We've all been there. It's early in the morning and you're jumping on a call. But you forgot it was a video call, and you also forgot to cover your webcam before joining. So now everyone knows you as the person who wears cheetah pajamas and has a serious case of bed head. Not ideal. Luckily practice makes perfect, and with the upcoming weeks of remote working, we gathered a few video call tips from body language expert, Vanessa Van Edwards.

In building out a contingency plan during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 400 of our Ivanti employees in the South Jordan, Utah location near Salt Lake City transitioned to a work-from-home environment to stay safe and healthy while still working at full capacity for our customers. For Plinio Pimentel, a senior engineer at Ivanti, the task seemed daunting.

We're here to support you and your organization during these uncertain times. Check out our helpful resources regarding how to navigate the IT environment with all the changes COVID-19 brings. Our lives and businesses are changing daily in response to the current health climate. It is an uncertain and unprecedented time for everyone, and our concern is always first and foremost the health and safety of our employees, partners, and customers.

A look into the shift from traditional Windows apps to SaaS, and more specifically browser-based apps. The concept of a “web application” began with the earliest CGI-powered web pages as far back as 1993, soon followed by PHP and other technologies that (very often) presented a web front end to a back-end database, with a browser-based workflow for user interaction.

I'm not sure what your work from home set up looks like, but mine includes an ironing board behind me. There's a set of golf clubs in the corner, and a pile of old clothes on the floor. My late grandmother's bookshelf tries desperately to bring some order to the room, but even it is filled with a hodgepodge of stuff. The problem is, I never intended to work from home. My "home office" can be best described as a storage room mixed with a little bit of the chaos.

Many organizations are prioritizing the health and well being of their workforce in the wake of the current global pandemic. Many threat actors are also taking advantage of this opportunity. I’ve seen recent examples of social engineering—with calculated phishing campaigns preying on those who seek information on the COVID-19. As noted by Security Researcher Brian Krebs, one hacker group even used a copy of a legitimate map of the impact of the virus to infect machines with malware.

As federal, state, and local government agencies scramble to create emergency response processes and procedures, be advised that IT service management (ITSM) can play a critical role in supporting emergency response plans and associated processes. Government and commercial business emergency response plans define how agencies and commercial organizations respond to catastrophic events in the environment.

It starts with one call. Then another user opens a ticket reporting sluggish laptop performance. One more call comes in, then a few more similar incidents and service requests. By the time the Help Desk Agent can see the bottom of that first cup of coffee, a bigger problem is evident, but not quite yet visible.

In the past, IT asset management and IT service management processes have been separate disciplines with different objectives and goals. Given this reality, Ivanti recently surveyed over 1600 IT professionals to better understand the alignment of asset and service management processes. Some results weren’t surprising. Laptop and desktop computers are the most common managed assets, while niche industry-specific devices are the least managed. Our key finding, however, is clear.

With the current focus on social distancing and other health precautions, service management leaders are probably already thinking about short-term implications of these rapidly incoming changes. The large-scale increased use of remote work is one implication. This might be a new option or an immediate mandatory requirement for all employees. Regardless, many IT organizations may not be ready.