP Anyware provides a seamless, secure experience, aligning with today’s remote work demands while reducing cyber risk.

The Value Of HP Digital Workspace With HP Anyware

HP Digital Workspace is built to meet the challenges of remote work by giving employees consistent access to their work tools and resources, no matter where they are located. Through the HP Anyware platform, organizations can provide employees with virtual workspaces that deliver high-quality, secure performance across various devices, making it an ideal solution for industries requiring robust computing resources.

HP Anyware’s digital workspace includes:

• Unified Access: Employees can access the same applications and data regardless of their location, with consistent performance across laptops, desktops, and mobile devices.
• Optimized Performance: Even high-performance applications, like graphic design software or engineering programs, function seamlessly through virtual workspaces, minimizing performance discrepancies often associated with remote work.
• Simplified IT Management: IT teams can centrally manage these virtual workspaces, streamlining support and reducing time spent on device configuration and maintenance.

Elevating Security With Zero Trust Architecture

Integrating Zero Trust with HP Anyware takes digital workspace security a step further. In a Zero Trust framework, every user, device, and application must be verified before accessing corporate resources. This approach helps ensure that each access request is thoroughly vetted, reducing unauthorized access and cyber threats. HP Anyware Trust Center offers a central console that simplifies Zero Trust policies, ensuring secure and streamlined user experiences.

Key Zero Trust Security Components in HP Digital Workspace:

• Continuous Verification: Every access request is verified in real-time, ensuring only authorized users can enter the network.
• Endpoint Compliance: Devices must meet pre-set compliance standards, like operating system versions and patch updates, before connecting, minimizing exposure to security vulnerabilities.
• Data Protection: Zero Trust principles also allow organizations to monitor data access patterns. In the event of unusual activity, the system restricts access until an administrator intervenes, helping protect sensitive data from being compromised.

Together, HP Anyware’s digital workspace and Zero Trust architecture enable organizations to manage security without impeding workflow, enhancing both protection and productivity.

WEI Podcast: Becoming An Insights-Driven Enterprise With HPE Storage 疯情AV

How HP Digital Workspace And Zero Trust Meet Enterprise Needs

For IT executives, supporting a hybrid workforce with a secure, reliable infrastructure is critical. HP Digital Workspace enables enterprises to provide robust computing resources without compromising security, while Zero Trust ensures that security perimeters are maintained regardless of where the user is located. Key benefits include:

• Enhanced User Experience: HP Digital Workspace provides a seamless user experience by optimizing application performance and reducing latency issues. With Zero Trust, employees enjoy a frictionless experience as verification and compliance checks run in the background.
• Improved Data Compliance and Security: Regulatory compliance is an ongoing priority for many organizations, and Zero Trust helps maintain this by continuously monitoring and logging access requests.
• Scalable, Flexible 疯情AV: With HP Anyware and Zero Trust, enterprises can scale their workforce infrastructure quickly and integrate additional security protocols as needed, supporting both current and future needs.

Digital Workspace KPIs To Measure

As digital workspaces and access software continue to evolve, IT must stay current on technology advancements and align them with business and employee needs. Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) can help gauge the success of digital workspaces:

• Accelerated Time to Value: Assess the speed of deployment.
• Service Availability: Measure access reliability for employees and partners.
• User Experience: Evaluate ease of access, performance, and user satisfaction.
• Future-Ready Micro-Services: Track scalability and redundancy of workspace components.
• Cost of Resources: Compare ongoing implementation costs.
• Security Metrics: Measure efficiencies gained through enhanced security.
• Sustainability: Assess the impact on the company’s carbon footprint and endpoint longevity.

Looking Forward: Embracing A Secure Hybrid Work Future

As hybrid work continues to shape the future of business, a robust, secure digital workspace is more essential than ever. By combining the power of HP Digital Workspace with the security of Zero Trust, organizations can confidently support their remote workforce and safeguard their data.

Final Thoughts

Incorporating digital workspaces with a focus on security, performance, and user satisfaction can be transformative for any organization embracing hybrid work. As a trusted technology partner, WEI is here to help you navigate every stage of this journey. If you have questions about implementing HP Digital Workspaces, Zero Trust, or optimizing KPIs, reach out to WEI today to learn how our solutions and expertise can support your team’s success.

Next steps: CIOs are faced with complexities in the data center as they are asked to minimize costs and optimize for efficiency. This is a challenge as IT leaders juggle priorities around the cloud, IoT, and more. In this video, WEI and HP identify five proven strategies where IT leaders can explore opportunities to drive efficiency in the data center.

The post Empowering Remote Work With HP Digital Workspace And Zero Trust appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

A guest writer of WEI, see Bill Frank’s biography and contact information at the end of this article.

Michael Lewis coined the term, Moneyball, in his eponymous book published in 2003 and made into a movie in 2011 starring Brad Pitt. Moneyball was about applying analytics to baseball. Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics General Manager, was the first baseball executive to use analytics to increase the probability of winning games.

Baseball is obviously about the players and constrained budgets. So Beane’s goal was to use analytics to create a better roster of players.

The analytics the Athletics developed were new and contradicted all the “rules-of-thumb” baseball scouts used to select players for over 100 years.

Moneyball for cybersecurity is about applying analytics to cybersecurity to reduce the probability of material financial impact due to cyber-related loss events.

Cybersecurity is about controls – people, processes, and technologies – constrained by budgets and resources. So the objective is to create a better portfolio of controls and to improve collaboration with the business leaders who set cybersecurity budgets.

This requires a new analytical approach that calculates and visualizes the aggregate effectiveness of an organization’s control portfolio across the cyber-related loss events of greatest concern to business leaders. In other words, visualize cyber defenses in dollars.

It can be misleading to project the risk reduction value of a control improvement based on evaluating it in isolation. Yet we do this all the time. Risk reduction is about how a proposed control improvement will work in concert with the other deployed controls.

Why We need Moneyball for Cybersecurity

There is a cybersecurity paradox. Overall cybersecurity spending increases every year. New frameworks are published, and older ones are updated. In addition, various government agencies are pressuring organizations to improve their cyber postures.

Despite these efforts, the number and financial impact of cyber-related loss events continue to increase.

Some say it’s due to the increasing pace of digital transformation. Others say it’s due to the increase in remote work and cloud computing. Still others say it’s due to a lack of trained cybersecurity professionals.

While those factors may contribute, two issues are more fundamental – prioritizing control investments and justifying cybersecurity budget proposals.

1. Prioritizing Control Investments

A control’s performance when evaluated in isolation does not indicate how effective it will be in reducing risk when deployed in concert with all the other controls. This makes it difficult to select which control improvements should be funded and which should not.

The underlying issue is the complexity of cybersecurity. Organizations deploy dozens of controls. There are hundreds of threat types as defined by MITRE ATT. There are hundreds to thousands of overlapping and intertwined attack paths into and through an organization’s IT/OT estate.

Therefore, each loss event scenario involves thousands of overlapping end-to-end kill chains. Adding to the complexity, many controls appear on many kill chains and many controls appear in multiple loss event scenarios.

In addition, it’s difficult to compare controls across different IT domains. How do you compare the value of a network control to an endpoint control? How do you compare the value of identity and access controls to malware detection controls? How do you compare left-of-bang to right-of-bang controls?

2. Justifying cybersecurity budgets

Security leaders often have difficulty justifying proposed control investments to the business leaders who set cybersecurity budgets due to the security metrics – business risk gap. Security teams use a wide range of technical metrics to monitor control performance that business leaders do not understand.

Business leaders know that cyber risk is business risk. Business leaders want to manage cyber risk as they do other strategic risks. They are frustrated by the difficulties of collaborating with security leaders who don’t speak their language – money.

Business leaders want to know how control investments will reduce the probability of material financial impact due to cyber loss events. To get their budget requests approved, security leaders need a credible approach to bridge the security metrics – business risk gap.

Implementing Moneyball For Cybersecurity

Monaco Risk’s advisory services use its patented Cyber Defense Graph to make Moneyball for Cybersecurity useful to security teams and credible to business leaders.

Better control selection

Monaco Risk’s Cyber Defense Graph statistical simulation solves the exponential kill chain problem described above. All of the kill chains related to a loss event scenario are analyzed together taking into consideration the capabilities, coverage, and governance of the controls involved.

Figure 1: This is an example of Monaco Risk’s modular Cyber Defense Graphic. Threats enter from the left. Threats move along attack paths shown as arrows. Controls are shown as boxes. Loss events result from threats that are not blocked by controls.

The resulting kill graphs display the critical path weaknesses into and through the organization’s IT/OT estate.

We generate tornado charts to show each control’s current and potential contribution to the aggregate effectiveness of the control portfolio.

Figure 2: Tornado Chart example showing the contribution of individual controls to “aggregate control effectiveness.“

In addition, we aggregate control effectiveness across multiple kill graphs.

In addition, we have developed a set of standardized control parameters that enables the Cyber Defense Graph software to compare the risk reduction value of disparate types of controls. We can compare network controls to host controls, identity/access to malware prevention controls, and left-of-bang to right-of-bang controls.

This improves the decision-making process for prioritizing control selection by showing how alternative control improvements will reduce the probability of material financial impact due to cyber-related loss events.

Improved collaboration with business leaders

Better collaboration with business leaders who set cybersecurity budgets hinges on bridging the security metrics – business risk gap. The Cyber Defense Graph enables credible business risk reduction analysis, in dollars, of alternative control investments.

We generate Loss Exceedance Curve charts to show the potentially catastrophic nature of cyber-related loss events. These charts also show, in dollars, how alternative control improvements reduce the probability of material financial impact of loss events.

Figure 3: This example of a Loss Exceedance Curve chart shows how selected alternative control improvements will reduce the probabilities of dollar losses exceeding three thresholds shown as vertical lines.

Simply claiming a particular control improvement will reduce risk by X% is not sufficient. As my teachers used to say, “Show me the work!” What are your underlying assumptions? Have you evaluated lower-cost controls? How do they compare to the ones you are proposing?

Are there any controls we can eliminate to save money? Can we negotiate lower prices on controls we need for compliance but don’t significantly reduce the risk of a cyber event?

The Moneyball for Cybersecurity Analogy

I am not the first to use the Moneyball analogy for cybersecurity. It has been used to focus on cybersecurity workforce development. Since Moneyball was about player selection, clearly Moneyball can and should be applied to cybersecurity team selection and development.

We take Moneyball a step further by applying it to processes and technologies as well as people, i.e. all controls. It was also used by a cyber insurance company.

Let me know what you think!

The post Moneyball for Cybersecurity appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

As businesses continue to adopt private cloud environments, the need for flexible and efficient management solutions is more critical than ever. Organizations looking to control their infrastructure while balancing security and scalability often turn to enterprise private cloud solutions. HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition provides a robust platform to tackle common challenges, offering flexible private cloud options that optimize workloads across both on-premises and hybrid cloud environments.

In this article, we’ll explore the pain points that HPE GreenLake resolves, review real-world use cases, and dive into the consumption models that cater to a variety of workloads and budgets. By the end, you’ll understand how this platform empowers businesses to overcome the complexity of managing private cloud environments while unlocking operational efficiency.

Overcoming Pain Points

Managing a private cloud environment can pose significant challenges for businesses, especially when trying to balance cost, complexity, and operational efficiency. HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud offers solutions to three primary pain points:

1. Simplifying Hybrid Cloud Management

Hybrid cloud environments often require businesses to manage both on-premises infrastructure and public cloud platforms, which create a complex operational landscape. Many organizations struggle to integrate these systems seamlessly, and the need for IT expertise becomes a barrier to efficient day-to-day operations.

HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition streamlines these processes with a unified console that simplifies the management of both on-prem and cloud-based workloads:

• Monitor and manage systems in real-time across multiple platforms.
• Leverage automation for simplified day-two operations.
• Utilize AI-driven analytics to predict and prevent performance issues.

By providing self-service agility, businesses can reduce the complexity of managing hybrid environments and free up IT teams to focus on more strategic tasks.

2. Ensuring 100% Data Availability for Mission-Critical Applications

Many private cloud options offer data availability guarantees of 99.99% (commonly known as 4 9’s). However, for mission-critical applications, this level of availability may not be enough to ensure uninterrupted operations.

With HPE GreenLake, businesses benefit from a for on-premises workloads, making it a game-changer for organizations that require constant uptime for their most critical data and applications. This level of resilience ensures that businesses using HPE GreenLake can maintain operational continuity without fear of data loss or downtime.

3. Reducing IT Complexity and Costs

For many enterprises, the cost of custom-managed services for large-scale deployments can be prohibitively high. Additionally, managing private cloud environments often requires domain expertise that complicates day-to-day IT operations.

HPE GreenLake reduces these barriers by offering a self-service console that empowers businesses to manage their private cloud environments without the need for extensive IT staffing or domain-specific knowledge. The platform provides:

• Low-touch provisioning across multiple on-premises and public cloud platforms.
• Centralized management for hundreds of sites from a single dashboard.
• Automation through AIOps to streamline operations.

HPE GreenLake In Action

HPE GreenLake makes it ideal for a wide range of business private cloud use cases. Whether your organization needs centralized management, low-touch provisioning, or simplified workload updates, the platform provides scalable solutions tailored to your needs.

1. Low-Touch Provisioning Across Multiple Sites

Businesses with remote offices or distributed IT infrastructure often face challenges in provisioning and managing resources across multiple locations. With HPE GreenLake, organizations can easily deploy and manage private cloud infrastructure across on-premises and public cloud environments, minimizing the need for IT personnel at remote sites.

2. Centralized Management of Enterprise Private Cloud Operations

Managing a large-scale enterprise private cloud across hundreds of sites can be overwhelming. HPE GreenLake’s centralized management allows organizations to oversee their private cloud environment from a single, unified console. This enables businesses to maintain consistency and quickly address operational issues.

3. Self-Service Application and Infrastructure Provisioning

For businesses looking to accelerate time-to-value, HPE GreenLake offers self-service application and infrastructure provisioning through an app catalog. This allows IT teams to create and reuse infrastructure blueprints, ensuring faster deployment of workloads while maintaining security and compliance.

Solving Your Evolving Business Needs

HPE GreenLake’s flexible consumption models cater to different business needs and budgets, ensuring that organizations can choose the private cloud options that best align with their financial strategies.

1. Pay Upfront Model

For businesses that prefer a traditional capital expenditure (CapEx) approach, the pay upfront model offers flexibility in hardware and software configurations. This model is ideal for organizations that want to own their infrastructure and make a one-time investment.

Additionally, users benefit from a perpetual software license.

2. Pay-As-You-Go Model

For organizations that prefer a more operational expenditure (OpEx)-focused approach, the pay-as-you-go model offers monthly billing based on usage. This model is available for both HPE Alletra dHCI and HPE SimpliVity platforms. However, for HPE Alletra, consumption analytics are provided through GreenLake Central (GLC).

This model allows businesses to scale resources dynamically, ensuring they only pay for what they use, making it ideal for fluctuating workloads.

What’s In It For Your Business?

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, businesses need more than just infrastructure, they need solutions that simplify operations, enhance data security, and scale effortlessly with changing demands. HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition delivers on all these fronts, providing enterprises with a comprehensive, cloud-like experience that can be deployed on-premises and extended across hybrid environments.

The platform offers significant advantages such as:

• Simplicity: A unified, self-service console simplifies the management of on-prem and cloud VMs, enabling businesses to automate repetitive tasks and focus on high-value activities.
• Resilience: HPE GreenLake offers a 100% data availability guarantee and seamless data protection across hybrid environments, ensuring that mission-critical applications remain operational. HPE’s AIOps technology further enhances resilience by predicting and preventing issues before they occur, allowing businesses to proactively address potential problems. This level of assurance is particularly important for industries like healthcare, finance, and manufacturing, where uninterrupted access to data and applications is essential for business continuity.
• Efficiency: Businesses can independently adjust their resource allocation to meet their specific needs, optimizing performance and reducing costs. With various consumption models available, businesses are assured they only pay for the resources they actually use, preventing overinvestment in underutilized resources. HPE GreenLake also offers hyper data efficiency across sites with its HCI model, consolidating storage, compute, and networking resources into a single solution.

This level of efficiency, which goes beyond basic infrastructure management, allows companies to focus on their core business while optimizing their IT operations.

Final Thoughts

As businesses navigate the complexities of managing private cloud environments, HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition offers a comprehensive solution that simplifies operations, guarantees data availability, and provides flexible consumption models.

To maximize the benefits of HPE GreenLake, partnering with a reliable and experienced IT solutions provider is essential. Whether you’re looking to optimize on-premises resources or bridge hybrid cloud environments, WEI is a trusted IT leader and brings extensive expertise in both HPE GreenLake and private cloud environments. Our team of experts ensures your business is equipped with the right solutions tailored to your needs.

For more information on how HPE GreenLake and WEI can transform your IT operations, contact our team today.

Next steps: Discover how HPE GreenLake delivers an intuitive and cost-efficient cloud experience that enables businesses to scale, manage, and protect their virtual machines across hybrid environments.will highlight the following key benefits:

1. 1. 1. Zero Overprovisioning for Better Economics
      2. Performance for Critical Applications at Scale
      3. Faster Time to Value
      4. Seamless Fit for Any IT Environment
      5. End-to-End Data Protection and Security

The post From Overload to Optimized: How to Make Business Workloads Work for You appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Businesses increasingly adopt and deploy multiple cloud solutions to enhance operations and cost efficiency. While public clouds offer many benefits, they may not always meet the needs of organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements, latency-sensitive applications, or a desire for greater control over their IT infrastructure. This is where private clouds come into play.

An enterprise private cloud provides a tailored solution that combines the cloud’s flexibility with enhanced security and compliance. As more businesses explore private cloud options, let’s dive into the challenges associated with traditional approaches and how modern solutions can address them.

Common Pain Points Of Traditional Private Cloud

Many organizations have turned to private cloud solutions to maintain control over their data, applications, and infrastructure. However, when evaluating their private cloud options, it’s crucial to recognize the common challenges that can arise, especially when scaling and optimizing an enterprise private cloud.

• Data sovereignty and compliance: A key issue with traditional private cloud environments is ensuring data sovereignty. Industries such as finance and healthcare are often bound by strict regulatory requirements, which mandate that data must be stored within specific national borders. Managing data residency in these cases can be complex and costly, especially when compliance must be maintained across multiple jurisdictions. For businesses handling sensitive information, addressing these compliance concerns is essential. Choosing the right business private cloud solution is critical to maintaining full control over where data is stored.
• Latency-sensitive applications: Industries that rely on real-time responsiveness, such as high-frequency trading, real-time analytics, or media streaming, cannot tolerate high latency. In traditional public cloud setups, latency issues arise due to the overlooked fact of the distance between the user and cloud data centers. For businesses operating in latency-sensitive environments, these delays can lead to performance bottlenecks and negatively impact critical applications. Traditional private clouds often struggle to meet real-time performance demands, affecting operations and user experience.
• Complex infrastructure management: Managing an enterprise private cloud often involves substantial overhead, including hardware procurement, software management, and ongoing maintenance. This complexity can be particularly burdensome for businesses without specialized IT teams or the necessary resources to handle intricate cloud operations. Traditional private cloud infrastructures require constant attention to ensure that resources are properly allocated and maintained, leading to inefficiencies and potential operational delays.
• Cost optimization and scalability: Traditional private cloud models typically require significant upfront capital investments in hardware and software, making them expensive to deploy and challenging to scale. Many businesses overprovision resources to avoid performance issues, resulting in wasted spending. Additionally, scaling traditional private cloud environments to meet fluctuating demands is often slow and costly, limiting the flexibility enterprises need. Addressing this lack of scalability and cost optimization is a common pain point for organizations looking to modernize their private cloud environments without incurring excessive expenses.

By addressing compliance, performance, complexity, and cost challenges, organizations can build a more effective and future-proof private cloud environment that aligns with their current needs and long-term goals.

Solving Traditional Challenges Of Private Cloud Environments

Building on its ability to address the limitations of traditional private cloud environments, HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition offers a comprehensive solution that brings the agility of the cloud to on-premises infrastructure. This approach allows businesses to enjoy the benefits of private cloud computing, such as enhanced control and security, while maintaining the flexibility and scalability typically associated with public cloud platforms. By tailoring its services to meet specific business needs, HPE GreenLake ensures that organizations across various industries can overcome the challenges of traditional private clouds and optimize their operations for the future.

• Hybrid Cloud Environments: HPE GreenLake enables businesses to seamlessly integrate on-prem infrastructure with public cloud resources, providing a hybrid solution. This is particularly useful for businesses managing workloads that require on-prem data storage while leveraging public cloud scalability.
• Data-Intensive Applications: For industries that deal with vast amounts of data, such as healthcare, finance, or research, HPE GreenLake’s private cloud options provide a secure, scalable platform. Data can be processed locally, ensuring both security and efficiency while meeting the stringent performance requirements of data-intensive applications.
• Seasonal Workloads and Fluctuating Demand: Retailers or online retail platforms often experience seasonal surges in demand, particularly around holidays or special events. Rather than investing in resources that will remain underutilized during off-peak periods, HPE GreenLake allows businesses to scale resources up or down as needed, providing cost-effective operations throughout the year.
• Gaming Industry: For gaming companies launching new titles, infrastructure needs can fluctuate dramatically. With HPE GreenLake, gaming companies can handle unpredictable surges in demand by scaling resources instantly, preventing downtime, and maintaining optimal user experience.Watch: Becoming An Insights-Driven Enterprise With HPE Storage 疯情AV
  
  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  

Key Features

HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition stands out with several key features:

1. Self-service portal: A user-friendly interface simplifies resource provisioning and management, reducing the burden on IT teams and enabling quicker deployment.
2. Workload-optimized platforms: The platform can be customized to meet the specific performance needs of different workloads, ensuring that businesses optimize their resource utilization.
3. Hybrid cloud integration: HPE GreenLake supports seamless integration with public cloud providers, allowing businesses to create a flexible and scalable hybrid cloud environment.
4. Data protection: Built-in features safeguard sensitive information and ensure compliance with industry regulations.
5. Scalability: Businesses can scale their resources up or down as needed, responding to changing business requirements in real time.
6. Flexible consumption models: One of HPE GreenLake’s most compelling features pertains to what it was founded on – its flexible consumption models. It offers two primary options:
   • Pay Upfront Model: In this traditional model, businesses invest in hardware and configuration upfront, ideal for organizations that prefer to make capital expenditures (CapEx) and have a long-term view of their infrastructure needs.
   • Pay-As-You-Go Model: This operational expenditure (OpEx) model allows businesses to scale their infrastructure based on usage and pay monthly for the resources consumed. This model is highly scalable and particularly useful for organizations dealing with fluctuating demands or seasonal peaks.

HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition provides businesses with the tools to build a more efficient and responsive enterprise private cloud.

Final Thoughts

is transforming the way enterprises manage their cloud infrastructure. Whether you’re addressing latency-sensitive applications, data sovereignty concerns, or unpredictable workloads, HPE GreenLake provides a scalable and reliable solution. With its hybrid cloud capabilities and customizable consumption models, this platform empowers businesses to achieve optimal performance and cost efficiency.

As a premier provider of business private cloud services, WEI is committed to delivering tailored solutions that meet the unique needs of our clients. To learn more about how HPE GreenLake can transform your enterprise, contact us today for a personalized consultation.

Next Steps: Discover how HPE GreenLake delivers an intuitive and cost-efficient cloud experience that enables businesses to scale, manage, and protect their virtual machines across hybrid environments. will highlight the following key benefits:

1. 1. 1. Zero Overprovisioning for Better Economics
      2. Performance for Critical Applications at Scale
      3. Faster Time to Value
      4. Seamless Fit for Any IT Environment
      5. End-to-End Data Protection and Security

The post Why Businesses Choose Enterprise Private Cloud Over Traditional 疯情AV appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Today’s fast-paced demands of cybersecurity require a workforce that is both highly skilled and diverse. However, many large and medium enterprises face ongoing challenges in attracting and retaining cyber talent. Economic uncertainties have led to hiring slowdowns and cutbacks, despite the rising need for cybersecurity due to increasing threats. Key skills in demand include programming, threat analysis, and cloud security, with soft skills like communication also being crucial. Upskilling and internal training are highlighted as strategies to address workforce gaps.

Recognizing these challenges, WEI has partnered with CyberTrust Massachusetts while also creating an innovative solution: This apprenticeship service not only addresses the critical need for skilled cybersecurity professionals but also fosters a more inclusive IT environment. Companies are increasingly valuing diversity in IT and cybersecurity teams, recognizing that diverse perspectives enhance problem-solving in the face of evolving digital threats.

Watch: Harnessing A Diverse Talent Pipeline For Cybersecurity Personnel

Why The WEI Apprenticeship Offering Stands Unique

Graduates from the CyberTrust program who enroll in the WEI Technical Apprenticeship benefit from a smoother transition from academia to the corporate world. Our cyber apprenticeship program stands out by prioritizing attitude and aptitude over existing skill sets, ensuring that we equip individuals with the necessary skills through role-specific and tech stack-specific training. Unlike other programs that focus on generic tech stacks, our training aligns directly with the technology actually deployed by the customer.

The program follows an iterative process combining on-the-job training with classwork, allowing apprentices to absorb and apply material in real-world settings, ensuring a deeper understanding and practical application. Additionally, we provide comprehensive mentoring for both apprentices and hiring managers to facilitate early course corrections and maximize program success.

To integrate WEI’s apprenticeship service into their existing talent development strategies, clients can leverage it to fill difficult early-career roles in niche or emerging technologies, establish a reliable entry-level technical talent pipeline, and enhance their team’s skills by incorporating apprenticeship training into their broader upskilling initiatives. Furthermore, the program can support a targeted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) hiring strategy, helping clients build a more diverse and skilled workforce tailored to their specific technological needs.

WEI’s proven apprenticeship service features a four-step process designed to ensure the successful transition of apprentices into full-time cybersecurity roles. There is zero obligation from the client to hire the apprentice to a full-time position, although that is the case in 99% of our engagements. Here’s how it works:

1. Identify Apprenticeship Plan & Expectations: WEI collaborates with the client to develop a role-specific apprenticeship plan, identifying expectations and recruiting individuals with the potential to excel in cybersecurity careers. This step aims to tap into underutilized talent pools, fostering a more inclusive workforce.
2. Hire Apprentice: Candidates undergo a job suitability assessment and participate in client interviews. While they may not possess all the required skills initially, their attitude and aptitude are key factors in the hiring decision. WEI then provides essential technical training.
3. Deliver Development Plan: Apprentices are paired with experienced cybersecurity professionals who offer guidance, support, and career development opportunities. This mentorship is crucial for shaping the trainees’ professional growth and ensuring a smooth transition into the workforce. This phase often lasts 12 months.
4. Transfer Apprentice to Full-time Employment: Upon successful completion of the program, apprentices are offered full-time positions with the client. This commitment helps bridge the cybersecurity skills gap and strengthens the regional cybersecurity landscape. As mentioned above, clients are not obligated to hire the apprentices, but WEI does boast a 99% success rate in job placements.

Addressing the Cybersecurity Skills Gap With CyberTrust Massachusetts

At WEI’s recent renowned cyber thought leader Rick Howard said the perception of a cyber staffing shortage actually has more to do with the mismanagement of existing talent within many enterprises.

“In my opinion, we don’t have a shortage of new talent coming into the field,” said Howard. “There’s lots of training programs for that. When you’re a security manager hiring a disposition manager, you’re not looking for the new talent, though. They are looking for the person with 25 years of experience and 17 certifications that they can pay them $150 an hour for. That’s why when you hear everyone say there’s a shortage of cybersecurity professionals, there’s not. As a profession, we manage it poorly. We don’t bring in new talent and train them up the scale. We try to find the unicorns, the super stars, and we don’t pay attention to all that stuff. That’s a complete mindset that needs to change in our industry if we are going to fix that problem.”

Watch: WEI Cyber Warfare Roundtable Discussion

Identifying and sustainably developing tomorrow’s IT talent is more pertinent than ever. That’s why WEI’s partnership with CyberTrust Massachsuetts comes at a time when many organizations are struggling to retain and upskill IT personnel. WEI is working to help customers alleviate this challenge by offering the apprenticeship.

The collaboration leverages the state-of-the-art Cyber Range at Bridgewater State University (BSU), where students and interns can simulate real-world cyberattacks, test defense strategies, and hone their skills in a controlled environment. CyberTrust is also affiliated with the Center For Cybersecurity Education at MassBay Community College and will also be leveraging an additional cyber range at Springfield Technical Community College later in 2024.

Our leaders at WEI passionately champion diversity by actively fostering inclusive practices and building strategic partnerships. Our DEI initiatives aren’t just about avoiding pitfalls, it’s about embedding diversity as a core value that fuels innovation across our business. CyberTrust’s comprehensive approach ensures that students receive both theoretical and practical training, making them well-equipped to handle real-world cybersecurity challenges.

Supporting a Sustainable Talent Pipeline

The sustainability of the cybersecurity talent pipeline is crucial for the long-term success of any enterprise. With WEI and CyberTrust Massachusetts, organizations can:

• Invest in Continuous Learning: Support ongoing training and development to keep pace with the evolving cybersecurity landscape.
• Foster Culture of Inclusivity: Create an environment where diverse talents can thrive and contribute to the organization’s success.
• Strengthen Community Relations: Engage with local educational institutions and community programs to build a robust talent pipeline.

The WEI Technical Apprenticeship for Diverse Candidates focuses on developing a comprehensive set of technical and soft skills that are essential for success in the cybersecurity field. Here’s a proven breakdown of some learned technical skills:

Network Security: Apprentices learn to design, implement, and manage security measures for network infrastructure. This includes configuring firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and other security protocols to protect data and prevent unauthorized access.

Cloud Security: Training covers security practices for various cloud environments, including public, private, and hybrid clouds. Apprentices learn about cloud security frameworks, identity and access management (IAM), and how to secure data in transit and at rest.

Security Operations Center: Apprentices gain hands-on experience in a SOC environment, learning to monitor networks for security breaches, analyze security incidents, and implement response strategies. This includes familiarity with security information and event management (SIEM) tools.

Incident Response: Apprentices are trained in incident detection, response, and recovery processes. They learn to develop and execute incident response plans, conduct forensic investigations, and report on security incidents.

Risk and Compliance Management: Apprentices learn about regulatory requirements and frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, and NIST. They are trained to conduct risk assessments, implement compliance controls, and ensure that security practices meet legal and regulatory standards.

Vulnerability Management: This includes identifying, assessing, and mitigating security vulnerabilities in software and hardware. Apprentices learn to use vulnerability scanning tools and develop remediation plans.

Endpoint Security: Training covers the deployment and management of security measures on endpoint devices such as computers, smartphones, and tablets. Apprentices learn to protect these devices from malware, unauthorized access, and other threats.

Penetration Testing: Apprentices are introduced to penetration testing techniques to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in systems and networks. They learn to use tools like Metasploit, Wireshark, and Nmap.

Data Protection: Apprentices learn about data encryption, data loss prevention (DLP) strategies, and secure data handling practices to protect sensitive information.

DevOps Security: Training includes integrating security practices into the DevOps process, ensuring that security is considered at every stage of the software development lifecycle.

Conclusion

The in partnership with CyberTrust Massachusetts, provides a comprehensive solution to the ongoing challenges of talent shortages and lack of diversity in cybersecurity. By adopting this program, medium and large enterprises can ensure a steady flow of skilled, diverse cybersecurity professionals who are well-prepared to meet the demands of the industry. This initiative not only benefits the participating companies but also contributes to a more secure and inclusive digital ecosystem.

Next Steps: To learn more, please contact or anyone from the WEI cybersecurity team to learn more on how we can help build you a sustainable IT talent pipeline for cybersecurity-based roles.

In the meantime, please download and read this original WEI white paper, As a SOC leader, you have the option to modernize your security approach by incorporating AI and ML technologies. AI-enabled security solutions are designed to directly address the challenges posed by gaps in knowledge, unfilled expert roles, growing digital footprints, and the rapidly evolving threat landscape, as adversaries also harness AI for nefarious purposes.

The post Build Your Cybersecurity Talent Pipeline With WEI’s Technical Apprenticeship For Diverse Candidates appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

At WEI, our team understands that diversity and inclusion are more than just buzzwords, they’re essential components of innovation and business success. As a minority-owned IT solutions provider, WEI is proud to offer our Technical Apprenticeship for Diverse Candidates service, designed to cultivate and integrate diverse talent into the IT workforce.

Formally introduced in 2023, this program is responding to the tech industry’s longtime trend of lacking gender, cultural, race, and ethnic diversity. This is troubling given IT’s high demand, competitive salaries, and job stability. Still, much progress must be made. For example, women are underrepresented in this growing industry, and people of color constitute an even slimmer percentage of big tech. According to a recent report by Zippia, there are some very telling statistics from big tech in the US:

• 26.7% of tech jobs are held by women while men hold 73.3%.
• Black Americans hold 7% of jobs, Latinx Americans hold 8% of jobs, and Asian Americans hold 20% of jobs.
• 83.3% of tech executives are white.
• Compared to other industries, the tech industry employs a smaller proportion of Black Americans (7.4% versus 14.4%), Latinx Americans (8% versus 13.9%), and women (36% versus 48%).

Many, especially those within the cybersecurity sector, feel there is a massive lack of staffing in information technology. More than ever, security analysts are being asked to do more and it is leading to eventual burnout. At WEI’s recent renowned cyber thought leader Rick Howard said the perception of a staffing shortage actually has more to do with the mismanagement of existing talent within many enterprises.

“In my opinion, we don’t have a shortage of entry level talent coming into the field,” said Howard. “There’s lots of training programs for that. When you’re a security manager hiring a disposition manager, you’re not looking for new talent, though. They are looking for the person with 25 years of experience and 17 certifications that they can pay them $150 an hour for. That’s why when you hear everyone say there’s a shortage of cybersecurity professionals, there’s not. As a profession, we manage it poorly. We don’t bring in new talent and train them up the scale. We try to find the unicorns, the super stars, and we don’t pay attention to all that stuff. That’s a complete mindset that needs to change in our industry if we are going to fix that problem.”

With many across the cyber and greater IT industry sharing Howard’s opinion, identifying and sustainably developing tomorrow’s IT talent is more pertinent than ever. Enter WEI’s partnership with CyberTrust Massachsuetts,which comes at a time when many organizations are struggling to retain and upskill IT personnel. WEI is working to help customers alleviate this challenge by offering the apprenticeship. Graduates of the CyberTrust program who enroll into the apprenticeship service will experience a smoother transition from academia to the corporate world.

Here’s an in-depth look at this transformative service, how it can benefit your organization, and a proven use case our team will share with you.

What Is WEI’s Apprenticeship Service?

The WEI Technical Apprenticeship For Diverse Candidates offering is a comprehensive initiative that aims to recruit, train, and transition diverse candidates into full-time IT roles. Notable roles this offering has recently filled for clients include:

• Cloud application engineer
• Data engineer
• Application developer
• Generative AI apprentice
• Solution application developer

This program is specifically designed to address the unique needs of medium and large enterprises, offering a tailored approach to building a skilled and diverse workforce. By partnering with educational institutions and leveraging our extensive industry expertise, WEI provides apprentices with the skills and experience needed to thrive in today’s competitive tech landscape.

Watch: Harnessing A Diverse Talent Pipeline For Cybersecurity Personnel

Benefits for Medium and Large Enterprises

1. Access to a diverse and untapped talent pool: The service connects enterprises with talented individuals from diverse backgrounds, fostering innovation and varied perspectives within your teams. As more apprentices are sourced and hired, a sustainable talent pipeline begins to develop for your enterprise for future IT roles.
2. Customized training: Apprentices receive training tailored to your organization’s specific technologies and workflows, ensuring they are well-prepared to contribute effectively from day one.
3. Cost-effective talent acquisition: The apprenticeship program provides a cost-effective solution for developing skilled talent, reducing the expenses associated with traditional recruitment and training methods.
4. Enhanced corporate reputation: Partnering with WEI demonstrates a commitment to diversity and inclusion, enhancing your corporate reputation and attractiveness to top talent.

Simplified Four-Step Process

WEI’s apprenticeship program is designed to be seamless and straightforward for our clients. Our four-step recruit-to-transfer process ensures that both the apprentices and your organization benefit from a structured and supportive experience. Clients enter this process knowing there is zero obligation to hire the apprentice to a full-time position, although a full-time hire is what plays out more times than not.

1. Identify Apprenticeship Plan and Expectations: We work closely with you to define the apprenticeship plan, including specific roles, technology stacks, and desired outcomes.

2. Hiring the Apprentice: WEI handles the recruitment process, identifying candidates with the right attitude and aptitude for the role. Using tools like Harrison Assessments, we ensure that the best-suited candidates are selected.

3. Deliver Development Plan: Apprentices undergo a year-long, iterative training program that includes hands-on experience, supervised projects, and continuous assessment to ensure they acquire the necessary skills.

4. Transfer Apprentice to Full-Time Employment: After successful completion of the apprenticeship, apprentices transition into full-time roles within your organization. While there is no obligation to hire, 99% of our clients choose to bring the apprentices on board permanently.

Proven And Measured Success

WEI’s apprenticeship service has a strong track record of success. In previous programs, diverse candidates have seamlessly integrated into various enterprises, contributing to significant improvements in project delivery and team dynamics. For instance, we have placed apprentices in roles such as cloud data engineers, application developers, and solutions architects, all of whom have demonstrated exceptional performance and career growth.

1. Conversion Rate to Full-Time Employment

One of the primary indicators of the program’s success is the conversion rate of apprentices to full-time employees. A high conversion rate signifies that the training provided is effective and aligns well with the needs of the client. WEI boasts a 99% conversion rate, demonstrating the program’s ability to prepare apprentices for long-term roles within client organizations.

2. Retention Rate Post-Apprenticeship

Retention rate measures how long apprentices remain with the client company after being hired full-time. This metric is crucial because it indicates the apprentice’s satisfaction and the quality of the match between the apprentice and the employer. WEI has seen high retention rates, with many apprentices continuing to grow and advance within their organizations.

3. Performance and Productivity Metrics

During the apprenticeship, we monitor the performance and productivity of each apprentice through regular evaluations and feedback from supervisors. Key performance indicators (KPIs) might include:

• Completion rate of assigned projects
• Quality of work
• Adherence to timelines

These metrics help ensure that apprentices are meeting or exceeding expectations in their roles.

4. Skills and Certification Attainment

We track the skills and certifications attained by apprentices throughout the program. This includes completion of training modules, acquisition of relevant certifications (e.g., CompTIA, AWS), and mastery of specific technical skills. Ensuring apprentices achieve these milestones confirms they are gaining the necessary expertise to excel in their roles.

5. Feedback from Clients and Apprentices

Client satisfaction is a vital measure of the program’s effectiveness. We gather regular feedback from clients regarding the apprentices’ performance, integration into the team, and overall contribution to the company. Additionally, feedback from the apprentices themselves provides insights into their learning experience, satisfaction with the training, and any areas for improvement.

6. Career Progression and Advancement

Tracking the career progression of apprentices after they transition to full-time roles provides long-term insight into the program’s success. Metrics such as promotions, salary increases, and leadership roles attained can indicate the lasting impact of the apprenticeship on the individual’s career trajectory.

7. Return on Investment (ROI) for Clients

Finally, we measure the ROI for clients participating in the apprenticeship program. This includes assessing the cost savings associated with hiring trained apprentices versus recruiting experienced professionals, as well as the overall value added to the company through increased productivity and innovation.

By closely monitoring these metrics, WEI ensures that our Technical Apprenticeship Program continues to deliver exceptional value to both our apprentices and our clients.

Conclusion

Every industry has unique requirements, and WEI’s apprenticeship program is flexible enough to meet these diverse needs. Whether your organization requires advanced cybersecurity training, cloud computing expertise, or specialized software development skills, WEI can tailor the apprenticeship curriculum to align with your specific industry demands.

By leveraging WEI’s expertise and commitment to excellence, you can drive your business forward while contributing to a more inclusive tech industry. For more information about our apprenticeship program and how it can benefit your organization, visit WEI’s Technical Apprenticeship Program.

The post Empowering Diversity in IT: WEI’s Technical Apprenticeship Program appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

The business landscape is marked by rapid innovation, disruption, and intense pressure on IT teams to accelerate digital transformation. As generative AI (GenAI) and natural language processing (NLP) reshape business expectations, the enterprise network emerges as a critical component for delivering data services and enabling technologies. Ensuring optimal network performance and health is important for business success and delivering exceptional user experiences.

AI-powered networking offers a transformative solution to address the growing complexity of networks and the evolving threat landscape. Advanced AI optimizes network performance for applications and users by enhancing and automating various tools and processes. Let’s delve into the specific benefits that AI-powered networking can bring to your business.

Transforming Your Enterprise Network

Traditional IT operations are plagued by several challenges, including:

• A lack of collaboration between network and security teams
• Manual network service provisioning
• Limited visibility into user activity, application traffic, and connected devices
• An IT team overburdened with reactive monitoring, reporting, and troubleshooting (MRT), leaving them with less time for proactive improvements that could prevent problems in the first place.

GenAI and NLP are transforming business priorities by driving automation, enhancing security, and optimizing resource allocation. However, with the advent of new technologies, threats are still at large and constantly evolving. To address evolving threats and ensure compliance, a new strategy is crucial – one that embraces zero trust security.

Here’s where AI-powered networking comes in. It acts as a force multiplier for existing network tools, enabling continuous optimization that benefits both applications and users. More importantly for network administrators, AI automates complex IT processes and streamlines network operations (AIOps).

This frees network administrators from tedious tasks, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives and proactively hunt for threats. The outcome is a demonstrably secure and adaptable enterprise network architecture that empowers both networking and security teams.

The secure and versatile network services architecture created by AI-powered networking paves the way for a multitude of benefits:

1. Collaborative And Enhanced Productivity

For an enterprise network to function optimally, a common foundation for both network operations and security is crucial to ensure seamless user access while effectively addressing ever-evolving cyber threats.

Due to the challenges of the traditional approach to network management, we need a new way to orchestrate data securely, simply, and automatically – which is achieved through AI-powered networking. Here’s how this approach achieves superior network security and management:

• AIOps: Leveraging machine learning (ML) and NLP allows network and security teams to work together using common tools. These tools provide real-time insights and automate routine tasks, freeing up valuable IT resources to focus on strategic initiatives and comprehensive cybersecurity protection.
• Enhanced network performance and uptime: AI-powered networking optimizes network performance and uptime, minimizes disruptions, and ensures critical applications are always available.
• Network as an IoT hub: The network can be transformed into a secure and efficient hub for connecting and managing IoT devices. Compatibility with various protocols and third-party USB connections simplifies the integration of new on-site technologies.
• Greater visibility and control: Gaining deeper visibility into user behavior, application traffic, and connected devices empowers proactive security measures. This allows for the implementation of “deny-first” access controls based on zero-trust principles.
• Digital experience optimization: AI-powered network analytics can unlock valuable insights into user experience and network power consumption. This data can then be used to optimize network performance and user experience.

This shift towards a security-first, AI-powered network empowers your IT teams to be more collaborative, proactive, and efficient. It allows them to maintain and leverage the network as a platform for growth and innovation.

2. A Network Aligned With Business Goals

As your business evolves, its network requirements will too. Are you seeing a growing need to support clients with cutting-edge Wi-Fi technologies like 6GHz or high-bandwidth wired access like 10GbE? Perhaps you’re anticipating increased data demands that need further investment in your campus network and WAN infrastructure. Identifying these emerging needs is crucial for ensuring your network can continue to support your business goals.

To keep pace, organizations need enterprise network solutions that can deliver a consistent and reliable experience for businesses, IT teams, and end-users alike. This network should be intelligent and adaptable, capable of automatically optimizing performance and security.

HPE Aruba Networking Central is fit for the modern workplace as it offers a suite of enterprise network solutions designed to address these challenges and empower your line-of-business initiatives. These solutions leverage network automation, AI-powered networking, and AIOps to simplify network management, including:

• Unified infrastructure operations: Manage your entire network through a single platform, from Wi-Fi and switching to SD-WAN and VPN. This provides network-agnostic visibility and control, allowing easy integration of third-party services like IoT and security solutions.
• Rapid onboarding and deployment: Self-service registration and privacy-centric service availability simplify user onboarding. Cloud-based features like authentication, MPSK, Bonjour, and AirGroup further expedite deployment and reduce administrative burden.
• Automated configuration at scale: Leverage advanced features like NetEdit, port profiles, and cloud-native switch management to automate network changes with minimal disruption.
• AI-powered performance optimization and diagnostics: HPE Aruba Networking Central utilizes ML to continuously monitor and automatically adjust network configurations for optimal user experience, 24/7.
• User experience insights: Gain valuable insights into network and application performance through User Experience Insight (UXI) sensors deployed throughout your network. These sensors identify and aggregate anomalous user experience issues for faster remediation.
• NLP integration: Simplify network diagnostics with NLP-powered search functions within HPE Aruba Networking Central, enabling a more human-like approach to troubleshooting.
• IoT convergence: Easily integrate a wide range of IoT operational products and services with your existing IoT-optimized access point infrastructure.
• Carbon footprint management: Monitor power utilization, carbon emissions, and resource consumption to support corporate sustainability initiatives. Network Central generates environmental impact alerts and reports to provide clear visibility into your network’s ecological footprint.

Moreover, HPE Aruba Networking is offered as a network-as-a-service (NaaS) model. This subscription model delivers full enterprise network solutions on-demand to eliminate upfront costs. NaaS empowers your IT team with AIOps and network automation features like:

• AI-powered insights to optimize performance and prevent issues, ensuring a smooth user experience.
• Outsource the entire network lifecycle, from planning to end-of-life support. This guarantees an up-to-date, secure network.
• Flexible consumption options let you pay only for what you use, accelerating the mean time to value of your network investment.

NaaS offers agility and simplifies network operations, making it a strong contender for the future of enterprise network management. By leveraging HPE Aruba Networking’s solutions, you can build a scalable network that aligns with your evolving business goals. This, in turn, empowers line-of-business initiatives and delivers a consistently positive user experience.

3. Modern Security For Modern Threats

The rise of cloud-native applications, hybrid cloud strategies, and ever-changing compliance requirements necessitates a more granular approach to network security. HPE Aruba Networking simplifies security with a zero-trust approach, ensuring compliant and up-to-date network solutions.

• Unified policy orchestration with automation: Apply consistent security policies across WLAN, switching, and SD-WAN environments with global automation capabilities.
• AI-powered client insights: Proactively identify devices on your network using AI-powered analytics.
• Secure device onboarding and health checks: Ensure only authorized devices with healthy security postures access your network.
• Dynamic segmentation: Enforce least-privilege access controls based on user, application, client, and network context.

HPE Aruba Networking offers a comprehensive Secure Service Edge (SSE) solution that secures remote access to web applications, cloud services, and private applications. It includes ZTNA for granular access control, SWG for web threat protection, CASB for securing SaaS apps, and DEM for performance monitoring and troubleshooting.

HPE Aruba Networking empowers your enterprise network to confidently embrace the cloud while meeting today’s demanding security and compliance needs.

Final Thoughts

Imagine a future where you can deliver exceptional user experiences, accelerate technology adoption, and significantly reduce cyber risks, all with a network that adapts and anticipates your needs. AI-powered networking unlocks a unified infrastructure, empowering your business with a powerful combination of modern cloud-native security, intelligent automation, and flexible consumption. This drives greater efficiency, propelling you further into the digital age.

If you are envisioning the same for your business, our team of networking experts is ready to help you build a responsive network that fuels your digital success. Contact us today.

Next Steps: In our free tech brief, discover the challenges of deploying and managing network infrastructure. HPE GreenLake’s Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) solution simplifies this process by offering flexible, cloud-like networking services with on-premises control, eliminating significant upfront costs.

Overall, the tech brief highlights how HPE GreenLake for Networking enhances operational efficiency, security, and agility at the edge. Access the asset below.

The post Three Innovative Ways AI-Powered Networking Transforms Your Enterprise appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

In the first installment of this extended part series, we explored the fundamentals of cloud governance and best practices for establishing a robust governance framework on AWS. We identified shadow IT, which is the use of unapproved cloud services by employees, as a key challenge. In this article, we’ll dive deeper into strategies for managing shadow IT risks while fostering the agility and innovation the cloud enables. We will also focus on leveraging AWS services to improve visibility, automate policies, and provide secure self-service options.

Understanding the Risks and Causes of Shadow IT

Before we jump into solutions, let’s take a moment to understand the risks posed by shadow IT:

• Security vulnerabilities: Unsanctioned cloud services can expose sensitive data if proper controls are not in place. According to Gartner, through 2025, at least 99% of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault.
• Compliance violations: Unapproved services may not meet regulatory requirements like HIPAA, PCI, etc.
• Inefficient spending: Redundant services and lack of volume discounts can drive up cloud costs.

So, what fuels the growth of shadow IT? Some common reasons include:

• Slow provisioning processes from central IT: When developers face long wait times to get resources, they are more likely to go around IT and use unapproved services to move faster. Cumbersome approval processes incentivize shadow IT.
• Lack of awareness about approved services: Employees often aren’t aware of all the approved tools available to them. Without clear communication from IT, they assume they need to find their own solutions.
• Desire to experiment with new technologies: Developers want to try the latest tools and services. When IT policies are too restrictive, employees may decide to experiment without approval.

The cloud has accelerated these issues by making it incredibly easy for anyone to spin up new services quickly, often without needing to go through IT. However, while the cloud enables shadow IT, it also provides powerful tools to help govern it.

Strategies for Managing Shadow IT on AWS

As an AWS Select Tier Services Partner, our cloud experts realize that AWS provides several services and tools that can help you discover shadow IT in your environment and mitigate the risks:

1. Gain Visibility with AWS Monitoring Tools

You can’t protect what you can’t see. AWS provides powerful tools to monitor your environment for unapproved activities:

• AWS Config: Continuously assess, audit, and evaluate configurations of AWS resources. Use Config Rules to detect policy violations, like unapproved instance types or unencrypted S3 buckets.
• AWS CloudTrail: Log, monitor, and retain account activity across your AWS infrastructure. Detect unusual API calls that could indicate shadow IT, like IAM user creation outside approved processes.
• Amazon GuardDuty: Continuously monitor for malicious activity and unauthorized behavior. GuardDuty uses machine learning to identify potential security issues.

2. Automate Policies with AWS Control Tower and Service Catalog

Establish guardrails and provision approved services in a self-service manner:

• AWS Control Tower: Set up and govern a secure, multi-account environment based on best practices. Enforce policies with preventive and detective guardrails.
• AWS Service Catalog: Create catalogs of approved resources that adhere to security and compliance requirements. Developers can quickly deploy from the catalog within defined guardrails.

3. Enable Secure Innovation with AWS Organizations

Provide builders with secure sandbox environments to experiment:

• Use AWS Organizations to programmatically provision new AWS accounts for teams to innovate. Apply baseline security policies using Service Control Policies (SCPs) to enforce guardrails across accounts.
• Integrate with AWS IAM Identity Center to centrally manage access to these sandbox accounts.

4. Leverage Landing Zones and Reusable Templates

Establish a secure foundation with a multi-account landing zone based on AWS best practices. Use tools such as:

• AWS Control Tower Account Factory for Terraform (AFT): Provision a fully compliant landing zone according to your requirements using infrastructure as code.
• AWS CloudFormation:听Create reusable templates for common architectures that adhere to security standards. Make these available via Service Catalog for developers to use.

5. Foster Open Communication and Training

Ultimately, managing shadow IT requires a cultural shift:

• Engage with business teams to understand their needs and why they may be tempted to use unapproved services. Work with them to find secure alternatives.
• Provide training on approved services, processes for requesting resources, and the risks of shadow IT. Make security engaging and relevant.
• Be transparent about the policies around shadow IT and the consequences of violations. Share examples of how shadow IT has led to security breaches.

By leveraging AWS’s powerful governance tools and following these featured strategies, you can effectively manage shadow IT risks while still enabling the agility and innovation that the cloud unlocks. The key is to automate guardrails, streamline provisioning, and work closely with builders to meet their needs in a secure manner.

In our next post, we’ll explore how to build a Cloud Center of Excellence to drive cloud governance best practices across your organization. Stay tuned!

Next Steps: In today’s cloud-driven world, ensuring meaningful security for an AWS environment is paramount for IT security leaders and the end users they protect. WEI Senior Cloud Architect & Strategist Keith Lafaso; presentsas he unveils the essential best practices to safeguard your cloud infrastructure. Listen below:

The post Shining A Light On Shadow IT: Strategies For Secure Innovation On AWS appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

The goal of every security organization is to protect its data. This mission has become increasingly complex in the face of an expanding attack surface and increasingly sophisticated and frequent attacks waged by relentless adversaries. Effectively responding to security incidents requires the Security Operations Center (SOC) to validate alerts and provide the IR team with critical details on the scope of the threat so they can quickly and reliably remediate the issue. However, several obstacles hinder the SOC from gaining the necessary visibility to deliver this critical insight.

Today’s SOC must monitor security across a wider digital footprint that can span multiple data centers, multi-cloud, software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, various domains and more. Gaining visibility across this enlarged IT surface can be challenging as many environments require their own tools. The lack of integration between specialized tools greatly increases the volume and frequency of alerts, making it difficult for SOC analysts to keep pace. This often results in a high burnout rate of Tier 1 SOC analysts, who typically triage alerts.

The existing three-tiered SOC structure also limits understanding of the threat landscape. Tier 1 SOC analysts manage individual alerts, without an opportunity to view them in a larger context. This restricts their ability to build threat intelligence, assess alert efficacy and deliver a comprehensive picture of the incident to the IR team. Without the necessary experience and visibility, many Tier 1 analysts escalate alerts unnecessarily to higher tiers, pulling senior analysts away from verified events that need their attention.

To manage today’s more complex security demands and provide the IR team with the intelligence it needs to address threats quickly and effectively, the SOC model needs to evolve. WEI can help organizations maximize their IR capabilities with a modern SOC.

Modernizing the SOC

When it comes to security, time is of the essence. The inherent siloes of the legacy SOC can impact an analyst’s ability to triage and tune alerts and arm the IR team with a full view of a threat. Without this thorough understanding, IR can lose precious time trying to piece this information together.

The modern SOC requires a new level of integration that speeds its team’s ability to assess alerts for efficacy and deliver the full scope of a threat, including the impacted systems, users and networks; the incident timeline; the initial access vector; identified activities and behaviors; and the tools utilized, to IR. This enhanced visibility can help IR remediate issues quickly and contain them at a micro level without impacting more systems, business units and users than necessary. It can also help IR understand root cause to ensure a threat is not lying dormant, waiting to reestablish a foothold.

To improve threat awareness, organizations must modernize three key areas of their SOCs:

• The SOC team structure
• The security platform
• The SOC-IR relationship

Integrate the SOC Team

By moving away from the tiered, legacy SOC structure, in favor of a more integrated SOC, analysts can see other aspects of the security investigation and response pipeline to help build their awareness of the threat landscape. This broader context helps the SOC more definitively verify existing alerts and provide IR with the critical details it needs to remediate the threat, identify its root cause and return the environment to a healthy state. This awareness also helps analysts fine tune alerts to improve their future efficacy.

Many organizations are also outsourcing triage duties to managed security service providers (MSSP), staffing their internal SOCs with more experienced analysts.

Utilize an Integrated Platform

The modern SOC should also employ a holistic platform, enabled by artificial intelligence (AI), analytics and automation, to aggregate alerts across disparate sources. These advanced technologies can identify alert commonalities to form a more comprehensive understanding of a potential threat. They can also group similar alerts to reduce the volume of notifications the SOC must manage. This can help temper the burnout rate of SOC analysts, helping organizations retain knowledgeable analysts.

With improved insight into a threat, the SOC can provide the IR team with a concise package of intelligence to help them more quickly contain a threat. Additionally, by automating specific security tasks, the platform helps speed responses to limit potential damage and better protect the organization.

Foster a Symbiotic Relationship Between the SOC and IR

While the SOC commonly feeds data to the IR team, IR should also relay its findings back to the SOC. This reciprocal relationship helps strengthen threat intelligence, offering a more complete, real-world security picture that bolsters alert management, IR and the overall security posture. This closed-loop feedback cycle should also extend beyond the SOC and IR teams to include cloud engineers, service providers and other IT stakeholders to ensure all reoccurring issues and vulnerabilities are addressed fully and do not continue to impact the organization.

Video: Harnessing A Diverse Talent Pipeline For Cybersecurity Personnel

Strengthening IR with Preparedness Training

To be truly impactful, the modern SOC should carry forward the best practice of preparedness training. Simulations such as tabletop exercises enable security teams to rehearse their IR, ensuring all team members recognize and can execute their duties seamlessly during a real incident. Conducting frequent simulations of specific security events also allows the team to iron out issues and adapt specific responses, if necessary.

In addition to regular exercises with the security team, an enterprise-wide simulation should be performed at least annually to encourage mindfulness that security is everyone’s responsibility. Additionally, the security team should involve nontechnical stakeholders, such as general counsel, business partners and the public relations team, in select sessions to ensure they understand their roles as well.

WEI is Your Trusted Partner

Modernizing the SOC can be challenging for organizations without deep-seated security experience. WEI’s seasoned security experts can help organizations redesign their SOCs to integrate the structure, technology and practices required to effectively triage and tune alerts in a fast-paced and ever-evolving threat landscape.

WEI partners with the world’s most lauded technology providers, yielding expertise in the modern tools designed to address increasingly complex security demands. Working as an extension of an organization’s internal team, WEI gains a thorough understanding of the organization’s goals, direction and requirements. Our knowledgeable team can help organizations navigate the full spectrum of security needs, from assessing the current environment and building an innovative security strategy to implementing the tools, platforms and processes necessary to manage risk effectively. Contact us today to get started.

Next Steps: Following a cyber incident, cybersecurity teams often resort to their data sources to identify how the incident transpired. While analyzing these data sources, a critical question must be asked –what prevented cyber personnel from stopping the cyberattack in real time? 

In this data-driven era, cybersecurity practices have increasingly focused on the prevention phase, made possible by leveraging the data already present in a cybersecurity environment. Prevention is your first line of defense, it is time to leverage its power and potential.

o learn more about this cloud-based, integrated SOC platform that includes best-in-class functions including EDR, XDR, SOAR, ASM, UEBA, TIP, and SIEM.

The post Maximizing Incident Response with a Modern SOC appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

Are you ready to embrace the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution? Many companies are already have made significant strides, driven by the immense potential of AI. According to the IDC, IT spending is rapidly accelerating to capitalize on the AI wave. By 2025, Global 2000 organizations are projected to allocate a staggering 40% of their core IT budgets towards AI-related initiatives. For most IT companies, AI is poised to surpass cloud computing as the primary catalyst for innovation. The race is on.

Know Your AI Acronyms

Before this article reads any further, let’s make sure the common acronyms are understood. To navigate the AI landscape, it’s essential to understand:

• ML (Machine Learning)
• DL (Deep Learning)
• GenAI (Generative AI)
• LLM (Large Language Models)
• High Performance Computing (HPC)

The Insatiable Appetite of AI

Thanks to groundbreaking advancements like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other forms of GenAI, the ability to generate vast amounts of new content could potentially overwhelm the entire web. are that by 2027, 90% of the information on the internet will be created by Generative AI. This explosive growth isn’t limited to what AI creates, but what it consumes as well. Despite the remarkable increase in compute capabilities and data capacity over the past 13 years, end users are barely keeping pace with the exponential growth of AI model sizes and their proliferation. What happens if we can’t keep pace?

WEI Podcast: Becoming An Insights-Driven Enterprise With HPE Storage 疯情AV

What is HPC?

Why is HPC so critical? Because AI has the power to turbocharge nearly every aspect of our lives, and HPC’s underlying turbocharged infrastructure is required to make that happen. Simply put, HPC provides the high-performance computing infrastructure to support AI’s turbo capabilities.

HPC systems consist of multiple processors working together to perform tasks that would be impossible or take an impractical long time on standard computers. HPC is the backbone that enables the training and deployment of advanced AI models, particularly the computationally intensive large language models and deep learning systems as these require large datasets for training and validation.

HPC systems can process these massive amounts of data quickly and efficiently. Training complex AI models can take an extensive amount of time on regular computing systems. HPC accelerates this process by distributing the computational load across many processors, significantly reducing the time required to train models.

Challenges for AI Implementation

The challenges surrounding AI extend far beyond keeping pace with the rapidly evolving demands. Achieving true success with AI requires addressing several critical factors:

• Flexibility: AI systems must be highly flexible, with an extensible architecture that allows for continuous learning and adaptation as new data becomes available as rigid, static models quickly become obsolete and less useful over time.

• Scalability: The insatiable thirst for data in AI is only going to grow. As model sizes and complexity increase, organizations need elastic infrastructure that provides on-demand scalability to spin up additional compute resources in seamless fashion.
• Data Placement: While cloud computing offers compelling advantages for AI workloads, the data necessary to train AI models may reside on-premises, creating potential issues around latency, cost, and data movement. Intelligent data placement strategies are crucial to ensure optimal performance and cost-efficiency.

The pressure to deliver AI capabilities quickly is immense and it is a delicate balance between rapid deployment and ensuring AI systems are developed and deployed responsibly.

WEI Podcast: Adapting To The Evolving Education Tech Landscape

HPC Expertise from HPE

HPE is a leader in HPC and AI. It only makes sense as HPE has a long-standing legacy and deep expertise in designing and building some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. The HPE Cray Supercomputing EX line powers several of the top supercomputing systems in the world. Their comprehensive portfolio of servers, storage, and networking solutions purpose-built for AI workloads. This includes the Apollo line of servers with support for the latest AI accelerators like NVIDIA GPUs and AMD Instinct GPUs, as well as high-performance storage systems optimized for data-intensive AI training.

HPE Slingshot

Unlocking the full potential of real-time AI hinges on blistering speed. Enter HPE’s Slingshot – a cutting-edge interconnect technology that supercharges their high-performance computing (HPC) and AI solutions. With , HPE’s HPC systems can efficiently handle the massive computational requirements of training the largest AI models and running the most complex simulations in parallel. This interconnect is a key enabler for HPE to deliver powerful, turnkey exascale computing solutions that can tackle the most demanding AI and HPC workloads.

How About AI-as-a-Service?

For those who prefer an on-premises as-a-Service model, HPE GreenLake for AI and Analytics delivers a cloud-like experience for AI/ML and analytics workloads across on-premises, edge, and public cloud environments. This expansive solution allows on-demand scaling of AI/ML infrastructure and capacity and provides customers access to HPE’s expertise in AI/ML, HPC, cloud, and edge computing.

HPE GreenLake offers a complete AI infrastructure stack, including high-performance computing, accelerated storage, interconnects, and AI/analytics software and expertise. This enables companies to build and scale AI initiatives with a cloud operating model that combines security, performance, and easy hybrid cloud management through HPE’s as-a-service offering.

Don’t Forget What WEI Can Do For You

Don’t get left behind in the AI race. Leverage HPE’s advanced technologies, talent, and expertise to accelerate your progress and ensure your AI vision becomes a reality. If you need help defining your vision, contact the AI technology experts at 疯情AV They can listen to your unique business needs and help you map out a course and strategy to get you started.

Next Steps: Whether you’re a CEO, a business owner, a manager, an IT administrator, or a language translator, it’s crucial to understand AI and how to leverage it in your role. In our free white paper titled, discover a deeper understanding of AI and identify the critical role of High-Performance Computing (HPC) in managing extensive datasets and advancing sophisticated machine learning models.

The post Addressing The Common Challenges Of AI Implementation To Unlock Its Full Potential appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.

See Bill Frank’s biography and contact information at the end of this article.

This article is Part Two of my series on managing cyber-related business risks. In Part One, I discussed the relationship between Defensive Controls and Performance Controls. Defensive Controls directly block threats. Performance Controls measure the effectiveness of Defensive Controls and suggest improvements.

In Part Two here, I discuss the relationship between Performance Controls and Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ). The purpose of CRQ is to help CISOs collaborate with business leaders who set cybersecurity budgets and decide on the organization’s cyber risk tolerance. CRQ can provide a useful and credible method for connecting security metrics to cyber-related business risks expressed in dollars.

These three cybersecurity functions – Defensive Controls, Performance Controls, and Cyber Risk Quantification – taken together make up the Cybersecurity 3-Layer Wedding Cake. I see these three functions as layers because Performance Controls analyze information drawn from the Defensive Controls and CRQ analyzes information drawn from Performance Controls.

Performance Controls, whether manual or automated, generate recommendations and security metrics that help security teams work more effectively and efficiently by (1) highlighting gaps in threat coverage and misconfigured or under configured Defensive Controls, and (2) prioritizing vulnerability and control deficiency remediation recommendations.

CRQ software can also use this information to improve its accuracy and credibility to business leaders if the CRQ software model includes factors for individual and aggregate Defensive Control effectiveness, threats, vulnerabilities, attack surfaces, and especially attack paths through an organization’s IT/OT estate.

In addition, the CRQ’s data model must be open enough to support whichever Performance Controls security teams to select.

In this article I discuss (1) how the Cybersecurity 3-Layer Wedding Cake supplements traditional GRC frameworks, (2) the potential value of CRQ, (3) the requirements of CRQ if it is going to achieve its potential, and (4) CRQ vendor business models – SaaS software and Advisory Services.

Finally, I will provide an example of a CRQ offering that meets these requirements.

Part One Article – Performance Controls Summary

In Part One I defined the two types of cybersecurity controls which reduce the Likelihood and Impact of cyber-related Loss Events:

1. Defensive – Controls that directly block threats or at least detect suspicious activities which are then resolved by an in-house or third-party security operations team.
2. Performance – Indirect controls that measure and report on the effectiveness of Defensive Controls, evaluate the quality of their configurations, and make specific recommendations for improvements. I categorize Offensive security tools as Performance Controls.

Given the number and complexity of deployed Defensive Controls, only automated Performance controls can provide continuous visibility and management. Having said that, highly skilled human pen testers surely add value for detecting the types of vulnerabilities that automated tools might miss.

I defined and discussed five types of automated Performance controls: Attack Simulation, Risk-based Vulnerability Management, Metrics, Security Control Posture Management, and Process Mining.

Why The Cybersecurity 3-Layer Wedding Cake

The limitations of current GRC frameworks

Despite spending billions of dollars on cybersecurity controls and implementing a variety of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) frameworks, the frequency and impact of cyber incidents are still increasing. How can this be?

I suggest the root cause is lack of meaningful executive involvement in strategic cybersecurity decision-making. None of the GRC frameworks that security teams labor under provides a mechanism to enable business leaders to actively collaborate with CISOs to assess and set their organizations’ cybersecurity risk appetites or provide meaningful criteria for setting their cybersecurity budgets.

Business leaders want this involvement because they recognize that revenue generating business processes rely on information technology. They understand that strategic cybersecurity decisions can no longer be left to security teams.

CISOs are also frustrated because they too understand that cyber risk is business risk. They are looking for an approach that will enable them to collaborate with business leaders who are ultimately responsible for deciding on the amount of cyber risk, expressed in dollars, they are comfortable with.

Government and industry regulatory bodies understand this as well and are moving to require executive responsibility for cybersecurity.

The 3-Layer Wedding Cake Model Supplements GRC Frameworks

I am surely NOT saying that the GRC frameworks don’t have value. They do. But an overarching approach is needed to enable business leadership to take its rightful role in an organization’s cybersecurity program – setting cyber risk tolerance and budget.

Figure 1: The 3-Layer Wedding Cake model enables business leaders to collaborate with the CISO to set cyber risk tolerance and budget

The “3-Layer Wedding Cake” model solves this problem. The technical language of cybersecurity teams must be translated to the financial language used by business leaders to manage the organization’s other strategic risks.

Defensive Controls are the direct controls that block threats or at least alert on suspicious behavior.

Performance Controls are indirect controls that measure the performance of Defensive Controls and make recommendations for improvements.

Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ) interprets the output of Performance Controls and translates technical metrics to business risks expressed in dollars. CRQ bridges the technical metrics – business risk gap.

Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ)

Whichever combination of Defensive and Performance Controls you select, these questions remain:

• How best to communicate the effectiveness of your security program to business leaders, particularly to those who set your budget?
• How do you gain approval for the additional budget you are requesting?
• How do you collaborate with business leaders on the likelihood of a material incident?
• How do you determine risk appetite / tolerance?
• How do you obtain cooperation from the IT teams responsible for deploying and maintaining Defensive Controls and remediating IT infrastructure vulnerabilities?
• How do you obtain cooperation from the software development teams that are responsible for remediating application vulnerabilities?
• How do you gain support from the business operations teams who would be impacted by a successful cyber attack?

In theory, Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ) provides the process and tools to answer these questions by translating technical control metrics to cyber-related business risk expressed in dollars.

More specifically, security teams rely on technical metrics to measure and manage the cyber posture of their organizations. But business leaders rely on financial metrics when assessing business risks. This creates a cyber metrics – business risk gap that in theory CRQ bridges.

But in practice, for the last 10+ years the purveyors of CRQ have fallen short due to their inability to model the efficacy of controls individually and collectively, in the context of threats, vulnerabilities, attack surfaces, and attack paths into and through an organization.

CRQ Software Requirements

For CRQ software to be of value to both security teams, business leaders, IT teams, software development teams, and business operations department leaders, it must:

• Support control investment decision-making by showing how control changes, additions, enhancements, and reductions affect cyber-related business risk in dollars.
• Explicitly factor: (1) the efficacy of Defensive Controls individually and collectively, (2) the range of strength of adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures based on MITRE ATT&CK庐, and (3) attack surfaces and attack paths into and through the organization’s IT/OT estate in the context of the loss events of concern to business leaders.
• Provide a defensible method for calculating Aggregate Control Effectiveness, i.e., the overall effectiveness of all Defensive Controls working together, in concert. The only credible way to do this is by using information from Performance Controls to map Defensive Controls’ effectiveness against the attack paths.
• Provide a set of open, standardized parameters across all Defensive Control types so that the efficacy of controls across all domains can be compared.
• Accept input from any combination of Performance Controls an organization chooses to deploy. This means that the CRQ software places no restrictions or limitations on Performance Control selection.

CRQ Vendor Business Models

There are two prevalent business models for CRQ vendors – SaaS software and Advisory Services.

Most security teams are not ready to make a major commitment to a SaaS annual subscription for two reasons. First, lack of a resource with CRQ experience. Second, simply the expense.

A better approach is to work with an experienced CRQ Advisory Service that can also assist with the selection and implementation of Performance Controls.

A pilot program using an Advisory Service can be inexpensively implemented with very limited client resources.

What follows is a discussion of how Monaco Risk’s CRQ Advisory Service and software platform meets the above requirements.

Monaco Risk’s Cyber Defense Graph

We architected Monaco Risk’s CRQ software to be the CRQ layer of the Cybersecurity 3-Layer Wedding Cake. More specifically our patented Cyber Defense Graph software offers a useful and credible method of calculating individual and Aggregate Control Effectiveness in the context of threats, vulnerabilities, attack surfaces, and attack paths.

Modeling attack paths is critical to understanding how a change to a Defensive Control affects the risk of a Loss Event. Put another way, evaluating a new Defensive Control in isolation cannot predict how that control will perform in concert with the other deployed controls to reduce the likelihood and impact of loss events of concern to business leaders.

Here’s why. A Defensive Control can test very well individually but not reduce risks significantly, even if it’s well configured, for two reasons. First, the control may be on a path that does not see very many threats. Second, the control is on a path with several other strong controls.

Below is a partial example of a Cyber Defense Graph (CDG) generated by Monaco Risk’s software.

Figure 2: Monaco Risk’s patented Cyber Defense Graph showing Critical Path Weaknesses.

This CDG highlights the four key stages of a successful attack, based on MITRE ATT&CK, that results in business disruption due to ransomware: (1) Initial Access, (2) Execution on Workstations, (3) Lateral Movement including execution on workloads, and (4) Adversarial Objectives.

The arrows stand for threats that enter from the left and move along attack paths. The nodes (boxes) represent Defensive Controls that can block the adversary’s tactics, techniques, and procedures. Every Defensive Control can block some percentage of threats. Threats that make it all the to the far right represent loss events.

The shades of red of the control nodes indicate the criticality of the attack path based on the controls’ abilities to block the TTPs. The darker the shade of red, the more critical the attack path.

Sensitivity (Tornado) Charts

In addition to Critical Path Weakness graphs , Monaco Risk’s software generates a Sensitivity Charts which show the relative importance of individual controls. It’s commonly referred to as a tornado chart due to the overall pattern of the bars.

Figure 3: Sensitivity (Tornado) chart shows the relative importance of each control in the Cyber Defense Graph.

The bars to the left of the center line show the percentage decrease in Aggregate Control Effectiveness if the control was removed. The bars to the right show the percentage increase in Aggregate Control Effectiveness if the control is implemented with complete Coverage and a high level of Governance.

GRAACE

The Cyber Defense Graph software is a component of Monaco Risk’s overall approach to CRQ called GRAACE (Graphical Risk Analysis of Aggregate Control Effectiveness, pronounced grace).

GRAACE is both a CRQ ontology fully implemented in software and a process to support strategic and tactical control investment decisions.

Here is a brief description of each of these terms:

Risk is based on the probability (likelihood or frequency) and the financial impact (magnitude) of loss events for a given period of time.

Control can be any people, process, or technology that the organization has control over to reduce risk. Organizations implement Defensive and Performance Controls.

Graphical representation of the attack surfaces and attack paths adversaries can take into and through the organization’s IT/OT estate to achieve their objectives. Defensive Controls are mapped to attack paths and visualized in Monaco Risk’s Cyber Defense Graph.

Aggregate Control Effectiveness is the combined effectiveness of an organization’s portfolio of controls. It’s the inverse of Susceptibility (1-Susceptibility). It’s calculated using Defensive Control efficacy determined by Performance Controls, in the context of threats, vulnerabilities, attack surfaces, and critically attack paths through the organization. Control investment decision-making is improved by showing how one or more additions, changes, or removals of controls affect Aggregate Control Effectiveness.

GRAACE Ontology

Why call this an ontology? At some point in your investigation of CRQ, you are sure to come across the “FAIR Ontology.” Since Monaco Risk is in the same space, and you may want to compare and contrast GRAACE with FAIR, I decided to use the word ontology as well. It’s a diagram to show the factors we use for calculating risk and the relationships among them. For a more detailed comparison see,

The figure below shows the GRAACE ontology.

Figure 4: The GRAACE Ontology

Here is a brief description of each component of the GRAACE ontology.

Risk: Loss Event Taxonomy

A problem that often arises when performing cybersecurity risk assessments is determining whether you have addressed all the possible loss event types. For the last four years, Monaco Risk has been maintaining and updating a Loss Event Taxonomy that exhaustively covers all cyber loss event types.

During this period, the number of loss event types has grown from the initial 12 to 16. They are categorized as follows: (1) Exposure of Sensitive Information, (2) Business Disruption, (3) Direct Monetary, Business, or Resource attack, and (4) Non-compliance, audit, or liability.

We’ve made the Loss Event Taxonomy available at no charge under a Creative Commons license. Please contact me and I will send you the document. My contact information is available at the end of this document.

Loss Event Frequency: Cyber Defense Graph

Monaco Risk’s Cyber Defense Graph simulation software was described in an earlier section. It’s our approach to decomposing and calculating Loss Event Frequency.

Loss Magnitude – Financial Loss Components

Monaco Risk’s Loss Event Taxonomy provides four categories of Financial Loss Components which relate directly to the loss event types: (1) Direct Monetary Loss, (2) Lost Revenue, (3) Increased Costs, and (4) Liability & Regulatory. The full list of ten Financial Loss Components is available with the Loss Event Taxonomy under a Creative Commons license. Glad to send upon request.

GRAACE Process

GRAACE is more than a quantitative cybersecurity risk model. It’s also a risk management process which consists of three phases: (1) Identify the loss events of concern to business leaders, (2) Baseline current cyber posture using the Cyber Defense Graph, and (3) Run what-if scenarios on control changes to show changes in risk expressed in dollars.

This fosters collaboration with business leaders who set cybersecurity budgets and cooperation with IT and software development teams, and operational teams who are impacted by cyber incidents.

About The Author

Bill Frank has over 24 years of cybersecurity experience. At present, as Chief Client Officer at Mr. Frank is responsible for leading Monaco Risk’s cybersecurity risk management engagements. In addition, he collaborates on the design of Monaco Risk’s cyber risk quantification software used in client engagements.

Mr. Frank is one of two inventors of Monaco Risk’s patented Cyber Defense Graph. It is the core innovation for Monaco Risk’s cyber risk quantification software which enables a more accurate estimate of the likelihood of loss events.

Prior to Monaco Risk, Mr. Frank spent 12 years assisting clients select and implement cybersecurity controls to strengthen cyber posture. Projects focused on controls to protect, detect, and respond to threats across a wide range of attack surfaces.

Prior to his consulting work, Mr. Frank spent most of the 2000s at a SIEM software company where he designed a novel approach to correlating alerts from multiple log sources using finite state machine-based, risk-scoring algorithms. The first use case was user and entity behavior analysis. The technology was acquired by Nitro Security who in turn was acquired by McAfee.

Bill Frank’s contact information:

• Email: bfrank@monacorisk.com

The post The Cybersecurity 3-Layer Wedding Cake appeared first on IT 疯情AV Provider - IT Consulting - Technology 疯情AV.