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Yes, good points. I asked because of Microsoft's efforts with Data Loss Prevention and now Azure Information Protection in the Cloud. Seems they are keen on helping prevent information from being knowlingly sent outside your organization. Though as per my other post on where are you managing risk, I wonder where we draw…

That's a great attitude to have.

The two different streams are really interesting - consumer based v commercial based bots. In a future article, I'll talk about the place for bots in our IT industry.

I can see how the technology has shifted throughout your career but your Why probably hasn't. It's great to see technology advancements that can help enhance your Why and improve/automate the delivery of those resources to the company's staff.

That's what were seeing in the small end of the SMB market though. The infrastructure becomes the internet connection, LAN and the end user's device - that's it. For everything else, they're using a SaaS product.

That's what we wonder - if human traits like compassion or even context can be 'programmed' into AI.

Fingers crossed for you Mike and thanks for the feedback!

It's a really good move for Microsoft and something I can see people would embrace as being useful in the real world.

Wonder if that's going to have a flow on effect to the hardware industry? Have the operating systems & apps reached a peak in that they'll run happily on what is now 'average' hardware? Have we seen an extended hardware lifecycle because you don't need more grunt to send emails and write documents, especially in Enterprise…

So your security team manages SaaS access? Hopefully with say a notification from HR that someone 'has left the building'?

Awesome, thanks!

I love this! Yes, the impact of you not doing your job really has an impact on people's lives. I love that you understand why people travel.

Oh fantastic! That's a great Why!

So much this. But then it's always annoyed me when tech decisions are made on the cool factor, or that the new manager prefers X over Y. I bet we all have stories to share about that!

Tim Ferriss in the 4 Hour Work Week says "automate the routine, humanize the exception". That was related to customer service, but the kick in the ass scenario works too.

Absolutely. And perhaps we don't lean enough on what other people are doing, e.g. successful competitors? When business processes (eg making widgets) are similar, there are so many different ways to achieve the same result as far as technology goes .. but do we reinvent the wheel too much?

For larger organizations, Delve is one of my favorite tools.

Absolutely it is. I thought with Amazon Prime you could order via Alexa on your Echo? Wonder what the human impact is behind the scenes? Automating order is one thing but order fulfillment is another. Though if you've ever seen the Tesla car assembly process, it's robots most of the way.

Totally understand! Growing up in a bank's IT department, password changing is such a habit. Mind you, we did have a large data security department that was always busy resetting passwords and unlocking accounts.

That's certainly a fun rabbit hole to go down! I love your point about being specific. Instead of saying I'm going to learn PowerShell" you'll get better results from being specific and stating "I'm going to automate x, with PowerShell being the tool of choice" You still need to pick up the basics of things like command…

Isn't it funny that everything old is new again? It's good to see the industry supporting more automation tools now, but this can lead to confusion about which one to choose (like any technology choice). And yes, you will always have divided opinions, but I honestly don't know any Enterprise environment with zero…

Regulation is a hot topic. In Australia. Microsoft has ASD Certification from the Australian Government for Azure, Dynamics 365 & Office 365. Here's the full (short) list of ASD Certified Cloud solutions: https://www.asd.gov.au/infosec/irap/certified_clouds.htm It's pretty much the top security endorsement in our country.

Oh wow. How can you do SaaS and not manage the underlying SQl database? We have vet clinics who use a hosted specialised program (it's really their own instance of a Windows Server VM with the proprietary app installed) but the vendor manages the server AND the app inc the database.

I'd replace "Exchange" with SMTP. Exchange if that's your product of choice, yes. Having supported 5 different email systems during my career, it's important to understand the general principles of how emails are sent & received, then add your product knowledge on top. I've seen a few sys admins who can run eseutil but who…

If you look at automation of server provisioning, the goal there is to minimise or eliminate the what ifs. Servers are cookie cutter - cattle not pets - and the more 'special snowflakes' you can remove so your environment is standardized, the better. Again, it's a nice goal, but often the reality differs?

Slack has some really cool bot integrations that bring information into that chat channel or can be used to trigger other services to do stuff.

Oh yes, so much this! I remember going to a half day training on how to use a new portable parallel-attached CD burner. And boy we killed a lot of CDs in those days. You are right - consumer IT & corporate IT are two different worlds. BYOD is also blurring those lines for end users. But true IT professionals can make…

I'm picking that's going to be the most common answer!

Love it! So, next question: are you also securing how information is shared outside of your organisation?

Absolutely it could.