As the first vendor to embed generative AI, and specifically, BMC HelixGPT across the entire service and operations management portfolio, BMC continues to make significant advances with the technology to remove friction and augment human intelligence. In this blog post, learn how the BMC Helix Service Management 23.3 release is delivering conversational virtual agent experiences with BMC HelixGPT; enabling more personalized workplace portals; reducing HR complexities; and improving security response handling.

Save time training chatbots

The use of generative AI to power chatbots is going to play an even bigger role in the workplace, driving higher levels of employee self-service and automation. BMC HelixGPT provides prompts and guardrails to significantly reduce the time spent on training large language models (LLMs). BMC Helix Virtual Agent, powered by BMC HelixGPT, ingests company owned PDFs, Confluence and SharePoint files, and knowledge articles to give BMC Helix Virtual Agents the best source of company information. Live chat is a powerful way for an agent to engage with the end user in real time to resolve an issue quickly. BMC HelixGPT automatically generates a high-quality summary of the live chat once the issue has been addressed, saving the agent time and accelerating productivity.

Redefine workplace portals

Every time an employee engages with a workplace portal or process, it’s an opportunity to reinforce the company’s culture, values, and priorities. BMC Helix Digital Workplace can be easily customized without complex coding. Within this release, it is now easier than ever to fine-tune the workplace portal so different employee types only see the content that is most relevant to them. This saves the employee time, improves self-service, and reduces delays from rerouting tickets to the right teams.

Reduce HR onboarding and offboarding complexities

A smooth and positive experience for onboarding and offboarding makes employees feel welcomed, motivated, and valued from the time they start to the time they leave. The BMC Helix Service Management 23.3 release provides an out-of-the-box solution to automate onboarding and offboarding processes from pre-boarding to everyday employment to offboarding and alumni status. The solution includes a detailed manager view and out-of-the-box dashboards to improve reporting activities. HR teams now can filter by country and location, assess new hire statistics, and have a drill-down view per employee with data on their tasks and statuses.

Respond to security events quickly

BMC Helix Security Incident Handling is a ready-to-use solution within the BMC Helix Service Management 23.3 release that tightly aligns with industry and government standards based on NIST 800-61 and ISO 27001. Security events are automatically created through integration with security information and event management (SIEM) tools so that each phase of the incident management lifecycle—identification, investigation, response, and remediation—is methodically addressed. Preconfigured runbooks address common security scenarios and help standardize the activities in each phase. The solution shortens the duration of breaches to minimize associated impacts, reduces manual tracking activities, and provides a way to formally track lessons learned. It enables teams to share critical information around prevention, corrective actions and associated policies and controls.

Start your journey today

Learn more about the exciting developments in the BMC Helix Service Management 23.3 release by watching the latest webinar. Speak to your account manager to start your journey today.

When it comes to security incident response, the saying “failure to plan is planning to fail” resonates deeply. We often get consumed with the latest tactics to prevent attacks but overlook the importance of a robust approach to security incident handling. Without a well-defined and comprehensive incident response plan in place, organizations are ill-prepared to handle security breaches, leaving them vulnerable to extensive damage and prolonged disruptions.

According to the Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2023 report, a quarter of businesses don’t regard incident response skills as essential. Almost half said they weren’t confident they could put together an incident response plan (IRP), which led to 41 percent saying they were not very or not at all confident that they would be able to deal with a cybersecurity breach or attack.

When an incident occurs, time is of the essence

Ensuring that organizations have a strong process for security incident handling is important for several reasons. First and foremost, it helps an organization minimize the impact of security incidents, which can include data breaches, network intrusions, malware infections, and other cyberattacks. By having a well-defined incident response plan in place, an organization can detect and respond in a timely manner, potentially reducing the amount of damage caused and the associated costs.

While not all cases of a data breach will lead to fraud or identity theft, compromised data is still an expensive business for companies. The repercussions stretch further to impact consumer trust and brand reputation, not to mention the mental health of customers and the financial health of the business.

Building a culture of trust

As hackers are now using artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools for increasingly sophisticated attacks, IT and security teams are striving more than ever to keep ahead of cybercriminals. The need for adequate staff training, as well as creating an atmosphere of trust to report any issues has never been greater. Rigorous training of staff to help recognize phishing emails and malicious activity—and understand how to report them—is a must. Employees who feel trusted they will be more likely to report an incident without fear of reprisals instead of ignoring it.

The quicker an organization can respond to a security incident, the better. That means effectively containing the damage to prevent further compromise and minimize the risk of an incident escalating and causing widespread disruption, financial loss, or reputational damage.

Preserve evidence and comply with industry regulations

A well-executed incident response plan can help restore affected systems and services to normal operation as quickly as possible, minimizing disruption to business operations and maintaining customer trust. Incident response plans also help organizations demonstrate their commitment to safeguarding sensitive information and complying with relevant laws and regulations by preserving evidence related to the security incident, which may be crucial for investigating and prosecuting cybercriminals. Properly collecting and preserving evidence can also support an organization’s efforts to understand an incident and improve its security posture to reduce the likelihood of it happening again.

Identifying the right solutions for security incident handing

Security teams must often rely on an IT service management (ITSM) tool that has a “security” category under “IT incident.” But this is not fit for purpose because it provides little flexibility and does not enable teams to create standard processes for handling different types of security incidents. It is also difficult to collaborate across teams as needed.

Leverage BMC Helix for security incident handling

BMC Helix has worked hand in hand with key customers to design a pre-built security incident handing solution based on industry best practices and customer feedback. The solution aligns tightly with industry and government standards such as NIST 800-61 and ISO 27001, so that each phase of the incident management lifecycle—identification, investigation, response, and remediation—is methodically addressed. Preconfigured runbooks are provided to address common security scenarios, help standardize the activities in each phase, and provide collaboration and integrations to ensure all essential areas and teams are part of the activities.

The solution is the missing piece in many organizations’ security operations (SecOps) posture and solutions, bringing together prevent-and-respond processes and associated teams while also providing regulatory audit and evidence constructs and key lessons learned, which then become part of the prevention activities.

Extending Service Management Across the Enterprise

BMC’s security incident handling solutions is part of a suite of preconfigured out-of-the box workflow solutions which enable organizations to extend the value of BMC Helix for Service Management beyond IT and across their enterprise.

Learn more: BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management – BMC Software

Watch Video: BMC Helix Enterprise Service Management – Security Incident Handling – YouTube

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and as organizations face an ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats, building a robust security posture is even more crucial. By incorporating good security practices and protocols, organizations can enhance their ability to protect sensitive data, prevent security breaches, and detect and respond to incidents. Here are our seven key recommendations to help bolster your security efforts.

1. Avoid friction points with a centralized approach to incident response.

Teams that operate in silos and follow manual processes make mistakes and create unnecessary delays. By bringing together incident management capabilities, organizations can efficiently detect, report, and respond to security incidents in a consistent and timely manner. This facilitates seamless communication, enhances incident resolution, and minimizes the impact of breaches.

2. Remain diligent with change management practices.

A strong security posture requires diligent change management practices. It’s essential to streamline the process for security-related changes such as system updates or access control modifications. By automating workflows and adhering to established change management procedures, vulnerabilities introduced during system changes can be minimized, ensuring a secure environment.

3. Maintain good management of security assets and configurations.

Proper management of security assets and configurations is critical to mitigating risks. Organizations need to maintain accurate, up-to-date information about hardware, software, network devices, and user access rights. With comprehensive asset and configuration management, security teams gain enhanced visibility, enabling them to monitor, track, and secure critical resources effectively.

4. Streamline the remediation process with automation-driven vulnerability management.

Integrated vulnerability scanning tools help identify and prioritize vulnerabilities across an organization’s infrastructure. By automating vulnerability assessments and linking them with asset management, the remediation process is streamlined. It enables security teams to prioritize patches or mitigation actions based on risk severity and impact. This helps organizations stay ahead of emerging threats and maintain a resilient security posture.

5. Ensure efficient request fulfillment.

Security-related requests, such as access control or security policy exceptions, need to be managed efficiently. Make sure you can facilitate the management of these requests through standardized and automated workflows. By ensuring that security controls are followed, organizations can reduce the risk of unauthorized access or policy violations, further enhancing their security posture.

6. Be prepared for a continual state of compliance.  

Operations teams must continuously meet compliance and audit requirements. Automating workflows to document, track, and report on security-related activities helps demonstrate adherence to security policies, industry standards, and regulatory obligations. This ensures organizations are in a continual state of compliance and are prepared for audits.

7. Leverage good knowledge management for informed decision-making.

Create a centralized knowledge hub for security documentation, procedures, and best practices that is easily accessible to security personnel, empowering them with valuable information during incident response and security operations. By harnessing this knowledge base, organizations make informed decisions, share insights, and provide access to relevant resources, leading to a more proactive security posture.

Conclusion

Your business operations teams play a pivotal role in building a strong security posture across organization. It’s imperative to stay ahead of evolving cyber threats by continuing to embed security practices within your operations management process to help accelerate the journey towards a resilient security posture. This is a powerful way to safeguard your digital assets, protect sensitive information, and maintain the trust of your stakeholders.

BMC Helix and Security

With BMC Helix, you have a powerhouse behind you to build a strong security posture across your organization. BMC Helix helps align IT and security teams around common workflows for handling security incidents, enables your teams to prioritize and remediate critical vulnerabilities, and systematically addresses compliance violations through an integrated and automated approach across your multi-cloud environment.

Find out more about how BMC Helix can help you ensure a Security First Mindset.
https://www.bmc.com/it-solutions/secops-security-operations.html

A company is only as good as the people it keeps. Amid tough economic conditions, business leaders see the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to revolutionize HR and make businesses more efficient. In fact, according to Fortune Business Insights the global HR technology market is projected to grow from $24.04 billion in 2021 to $35.68 billion in 2028[1]. Those investments will likely include AI to optimize business processes and reduce costs.

AI is set to transform both traditional HR shared services (HRSS) administration and HR business partner (HRBP) work, which will happen faster than most HR teams can anticipate, with benefits including:

• Reduced manual workload and improved cost efficiency: By using virtual assistants to answer FAQs, process requests, and provide information, HR teams can be reallocated to focus on more complex and strategic activities that add value.
• Improved accessibility and responsiveness: By providing round-the-clock support to employees, AI can assist with inquiries, troubleshoot issues, and offer 24×7 self-service options.
• Consistent and accurate responses: By leveraging AI systems that have the most up-to-date information and processes, HR teams can reduce errors and inconsistencies from manual processes and interactions.
• Better support for simultaneous, large-volume inquiries: As HR demands fluctuate, AI can efficiently manage spikes in activity without compromising service quality or response times.
• Analytics and insights: Using AI technology to gather and analyze data from HR interactions can provide insights into common issues, bottlenecks, preferences, and service trends to help shared service teams identify areas for improvement, optimize processes, and make informed decisions.
• Personalization: By tailoring systems to individual preferences and providing personalized support and recommendations, HR can enhance the customer experience and make interactions more seamless and effective.
• Knowledge management: By capturing and organizing information from HR interactions, AI can be used to create a centralized, easily accessible knowledge base for employees or customers to improve information sharing and problem solving.

As we integrate AI into the HR process, it’s important to decide what should be done by a human being and when it is better to automate it. Get it wrong and the impact on productivity is massive.

While artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance efficiency, it is crucial to not overlook the essential human aspect of HR. HR professionals possess empathy, emotional intelligence, and the ability to understand complex human dynamics. These qualities are valuable when handling sensitive matters like employee grievances, conflicts, or career development. Human interaction is irreplaceable when it comes to building trust, providing emotional support, and fostering a positive work culture. As you introduce AI into the mix to improve more process-oriented HR tasks, it’s important to keep several strategies in mind to maintain harmony between the humans and the technology.

1. Strategic task allocation: Identify task where AI can deliver effective results. This frees up HR professionals to focus on more strategic, people-centric responsibilities that require their human touch.
2. Augment instead of replace: AI should act as an augmentation tool rather than a replacement for human professionals. It assists HR professionals by providing data-driven insights and recommendations and streamlining processes to help them make better-informed decisions about employee development, retention, and engagement.
3. Empathy-Driven AI: Develop AI systems that are designed to understand and respond empathetically to employee needs. By incorporating sentiment analysis and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, AI-powered chats bots can provide personalized and compassionate support to employees and augment the human aspect of HR.
4. Continuous learning: Encourage HR professionals to embrace AI as a learning opportunity. Provide training and resources to enhance their AI literacy, enabling them to leverage technology effectively and adapt to changing HR landscapes.
5. Transparent communications: Clearly communicate to employees how AI is being used in processes, emphasizing that is it is a tool to improve efficiency while preserving the human element. Address any concerns or misconceptions that may arise and ensure that employees feel valued and heard.

As AI continues to reshape the HR landscape, ensuring the right balance where AI augments human interactions and supports human excellence is essential. By leveraging the strengths of both AI and human professionals, HR service management can achieve efficiency without compromising empathy and understanding, resulting in more enhanced employee experiences, and ultimately a thriving work environment.

While physical workspaces are being redesigned to support hybrid workstyles, the safety and well-being of the employee remains a prerogative. In the US, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, can levy fines from $15,000 to $150,000 per instance of safety violation. Equipment that isn’t performing optimally can also impact your organization’s carbon footprint. Globally, building operations account for 30 percent of energy consumption and 26 percent of energy emissions. Improving those numbers is integral to meeting ongoing sustainability initiatives.

Delivering a well-functioning facility that’s consistent with employee expectations becomes even more challenging in a hybrid environment. Faulty lights or broken chairs can go unreported for longer than necessary as employees spend less time in the office and become complacent about reporting the issue or lack visibility into the process for doing so.

The goal should be to minimize reactive maintenance; in fact, if you apply the Pareto principle to maintenance, 80 percent of it should be preventive. This requires a proactive approach to equipment maintenance that includes regular inspections, servicing, and repairs to detect and prevent any breakdowns before they occur.

A service-oriented approach to reactive and preventive maintenance

How does BMC Helix help you deliver a safe workplace? In the case of workplace maintenance, BMC Helix Digital Workplace empowers workers to log workplace issues into a multi-departmental portal in the same way they would raise an HR or IT request. BMC Helix also includes out-of-the-box case templates and workflows to address a wide range of workplace issues and expedite processes for issue resolution.

With regard to preventive maintenance, BMC Helix allows for the automatic scheduling of maintenance for assets or groups of assets on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis. Once assigned, a technician can then view their caseload by building, site, and floor. All assets are containerized within the BMC Helix CMBD alongside IT assets, removing the need for siloed and disjointed facilities maintenance systems. Each maintenance case includes checklists and related knowledge that can be accessed by technicians while on the go, so that inspections can be completed as efficiently as possible.

However and whenever we return to the office, we still want a safe and functioning workplace that puts the employee experience first. With a service-centric approach to workplace management, BMC Helix helps organizations focus on the employee experiences and align their workplace strategies to the changing world of work.

Learn more at bmc.com/digitalworkplace.

In the search for talent, first impressions matter

As organizations compete for talent, the onboarding experience can have a significant bearing on someone’s decision to join an organization and stay long-term. But many organizations struggle to deliver a good onboarding experience. That’s because onboarding processes aren’t organized around the new hire, and due to a lack of standards, experiences can vary depending on role and location. With the total cost to hire a new employee equaling up to three to four times the position’s salary, more needs to be done to deliver an onboarding experience that sets up new hires for success. So, what’s going wrong with onboarding, and, more importantly, how can you fix it?

It’s not just the responsibility of HR

Onboarding involves multiple departments, from the IT team who organize hardware configurations and system access to facilities for building access to finance for payroll and benefits and more. Onboarding requires close cooperation between the different functions, which are often using their own departmental systems. When steps are missed, this can result in delays, leaving the new hire anxious and frustrated.

Inconsistent onboarding experiences

Additionally, the new hire’s experiences can often be inconsistent throughout the preboarding stage and into their first days, weeks, and months. The submission of preboarding verification documentation isn’t always straightforward; it may be difficult for new hires to get the answers they need in those early weeks and months. This can leave them with a negative perception of the brand, impacting their productivity and increasing the risk of new hire attrition.

No single version of the truth

Often there is no one place for HR or the hiring manager to receive updates on the status of the hiring process, which can be especially cumbersome when you are handling multiple new joiners with different start dates. HR operations also face too many manual processes and must repeatedly enter information and data into multiple systems. The hiring manager doesn’t have a true understanding of what is going on, either, or is unable to provide input into the process. The handoff of tasks between siloed departments can also be difficult as they follow their own processes.

Building a seamless onboarding experience with BMC Helix

It’s our goal to provide BMC Helix customers with a way to address these onboarding challenges, and accelerate the time to value of their investment, without building everything from the ground up. Out-of-the-box, pre-configured onboarding workflows are available to orchestrate the management of tasks for key lines of business such as facilities and finance, as well as IT, HR, and the new hire. The workflows can vary based on employee persona information like location, employment type, role, etc., and configured using drag-and-drop capabilities that make the process repeatable and easy to scale.

Standardize interdepartmental workflows

HR systems of record play a vital role in maintaining the integrity of personal data and employment information. The BMC Helix onboarding solution is not designed to replace your human capital management (HCM) solution. Instead, we offer a way to standardize interdepartmental processes for onboarding employees, streamlining communications, and ensuring compliance with HR policies and procedures.

Make your new hire feel part of the team before day one

With our integrated new hire portal, you can make your new hire feel part of the team before their first day. You can avoid the frustrations of disjointed emails to manage pre-boarding communications and instead provide them with a portal, customized in your company branding, where they can log in with their own personal email account and submit documentation and complete pre-hire tasks. This enhances their experience and fosters a feeling of organizational belonging even before their first day, helping to set them up for success.

Empower your hiring manager with better visibility

Give the hiring manager and HR a single-pane-of-glass view of the onboarding status of their new hires so they can keep track of all their related onboarding tasks. They can also use the portal to make any equipment or software requests and communicate with fulfillment teams by updating tasks with comments.

Building a culture of effective and consistent onboarding

An employee’s job satisfaction begins from the moment they are hired. Adequate training, mentorship, and feedback are necessary to ensure that new hires can quickly acclimate and become valuable contributors to the organization, as well as enthusiastic stewards of the company’s brand. This requires a culture of effective and consistent onboarding.

BMC extends the value of BMC Helix with an onboarding workflow that supports the successful integration of new employees throughout the company, removes friction, standardizes processes, and supports the new hire journey from the moment they accept their offer to day one and beyond. To learn more, visit bmc.com/onboarding.