Modern businesses face scores of challenges in the marketplace from competitors, regulators and the ever-changing needs of their customers. But while these challenges are focussed upon as part of daily business, planning for a disaster outside the company’s control can often be ignored.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus has thrown this situation into sharp relief, with global stock markets and many companies and industries severely impacted as authorities struggle to contain the pandemic.

Many businesses are scrambling to keep up with events, struggling to keep their services up. But businesses with strong disaster management plans in place are weathering the storm, empowering their staff to make the changes necessary to allow their operations to continue with minimal disruption.

So just as Winston Churchill is said to have uttered, “never waste a good crisis,” the emergence of this virus and its social impact, is an opportunity to fortify your business.

Disaster management in action

A great response to crisis is the recent action taken by the American investment and financial services firm JPMorgan Chase, which instructed thousands of its employees to work from home for one day.

This test of their business continuity plan (BCP) was designed to test remote access capabilities in the case people had to work from home for extended periods. There are also reports that the company is testing backup trading sites just in case its main trading floors in London and New York are affected by COVID-19. (SOURCE)

Any interruption to JPMorgan Chase’s services could have severe consequences. So these tests are prudent moves, signalling competence to markets while ensuring staff are ready for anything.

But this testing also shows that businesses who don’t have such contingency plans are hostages to events, unable to adapt for a crisis situation.

Creating a strong working network

If a pandemic sweeps through, or an earthquake strikes, even if the power goes out for a prolonged period of time, it’s vital that your business can continue its operations. Behind the scenes it may be a struggle, but to the customer and the rest of the world, it looks like business as usual.

This is where utilising the skills of a Managed Service Provider can pay huge dividends. And allow you to continue what you do best, and that’s running your business.

MSP companies provide services that run your business’ online aspects from an outside location, as a remote IT Department. They can provide a complete service or supplement your existing team with specialist capabilities.

Running a work from home test may result in:

1. Each employee identifying any issues specific to their set-up
2. Checking minimum bandwidth for each employee (ensuring each home connection has the minimum bandwidth)
3. See the impact to infrastructure with the changes in routing and bandwidth utilisation
4. The behaviour of applications

So in the event that a disaster of any kind strikes your business, you will be confident that your infrastructure is reliable and your team is ready for any adjustments to be made. This means your staff can work from home or another location (a diversity site). They will have access to all the tools they need to complete their jobs with confidence, all while meeting the needs of customers and other stakeholders without interruption.

Scalability and resilience

With an MSP handling your key IT functions from an external location, another key consideration is to create the flexibility for your company’s workers to continue their tasks from remote locations.

Whilst this capacity becoming more common in regular working life due to social changes, it’s also an advantageous capability to help your business deal with a disaster.

To make sure this is possible, it’s vital to focus on creating strong broadband links for remote employees, ensuring your company can switch from regular working practises to a distributed network quickly and efficiently.

At a basic level, this involves ensuring your telecommunications network is as modern and reliable as possible, allowing any important communication to be disseminated quickly to your workforce, customers and the community through any digital means.

This is also advantageous because any delays in sending messages could severely impact your business and its ability to adjust to changes quickly.

Crisis situations are of course often very stressful, so it’s also crucial to have resilient and reliable automation capabilities to reduce workload if a disaster strikes, allowing your employees to have more time to focus on solving problems.

A MSP will use robust and scalable network management and monitoring tools that are automation capable. When choosing a MSP, ask about how they can grow with you and how they use automation to meets Service Level Agreements.

Do you have a Business Continuity Plan?

Whilst establishing the ability for remote or alternative working locations and an MSP on deck is a great start for crisis management, it also pays to have a plan for when the unexpected strikes.

A Business Continuity Plan – also known as a BCP – is a vital tool that every modern company should have prepared to enact at a moment’s notice.

A BCP is a blueprint for keeping your business’ day-to-day and long-term services and goals running even in the face of major disruptions, drawing on all of our capabilities and assets to keep things on an even keel.

The BCP also uses up-to-date information about the company and its assets to make decisions about recovery priorities and strategies, ensuring the most important things are dealt with first.

Without an up-to-date BCP tailored exactly to your company’s needs, you could be vulnerable to events outside your control, and if and when they strike, be overwhelmed by them.

This is a major concern because any problem with a company’s services can severely impact its customer base and even threaten its survival. So if you don’t have a BCP, it is best to start the process now.

Creating a BCP for your company

To create a BCP for you company, the first move is usually to conduct what’s called a Business Continuity Impact Analysis.

This process considers a wide range of variables that could affect your business in the event of a disaster, and tests what impact they could have. Everything from financial reporting to customer service is put through its paces, testing for weaknesses and identifying strengths to create a thorough understanding of how your business could perform under severe pressure.

The next step is to create an actionable plan for your employees to follow at every level of the company if a disaster strikes and services are disrupted. This can be done with expert help from outside consultants, and should be made as thorough as possible.

As part of this process, your company should also develop processes to help it recover from a disaster, not just respond to and manage it. While ensuring continuity of service is vital, it’s equally if not more important to create methods of restoring your company’s full abilities.

For example, if there is a major power failure at your office building and all back up generators fail (or run out of fuel), a good BCP would allow for employees to take laptops to outside locations and continue working whilst other employees coordinate efforts to restore the power.

Testing and enacting your capabilities

Whilst having a plan is essential, it’s no guarantee of success.

That’s why testing your BCP is a vital part of the process to ensure any weak points are identified and dealt with, and your employees know what to expect even when the unexpected strikes.

A great way to ensure this happens is to hold a training session with your employees, creating a disaster scenario that allows the activation of the BCP.

You can then track its progress and see if it meets your business’ needs, keeping your operations online and your customers informed and happy.

Preparation is the best protection

The recent emergence of COVID-19 and its global impact has highlighted the importance of being prepared for a disaster.

With a robust and reliable telecommunications network operated by a quality MSP, your company can ensure its operations won’t be disrupted by any unforeseen disasters.

And with an up-to-date BCP that’s regularly tested and trained for, your company will be able to weather any storm that comes its way and even outperform its rivals if they are unprepared.

The dust has finally settled on the new year and as we delve deeper into 2020, new technology trends have already become apparent. So, what are the biggest technology trends set to disrupt the banking and financial industry in 2020? And, what benefits will these technology trends bring? We answer this and more below…

1. AI

AI is a technology trend that is rising in almost every industry, including banking and financial services. Like many industries, banking and financial services are investing in AI to create long-term future savings. For example, one of the most common AI implementations is an AI chatbot. AI chatbots are set to revolutionise customer service by communicating with customers and answering customer queries. This could potentially eliminate the need for a bank to have customer service employees, saving them significant personnel and HR costs.

The popularity of mobile banking has risen in the last few years, as banks have seen the demand from customers to be able to manage their money on-the-go. AI allows 24/7 online banking access for consumers by completing and conducting essential banking operations.

Another of the biggest issues banks and financial businesses face is identifying and preventing fraudulent activity, and fraud detection. AI could disrupt current fraud detection processes by enhancing financial security through its advanced fraud detection capabilities. For all the reasons above, it’s not hard to see why AI is set to disrupt and revolutionise banking and financial services in 2020.

2. Robotic process automation

Robotic process automation, or RPA, similarly to AI, is set to cause disruption to financial and banking services due to its potential to lower operational costs and remove human error. RPA is able to complete repetitive tasks which would previously have to be completed by employees and can be labour intensive. By enabling RPA to complete such tasks, human employees can focus on more skilled work and everyday tasks can be completed much more efficiently without human intervention.

RPA is often more effective as robotic processes do not need to take a break or take holiday days and they can be programmed to complete tasks accurately and efficiently, removing any possibility of error. For example, an insurance company may invest in RPA to speed up its claims process. RPA can screen applications more quickly than a human and then progress or reject claims.

3. Big data

Big data is a large set of data that can be used and analysed to reveal patterns and finance trends, e.g. consumer buying habits. For years, banking and financial services have accumulated big data through monitoring the transactions, transfers and ATM withdrawals of their clients. As they have access to so much data, banking and financial services are investing in business analytics to analyse and safely store their big data. If the financial industry is able to accurately monitor and analyse this data, they could draw actionable insights. For example, with an accurate picture of customer spending habits, fraud will be more easily detectable as anomaly spending can be detected instantly.

Similarly, big data analysis can help identify market and banking trends, allowing financial institutions to make more profitable business decisions, e.g. improved product cross-selling. NMIS (network management information system) can help you handle your data, and ensure you are compliant with data regulations.

4. Cloud computing

Cloud computing is a system that is reliant on shared resources and is an alternative to having local or dedicated servers. Cloud computing technology is used to store data and delivers services such as data analytics, software development and more through an internet connection. Often a business or individual pays for as much cloud storage as they are currently using, as the technology is incredibly scalable. Many banking and financial services are opting for cloud computing in 2020 as it is more cost-effective than using an independent or shared server. As you only pay for the storage you use in cloud computing, controlling outgoing costs is much more easily managed.

Cloud technology is also often more secure than servers, helping banks and other financial companies, such as insurance companies, complete secure online payments and transfers without interference from those with malicious intent. Cloud technology, such as cloud inventory and audit software, can be accessed from anywhere in the world at any time, allowing financial companies to always operate at maximum efficiency.

The above fintech trends are just some of those set to disrupt and improve the workflow of banking and financial services in 2020. If you’re interested in introducing any of these new trends into your business, Opmantek products can integrate and manage new technology with ease, ensuring minimum disruption for your business. If you’d like to learn more about our innovative products, such as our Opmantek Virtual Appliance, a member of our expert team would be happy to get in contact with you.

One of the primary drivers that lead people to Opmantek is their desire to transition their event management to become less reactive and more proactive. Gartner’s IT Service Management Maturity Model stresses the need to become proactive while your business is in its infancy, this will aid in making your IT a valuable asset to your company, not as an expense.

A great way to start this transition is to change your perception of event management, specifically, take control over events earlier and automating your remediation. Two key concepts that will assist in this and talked about in this blog are opEvent’s automated remediation and opConfig’s virtual operator.

Proactive Event Management

The first step in transitioning your event management into a proactive format is by handling your events before the end-users raise them. This is a significant change to prepare thoroughly for, because you may be initially swamped with open events. However, if you are using opEvents as your event management platform, this will be significantly reduced, opEvents uses event correlation and deduplication natively and will combine your related events. (This is further expanded on in this article).

Automated Remediation

Once you start looking at events proactively, you will have more events coming through your system; this is where automation will play an integral role in managing your network. opEvents allows you to add scripts that will run as soon as an event has occurred; this will help with automatic remediation. This can be used to serve a variety of purposes such as using scripts to automatically remediate events with a replicable solution process or providing information at the time of the incident, rather than at a later stage.

Event Status

Inside opEvents, on the events themselves, there is event status that can be used to signify the stage in the event management process that the event is in. This helps the tools that your team is using, while also providing a service desk that gives you usable information.

Virtual Operator

opConfig’s Virtual Operator can be used to help create jobs comprised of command sets that can be used to troubleshoot nodes that have been identified with opEvents. These actions are templates that the virtual operator uses that saves you from having to create commonly run jobs. It also gives operators easy access to run commands on remote systems without giving them full access to the machines. This will help your team troubleshoot any events without compromising any security measures that are in place.

Next Steps:

• Download opEvents and opConfig on our Virtual Machine and start monitoring nodes with a free lifetime license.
• Read more about Deduplication and storm control in opEvents.
• Read more about Event Correlation.
• Watch this webinar series on how to truly optimize opEvents and opConfig for your environment.
• Read our Solution Guide – Event Consolidation Based on Location.

What is Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)?

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) represents an all-encompassing platform developed by Microsoft, designed to unify the administration of devices and applications within a network environment powered by Windows computing systems. It provides users with valuable information about the status of local or remote computer systems, making it an indispensable tool for administrators managing various Windows operational environments. WMI, a key component of Microsoft’s management infrastructure, comes pre-installed on Microsoft’s newest operating systems and is designed to reduce the maintenance and cost of managing enterprise network components.

WMI provides a consistent model of the Windows operating systems, configuration, and status in enterprise networks, offering a COM API that allows access to management information about the status of local or remote computer systems. Developers and IT administrators can write WMI scripts or applications to automate administrative tasks on remote computers, with management applications or scripts able to perform operations or get data through WMI in a variety of programming languages. Its flexible and extensible architecture provides support for new devices, applications, and other enhancements, making WMI a powerful and flexible tool for managing and monitoring the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Introduction to Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a powerful feature of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It is a part of the infrastructure for management data and operations on Windows-based operating systems. WMI represents a collection of guidelines established by Microsoft, designed to streamline the administration of devices and applications within a network environment that utilizes Windows computing systems. It provides users with information about the status of local or remote systems and computer systems.

Understanding the WMI Architecture

The WMI architecture is a flexible and extensible architecture that is designed to provide a unified way of accessing management information in an enterprise environment. At the heart of the WMI architecture are the WMI providers. WMI providers act as intermediaries between the WMI service and the managed objects in the Windows Driver Model. They supply the WMI service with data from managed objects and handle requests to change the state of managed objects.

The WMI repository is a crucial component of the WMI infrastructure. It stores the static data and the definitions of all WMI classes, which are the templates for the instances of management data. The WMI repository also stores the definitions of all the WMI namespace namespaces, which are logical divisions of the WMI class hierarchy.

WMI vs. Other Management Protocols

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is often compared to other management protocols like the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). While both protocols are very fast and highly efficient, they go about their business in very different ways. For managing Windows devices, WMI is probably the better option, while SNMP is widely supported by networking vendors like Cisco, Juniper, Huawei, and Unix/Linux operating systems.

Working with WMI

Working with WMI involves using the WMI command line, WMI Query Language (WQL), and WMI scripts. The WMI command line tool, also known as WMIC, is a command-line interface to the WMI API. It allows administrators to perform various system management tasks from the command prompt. For example, to access WMI from the command prompt, type WMIC and press Enter.

WMI scripts are used to automate administrative tasks and manipulate management data. These scripts can be written in any language that supports Microsoft ActiveX scripting, including:

• VBScript
• Perl
• Windows PowerShell

WQL is a subset of SQL with extensions to support WMI events and other features specific to the WMI system. WMI queries are used to retrieve management data from the WMI repository. There are three types of WMI queries: Data Queries, Event Queries and Schema Queries.

Data Queries

Data queries are the most common type of WMI Query Language (WQL) query. They are used to retrieve data from the WMI repository. Data queries can be used to retrieve instances of a specific class or to retrieve instances that meet certain criteria. For example, a data query might retrieve all instances of the Win32_Process class (which represents processes running on a Windows system), or it might retrieve only those instances where the Name property is “notepad.exe”.

See below for a data query example that requests the event log file named “Application” from all instances of Win32_NTLogEvent.

Event Queries

Event queries are used to subscribe to events in WMI. An event in WMI is a significant occurrence in a managed object that might be of interest to management applications. For example, an event might be generated when a process starts or stops, when a disk drive becomes full, or when a network connection is lost. Event queries can be used to subscribe to these events and be notified when they occur.

There are two types of event queries: intrinsic event queries and extrinsic event queries. Intrinsic event queries subscribe to events that are automatically generated by WMI when instances of a class are created, modified, or deleted. Extrinsic event queries subscribe to events that are explicitly generated by a WMI provider.

See below for an example event query by an event consumer request notification when a new instance of a class derived from Win32_NTLogEvent is created.

Schema Queries

Schema queries are used to retrieve information about the schema of the WMI repository. The schema of the WMI repository is a set of definitions for all the classes, properties, methods, and events that are available in WMI. Schema queries can be used to retrieve information about these definitions.

For example, a schema query might retrieve the definition of the Win32_Process class, including the names and types of its properties and the signatures of its methods. Schema queries can also be used to retrieve information about the relationships between classes, such as the inheritance relationships between classes and the associations between instances of different classes.

The following example schema query shows the syntax.

Advanced WMI Features

WMI provides a higher level of representation of systems, supporting properties, events, and methods on top of the object classes used by SNMP. The WMI system classes providers supply the WMI service with data from managed objects and handle requests to change the state of managed objects. The WMI provider class defines the methods for a provider.

WMI also supports remote management. The WMI service acts as a server component, allowing management applications to connect to it remotely. This feature is particularly useful for managing remote computers in a Windows enterprise network.

WMI in Network Monitoring and Management

WMI plays a crucial role in network monitoring and software management systems. It provides an in-depth analysis of devices, including current configuration parameters, status values, CPU load, memory usage, software and hardware audits, application availability, and operating system failures. WMI can be used to monitor any desktop or server running the Windows operating system in public, private, or hybrid environments.

Security Considerations in WMI

Security is a critical aspect of any management infrastructure. WMI provides several security features to protect the management of data. For example, WMI uses the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) for remote access, which provides a robust set of security features. It also allows administrators to set permissions on WMI namespaces and classes, ensuring that only authorized users can access the management data.

WMI Monitoring Tools

There are several WMI administrative tools available that can help manage boot configuration data and monitor the WMI infrastructure. These tools provide a graphical user interface to display and manipulate the data in the WMI repository. Some tools also allow you to build scripts without any coding knowledge. Examples of such tools include WMI Explorer and WMI Event Viewer.

Future of WMI

The future of WMI looks promising. With the continuous development of the Windows operating system, WMI is expected to become even more powerful and versatile. The latest versions of the Windows Server and supported Windows platforms come with enhanced WMI features, making it easier for administrators to manage enterprise network components.

Simplicity vs. flexibility

So which monitoring solution is right for you? The answer will depend on the size and complexity of your network, your management infrastructure standards, the skills of your network administrators, and your available budget.

One of the major advantages of SNMP is that it is easy to deploy and configure even on larger networks. It can also be used to manage all devices on the network regardless of the manufacturer. Many SNMP tools are also free which helps keep costs down. The downside is that standard SNMP features are very basic.

If you require more sophisticated data and configuration options and you operate a large Windows OS environment, then WMI is the way to go. This will provide you with a powerful framework to streamline the monitoring and management of your Windows OS environment. The downside is more complexity and increased operational overhead.

Deep Dive into WMI Providers

WMI providers are a critical component of the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) infrastructure. They act as intermediaries between the WMI service and the managed objects in the Windows operating system. WMI providers supply the WMI service with data from managed objects and handle requests to change the state of managed objects.

Each WMI provider is associated with one or more WMI classes, which are templates for instances of management data. These methods can be used to retrieve data, change the state of a managed object, or trigger an action on a managed object.

WMI providers are implemented as COM objects and are loaded into the WMI service process when needed. They can be written in any language that supports COM, but most are written in C++ for performance reasons.

Understanding the Two Types of WMI Providers

WMI providers are essential components of the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) infrastructure. They act as intermediaries between the WMI service and the managed objects in an enterprise environment. There are two primary types of WMI providers: instance providers and event providers. Each type plays a unique role in the WMI infrastructure.

Instance Providers

Instance providers are responsible for supplying data for instances of WMI classes. They manage the static data that represents the current state of a managed object. For example, an instance provider for a disk drive might supply data about the drive’s current capacity, free space, file system, and other properties.

Instance providers handle requests from the WMI service to retrieve or modify the properties of a managed object. When a management application makes a request to read or write a property of a managed object, the WMI service forwards the request to the appropriate instance provider.

Instance providers are also responsible for implementing the methods of a WMI class. When a management application invokes a method on a managed object, the WMI service calls the corresponding method in the instance provider.

Event Providers

Event providers, on the other hand, notify WMI when events occur. An event can be any significant occurrence in a managed object that might be of interest to management applications. For example, an event provider for a disk drive might generate an event when the drive becomes full.

Event providers are responsible for detecting events and delivering event notifications to the WMI service. When an event occurs, the event provider creates an instance of an event class to represent the event and delivers the instance to the WMI event registration service. The WMI service then forwards the event to any management applications that have registered to receive such events.

Event providers can generate two types of events: extrinsic events and intrinsic events. Extrinsic events represent significant occurrences that are not directly associated with a change in a managed object’s state, such as a user logging on or off. Intrinsic events represent changes in the state of a managed object, such as a change in a property value.

Both instance providers and event providers play crucial roles in the WMI infrastructure. Instance providers manage the static data that represents the current state of managed objects, while event providers notify WMI when significant events occur. Together, they enable WMI to provide a comprehensive and flexible framework for managing and monitoring the Windows operating system.

Microsoft Windows Operating System and WMI

The Microsoft Windows operating system is deeply integrated with WMI. WMI is a part of the infrastructure for management data and operations on Windows-based operating systems. It supplies management data and provides a unified way of accessing management information in an enterprise environment.

WMI comes preinstalled with the Windows operating system and is available on all Windows platforms, including Windows Server and Windows Vista. It provides a way for the operating system to expose management data and operations to management applications.

The operating system interface exposes many of its features through WMI classes. For example, the operating system might expose a WMI class for each logical or physical component of a system, such as a disk drive, a piece of memory, or a network adapter. Management applications can use these classes to manage the corresponding components.

WMI also plays a crucial role in the Windows operating system’s event logging system. The Event Log Provider in WMI provides access to the event logs on a local or remote system. This allows management applications to retrieve event log entries and to be notified when new events are logged.

Conclusion

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a powerful tool for managing and monitoring the Windows operating system. It provides a flexible and extensible architecture for accessing management data and automating administrative tasks. Whether you’re managing a small network of computers or a large enterprise network, WMI tools can help streamline your operations and improve your efficiency.

With the right knowledge and tools, you can leverage WMI to its full potential. Whether you’re using the WMI command line, writing WMI queries, or creating WMI scripts, there’s a wealth of resources available to help you get the most out of WMI. And with the ongoing development of the Windows operating system and WMI, you can expect even more powerful features and capabilities in the future.

The growing role of machines alongside humans has always been a point of discussion in our constantly evolving workforce, so where does automation come in?

Automation can be defined as the process of carrying out tasks through the use of technology, with minimal human supervision. As a result, it can improve overall safety and reduce the margin of human error, leading to an increase in productivity. In fact, an article by Harvard Business Review cites academic research on automation estimating that 47 percent of occupations in the United States could be automated within 20 years. Now that technology is advancing even more rapidly than ever, how can the process of automation help you in your career?

1. It can lead to further job opportunities

Sharon Hunneybell explored how process automation can lead to the creation of new jobs, opening up future roles for automation analysts, integration architects, and data quality analysts. If you’re a part of this field and you’re interested in working with the latest and greatest in technology, it’s a good idea to start figuring out how you can stay ahead of the crowd. In order to make manual and repetitive tasks a thing of the past, try figuring out how automating processes can integrate with your current business practices. Automating your workload can help you free up time to onboard staff with efficiency.

2. It can help source talent

If you’re part of a HR department, automation can help you search for talented staff much more quickly and onboard them with more efficiency. Case in point, Marcus points out that AI can help find in-house talent, which UnitedHealth Group currently uses through an algorithm that can identify leadership qualities among its pool of employees. This information can also be used to identify and nurture early-career employees for leadership roles. Not only will this save time, but it also ensures that your top-performing candidates are adequately recognized. During the onboarding process, automation can also benefit you through the creation of custom onboarding packages such as online forms, key checklists, and welcome e-mails for new hires. This ensures that they’re aware of any important security measures at work and that they’re ready to hit the ground running.

3. It can improve security and operations

IT teams and security operations are vital aspects of any business. Among their most time-consuming tasks involve operations and maintenance. However, an article on IT processes on EnterpriseTalk states that “IT professionals themselves believe that almost 20 percent of their current daily tasks could be automated by AI.” For instance, conditional access can be granted to certain employees so that security screening can be innovated, as well as software installation, batch processing, and server monitoring. Start exploring how robotics process automation (RPA) will work in your organization by downloading the Opmantek Virtual Machine today and activating your free license for up to 20 devices. If you would prefer to have an engineer walk you through the software, you can also request a demo.

Evidently, automation provides countless benefits for the day-to-day aspects of almost every role in your team. You can maximize profits, keep operational costs down, and free up time for your highly-skilled employees to perform more challenging tasks or shift into other roles. Now it’s time to take that step forward and explore how automation can best be integrated into your business practices.