A network is, in most ways, a system. It’s a connection between various nodes and devices that act as conduits for interaction with the network as a whole — interconnected computers and virtual machines acting on each other or in tandem with each other within the guidelines and parameters set in place by the network’s administrators and owners. In most cases, a business owner or their trusted network manager would be the one to set up these parameters, and in most cases, they help define some of the things that are part of your network today: Whether these are security infrastructure tools, role-based access permissions, or even just the ability to share work content remotely from endpoint to endpoint, the purpose of a network is defined by these parameters.

Why Use Network Visibility Maps?

In an increasingly advanced and holistic approach to network security, people want to be able to see what’s in place in their network. A network visibility map is an attractive solution for this reason, as it showcases the components in a network in a way that is mapped out, like the name suggests, rather than in lists and other hard-to-read management interfaces.

More than that, though, network visibility maps show a user things like traffic, network performance, and even analysis of big data that’s present within the network. The benefits to having this information at your fingertips has a lot to do with the idea of managing your network in an informed manner.

What Is Network Visibility?

Much like the idea of threat visibility (which is when you’re aware of threats in your endpoint or network), network visibility is the awareness you have of what goes on in your network — and of which components it is comprised. From here, it’s easy to realize the goal of network visibility is straightforward — and so are the benefits.

Security Benefits

The most obvious benefits to network visibility are those that have to do with the security of a network and all the computers connected therein. For any business using network visibility, they will notice:

• The availability of information on the network will make it clear what constitutes normal behavior, and what it looks like to see “abnormal” behavior.
• The increased understanding of abnormal behavior and the network as a whole allows users and admins alike to detect potential threats on the network.
• The inclusion of network visibility mapping makes it easy to visualize and plan the positioning of new security measures, be it an extra firewall or a new VM that needs encryption protocols.

Management Benefits

With Network Visibility in place, you not only have the ability to protect your assets — you also have the ability to control them. This includes management of who uses your network and how:

• The ability to monitor your network means you can see usage behaviors clearly, and that you can also define how usage on the network changes, like limiting bandwidth hogging.
• Looking at the places where your network lags or under-performs can give you insight into how to solve those problems before they become a source of unwanted downtime.
• You can even use network visibility mapping to view and manage roles in real-time, making sure that users only have permissions and devices that are relevant to their job.

Growth Benefits

There’s more to your network than the components you have. Network visibility can also help you determine what your network still needs:

• You can troubleshoot and analyze with informed decisions that make it easier than ever to plan ahead for issues as well as for trends in the business’s network performance.
• The ability to map out your network means you can easily identify places where performance can be improved by adding components and other network adjustments.

Common Challenges Of Network Visibility And How To Solve Them

Network visibility is an evolving aspect of networking, and with that evolution comes its own share of challenges. Traditional monitoring tools, for one thing, have become less and less useful in offering full network visibility, thanks to the way that networks allow access to various endpoints and users from differing devices and connections. The sensors, the links, the data that was used for network visibility and tracking in earlier years is no longer sufficient, in fact.

Network visibility also has its inefficiencies when performed by locally applied devices, such as secure web gateways or threat management applications that are used on premise. Not only do these inefficient methods of monitoring affect performance, but their current applications are so easily made useless by capacity restrictions that would prevent scaling without hardware upgrades. Because of these issues, it’s important that you utilize a network visibility map that is designed for scaling, and that has a centralized and updated understanding of the various new access points that are defined in and supported by today’s wide area networks and remote access landscape.

Why Choosing The Right Software Is So Important

Because it’s not always possible to scale network visibility solutions, there has to be a consideration for what type of network usage you expect to have, and what capacity you expect your network to maintain over an extended period of time. Network visibility software can become inefficient if you outgrow your chosen solution, so in all cases, it’s best to find something that’s easily and continuously updated, and that is made with today’s various networks in mind.

Jason Obrien

Jason is the Marketing Manager at a local advertising company in Australia. He moved to Australia 10 years back for his passion for advertising. Jason recently joined BFA as a volunteer writer and contributes by sharing his valuable experience and knowledge.

Your initial thought about something as specific as business process modeling is, “What use does that have in real life?” However, if you already manage a business, chances are that you know the truth: knowing business process modeling revolutionizes the day-to-day. What it all comes down to is function. The function, the extended usability of the skill, is far greater than you might guess. The same goes for the benefits of learning the skill in the first place, which not only have to do with function, but also with the added bonuses to having this knowledge. Here are some of the biggest benefits of using business process modeling software, or tools that are made specifically to help you model business processes.

Intimate Knowledge

One of the most obvious benefits of business process modeling and notation tools comes from the way that your understanding of a business process grows as a result. Whether it’s your first time building out a business process diagram, or whether you’re a seasoned BPM professional, you can take the time to get to know a particular process when you map it out yourself — and this is all the truer when you think about software that helps you view the process holistically. Whatever industry, whatever process it is, a modeling tool that aids you in building and analyzing the structure of your business process will make you aware of the essentials, such as the main tasks, as well as more specific details, like the complexity of the process, and the types of decisions you’ll be making along the way.

Ease of Access

Business process modeling and notation tools have created the ability for anyone to map out and get to know their business’s core process with little need to be knowledgeable in the field to start out. You don’t need an education in BPM to start learning the essentials of business process modeling, thanks to the various tools that make it easy and accessible to users of every skill level. You can take tutorials, get familiar with the working parts of the software, but no longer do you need to be the one with industry knowledge — instead, let the software be that expert guidance as you build and model your processes.

Less Mental Math

A BPM professional is often thinking on their feet, and in many situations must do calculations on the fly to aid certain processes in addressing issues with the flow or the resources that are made available. There’s even merit to calculating before or after a process: before, you can preempt what problems could arise in the process; when doing so after a process, though, you can use the same kind of calculations to optimize for better performance. If you have a way to model a process within a software tool of some kind, though, it makes these calculations all the easier — with some programs doing the work for you in terms of analyzing the process that’s been mapped out.

Sharing The Process

When using a modeling tool, your business process becomes shareable. It becomes more than just a map on paper: it’s a platform for collaboration, and in many cases, it’s malleable to the feedback of various users to make it easier to find the best, most beneficial approach in any business use case. Apart from that, business process modeling tools make it easier to explain your process — remotely or in person — as you’re able to control the view and pinpoint things digitally for your teammates, making it clearer than ever what you’re trying to accomplish with your specific processes.

Implementation Made Easy

In some cases, your business process modeling is the first step of your workflow management tool. In other cases, using a modeling tool just means that you’ll be prepared to copy the process step by step into your actual workflow. No matter what, though to implement a specific business process means planning it out, and by using software that’s designed for exactly that, you’re aiding yourself in the modeling of this process to a point where it will be all too easy to implement in real life — because you’ve already designed and built it in the modeling tool.

More Creativity

There’s an added bonus to having a bit of a sandbox to play with, sporting all the tools and assets that can make up a fully functional business process model. While sometimes all you want to do is build your most straightforward solution, there will be times when you want to test out a new approach, a new way of resolving your business process needs. That’s when this software comes in handy to so many business owners looking for new solutions!

All you do is work out new ideas in a business process model that reflects your goals, and if you find it works, you’ll be able to take it to the bank without wasting resources on an actual replication of this design until you know it’s worthwhile!

Conclusion

No matter why you decide to use it, the overall benefits of having a business process modeling tool are too great, and the accessibility too high, for you to turn away from the possibilities now. Many are available for free use or come with workflow tools you already use. In any case, it’s time to put it to work!

Jason Obrien

Jason is the Marketing Manager at a local advertising company in Australia. He moved to Australia 10 years back for his passion for advertising. Jason recently joined BFA as a volunteer writer and contributes by sharing his valuable experience and knowledge.

The recession seems to be inescapable. But while stocks continue to plunge, specific industries remain insulated. One of the industries that are prepared for transformations is Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

As the Covid-19 pandemic triggers dramatic shifts in the economy, many are wondering if inclining to technology, such as RPA, is the ultimate move to survive a recession.

In this article, we will discuss RPA and how its helping organisations through this current crisis.

What is RPA

RPA is a software that automates the repetitive tasks humans do with their computers, such as filing forms, reading databases, creating calculations, opening emails, collecting social media data, and extracting data from files. It can manage a whole process or parts of it. RPA can accomplish a large volume of tasks in minutes, which would typically take hours for humans.

In 2018, it generated $52.3 million in total revenue, which is a 48% percent increase from the prior year. Although the Australian market is still considered small, it is growing fast.

How RPA Reduce Expenses

Automation is highly essential for struggling organisations that can’t afford a large on-site and offshore team. Therefore, there is an expected substantial boost in RPA adoption in a time of recession. Data shows that global spending is expected to reach $1.58 billion by the end of 2020.

High Efficiency: Can operate 24/7 for 365 days and can complete processes a lot faster than a human being. More affordable than hiring an offshore staff who can handle different time zones.

High Accuracy: Only follows a structure, resulting in high consistency and compliance levels

Rapid Application: Does not require training and systems integration

Low Risk: Changes, patches, and licensing can be managed effectively by an experienced IT staff

RPA is suitable for the customer service setting by allowing you to focus on more valuable interactions through human creativity and lateral thinking.

RPA In Difficult Times

Due to economic uncertainty, the RPA industry is placed in a fluid position right now. While businesses realise the importance of accuracy, efficiency, and speed offered by this software, recession forces us to maximise human intellect for continued growth and survival.

It is important to note that efficiency isn’t the only advantage of RPA. It can also be used to improve customer services, which is critical in maintaining revenues. For this reason, RPA may increasingly migrate from the “back office” to the “front office”.

What Do These Terms Mean?

Back office tasks refer to tasks that run the organisation behind doors. These include inventory, accounting, quality control, and order processing. All other functions with a sales or customer support nature are classified as front office task. Even if these processes can’t be fully automated, RPA can speed them up.

Why Integrate RPA Into Your Front Office?

When front office processes are automated, it can result in faster transactions and faster communications with significantly minimal error margins.

For example: Instead of hiring people to read and sort thousands of customer emails manually. RPA can automatically forward the emails to the right departments so that you can focus more on high-value correspondence. This is incredibly helpful in today’s market, where promptness tends to attract more customers.

Its biggest adopters are telcos, banking institutions, insurance companies, and utility providers. Experts predict that RPA is set to have a 29.30% from 2019 to 2026.

While RPA is relatively new, its applications continuously evolve.

Using RPA The Right Way

Shane Perry, a startup investment expert at Max Funding, believes that it is high time to adopt technologies, “Just like any other form of technology, RPA isn’t the solution for everything. It definitely has disadvantages, such as scaling difficulties and pricey licensing. For this software to be implemented successfully, the strong internal focus is needed.”

Some experts think that RPA may only deliver short-term results. To avoid this, your organisation should use a comprehensive strategy.

Rise of Hybrid Workplaces

During an economic slump, the rate of organisations turning to technologies with a wide range of applications surges. While RPA has superior efficiency, it’s not the solution to all processes. This is where business process management, AI, and other integrated solutions enter the picture.

Once you’ve fully integrated these solutions into your organisation, you can build a workforce that may exceed what humans can delivery. However, the human factor is still crucial for RPA implementation. So, you need highly-skilled technicians to implement and monitor RPA bots to address any hiccups promptly.

Because RPA functions for tasks with distinct inputs and outputs, rule-based, or only repeatable, it cannot make complex decisions. RPA’s major limitation is its inability to understand and interpret context or anything out of the structure, such as images.

RPA During and After Pandemic

High technologies are helping societies cope with the challenges of Covid-19 pandemic, and experts believe these will also be useful once this current situation is over. The aftermath is also filled with challenges as we all try to resume regular routines. Every industry may experience an avalanche of bookings, orders, refunds, requests, complaints, reschedules, etc.

RPA bots will be incredibly helpful in this situation. They can be programmed fast and, once installed, they can handle a vast amount of dull, redundant, time consuming but relatively essential tasks. They can prevent your employees and systems from getting overwhelmed.

Bottomline

RPA turbocharges efficiency, minimises costs, improves flexibility and resilience, and maximises results. This technology addresses the challenges of the current crisis, allowing organisations to, not only survive, but come out stronger.

It could protect an organisation during recessions. But only if it is implemented and supervised correctly. You have to work with specialists in determining the best solutions for your business.

Jason Obrien

Jason is the Marketing Manager at a local advertising company in Australia. He moved to Australia 10 years back for his passion for advertising. Jason recently joined BFA as a volunteer writer and contributes by sharing his valuable experience and knowledge.

Security tools are always changing, developing new ways to make your life easier. On the other end of the spectrum, though, are cyber attacks and other potential dangers that become increasingly sophisticated. As your options for defense vary and evolve, so too do the threats — internal and external alike.

So the big question is, is it still safe in 2021 to use a business password manager? To answer that question, though, you’ll need to look at: the uses of such a tool; what kind of risks exist; what the benefits are; and most importantly, what to look for in a business password manager.

What Are They For?

Password management tools are designed mainly to store and protect the passwords that you use in your business, from email accounts to specific software logins. When you log into your password manager, you’re able to use its encrypted storage and application to fill in credentials on these other sites and apps — meaning you never have to remember those credentials yourself.

In other words, these password managers are a security tool that has become regularly used throughout the business world. Part of the reason for that is the fact that this kind of tool has more than just one use. Many of its features benefit users in several ways.

What Are The Benefits?

A business password manager, first and foremost, makes it easy to manage passwords — hence the name. The first benefit is obviously the ability to quickly and easily apply login information, as mentioned, with various platforms. With this, you don’t require memorization or separate storage of passwords elsewhere, as the password manager handles that on their own. In addition to storage of passwords, these tools offer encrypted storage of other information, such as your other credentials, digital certificates, or even media files held for safekeeping.

These virtual vaults are great, of course, but there’s more: a business password manager reminds you to use safe passwords, even suggesting them for you when needed — and storing them safely once decided. In addition, you’ll find yourself feeling even safer for knowing that your weak passwords of the bygone ages will be flagged by your password manager. You’ll know that you need to fix these and make them all the more secure and that in the case of reused passwords, you’ll need to diversify.

With the number of suites you use on a normal day of business, it may be hard to keep track of all that, much less be sure that you’re using passwords of strong design. That’s where one of these manager tools comes in handy, as their flagging is meant to draw your attention to these security concerns, preemptively fixing them before they become a real hazard for your numerous accounts. In addition to this, there are other benefits to consider, like the centralized control of access among users connected to the manager.

What Are The Risks?

It’s certain that a password manager for your enterprise has a lot to offer, and with those features comes the knowledge that you’re looking out for your business’s best interests. However, like any security tool, there are risks and weaknesses to consider. The first and most obvious is the idea that if someone were to gain access to your password manager, they’d have a free ride to all of your favorite accounts, along with whatever other sensitive info you might be storing within.

Cyber attackers know this, and password managers can often be targeted as a result. In other cases, you might simply forget the master password that allows you to use the tool, meaning your passwords, other stored info, and your ability to log in to various tools are all unavailable to you. In addition to all this, there’s the fact that password managers can, at times, encounter software bugs, just like any other digital tool.

How To Know Which Ones Are Safest?

With these risks in mind, though, can you be sure that it’s better to go without a password manager? In many cases, the answer is “no”. Password managers are a tool that fills a litany of needs from business owners, and while risks do exist, the risks are far greater for those who go without. As such, it’s simply better to select your password manager based on a few crucial criteria.

One criterion should be your password recovery protocol: if you were to somehow lose or forget the master password you use for logging into a password manager, you should be able to recover that information or reset it somehow, in a way that’s secure to you alone. Without this feature properly researched, you’re putting yourself and your assets in danger.

Similarly, look for password managers with encrypted storage and zero-knowledge architecture — i.e., password tools that don’t allow anyone but the decrypter (the user with the master password) to view stored info on the platform. Even in the event of a breach, or in the event of a problem on the host server, your information is made safe thanks to such measures, with zero-knowledge tools keeping your information completely unreadable even to the host.

Finally, you can be sure that your password manager is one of the many that have reputable vendors who update their software for bugs regularly. Proactive updates, host-proof storage, and password recovery are all features you should keep on your shopping list — so that when you do take on a business password manager, it’ll be the absolute safest option available.

Tristan D. Porter

I am Tristan who loves to ride and spend time with my jenny (horse) and my love Mark. After completing my graduation, I have been working as an accountant in a private firm in Cologne.