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In Cyber Security

Ransomware – A Real and Present Threat at Our Doorstep

By 3 Mins Read

Statistics reveal that ransomware will attack a business, a consumer, or a device every 2 seconds by 2031. And it will cost its victims $265 billion annually.

In the last five years, ransomware attacks have risen by 13% and in the first half of 2022 alone, there were around 236.7 million attacks globally.

These are very distressing numbers. Ransomware is one of the most real and present threats that organizations are facing today.

Ransomware is a type of malware used by threat actors for financial gain. It takes over the victim’s files or systems, and the attacker demands a ransom be paid in exchange for a decryption key, which organization can only hope that will return the files to their original state.

Recently, threat actors have begun to exfiltrate data during a ransomware attack resorting to “double extortion” – to blackmail victim organizations into paying the ransom to avoid having their information posted on leak sites or put up for sale.

LockBit is the world’s fastest and the most stable ransomware since 2019-2020. The LockBit 3.0 ransomware, also known as LockBit Black, operates as Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS). It is an improved version of its previous LockBit 2.0 and other versions.

How does ransomware work?

Threat actors infiltrate the victim organization’s network and find its way onto a device. They then encrypt the files and folders on it.

Threat actors don’t stop there. They execute enumeration activities to spread their reach laterally on to the network and can spread the ransomware from device to device, affecting all computers in a network.

How do threat actors infiltrate?

  • Email links or attachments: The user is sent a phishing email with a malicious link or attachment, which leads to either credential harvesting or the downloading of the ransomware from the file they attach on email.
  • Remote Desk Protocol (RDP): Threat actors exploit publicly available or weak credentials and brute-force or password spray via the RDP protocol to gain access.
  • Virtual Private Network (VPN): Threat actors identify and exploit unsecured and unpatched remote access VPN servers – by exploiting publicly available or weak credentials and brute-force or password spray – to gain access to a network, then distribute malware.

Recommendations to protect your data against ransomware

Identity & Authorization

  • Enforce long and complex passwords.
  • Passwords must be set to avoid dictionary words, patterns, or commonly used passwords.
  • Implement Password Change Cycle and avoid accounts with the option of setting passwords that will never expires.
  • Enforce Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) at every logon attempt.
  • Consider Phishing Resistant MFA.
  • Integrate MFA for all remote access, internet accessible and business email accounts.
  • Periodically audit user accounts with administrative privileges and configure access controls according to the principle of least privilege.
  • Periodically identify unused accounts and delete them.

Network

  • Geo Fence network perimeter – Whitelist the Geo where you operate from. Blacklist the rest.
  • House critical infrastructure on to DMZ
  • Segment networks and disable unused ports.
  • Disable inter VLAN communication or restrict to necessary communication only.
  • Disable any direct external RDP access.

Data Backup & Restoration

  • Maintain offline backups of data.
  • Ensure all backup data is encrypted, immutable (i.e., cannot be altered or deleted).

General Safety Measures

  • Keep all operating systems, software, and firmware up to date.
  • Identify, detect, and investigate abnormal activities and potential lateral movements with an appropriate EDR / XDR tool.
  • Periodically review domain controllers, servers, workstations, and active directories for new and/or unrecognized accounts.
  • Consider adding an email banner to emails received from external organizations or domains.
  • Disable hyperlinks in received emails.
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In Remote Working

Digital Workplace Tech Trends for 2023

By 4 Mins Read

The future of work centers around creating a human-centric digital workplace to accommodate the evolving employee experience requirements. As we discussed in one of our previous blogs, in an effort to foster an employee-centric culture, organizations globally are investing in technologies to enable a productive and secure digital employee experience.

In this turbulent business environment made so by recessions, talent shortage, and the dynamic work models, tech leaders need guidance to make strategic IT decisions. To help them strategize and execute cost-effective digital workplace transformation, Forrester highlights five major digital workplace trends that will become popular in 2023.

Digital Employee Experience (DEX)

According to Forrester, 60% of technology and business leaders indicate that improving employee experience is a top priority for this year. Even with the threat of an upcoming recession, enterprises are determined to focus on DEX, preferably in a cost-effective fashion.

Forrester advises that the recession should not influence organizations to put their DEX investments on the backburner. In fact, tactical DEX improvement with tangible ROI should be the key focus areas.

In a VMware survey, 88% agreed that the ease with which they can find and install the right apps needed for work is a most critical factor in ensuring a great digital experience. 83% voted for flexibility in anywhere working as another important factor. Digital workplace technologies like Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) can help organizations implement a human-centric and employee-focused culture.

Proactive Experience Management

Since DEX is the driving force behind digital workplace transformation, proactive IT support will receive a lot of attention in the coming years. There is a need to proactively detect and solve IT-related issues to improve employee experience. This not only improves DEX but also has the capacity to reduce cost.

Since the right data is the key component in getting the right insights, data from end user touch points will be a valuable asset. System-driven analytics such as incident correlation can save massive amount of time and energy for workers while also improving their end user experience.

Digital Workplace Vendor Consolidation

When the world got serious about hybrid and remote working, vendors came together to simplify digital workplace portfolios with app integration in platforms that made end user experience easier. This trend will see more acceleration in 2023 and beyond.

Forrester predicts greater integration between EUEM (end user experience management) platforms and AIOps tools. Since DEX can improve drastically with simplified apps availability and accessibility, there will be investments made in digital workplace vendor consolidation.

Personalized Digital Workplace

A huge part of enhancing employee experience is personalizing their digital workplace environment. According to Gartner, audience segmentation capabilities will enable the delivery of targeted and personalized data and apps into employee interfaces. This will equip each employee with their own highly individualized digital workplaces, which not only enhances their experience but skyrockets their productivity too.

With digital workplaces personalized for each employee persona, the time and effort spent will inevitably reduce and this user customization will drastically bring down IT issues.

Transition from SLA to XLA

The traditional metrics of success like open rates, content views, and client-specific SLAs on up-time are set to change, says Forrester. As the focus shifts to DEX, these metrics will be centered more on employees and their experiences – SLAs transitioning to XLAs. These XLAs can range from device performance to app accessibility to lesser downtime to something as broad as digital onboarding processes.

While CSAT is one of the most trusted DEX metrics, organizations will need to go deeper on to a micro-level and measure the experience of each end user, instead of the client average. While SLA measures the output of IT, XLAs will measure the outcome of IT. While SLAs focus primarily on measuring the processes, XLAs will focus on the value added and the productivity of the services delivered.

Measuring DEX must be a regular and ongoing task that encompasses device and app performance. Quantifying DEX through set XLAs will go a long way in creating an employee-centric digital workplace.

To Sum Up

Implementing anywhere working has evolved in just a matter of two years, with the focus shifting from utilitarian to experiential. Focusing on DEX while strategizing your digital workplace transformation is a smart way of ensuring both employee productivity as well as achieving business goals.
The trends we discussed work well as a roadmap to setting up a highly effective digital workplace and successfully managing DEX.

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In Customer success and growth

How Anunta Helped a Leading BPM Service Provider in Their Strategic Growth and Expansion

By 5 Mins Read

Delivering great client experiences requires industry expertise and focused strategies. But when the industries you serve span across healthcare, finance, edtech, banking, and a lot more, ensuring great experiences for your clients is no longer straightforward.

One of our oldest customers, a global business process management service provider, is one such organization that excels at simplifying complex business processes of clients across industry.

Committed to elevating their clients’ experiences at every interaction, the BPO partnered with Anunta in 2011, a journey that continues to this day.

Building a Flexible Workplace with Desktop Virtualization

One of the very first customers of Anunta, when they entered the BPO industry, they wanted to reduce the dependency on their local IT team and create a highly flexible workplace for their workforce. We helped them adopt desktop and server virtualization, starting with a pilot of 500 users being migrated to a centralized virtual infrastructure. This successful desktop virtualization adoption enabled their workforce to work from any branch on any device to provide uninterrupted support to their clients.

With a distributed IT infrastructure and multiple in-house teams, vendors, and geographically distributed employees, the BPO giant wanted a cost-effective means of remotely managing their IT landscape, the rising cost of which was becoming a global concern. Partnering with Anunta, they were able to reduce this cost by an incredible 40%. Added to this, they were able to enhance user productivity and user experience with the increase in uptime that was a result of our proactive monitoring tool, EuVantage.

Adopting New Technologies to Ensure Superior Client Experience

With evolving client requirements and expectations, the business process management service provider had to adapt seamlessly to the new technologies and leverage them efficiently to ensure superior client experiences. IT outage was not a luxury they could afford in their commitment to provide only the best to their clients.

One of the major projects we partnered with them in 2017 was migrating their telephony platform across two sites from one vendor to another. Anunta’s pivotal role in identifying the right vendor and providing the best support during implementation played a significant role in helping the BPO leader deliver and follow through with their client commitments.

By the end of 2017, Anunta was managing close to 15,000 end points for our customer.

Consolidating Core Data Centers and Enabling Technology Integration

The growth of our customer was exponential since inception. Their strategic organizational goals involved multiple acquisitions, which led to complex IT management. In a bid to simplify their IT management, once again, Anunta was their trusted partner.

In 2018, we helped them consolidate their different data centers to enable centralized management of their disparate IT. Consolidating multiple data centers into one streamlined the customer’s IT administration and reduced infrastructure costs.

A few of the acquired companies had proprietary business applications and legacy IT infrastructure. Anunta undertook an end-to-end technology migration project, ensuring a reliable, modern IT infrastructure to better serve the needs of the end users and clients.

By the time we closed 2018, Anunta was handling more than 22,000 end points for our customer.

Setting Up New Centers and Expanding Their Cloud Presence

In their era of business expansion, our customer had to set up new centers to accommodate additional headcount. Once again, they teamed up with Anunta in their expansion activities, with our team of experts providing design and capacity management to ensure that they achieve TCO benefits with the new centers.

With the growing business, the maintenance and management of their on-prem infrastructure was tedious, time-consuming, and expensive. Accessing heavy business applications over the existing network clogged bandwidth, which meant that business continuity activities would take a hit. So, when the customer wanted to move their workload from on-prem to cloud to modernize their legacy servers and refresh their technology, Anunta once again rose to the challenge to transform employee experience across locations.

Anunta architected a secure end-to-end managed solution and migrated virtual machines for more than 1000 users and 200 servers.

When 2022 ended, Anunta was managing more than 35,000 end points for the customer.

The Business Outcomes from the Engagement Though Numbers

With 99.95% availability of business-critical applications, the customer was able to achieve a 90% customer satisfaction score.

The customer also experienced an 18% improvement in infrastructure and services which increased agent productivity. Added to this, they recorded 35% reduction in infra and telecom management cost and 30% reduction in capex.

If you’re interested in learning more about our partnership with one of the leading business process management service providers and how we played a part in their growth story, check out the customer success stories below.

Creating a Next-gen Digital Workplace for a Healthcare Business Process Management Services Provider
Facilitating large scale Cloud Migration for a leading Business Process Management Provider
Transforming End User Experience for a Global BPM Provider
Simplifying Business Continuity & Resiliency for a Global BPM Provider
Leveraging Azure Cloud for a Leading Business Process Solutions Provider to Boost User Experience and Business Agility

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In DaaS

The New Future of Work is Employee Centric

By 5 Mins Read

When we resorted to remote working in 2020, we believed it to be a short-time fad brought on by sheer necessity. Now, from the poorly planned work-from-home strategies of two years ago to the thriving hybrid work model that has recently emerged, the way we work has gone through a swift evolution.

The first couple of years post-pandemic focused on workplace digitization to ensure a secure and collaborative means of working. From 2020 to the end of 2022, the will-we-won’t-we tug-of-war between remote/hybrid working and return to office kept the business world focused primarily on employee productivity.

But it’s 2023 now, and this focus too, seems to have shifted. For the first time since the five-day working week was implemented due to the growing unrest among the labor force almost a century before, employee requirements have become the driving force behind deciding the future of work.

What’s New in Today’s Digital Workplace?

Enhancing employee experience through a human-centric digital workplace is the talk of the town since the beginning of the new year. In fact, The Future of Work 2023 Report by Infosys says that from 2022 to 2024, businesses have been focusing on automation, and adoption of digital tools to create a digital workplace in an effort to foster a human-centric culture.

The report says that an overwhelming 73% of senior executives and managers surveyed said that flexible and remote workplaces will grow in the future and 41% of the companies said they are planning to increase remote working hires in the next 2 years.

In the last 2 years, we saw that remote working improves talent onboarding since the blurring of geographical boundaries brings more employee flexibility. And the hybrid model does wonders with employee retention. This is one of the main reasons why Forrester Predictions 2023 warns leaders that forcing employees back to the office will meet with “disastrous results”. It says that undoing hybrid and remote working will result in a loss of productivity.

Set against this context, organizations are faced with the most obvious choice – adopt digital workplace technologies with the goal to improve employee experience.

Digital Workplace Technologies that Improve Employee Experience

The Gartner 2023-2024 Tech Adoption Roadmap for Infrastructure & Operations says that there will be a 14% increase in the adoption of digital workplace technologies from the period 2021-2023 to 2022-2024. This increase will be driven primarily by the need to ensure a great digital employee experience.

The Gartner report validates this rise in percentage with some employee experience statistics. Employees expressing satisfaction are 60% more likely to stay with the organization and are 69% more likely to be high performers.

This data becomes even more crucial in the face of one of today’s biggest business challenges – scarcity in talent, an aspect we discussed in detailed in one of our recent whitepapers.

Among the digital workplace technologies already deployed by organizations, Gartner says, 60% improves speed and agility, and 40% enhances employee experience.

It also says, Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) is already a favorite among CIOs and IT decision-makers as it is a high value, low risk technology.

How DaaS Enhances Digital Employee Experience

With employee experience being a critical factor for business success, it is a priority for organizations to invest in digital workplace technologies like DaaS, which invariably provides a high return on investments.

DaaS addresses employee experience challenges in many ways, from providing remote access to business applications to ensuring minimum downtime. With DaaS, employees get the support to remain productive without loss in effort or time, without the risk of data breach or loss.

A few ways that DaaS empowers employees:

  • Onsite and offsite employees are constantly connected to the virtual infrastructure because DaaS enables working from anywhere.
  • By providing a virtual workplace on even their personal devices, DaaS ensures that any personal applications installed on the device are well and truly separated from critical business applications.
  • The IT team can monitor all virtual machines from anywhere and perform software updates and maintenance remotely, which means that employees don’t lose time waiting for IT support.
  • If any device the employee is working on malfunctions or become inaccessible, all they have to do is switch to another device. Their data and applications are device agnostic, and thus, accessible from anywhere.
  • Employees do not have to worry about corporate data theft or loss even if their device gets stolen. DaaS comes with concrete security, and nothing is saved locally.

(Learn more from our COO, Maneesh Raina, as he explores in detail how DaaS ensures great end user experience.)

The future of work is employee centric. As we make the shift to a human-centric digital workplace that is driven largely by employee expectations, organizations must realign their IT strategies with a fresh perspective. The workplace of the future is not about numbers but more about experiences. And with digital workplace technologies like DaaS, which provides the ideal infrastructure for seamless operations, organizations can ensure that these experiences are both meaningful and repeatable.

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In Customer Experience

Anunta’s Net Promoter Score of 74 and What it Means

By 5 Mins Read

Customer commitment is the most critical aspect to focus on to achieve product excellence and deliver customer value. In fact, a customer-centric approach to product design and delivery is crucial to its success.

Over the last 10 years, Anunta has been leading the Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) market, delivering value and excellence in our customers’ virtualization journeys. While our custom-built innovative DaaS products have our customers at the center, this approach doesn’t end at the product design stage. Customer centricity is at the core of everything we do – from product design to delivery to support.

Yes, we are proud of the fact that outstanding customer experience is one of the key drivers of our success and growth. But how do we measure the success of our customer commitment? How do we ensure we are on the right path in our customer initiatives and engagements?

Measuring Anunta’s Customer Happiness through Our Net Promoter Score (NPS)

As a data-driven organization, Anunta relies on different metrics to analyze the success of our customer endeavors like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey results. Conducted quarterly, our NPS surveys have been telling us how happy our customers are – with an amazing score of 74.

To understand why this score is happy news for Anunta, it is important to understand what NPS survey is and what it measures.

NPS is the gold standard of customer experience and happiness metrics. It measures the loyalty of customers to a brand or organization and does so with just one question.

“How likely are you to recommend Anunta/Anunta’s products to a friend or colleague?”

Customers are requested to choose a rating from 0 to 10, 0 being “highly unlikely” and 10 being “extremely likely”. Depending on their response, customers are categorized into three:

  • Promoters: Those who rate 9 or 10 are typically extremely loyal to the brand and can be trusted with spreading the word in their circle. They are our brand evangelists.
  • Passives: Those who respond with a score of 7 or 8 will most likely be satisfied with our products but they won’t be enthusiastic enough to evangelize us.
  • Detractors: Those who score between 0 and 6 are extremely unhappy with our products and services and may end up discouraging others from being our customers.

NPS calculation is simple – ignore the passives and subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.

For example, if 20% of respondents are detractors, 10% are passives, and 70% are promoters, then your NPS is:
70 (promoters) – 20 (detractors) = 50

While any positive NPS is good (which means there are more happy customers than indifferent and unhappy ones), most B2B tech companies score somewhere in 20s or 30s. It’s a very good score, no doubt, which is why Anunta’s 74 is an extremely impressive number.

Adding the Anunta Edge to Customer Experience

So how did we end up with this fantastic score? Our customer-first approach to all processes ensures that from delivery to support, the product and services are driven by our customer’s requirements.

  • Customer-centric product design: Anunta’s DaaS products are highly customized and uniquely tailored to customer requirements. They can be seamlessly integrated into the customer’s existing IT tools and processes, ensuring that their IT team doesn’t have to spare extra efforts.
  • Consumption-based pricing: Our pay-as-you-go model ensures user-based pricing, eliminating the need for capital expenditure. Moreover, it also helps customers scale up or down easily based on their requirements.
  • Proactive day 2 support: Committed to helping our customers build more agile, secure, and reliable desktop infrastructures, our end-to-end post implementation support ensures that customers can focus on using their virtual desktops to improve workforce agility and productivity, without having to worry about their infrastructure management and maintenance.
  • Dedicated Customer Experience Manager: Our CEM acts as the SPOC for all business and technical requirements, SLA reviews and deliveries, improving customer experience, and identifying opportunities of growth.

With end-to-end management of the customer’s virtual environment, Anunta ensures that IT leaders and their teams can focus on effectively driving their digital transformation strategies to further their business goals rather than be bogged down by infrastructure management and operations.

As an affirmation to our commitment to our customer-first approach, Anunta became a pioneer in the DaaS market to earn the prestigious “Customer First” badge from Gartner Peer Insights, earlier in 2022.

Recently, Anunta also won the CIO CHOICE 2023 award in the Desktop-as-a-Service category, making us the most trusted brand in the DaaS market. CIOs and ICT leaders nominated and voted for Anunta as their most preferred technology provider based on their own experience of working with us. Winning the CIO CHOICE Award elevates our position as a market leader in DaaS and showcases our strong customer focus.

The 5-star rating from our customers on Gartner Peer Insights and the CIO CHOICE 2023 award win, together with our impressive NPS of 74 distinguish us from other DaaS providers, ensure that when it comes to a customer-centric approach to engagements, Anunta leads the way.

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In DaaS

Navigating Today’s Uncertain Business Environment with DaaS

By 5 Mins Read

IT leaders have to navigate a sea of challenges in today’s cloudy business environment.

Inflationary pressures make it difficult for businesses to acquire critical IT infrastructure. Companies struggle to hire and retain skilled IT personnel. As organizations actively accelerate their digital and cloud transformation strategies, maintaining digital and technological sovereignty is a massive priority. Added to these, data security and compliance in the face of persistent cyberattacks and strict regulatory laws has become more important than ever.

In short, executive and IT managers must figure out how to meet ever-increasing operational and security requirements with less budget, reduced staff, and lower levels of certainty about the immediate future.

Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) can become an important tool to address these challenges. Rapidly becoming a mainstream technology, a fully managed DaaS platform can help businesses attain cost-effectiveness, ease the workload of their IT teams, and ensure data security and compliance.

What is DaaS and how does it work?

DaaS is a desktop computing infrastructure that uses virtual machines to deliver desktop sessions to end users. All virtual desktops and applications are hosted in the cloud, and nothing resides locally.

DaaS makes it possible to deploy virtual desktop sessions quickly, and DaaS infrastructure can scale to support hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of individual users. That’s why businesses across a range of industries – such as healthcare, finance, insurance, professional services, and business process management – are turning to DaaS to:

  • Support remote or hybrid workers.
  • Reduce IT spending through pay-as-you-go pricing models.
  • Enhance data and application security.
  • Increase agility.

How DaaS improves reliability under inflationary pressures

A slowdown in global economic growth, inflation, and IT product costs have significantly increased the financial pressure for organizations across the globe. Most companies likely have less budget to support IT initiatives or maintenance operations. IT leaders now face tremendous pressure to do more with less budget, and are faced with the need to find innovative ways to maximize the ROI of existing IT investments while also making changes that reduce overall IT costs.

DaaS provides enhanced reliability during times of inflation as organizations can launch as many virtual desktops as they need, quickly and easily, without having to rely on hardware procurement. Virtual desktops also provide hassle-free de-provisioning as opposed to traditional desktops, resulting in zero wastage in idle hardware.

The pay-as-you-go subscription model saves cost while ensuring easy scalability – a feature that holds value while organizations gear up to weather the upcoming inflation.

How DaaS overcomes staffing shortages

The competitive hiring market has made it difficult for many IT organizations to hire and retain skilled engineers. Once consequence of IT staffing shortages is that IT teams may no longer be able to maintain the same level of inhouse operations that they traditionally have been doing. Engineers are stretched thinner, leaving less time to spend on work like patching and updating critical systems. The lack of skilled personnel may mean cutting corners when it comes to IT management and support operations.

DaaS helps overstretched IT teams do more with fewer personnel. Instead of desktop support, IT teams can focus on new digitization projects, such as cloud, automation, and data analytics.

With DaaS, IT engineers no longer have to worry about servicing or updating physical desktops. They can rely on DaaS providers to manage their virtual PC infrastructure.

How DaaS enhances security to ensure digital sovereignty

Digital sovereignty is the concept that the data collected and stored in a country is subject to the data laws and governance of that country. Any violation of these regulations will result in massive damages in cost and brand name for organizations.

When it comes to their data, especially sensitive customer data, organizations must have complete control and visibility on where it is stored, how it is used, and who has access to it. Data security (with access control and insulation against cyber threats) and regulatory compliance (varying across the industry) are becoming more challenging daily.

With DaaS, businesses never have to worry that the loss or theft of devices will expose sensitive data. They can also centrally monitor all desktop environments to detect signs of security breaches, and they can harden systems against unauthorized access using techniques like multi-factor authentication.

DaaS also helps organizations ensure compliance and avoid legal risks by giving them complete control over their data.

Anunta’s DaaS value proposition

While DaaS offers clear and distinct benefits of particular value for IT organizations today, the challenge that IT leaders sometimes encounter is the difficulty of getting started with DaaS.

Building a virtual desktop infrastructure from scratch requires a significant investment of staff time and financial resources, both of which are scarce in the typical business today.

Anunta offers a simpler approach. Our fully automated Vendor-Defined DaaS, deploys a new virtual desktop environment in a matter of hours and helps scale up or down easily based on requirements. An enterprise-ready virtual desktop solution, Managed DaaS is not only highly customized and uniquely tailored to enterprise IT requirements, but it also seamlessly integrates existing IT tools and processes, ensuring next to no disruption for the IT staff.

With the end-to-end management of the customer’s virtual environment, Anunta’s DaaS ensures that IT leaders and CXOs can focus more on their digital transformation priorities rather than IT infrastructure and operations, effectively furthering their core business goals.

This is a summary of our Gartner Analyst-validated whitepaper titled “Leveraging DaaS to Thrive in Today’s Cloudy Business Environment”. Download the whitepaper to understand more on why DaaS is the best solution to weather the stormy waters of today’s business.

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In CSR Initiatives

Daan Utsav: Anunta’s Festival of Giving

By 4 Mins Read

During the Festival of Lights this year, Anunta celebrated a festival of its own.

As part of our CSR policy, Anunta is committed to giving back to the community and making a tangible difference in the lives of the underprivileged. The many CSR initiatives planned at Anunta are driven by the belief that even the smallest of gestures can make the biggest difference because we have the strength of numbers. Collective action from all Anunta employees has been the biggest force behind the success of each of these initiatives.

In the spirit of Diwali, we decided to spread love, happiness, and joy among the less fortunate as part of our CSR initiatives. Anunta organized ‘Daan Utsav,’ our very own festival of giving. In this two-week-long donation drive across our offices in Mumbai, Chennai, and Bangalore, we urged our colleagues to donate clothes, books, and toys to those in need.

In the two weeks that followed, we received overwhelming response from as our colleagues enthusiastically made their donations.

Why Daan Utsav?

We organized Daan Utsav because the idea of having our own festival of giving aligned well with both our CSR policy as well as the auspicious time of Diwali.

We have been organizing Daan Utsav annually and the response from our colleagues has always been inspiring. It falls under our “Joy of Giving” CSR initiative that is focused entirely on helping the underprivileged through financial and domestic resources.

Daan Utsav was conceptualized to help each employee in Anunta to experience the joy of giving. A drive like this where everyone openly participates helps us induct new employees into the “giving experience”. It also instils a sense of belonging in them, being part of a large corporate initiative with very tangible results.

A word about our partner, Goonj

For Daan Utsav, we partnered with Goonj, an NGO that undertakes disaster relief, humanitarian aid, and community development in 23 states across India. Headquartered in New Delhi, Goonj channels unused materials in urban homes to remote villages, distributing them among the deserving. They have built a strong, successful network of communities from urban to rural India, channelizing crucial and basic resources like clothes, food, books, etc. to address the gaps in education and livelihood.

Goonj’s model of development bridges the gap between the urban and rural communities, while creating a more inclusive and involved economy.

Goonj was the ideal partner for us in our Daan Utsav, as they source under-utilized resources from urban homes as tools for rural development, helping the less fortunate to live with dignity. Our collections through Daan Utsav would become crucial tools in building a comfortable life for the deserving.

The inspiring success of Daan Utsav

Daan Utsav was a tremendous success. At the end of two weeks, we collected over 100 boxes of clothes, toys, and books across all locations. Our HR team visited the Goonj offices in all three locations to hand over the donations, which will later be distributed across rural India by our very able partner.

Anunta has a very strong HR policy that is committed towards the upliftment of the underprivileged in our society. Daan Utsav is a great example how dedicated we are as an organization to put all our CSR plans into action.

“The Anunta Daan Utsav initiative was launched on October 2 with a simple request to our colleagues. Do you have any clothes, books, or toys that you would like to donate?” says Amar Salvi, our SVP of HR and Training. “The response from our colleagues across locations was prompt and in just a few days, the boxes were overflowing!”

“I am glad that we could collectively make a difference to the underprivileged through this association with Goonj,” Amar adds. “Looking forward to many such drives in 2023.”

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In DaaS

How DaaS Eases IT Hardware Challenges in the Manufacturing Industry

By 4 Mins Read

“36% of manufacturing enterprises realize above average business value from IT spending in digitalization when compared with peers,” says a Gartner report on how advanced manufacturing companies are now capitalizing on the latest technology trends to drive value.

One of these technology tools that has been adding consistent value to manufacturing businesses is Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS). In fact, the need for cost-effective digital transformation is already driving the industry towards desktop virtualization. The desktop virtualization market in manufacturing is expected to register a CAGR of 9.3% over the forecast period of 2021 – 2026.

A crucial advantage that DaaS brings in for the manufacturing industry is the massive time saving in device procurement and the subsequent cost saving. Manufacturing businesses heavily rely on devices with high-end specifications for their graphics professionals to develop CAD models and complex engineering simulations. These specifications vary based on project requirements, which is where the long road to hardware procurement begins. With DaaS, this road becomes much shorter.

How does DaaS tackle the IT hardware challenges in the manufacturing industry?

Anunta recently helped one of India’s leading steel manufacturing companies in addressing the twin challenges of time and cost involved in device procurement for their graphics team.

The customer had multiple projects which depended on devices with high-end graphics specifications. While the smooth execution of the project relied on these end user devices, there were multiple challenges associated with it.

One was the massive amount of time spent on device procurement. Because of the highly specific hardware configurations, this followed a long process that involved understanding the specifications, inviting bids from OEMs, finalizing the brand, procuring the end user device, installing the required software, and shipping the device to the end user. The average time taken for device procurement and deployment was a minimum of 6 weeks.

Apart from the time and cost involved in device procurement, another challenge lay in de-provisioning the device at the completion of the project. Since each project came with varying hardware specifications, device repurposing was a rare scenario, resulting in idle resources.

Anunta was able to help mitigate these challenges by moving the manufacturer to a DaaS infrastructure, specifically Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD). By leveraging AVD, we reduced the time taken for device procurement from 6 weeks to just 3 days, even with the high-end specifications. Moreover, we could also ensure hassle-free de-provisioning of virtual machines after project completion, resulting in zero wastage in the form of idle hardware.

The customer also benefitted from a subscription-based model, saving cost, and ensuring easy scalability.

Overall, Anunta was able to improve application availability dramatically with no major IT incidents, ensuring seamless and reliable manufacturing operations and processes.

What are the other benefits that DaaS offers the manufacturing industry?

  • Empowering a distributed workforce: DaaS provides seamless and secure access to real-time data, enhancing workforce efficiency and employee autonomy.
  • Centralizing all data: With data stored in a centralized platform, all stakeholders can access and share data. There’s also minimal risk of data loss as device failure has no impact on the centrally saved data.
  • Enhancing security and compliance: Leading cloud platforms are compliant to all regulatory standards.
  • Improving business agility and continuity: Seamless access to data and applications helps the workforce stay active during crises.

How does DaaS boost the growth of manufacturing businesses?

By eliminating the need to invest heavily in purchasing, maintaining, and upgrading hardware, DaaS contributes directly to the growth of the business. With no major infrastructural constraints, the money can be rightfully invested in other crucial operations for growth and market expansion.

There’s also the hidden advantage that DaaS brings in by enabling businesses in their ESG priorities by reducing carbon footprint and energy consumption. With a large-scale environment involving multiple plants and high-powered equipment, this is one advantage of DaaS that manufacturing businesses can truly leverage.

The manufacturing industry, that has long been tied down because of its massive fleet of on-premises equipment, impeding its digital transformation, can now adapt to the changing times. By simplifying its IT infrastructure and desktop management and eliminating security and cost concerns, DaaS has the potential to effectively boost the digital workplace transformation strategies of manufacturing businesses.

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How to Ensure Great End User Experience with DaaS

By 5 Mins Read

It’s no secret that happy workers are better workers – although if you want proof, check out what IDC says about how a positive employee experience breeds positive customer experiences.

Yet, it has become harder than ever for IT departments to keep workers happy. With more and more employees working remotely, ensuring that workers have access to the computing infrastructure, software, and support services they need to remain productive has become a core challenge for IT teams across the world.

One way to address this challenge is to embrace Desktop-as-a-Service, or DaaS. Because DaaS eliminates many of the friction points separating employees from a positive experience in using IT systems, DaaS helps workers to feel engaged and supported – even when they aren’t physically in the office.

Let me explain by elaborating on the user-experience issues that plague many workforces today, and how DaaS helps solve them.

The role of end-user computing in employee experience

In many respects, desktop computers are the essential link between employees and the companies they work for. No matter which role they play in the business or which systems they need to access, employees rely on desktop computers as their portals into the rest of the organization.

For that reason, desktop computers that result in a clunky experience can easily lead to underproductive, under-engaged, and demoralized employees. And the risks have only become greater as more employees have shifted to hybrid and remote work models since 2020.

Not only are situations like these bad for the business because they reduce productivity and increase the burden placed on IT teams. They’re also bad for employees, who are likely to become frustrated with their jobs and feel under-valued by their employers when they run into desktop computing issues that get in the way of their work.

Let’s also look at some of the most mundane yet significant limitations of traditional desktops:

  • Flexibility and mobility: Perhaps one of the most severe restrictions traditional desktops place on their users is the complete lack of mobility. We are talking about one cumbersome device placed in one location, entrusted with securing all data.
  • Data loss: Any corruption or damage to the hardware can result in the corruption or loss of data, making its recovery a near-impossibility.
  • New software rollouts: In a traditional desktop environment, new software rollouts have to be done using third-party tools, which do not guarantee 100% compliance on day 1.
  • Maintenance: Physical desktops – hardware and software – have to be updated and maintained regularly. Desktops may need hardware upgrades and replacements every 3 to 5 years. Operating Systems and software need regular updates for bug fix and security compliance. This maintenance becomes a challenging task in remote and hybrid working environments.
  • User experience: While high-end configurations tend to give a better user experience, others not so much. As physical desktops get older, the lower configurations and the age of the hardware contribute to slower performance, resulting in mediocre user experience.

Added to this, there is the very real threat of data loss associated with hardware failure. According to research, hardware failure contributes to 35% of data loss in organizations. If employees have to look over their shoulder everytime they handle a piece of corporate equipment for fear of damage or loss, it will not create a very happy work situation.

How DaaS supercharges employee experience

By using DaaS, businesses can virtually eliminate the risk that end-user computing problems like those described above will harm the employee experience.

With DaaS, on-site and offsite employees are constantly connected by default to the systems that they need to be productive. So, there is never a risk that employees won’t be able to access critical business resources or install the applications they require.

DaaS also ensures that the desktop environments employees work from are lean and mean. Any “cruft” that employees install on local devices remains isolated from virtual desktops, so it won’t slow down business critical applications.

IT support, too, is much faster and more efficient when employees have access to virtual desktops. The IT team can monitor and connect to virtual desktop environments from anywhere, without having to worry about how employees’ home networks are configured. They can access the virtual desktop that the employee uses, since it’s hosted in a server, to perform any maintenance activity like software updates, and operating system patching. Additionally, a VDI environment allows seamless software rollouts with a guaranteed 100% compliance from day 1 for every user.

And, in the event that the devices that employees use to connect to virtual desktops break down, they can simply switch to a different device in order to work around hardware issues. Since all of the data, applications and settings that workers need are stored in the virtual desktop environment, it doesn’t matter which device they use to connect.

Added to these advantages, DaaS provides the freedom to work from anywhere with its location and device-agnostic infrastructure. This mobility is reinforced by the iron-clad security it provides, making data theft or corruption a non-issue for end users.

These benefits are from a digital employee experience perspective. For employers, DaaS empowers their hybrid workspace in other ways:

  • It provides a secure hybrid workspace by eliminating the primary source of danger: insecure PCs.
  • By creating a seamless work experience for employees, DaaS enhances higher productivity and workforce scalability.
  • DaaS addresses all challenges in hybrid work by ensuring data security, network security, and software security.

DaaS: A win for workers and businesses alike

Put simply, DaaS helps to ensure that desktop computing infrastructure becomes a vector for employee efficiency and engagement, rather than a roadblock that separates workers from the business resources they need to do their jobs well. By delivering a smoother end-user computing experience, virtual desktops keep employees happy, while also protecting the needs of the business as a whole.

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Ransomware in Healthcare: How to Mitigate Risks With DaaS

By 8 Mins Read

The healthcare sector has been grappling with looming cyber security challenges over the last several years. Healthcare records offer a high-value target for cybercriminals looking to make quick money on the dark web or initiate more focused attacks. Additionally, with lives potentially at stake, caregivers become increasingly vulnerable to disruptive digital acts, including healthcare ransomware attacks.

Healthcare institutes generate tons of data containing confidential and valuable insights. As the industry switches from paper and documents to a digitized setting, the attack surface keeps on expanding. With data being one of the critical pillars, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and desktop as a service (DaaS) are earning good word among caregivers and patients alike.

Fear that critical patient information is always on the line? Keeping up with regulatory changes seems a challenging task? VDI solutions tackle these pressing issues with their innovative security offerings.

In fact, they are silently but rapidly becoming a potential weapon in the cyber security armory against ransomware attacks in healthcare. Ironically, data security and privacy have been a primary tight spot for organizations that delayed their migration to DaaS and VDI solutions. But now, the same leading-edge desktop virtualization technologies are finding use in identifying and combating cybercrimes.

This article explains how healthcare settings can profit from the security benefits of DaaS and VDI services.

Secure Healthcare VDI images

Creating an efficient image implies providing a lightweight VDI solution. Healthcare environments are characterized by numerous divisions in a mix. Hence, building the correct image for each domain is vital. For instance:

  • Executive staff (persistent image)
  • Labs and healthcare contractors (pooled image)
  • Department-based employees (both persistent and pooled images)

Each of these images will have its respective stack of policies focused on the end users. Accordingly, healthcare IT can deliver applications through user cohorts, and these images can remain light and clean.
By designing secure master golden images, IT admins can define updates to a single master image (in the respective division) and update that instance. Based on that, a reboot cycle for all the secondary images pointing to the master will make way for updates. Such management helps streamline a controlled VDI deployment.

Avoid Downtime during Crises

Like any other industry, downtime also translates to a loss of business in healthcare too. During system downtime, medical practitioners cannot respond to patient complaints, follow up on leads, or deliver care.
In healthcare, more than money is at risk. If computer systems are suspended, staff cannot book emergency appointments, and doctors and nurses cannot confirm medications or procedure timings. Eventually, lives are on the line.

During natural disasters such as a fire outbreak or floods, paper documents could get lost, compromised, or tattered. If the equipment has sustained damages, medical records saved on-premise might also get lost. Computers can freeze amidst a task, resulting in unsaved documents and lost progress.

DaaS keeps healthcare records in independent, centralized servers in real-time. As such, the odds of data loss with onsite files or hard copies reduce when medical staff save information on the cloud.

Besides, VDI solves general problems, such as load balancing, which often leads to standstills. If a single server fails to manage a process, DaaS vendors distribute the demand over multiple servers, ensuring healthcare institutes do not short-circuit during peak times.

Stricter Authorization to Avert Ransomware in Healthcare

An inquiry revealed that a Huntington Hospital (the US) employee grabbed the records of 13,000 patients without access permission. The now-former employee has been convicted of a criminal HIPAA offense. Worse, the hospital had to provide one-year complimentary identity theft protection services as prevention.

In most healthcare ransomware attacks, security loopholes occur from internal sources, including disgruntled workers or contractors who want to access the systems for vested interests. To avoid critical medical records from falling into the hands of suspicious people, healthcare needs more than a simple password approach. Simply put, a comprehensive VDI role-based access control (RBAC) matrix.
DaaS-based RBAC grants resource access to medical staff on a need-to-use basis according to their roles at the healthcare facility. This approach to identity and access management (IAM) allows only those with valid reasons to log into the virtual servers without compromising patient privacy.

Those with permission to use virtual desktops will require approval via digital certificates, biometrics interaction, or multi-factor authentication (MFA) before accessing relevant data to perform their duties.

Data Encryption as an Additional Security Layer

Private sensitive details, including protected health information (PHI) and electronic health records (EHR), are among the popular prizes for threat actors. Therefore, the guidelines for caregivers analyzing patients’ data entail stringent data protection requirements that come with hefty fines if not fulfilled.

Perimeter security approaches, such as firewalls, to strengthen the cyber security fabric are no longer capable enough to thwart today’s healthcare ransomware attacks. Complementing them with VDI’s data encryption feature is a must in a layered approach to data security.

Whenever EHRs float across multiple systems, their confidentiality and integrity become vulnerable to various risks – Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks, accidental exposure, and insider threats. Encrypting them in transit, mostly via the transport layer security (TLS) protocol, protects from many of these cyber risks.

Encryption encodes EHRs and PHI in such a way that only legitimate users can access them. It denies unauthorized third parties who do not have the required decryption key from reading or modifying classified information. In other words, even if a would-be interceptor physically nabs a server with encrypted information, that data remains completely undecipherable without the correct secret key.

Encryption does not guarantee the integrity of PHI – at rest and in transit. That said, as data is in constant evolution, healthcare settings can leverage it to check their backup integrity.

Frequent Security Patches and Updates

Unpatched software is among the primary reasons behind ransomware attacks in healthcare globally. Network threats are continuously evolving as malicious actors keep innovating their intrusion tactics. Cybercriminals often exploit critical security holes only a few hours after a software’s public launch. For small- and medium-scale healthcare centers, keeping software updated without triggering serious operation disturbances is challenging.

As such, regular software and app updates are crucial to boost the protection of confidential resources from potential healthcare ransomware attacks. Conventional IT security models do not execute timely updates or as often as necessary, thus exposing healthcare data and networks to digital intrusions.

DaaS vendors regularly install patches for their clients (healthcare settings), who can continue leveraging the cloud services without operational downtime. This reduces their chances of becoming victims of ransomware and saves them time in the process. When the staff reside in remote locations, VDI software solutions help ensure all employees are up-to-date and remain productive.

Secure Data Access from a Single Location

Moving healthcare data to DaaS allows medical staff to accumulate diverse databases in a single place. No doubt, the bulk of patients’ data is safeguarded. However, saving them in multiple sources – hard drives, spreadsheets, and hard copies – keeps petty items, such as a post-surgery note or a prescription, at the risk of getting misplaced or lost.

Storing medical records in a DaaS infrastructure opens new avenues for data management and integration (DMI) protocols. DMI is a complicated and evolving area. Simply put, it incorporates procedures and policies that companies implement to ensure that the right people have timely access to accurate information.

For hospitals and clinics, having plain and updated records is paramount before service providers shift or merge them with other data. If errors occur, for instance, in medical histories, patient details, prescriptions, or financial information, the healthcare institute can end up draining piles of cash and public backlash. Not to mention the physical harm if patients do not receive accurate treatment.

DaaS to Make Healthcare Cyber Security Smarter

Safeguarding critical resources in virtual servers is not only an IT issue but a paramount aspect of overall business strategy. The continuous rise in the sophistication of ransomware attacks in healthcare has influenced caregivers to realize the security benefits of the DaaS architecture.

Besides, the recent ransomware attack at the Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health is evident enough that cyber security intrusions continue to plague the healthcare system. Hence, organizations are inviting IT security pros to boardroom discussions for a well-thought-out security roadmap.

Today, virtual desktops are gradually replacing desktop setups in healthcare institutes. The perks end-users get to experience are hardware-agnostic desktop access, easy IT maintenance, better data security, and so on. Moreover, the security advances that VDI services boast are motivating healthcare that has been reluctant to embrace the technology to at least reassess their feasibility.

The intertwined nature of providing care reflects how an attack on one section of healthcare organizations can trigger a domino effect. While DaaS is not the silver bullet against ransomware in healthcare, it will keep classified medical resources organized and as secure as possible.

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