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PlumChoice, a fee-for-service online support company, was using Citrix’s GoToAssist™ as their remote access tool. However, as the popularity of Mac systems increased and the market for mobile devices such as smart phones, digital cameras and MP3 players exploded, PlumChoice realized their remote support solution no longer met their needs. GoToAssist did not support any systems beyond the Windows platform and failed to provide the security measures PlumChoice needed to be compliant with its customers’ industry standards. PlumChoice started to receive requests from their partners to extend beyond the Windows platform and began reevaluating GoToAssist™ as their remote support solution. They needed a solution that would record every support session and agent interaction.

Zappos.com's dispatch & helpdesk teams faced the challenge of supporting approximately 1,600 employees located in two different time zones and merchandisers who travel globally. Traditional tools, such as VPNs, were used but with sporadic and limited success. The challenge was further complicated by the need to support a multi-platform environment that includes Windows, Linux, and Mac. The IT team also saw the evolving requirement to support mobile devices internally. The rapid expansion of the company's headcount over the last few years has put more pressure on IT for support and training.

The National September 11 Memorial Museum, located at the World Trade Center site, is a significant institution documenting the events of September 11, 2001. The museum relies on numerous operation systems for its functioning, and the IT staff needed a robust and secure remote support solution to ensure 100 percent uptime for these systems. The team of technicians in the Memorial’s IT department work in a virtual environment and knew it was necessary to deploy a remote support solution that enabled them to meet the demanding requirement of constant uptime while ensuring security.

NowNerd, an IT technical support provider, faced challenges when it contracted with a national retailer to provide remote support. The company experienced difficulties with its existing system and decided to develop a proprietary support dashboard, NerdDeck, to offer a white label remote support interface that could be branded for each individual client. The company needed a reliable, user-friendly, and secure platform for remote support that could handle retail transactions. After months of testing and evaluating different solutions, Bomgar emerged as the clear choice.

Chili Security, a Denmark-based company providing technology support to private users and small businesses, was facing scalability issues with its existing remote support assistance tool, TeamViewer. The tool was slow and required manual processes, such as copying and pasting customers’ passwords and session IDs. Additionally, there were concerns with TeamViewer’s security measures. As the company was growing rapidly, it needed a solution that could scale with its expanding customer base and offer advanced features with a high-level focus on security.

Murphy Oil USA, Inc., a subsidiary of Murphy Oil Corporation, operates nearly 1,200 retail gasoline stations across 23 states in the United States. The company's national support center provides remote technical support for the computers and point of sale (POS) systems at each of its retail locations. Prior to Bomgar, the company used a number of different remote support tools that it found to be inefficient and cumbersome. The IT team wanted to standardize on a single remote support solution that could troubleshoot all of its retail systems. Additionally, once the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was formalized, a PCI compliant remote support solution became a requirement.

When a new chief information officer joined Boise State University, he recognized the need to provide broader support for the university community, particularly the student body. This was in line with Boise State’s growing emphasis on the student experience. The university was in need of a remote support solution that could support users with Windows or Mac OS X operating systems and serve users outside the university network. The remote support tool in use at the time was cumbersome for the support technicians to use and only allowed them to support devices on the university’s network. The IT support department could not fully assist faculty, staff and students working off campus.

Before BeyondTrust, Bechtle AG used various remote support tools that the team was not completely satisfied with. They lacked integration with their company ITSM solution, ServiceNow. In addition to increased IT productivity, Bechtle also wanted to achieve a higher level of data protection and IT security. They wanted a guarantee that their data would not go through foreign servers.

Norton Healthcare, a leading healthcare provider in Louisville, Kentucky, was in search of a remote support tool that could help them lower costs, increase first-call resolution, reduce incident handling times, decrease call escalations, and reduce on-site visits. Additionally, the tool needed to be secure and meet HIPAA compliance standards, including data encryption and session recording. The demand for mHealth and telehealth services was increasing exponentially, and the number of mobile devices used amongst its workforce was continually increasing. The team needed a solution that could support all these endpoints securely. Furthermore, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Norton Healthcare had to support a significantly increased number of remote workers, many of whom were using personal devices. The team needed to ensure that remote support and remote sign-in services were able to support BYOD in a secure fashion.

The article discusses the challenges faced by organizations in securing their infrastructure from cyber threats. These threats can come from various sources, including criminals infecting networks with ransomware, hacktivists making political statements, careless mistakes by insiders, or ethical hackers compromising poorly defended infrastructure. Many companies take a lax approach to cybersecurity, either thinking they will never be breached or worrying that it's too expensive and will slow down their operations. Resistance to change associated with additional security controls and monitoring is common. Another hurdle is integration, with organizations often dealing with third-party apps, in-house customizations and software, on-site operating systems like UNIX, Linux, Windows, and OSX, and off-prem cloud-based apps that run on AWS and Google Cloud.

The company was facing a significant challenge in managing password vulnerabilities and local administration rights, which were identified as the two biggest security holes. The company's InfoSec team was constantly putting out fires, dealing with security issues as they arose, but there was no strategic approach to preventing these issues from occurring in the first place. The company needed a solution that would allow them to take a proactive approach to security, reducing the attack surface within their infrastructure and preventing breaches before they happened.

The software development company was required by a large customer within the banking sector to control excessive administrative privileges across approximately 5,000 user endpoints. The bank's requirement came after an annual onsite audit identified a risk in relation to endpoint privileges. The software developer committed to a timeline of only three months to implement and deploy an effective and secure solution. The challenge was to find a solution that could control access privilege without disrupting the day-to-day work of its many users (endpoints).

Oxford Properties Group, a leading global real estate investor, asset manager, and business builder, was facing a challenge in securing its operational technology (OT) and non-traditional endpoints. The company was looking to improve endpoint security for IoT, desktops, servers, and other devices. The IT team identified the need for a solution that would allow the many vendors that serviced the buildings access to what they required, but without installing any local software or VPNs. These tools can create security gaps, especially with regards to privileged access. The company was also looking for a solution that would not require the vendor to install any local applications—they simply request access and can connect to the network with any internet-enabled device.

NHS Wales faced a significant challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic as they were forced to transition to remote work. The challenge was a combination of balancing logistical needs with maintaining quality of care. The NHS Wales Informatics Service, responsible for providing national IT systems and services to the Welsh NHS, had to adapt to this new situation. They provide direct IT service and desktop support to approximately 15,000 staff, with 12,000 of those staff members working in general practices in clinical or administrative staff roles, serving approximately three million citizens across Wales. The traditional approach of providing each user with a laptop and a VPN connection was not feasible due to the skyrocketing global demand for laptops. Therefore, they needed a solution that could provide remote access to the systems needed by the GPs.

The company, one of the world's largest payment and processing companies, has been aggressively expanding in the fintech space through acquisitions. This rapid growth has necessitated the scaling of all support systems and personnel to meet the increased demand for expertise. The company had accumulated seven different remote support websites and several data centers due to the acquisition of other companies and the launch of new products. The challenge was to streamline these systems and improve the efficiency and security of their support operations.

Ramboll, a Danish engineering, architecture, design, and consultancy firm, faced challenges in standardizing IT policies and procedures across its global offices due to its growth through mergers and acquisitions. The company had a high number of applications in use, with each country handling access privileges and admin rights differently. This resulted in an overburdened local IT team and a lack of visibility and control at the global level. The company also faced cybersecurity threats and needed to manage software licenses effectively. The challenge was to find a solution that would not only bolster and standardize application control and privileged management across the organization but also ensure license compliance and software standardization.

The University of Utah faced a unique set of IT challenges due to its diverse blend of students, professors, contractors, staff, visitors, and IT personnel. Many individuals held multiple roles concurrently, and roles could change or pause over many years. The university's hospital environment added to the complexity, as some students were also employees with access to Protected Health Information. Managing all these permissions, privileges, and access was exponentially more difficult than in a more traditional organization. The university needed to increase visibility into its accounts and reduce its risk, specifically improving the way it handled privileged accounts.

In March 2020, all 30,000 employees for the state of Illinois were ordered to work from home in response to the spread of COVID-19. This posed a significant challenge for the state’s Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT), which had to figure out a way to grant employees access to their workstations from their personal devices at home, while also meeting the state’s stringent compliance standards when granting access to critical state applications, systems and information. The state had previously used a variety of remote access solutions, including VPN, but these initiatives could only support up to 5,000 employees and could not scale to the level needed. The state needed a solution that it could implement quickly and with ease.

MANE, a leading flavor and fragrance group in France, was facing the challenge of preserving its business model and maintaining the secrecy of its formulas in a fast-evolving world where workplaces are experiencing accelerated digital transformation and relying more heavily on remote workers. The company needed to rethink its growth strategy and improve its IT infrastructure. They sought a secure solution to enable productivity for its modern work environment while ensuring its trade secrets stay secret. The company also needed to improve data and information system security by enhancing access controls, privilege management, and visibility over its numerous third-party suppliers and systems managers.

Zensar Technologies, a leading technology consulting and services company, was facing a challenge with privilege distribution and management. The company often granted local administrator rights to users for day-to-day tasks or to install approved software. However, without the ability to define privilege scope, the support team at Zensar was working with limited control over how administrative rights were distributed. This lack of control could potentially conflict with critical software compliance policies and create a bloated attack surface. The team sought a tool that would enhance their privilege management capabilities without disrupting their existing mandatory compliance policies and processes. They also wanted a flexible system for access controls, allowing the IT team to generate new policies and roles based on unique end-user requirements. Lastly, they needed a way to quickly generate privilege reporting across all endpoint assets and users.

The City of Midlothian, Texas, was facing a challenge with its IT environment. The more secure it became, the less usable it was. Open access left sensitive networks vulnerable to attacks and increased the risk of a data breach. The city had to choose between more security or better availability, often sacrificing one for the other. Before 2018, granting access to third-party vendors and remote workers was a hands-on chore that required multiple touchpoints and tons of cleanup. The city used a VPN client from their firewall provider to set up accounts for vendors and third-party users. They would download and run the software client, input their credentials, and gain full access to the network. However, there were no actual security controls in that tunnel. The only way to keep people from logging in whenever they wanted was to disable the account, which also meant the IT team had to reactivate the account as needed.

Alesund kommune, a Norwegian municipality with a population of 42,982, was using a combination of Windows 2000 server, Linux and BIND to manage its DNS and DHCP. However, the lack of redundancy for DHCP made it impossible to ensure the robustness of the network. The municipality occupies seven of the outer islands in the county of Møre og Romsdal, making it a highly-dispersed environment. Alesund wanted to find a DNS/DHCP solution that would not only eliminate potential network downtime, but would also simplify network management and improve administrator and user productivity while simultaneously decreasing the associated costs of managing its distributed network. The municipality has approximately 3,000 nodes in the network, spread over about 200 different subnets, with most of the clients being Windows and PXE (Pre-Boot Execution Environment) thin clients. With Windows 2000 server, it was impossible to divide all the nodes up into different classes within subnets, which made the system extremely difficult to monitor and manage.

Edeka SouthWest, one of the largest food producers, distributors, and retailers in Germany, was facing challenges with its expanding IT infrastructure. The company's IT department had deployed many devices on the company’s network to keep pace with its expanding ERP system. Each device needed its own IP address. Since the IT team managed IP addresses manually with spreadsheets, the group struggled to keep track of IP data. The company relied heavily on its mission-critical technologies, such as its ERP solution. Any downtime could mean lost customers and revenue. Therefore, the spotlight was squarely focused on the IT department and service desk to ensure that its network always functioned at peak performance, IP address data was always accurate and valid, and systems were always available.

Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe University (HS-OWL) in Germany was facing challenges with its network environment. The university had a limited IPv4 address space and was using an open source tool to document its IP addresses and networks. However, there was no integration between this tool and the university's DNS and DHCP core network services. The management and maintenance of these separate tools were time-consuming for the IT staff. The lack of integration also increased the risk of a network configuration error causing an outage that would directly impact the university's students, faculty, and staff. The university's network encompasses about 10,000 active IP addresses on campus and serves the needs of some 6,000 students and 600 staff. The DNS, DHCP, and IP Address Management (IPAM) solution selected would have to be scalable to support network growth and include a flexible API to enable integration with the university's existing in-house and custom-built network management tools.

The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) is a comprehensive academic health center with nearly 3,000 students, 1,500 teaching staff, and a 750-bed medical center. The university's network spans over 30 remote sites and comprises approximately 30,000 IP addresses. The network must support the diverse needs of both the hospital and university, as well as the intensive demands of medical researchers for online collaboration. The number of IP-connected devices on the network is growing exponentially, including smart phones, tablets, and specialized healthcare devices like wireless IV pumps. In addition, security cameras and door locks that used to be hard-wired are now IP-enabled. To maintain the reliability of the network and better serve its users, MUSC needed an efficient way to manage, automate, and delegate day-to-day network administration tasks.

ProSiebenSat.1 Produktion, a subsidiary of ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, offers comprehensive services for the production and multimedia distribution of TV content. The company was using a rudimentary IP Address Management (IPAM) system that was primarily used for documentation and did not enable consistency checks. The system was outdated and no longer met ProSiebenSat.1 standards. The company was looking for a modern IPAM system that would guarantee improved processes and would be both flexible and upgradable. It was also planned that the group’s existing Windows servers would eventually be integrated into the IPAM system and managed centrally.

TYROLIT, a technology-driven manufacturer and one of the world’s largest producers of grinding, cutting, drilling and dressing tools, as well as machines for the construction industry, experienced a serious crash of its Microsoft DHCP server in January 2010. This crash impacted its operations and caused the company to begin looking for a more resilient, hardware-based DNS and DHCP solution to replace its Microsoft DHCP servers. The company's network spans numerous remote sites worldwide and encompasses some 15,000 IP addresses. Any outage can cause production delays that cost the company money and impact its reputation, which makes DNS/DHCP resiliency and uptime a major concern.

Over the years, University College Dublin (UCD) built its own DDI infrastructure, consisting of BIND DNS and DHCP as well as several Red Hat servers. They also created an in-house IPAM solution that allowed its network team to easily create address ranges and edit IP data. However, the network was growing rapidly and placing more demands on the current system. The growth and increasing demand on the network put pressure on the already-tight resources, and the University did not want to be in a precarious position where its networks management group was stretched too thin. As resources left the team, it was becoming harder and harder to run the in-house solution. It made logical sense to move to a managed commercial DDI project where they had robust expertise and extensive support. In addition, UCD was in the process of upgrading to IPv6. They were operating a dual stack and had IPv6 running on a few test networks. As they looked for a new IPAM product, this was something that had to be addressed.

W&W Informatik, a German IT company, was facing challenges with its previous DDI vendor. The outdated version of the solution they were using had limited functionality, poor data consistency, and major issues handling high volumes of DDNS transactions. These limitations reduced the performance, reliability, and availability of the solution, hindering W&W’s productivity. Periodically, all VOIP phones would reboot causing the solution to fail, resulting in outages of the VOIP infrastructure. W&W’s network is heavily distributed across Germany and with the company’s rapid growth, they must deal with the challenge of offices frequently opening and sometimes closing. Each new office requires the setup of a small network. To support this rapid growth, W&W needed to find a DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management (DDI) solution that would grow with its network. Their network needs have evolved since their legacy solution was initially rolled out – the company’s focus has shifted to private cloud implementation, VMWare automation and server automation – and their solution was no longer able to meet their requirements. Additionally, their previous DDI vendor did not offer the ease of upgrade and support that W&W was looking for.

Cologne Bonn Airport, one of the largest commercial airports in Germany, was facing challenges with its home-grown network. The rapid growth in Wifi connectivity from personal mobile devices and greater use of IP-enabled devices, such as security cameras, dramatically increased network demand. In addition, the airport added many IP-based services to improve the customer experience. With multiple DNS zones, differing technologies, and a segregated network access team, the airport lacked a standardized network configuration or centralized visibility. The airport's network team turned to Axians, a German technology company, for guidance on the project.