??On-Call Life: Issue 02
Welcome back to On-Call Life, your go-to source for all things IT. In this newsletter, I will discuss recent events in general IT, cybersecurity, software development, and other areas. As the summer comes to a close, I think it is important to take a look back at some events in the IT world. So, keep reading this issue to dive into what’s new in the IT industry…
Still Investigating…??
After identifying suspicious activity on September 1st, Transport for London (TfL) has been investigating an ongoing cyberattack that has seriously impacted critical services. Dial-a-Ride – TfL’s free door-to-door transportation service for individuals with disabilities, who cannot use other forms of public transport – was temporarily unable to process new orders, interrupting its services. However, the service is reportedly back up now. In addition, contactless customers cannot access their statements, applications for certain card types have been suspended, and staff have limited access to critical systems and their email, resulting in prolonged delays.
Important Note: While they are still investigating, TfL has not reported the compromise of customer data.?
The lasting effects of this cyber incident highlight the importance of preparation for security events. With customer services down and employees having disrupted business operations, it is clear that teams must have a strong data breach response plan in place that minimizes the impact on their organization and enables them to quickly resolve incidents.?
Check out this blog to see OnPage’s guidelines for developing a data breach incident response plan: https://www.onpage.com/developing-a-data-breach-incident-response-plan/?
I Need to Find Some Free Time?
In a recent survey by Cisco, it was found that over 57% of software developers’ time is spent in meetings resolving performance-related problems instead of focusing on innovation and updates for software applications. Unfortunately, this is oftentimes due to the organization’s lack of full-stack observability tools.?
IT teams require visibility into all of their critical applications and dependencies to successfully maintain performance and swiftly respond to bugs and incidents. But, without the proper tool stack, teams continue to end up in “war room” meetings that just take up everyone’s time and prevent them from fulfilling their daily tasks.
However, the way I see it, even with the greatest observability tools, SRE and ITOps will still be lacking without the proper alerting tools to complement them. Organizations must prioritize solutions that will improve the identification and root cause analyses of potential performance issues. And, by integrating their observability tools with alerting solutions, incident responders can quickly identify issues, ultimately leading to better incident response and more time to discover the root cause of critical events.?
Check out this blog for more monitoring and alerting best practices:?
Meme Corner??
Everytime…
Feature Spotlight?
With our new Microsoft SSO integration, logging into OnPage is now easier and more secure! By leveraging the SAML protocol, you can integrate OnPage with Microsoft Entra, enabling single-click login and eliminating the need to remember multiple passwords.
??Key Benefits:?
Thank you for reading this issue of On-Call Life by Zoe Collins. Comment below what you prefer: This traditional newsletter type of post or last week’s longer-form article with only one subject. Subscribe for more!