Executive IT Insights: Navigating Business, Tech, and Security

With continued growth in computer and hand-held device use in the lives of many brings increasing technical questions and problems that arise. And so, the field of supporting these systems grows along with it, which brings business opportunities for entrepreneurs, and employment opportunities for support personnel.

But there are different types of support needs accompanied by varying required responsibilities and skills. The following are the differences between, and skills required for, three common areas of support: Help Desk, Technical Support, and Desktop/Deskside Support.

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The way customers interact with businesses has changed rapidly in the last several years. This means that organizations have had to pivot their business and marketing strategies. Customers are becoming increasingly diligent about researching products and services before buying. The most powerful source of product understanding is customer feedback, which has become even more accessible now as online reviews are growing in power and number.

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Employee error has long been acknowledged to be one of the main causes of healthcare security breaches. Still, a recent report by Kaspersky revealed that approximately one in four healthcare employees, ranging from doctors to admin staff, have never received cybersecurity training. Moreover, 11% of those that did receive training said that it only happened once during the on-boarding process.

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(Image source: Security Affairs.co)

In 2014, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) created a Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) that guides organizations in their journey towards developing secure computer systems. It sets a flexible foundation that all businesses can follow and sculpt to their needs. For this reason, it is extremely successful and is employed by a large number of organizations.

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Help desks are typically grouped according to their form of deployment, the size of a client's business and whether the software's source code is accessible and easy to alter. When searching for the perfect help desk, you must take these elements into consideration. The following is an explanation of the five main types of help desk examples currently on the market:

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Service level agreements (SLA) are formal agreements made between two or more parties as it pertains to a particular service. These documents provide guidelines for both the provider and the consumer during the life of a specified contract. A subsidiary of the Canadian Government, called Shared Services Canada (SSC), was formed in 2011 and took aim at adjusting certain parameters around SLAs within the Government of Canada in order to ensure efficiency.

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When it comes to cloud computing, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) act as both the structure and warranty of the terms of the relationship between the consumer and provider. SLAs that are tailored toward services in the cloud often include information that differs from other agreements of the same stature.

The following are six important considerations to be aware of for service level agreements customized for the cloud:

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What specifically needs to be included in a service level agreement? Which aspects are described in an SLA? In this post, we explain the 6 common elements of a service contract.

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UCHealth Denver tested the real-time social feed, CareLoop, and its effectiveness with regard to its spread of messages and information. CareLoop is essentially Facebook for patients; it is a medium that facilitates messages from medical professionals, questions from patients, test results, explanations, even providing users with information on possible symptoms and what they should be expecting in terms of certain procedures and medicines. Like most social media sites, CareLoop is a live feed, allowing patients to acquire their information and stay current up to the minute. Physicians and nurses have more opportunities to communicate with their patients without the necessity of a face-to-face visit.

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