[Music] the Aldis podcast is brought to you by Aldis International supplying your expert Ai and digital transformation staffing needs across the US and Europe today you are listening to our service now Series where we interview the best and brightest of the industry to share their story advice and views on the exciting world of service now and digital transformation [Music] hello everybody it's Mark Kelly here Chief customer officer and co-founder of Al this welcome to the service Now podcast series I'm so happy to welcome San Richard to the podcast series we're going to talk about an absolutely gamechanging podcast today because we're talking about SEC Ops and irm and if you don't know Sven I'll give you his his comp comprehensive title Sven Richard is product line lead SEC Ops and irm at agano Sven thank you very much for joining us on the show today hi Mark thank you for your invitation and I'm happy to be here Sven we always start off the podcast to find out a little bit about you and your background into the world of service now how did you get into this fascinating World well Mark after graduating in computer science I started six years ago with service now and in this years I had projects with uh different focuses like cm TB like it service management over the development of custom scoped applications uh up to vulnerability response so I had really Diversified topics many interesting projects and I also met really great people in this time Sven I had the pleasure of meeting your colleagues at knowledge last year in 2023 and we had two guests from the podcast that Shar some fantastic areas within human resources on the hrsd module tell us us a little about your work in AO and some of the work that you do in SE Ops and irm well Mark maybe at first um to AO aino was founded in 1986 as comc consult communic te G by graduates of the rwr and matna then took over the company in 2017 and since March 2018 we are now on on the market under our new brand name Akin and agino is specialized um in solutions for Enterprise service management and we are also the largest service now Elite partner in the German speaking region and one main point from my side um we have a really great team spirit in our company we have really skilled people and everyone supports each other so for my perspective working here is really great and I can only recommend it and yeah yeah perhaps to my role um I'm product line lead of uh security operations and irm and yeah as the name says uh this is a combined product line and service now offers many solutions in this area starting at functionalities for the response to security incidents over a proactive reaction to vulnerabilities as well as tools for managing regulations and identifying risks for your company and across all the topics we often have the need for the integration of third party tools and sources like vulnerability scanners or CM tools where CM means security information and event management outside of AI security seems to be the most talked about term in the world right now and it become it it seems like the world is just under attack from so many different types of incidents tell us a little bit about why it's so important for businesses day today well Mark our world is more and more interconnected yeah in the past we had just computers but today we have so many devices in every Branch like industry Health Care Transportation and so on and so the vulnerability against attacks of course increases and I also read shortly in one article that attackers um more and more focus on companies over private users and what you already mentioned uh the importance of AI will grow also on both sides on side of the defender and on S side of the attackers so it's important for everyone to be best possible prepared and also to stick to existing regulations of governments and Industry standards svan how are you helping customers with security and helping them to become you know more productive and efficient while you managing to reduce vulnerabilities and how do you utilize the service now platform to actually do that well let us talk about the advantages of service now maybe um first of all it's an integrated system that means you have one single system of records and an important fact is that service now includes uh cmtp a configuration management database and that means that you can have all your configuration items directly in your service now datab SP and service now also helps you to bring your data into the cmtp for example by Discovery tools and beyond that you have depending on what Solutions you use the advantage of a direct connection to other modules like it service management for example for creating change requests then service now offers you many possibilities for the integration of third party tools it brings you request fulfillment and you have also possibilities to communicate by email with the platform and yeah so this just this are just some examples um but of course you have many more advantages and when you're when you're a customer and you know so many customers are still you know using Excel using manual processes when you actually open up the opportunity to tell them about their vulnerability sometimes they can be flabbergast and don't necessar know know where to start how do you help them go on the journey from being totally overwhelmed with so many different you know cases where they need to to start to protect themselves how do you go on that kind of road map with them to show them how to get there um maybe U let's take a practical example how security operations will work yeah let's imagine we have a CM system and our CM system detects a DS attack on one of our servers this detection will then be be imported in service now as security incident and in service now the threat will be assessed and the priority will be determined by the severity of the incident and in the next step of course you want to defend against this attack and for containing and resolving the security incident service now offers among others uh the possibility to use playbooks and these playbooks can be configured and give advises for the solution of defined scenarios and beyond that uh they also allow to create and assign tasks automatically for initiating measures yeah and as part of the solution our it security team will then Implement these measures based on the assigned tasks and such measures could be um blocking IP addresses shutting down servers or even the simplest way unblock the block and after you res solved your security incident finally an assessment for the security incident will be created and added to the record yeah and this assessment provides you help for similar security incidents in the future and maybe to get a bit the connection to irm um for example business continuity management would offer you possibilities for preparing your company for such scenarios and also support you when it occurred for example by plan and run run books looking back on your your journey into the world of service now and getting into this field you're like sponge you've soaked up so much information from the platform from customer solutions to their problems and you you you generate a lot of task of knowledge imagine a younger span coming into this ecosystem and they don't know what you know or some of our customers who want to take action go to the next step what advice would you share with them to get going on this journey well Mark I think the first thing I learned um if you need support on doing things where you stuck um of course first try yourself but don't invest too much time for research um very often you have many experienced people in your company and what's hard for you uh they did for several times maybe so just ask and you'll know it next time and we're getting into a new solution of service now um first try to understand the intended process the main relevant tables for that solution uh but also the connection between your process and others in service now and of course make the courses service now offers to get a deeper knowledge of it and perhaps yeah one personal main point when you start initially Don't Be Afraid um we all started started one day we all still learn new things so just be open for new topics and be proud what what you achieved then every day I like I like this advice and I actually like the final part of your advice because we are all learning the cheese is always moving there's new new threats coming in that we need to provide Solutions this isn't just a this is a burning platform that that keeps going as well Sven Richard product line lead SE Ops and irm AO thank you very much for sharing your insights today on the all the service Now podcast series thank you Mark uh for your invitation and have a nice [Music] day thanks for listening to this episode of the oldest podcast if you enjoyed today's episode don't forget to subscribe rate and review we are available on Apple podcasts Spotify and any Android podcast of choice you can also head over to our website www.al this.com to listen to more podcasts view our open roles and stay up toate with industry news thanks for listening and stay tuned for more great episodes coming very [Music] soon