Ivanti Blog: Posts by

The Importance of Accurate Data to Get the Most From AI

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 13:00:00 Z

The IT service community is rightly buzzing about the wealth of possibilities AI offers to automate service management operations and better assist customers — especially in this age of expanding Everywhere Work. But without sound data, the path to leveraging AI for IT service management becomes quite daunting.

With so many more people working outside a traditional office setting, more end users than ever are logging in more often to access employee services. According to Ivanti research, all this complexity affects IT significantly: 39% of IT professionals report too many logins, 47% report too many digital notifications and 42% report using too many tools/platforms.

So AI-driven service management is a welcome tool to help IT personnel serve their end users. Sound data for AI is the bedrock of such a solution.

Organizations thrive on accurate data for AI. Without it, your service teams can only be reactive. That means you have manual processes in the organization — and they are taking a ton of time away from people who should be focusing on outcomes within that organization.

Not only that, but poor data means your service resolutions are inaccurate because the information you have doesn’t match up to the right resolution. The result? Users are unable to get back to work because of slower ticket resolution. Mismatched data is also a hazard when information is transferred from one specialist to another within an organization.

Good data, bad data, no data

Data is the fuel on which AI runs. A data-savvy organization uses data to define a problem and ensure that it goes to the right process and speeds your resolution.
Conversely, an organization without well-managed data for AI has tons of blind spots. Not only does that increase that organization’s security risk, but it also drives up the cost of the service desk. Manual processes are costly; they require human input, and you have no way to control you spend. That type of organization also probably doesn’t know what software or hardware it has and is likely going to overspend there as well.

In IT operations especially, accurate and complete data for AI is critical, because AI requires significant training. If you don't have the right data, your AI is not going to give you the right answers. And those data needs are continuous as well. It's not enough to have a single data source feeding your AI. You constantly have to feed it with the right data so it can detect changes over time and react appropriately and differently.

Conflicting data within some data sources is another challenge you must resolve. As you bring data into a single data pool that you can learn from, you have to ensure that that data is reconciled.

Ultimately, all these hurdles slow digital transformation within the organization. Visibility into and accuracy of the data is vital to the success of any AI investment. AI needs to be trusted. If it's making recommendations and predictions — even suggestions about how you resolve issues — trust in those outputs is vital. If you leave this unaddressed — if the accuracy of your data for AI is not correct and the predictions are not correct — it's really going to impact your return on investment and hinder digital transformation in your organization.

The first 4 steps to implementing AI

If you are considering how to leverage AI for service management in your organization, you must address some critical initial steps:

Eliminate blind spots: Remove the data gaps within your company by getting better visibility into your data assets, then monitoring those assets. Collecting and understanding the data that drives AI is a continual process — this isn’t a one-time deal. You have to continually ensure that you have the necessary data feeds coming into your AI solutions.
Remove data silos: To achieve more powerful outcomes from the data you acquire, you should not have just a single view of an asset. For a fuller, more rounded view of an asset, you must combine your data silos. Those include your asset inventory, asset management software inventory, data center inventory service maps, tickets, information, knowledge bases and monitoring logs. Commonality exists among all these types of data — which is one of the reasons organizations are turning to the power of platforms that provide data seamlessly across different applications.
Protect privacy: Ensure that your data doesn't include sensitive or personal information in it, as that can be baked into the predictions and outcomes your AI delivers.
Create data governance: Many organizations are crafting governance frameworks, policies and processes to set a standard and guidelines for how they use data — and they’re including AI data governance in that process.

Ivanti Has Earned A Spot In G2's Top 50 IT Management Products

Mon, 23 May 2022 18:05:25 Z

We’re thrilled to announce that Ivanti Neurons is the recipient of the “Top 50 IT Management Products for 2022” award by G2 users. The annual Best Software awards list is curated to rank the most renowned software companies and products globally to help aid users in their buying decisions.

We are truly honored to receive this award from G2.

The “Best IT Management Products for 2022” award winners are based on analysis of product satisfaction and market presence scores within the category. To qualify in G2’s annual “Best Of” list, the company or product must receive at least 50 approved and published reviews during the previous calendar year. G2 is one of the world’s most trusted software analysis platforms, annually helping more than 60 million people discover top software.

“As we continue to accelerate rapid growth, our online marketplace boasts 100,000+ software and services companies in 2,000+ categories and over 1.5 million trusted user reviews. Simply put, G2 is where you go for software,” said Godard Abel, co-founder and CEO of G2. “Our annual Best Software List aims to guide buyers on their purchasing decisions, knowing they can trust in the credibility and objectivity of our scoring algorithms. We applaud those companies named to our 2022 list, as they’ve earned satisfaction among their customers as well as an impressive market presence.”

Ivanti earned its spot on G2’s best software awards based on authentic, timely reviews from real users. Users noted that after implementing Ivanti Neurons, productivity toward their everyday workload showed a dramatic increase. Ivanti Neurons delivers end-to-end automation, empowering organizations to autonomously self-heal and self-secure devices and self-service end users.

“When Ivanti Neurons first launched in July of 2020 — as remote work was quickly becoming the new normal — our vision was to leverage hyperautomation to address the rapid growth and complexity of devices, data and the various needs of a multigenerational remote workforce and increasing cybersecurity threats,” said Daren Goeson, Vice President of Product Management at Ivanti. “And today, Ivanti Neurons is the only platform on the market that combines unified endpoint management, enterprise service management and cybersecurity capabilities.”

Additionally, we are continuing to innovate and release updates to the platform on a quarterly basis to further help customers embrace the future of work. Daniel Bolton, Head of Technical Security at Ivanti, asserts, “Ivanti Neurons gives us real-time actionable intelligence, so we can automate or make more informed decisions and keep our users productive.” For example, we recently released Ivanti Neurons Patch for MEM (Microsoft Endpoint Manager), Ivanti Neurons for Risk-Based Vulnerability Management, and the Digital Experience Score capability within Ivanti Neurons Workspace to help customers further manage, automate and prioritize cybersecurity and deliver secure, contextualized and productive employee experiences.

We are deeply grateful to G2 for recognizing our team’s efforts, and thankful that our contributions to our customers have earned us this spotlight.

Ivanti Neurons for Healthcare Expands Visibility and Security into the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 16:18:25 Z

From my perspective, today’s an exciting and important day for healthcare organizations around the globe. Why? Ivanti just announced the release of the new Ivanti® Neurons for Healthcare solution, designed to help healthcare customers improve asset visibility and security-risk mitigation for medical devices—in order to boost IT performance, strengthen security, and improve compliance across the estate with a smooth experience virtually unnoticed by clinicians, nurses, or hospital staff.

Visibility and Security – Key Challenges for Healthcare Organizations

According to research firm Frost & Sullivan’s Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) “Forecast to 2021” report, 20 billion to 30 billion connected IoT and medical devices were projected to be a part of the healthcare ecosystem by the end of last year. Cyber-attacks continue to be directed at healthcare facilities, and there is an average of 6.2 vulnerabilities per medical device. The rapidly growing number of devices and lack of visibility—combined with security threats and ransomware increasingly targeted at healthcare—make it very challenging for healthcare organizations to manage and protect their medical devices and IT environment efficiently.

Ivanti Neurons for Healthcare – A Complete Picture of IT

Ivanti Neurons for Healthcare delivers the complete picture of IT across healthcare facilities by intelligently discovering and profiling IoMT devices, assessing risks, reporting threats, and reconciling device information across data sources.

What’s more, customers can know more about the various healthcare-specific devices across their facilities, including device classification and usage information, with the details to reduce risk or attend to anomalies. Customers can also collect and reconcile vendor data, creating a single source of truth for all their medical devices.

With the Ivanti Neurons for Healthcare solution, you can:

Discover and gain visibility into all healthcare devices and Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), such as PACS servers and X-ray, CT, and ultrasound machines
Gain a complete picture of your medical and IT devices in a single view
View medical-device analytics such as seeing which devices have default passwords
Avoid vendor sprawl and reconcile medical-device information across multiple data sources
Classify medical devices for a clear picture into the health and performance of these devices
Integrate your medical device data efficiently with your Ivanti® Asset Management
Assess and mitigate security risks quickly and effectively to secure, remediate, and configure your medical devices

Take a few minutes to learn more about Ivanti Neurons for Healthcare.

Ivanti Neurons: Go Way Beyond Workflow With Hyper-Automation

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 17:50:39 Z

It’s no secret that IT organizations are facing increasingly complex challenges. Device proliferation, demands to access data from anywhere, ensuring security both on and off campus—and this year, a major shift to remote work—have IT departments struggling to stay above water. As both human and budgetary resources are spread thin among these and other challenges, the question arises:

How can IT expect to deliver a quality user experience?

They need a complete picture of the landscape they oversee—visibility of all the assets as well as the state of security—while optimizing costs across the services and assets they provide. The challenge of navigating all these complex demands is only magnified by the need to deliver an experience their users value.

The Answer: Ivanti Neurons

Those organizations that attempt to tackle these ever-growing headwinds with more people will suffer and lose out on the opportunity to implement a truly competitive edge. The only way for organizations to handle and excel in this complexity is through hyper-automation, which is a term I go into detail about in my blog Hyper-Automation is Your Next Competitive Advantage.

What enterprises need is the next generation of assistance that comes from automation. Automation is a term that has been used in enterprises for several decade. It has evolved from basic task-based workflow automation, to human directed automation using no code / low code tools to build more complex process orchestration. In recent years with the advancement of AI/ML, automation has been able to engage with users through conversational AI and Virtual Assistants.

Now, hyper-automation is the next level. Gartner refers to hyper-automation as “a set of business or IT process design and decisions where the scope and degree of automation delivered spans a spectrum of technologies”. To achieve this, there are foundational elements needed to really accelerate your automation strategy to one of hyper-automation:

A strong discovery capability to find all assets in your environment
The ability to make intelligent and contextual decisions when automating
The right integrations and actions available to resolve and heal issues

Discover and Reconcile with Ivanti Neurons for Discovery

You can't manage what you don't know about. Discover all devices from cloud to edge using multiple methods such as passive and active discovery. The problem is that it doesn’t just stop with discovery and getting data into a single system.

In today's enterprise environments, there are many silos of data and those silos are connected, but those connections are not always obvious or easy to make. Ivanti Neurons for Discovery pulls data from multiple data sources, using both active and passive scanning techniques to be able to look in all corners. Ivanti Neurons pulls data in and reconciles data out, delivering consistent and complete data among corresponding data sources. This results in a comprehensive view of users, endpoints, and assets in your organization. A critical set of information in your hyper-automation maturity.

Detect and Diagnose Through Advanced Machine Learning with Ivanti Neurons

Once you have that comprehensive list of assets along with the reconciled data to give you a 360-degree view of those assets, you have the foundation to detect issues when they first occur, and even predict issues before they happen. This means leveraging bots to constantly monitor the user experience, getting insights into the state of the device in real time, making decisions within the context of the device, user and location. Machine learning delivers a much better user experience, allowing the user to interact with the bot (that is working overtime) to provide them a great user experience. Ivanti Neurons is that autonomous system, proactively and predictably detecting issues to self-heal, or self-secure or self-service through hyper-automation.

Heal and Remediate with Ivanti Neurons for Healing

Momentum toward autonomous systems will continue in the coming months and years, quickly evolving systems that facilitate a seamless user experience. These systems leverage more advanced AI/ML, such as more unsupervised learning, deep learning, neural networks that quickly and accurately automate incident response before they impact the user of the organization. The innovations available today enable hyper-automation to improve service, de-escalating issues that would have typically been pushed to IT specialists thanks to automating known troubleshooting tactics and enabling Tier 1 Support Analysts to remediate issues with insights to address challenges automation didn’t resolve. The Ivanti Neurons for Healing hyper-automation platform gives enterprises the power to improve that Mean-Time-to-Resolution metric and improve user satisfaction.

Protect and Prioritize with Ivanti Neurons for Patch Intelligence

Equal to the service automation is security. Hyper-automation speeds up vulnerability remediation efforts, bringing enterprises closer to the 14-day SLA target. Cyberthreats are increasing in both frequency and the measure of damage they can cause. SecOps teams are on-guard 24/7, yet the data on threats is more than they can manage and prioritize in order to maintain optimal protection.

Ivanti Neurons for Patch Intelligence does the work of assessing the organization’s threat surface, identifying relevant vulnerabilities, and prioritizing the application of patches to minimize risk. Both supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms solves the challenge of researching, prioritizing and providing actionable intelligence that security teams can act on, faster.

We fundamentally believe that as organizational adoption of automation matures, the opportunity to discover, detect, heal, and secure autonomously will have a significant advantage in the speed in which they deliver a service, the accuracy of that service, and the lower cost in which services are delivered. The Ivanti Neurons hyper-automation platform takes organizations way beyond previous expectations of workflow automation, addressing the complex challenges affecting work both today and for years to come.

Hyper-Automation is Your Next Competitive Advantage

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 12:25:10 Z

The world is changing fast, and for IT departments, demands are increasing exponentially.

The challenges in today’s environment are like a tidal wave coming at organizations. There is unmanageable complexity due to the explosive growth of endpoints and IoT devices—generating and processing data all the way to the edge. Cybersecurity threats are reaching catastrophic new heights and present significant risk to companies. Add in the fact that employees are working from anywhere, at anytime, and still expect engaging, consumer-grade experiences with immediate responses to their issues. The COVID pandemic is forcing many organizations into the digital transformation to support mass remote work, and working from home is widely expected to become the "next normal" after the pandemic subsides.

To pile it on, IT departments are being asked to manage all these new and increasing challenges without an increase in budget or resources (often with a decrease in both). To that end, the only way for organizations to deal with the rapidly growing complexity, security concerns, and multi-generational user expectations is through hyper-automation.

Hyper-automation

According to Gartner, "Hyper-automation refers to the combination of multiple machine learning, packaged software and automation tools to deliver work." (Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2020, October 21, 2019)

To achieve this, organizations must mature from basic automation (think workflow automation), to augmented Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (think conversational bots), to a confluence of hyper-automation with deep learning capabilities. Through hyper-automation, organizations can proactively, predictably, and continuously self-heal, self-secure devices and self-service end-users. Humans will co-exist with bots and robots, working hand in hand to deliver contextual, anticipatory, and personalized consumer-grade experiences to employees, customers, and consumers.

This is where Ivanti Neurons comes in.

Autonomous Healing

Evolve the management of devices from reactively managing endpoints to autonomously managing and self-healing. Continuously discover endpoints, diagnose issues, and optimize the device performance and minimize configuration drift, then automate productivity preservation and system health and security.

Adaptive Security

Anticipate security threats by going beyond simply reacting to security issues or anomalies to continuously sensing, discovering, and detecting security issues, prioritizing them predictively based on cognition, then remediating issues proactively before the end user detects there was an issue.

Ambient User Experience

Provide an experience to the end users (employees, customers, consumers) that is contextual, personalized and anticipatory for what the user needs. Combining the ability to detect all devices that the user has, understand their preferences, optimize the performance, minimize the configuration drift, and identifying and resolve any security vulnerabilities to provide the user with an Ambient Experience.

It’ll be the organizations that embrace and invest in their maturity from basic automation to hyper-automation and delivering ambient experiences to end users at the highest speed, accuracy, and optimal cost that will have a significant competitive advantage going forward.

For more information, visit the Ivanti Neurons pages on our website.