For the last 10 years, Microsoft has been saying that the single most important skill for an administrator is proficiency with PowerShell. In 2019, that is true more than ever, as PowerShell commands impact Microsoft’s major technologies of Office 365, Teams, Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, etc. However, the problem for most organizations is they don’t have a team full of scripting experts, causing them to rely, too heavily, on limited resources. Organizations find themselves in a situation where they are locked into hiring employees just to secure individuals with PowerShell expertise.
PowerScripts from VitalSigns changes that completely by providing the ability to securely delegate, as well as automate, PowerShell scripting tasks to individuals that have no PowerShell experience. PowerScripts leverage the security of Active Directory and role-based authentication to safely assign encrypted credentials to designated users. With PowerScripts you have access to previously vetted PowerShell commands and can view all policies, logs, and reports from a centralized PowerScript Dashboard. IT Managers can easily remain in control with a real-time Audit Log that records each time a user attempts to execute a PowerShell command using PowerScripts.
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POWERSCRIPT USE CASES
Suspending Multi-Factor Authentication:
In a large and globally dispersed organization, with 70,000 users, statistics show that up to 10 users a day can misplace their mobile devices needed to authenticate them and grant them system access when working from home on the road. This can cause an overload of requests to the service desk to temporarily suspend a user’s multi-factor authentication. This disrupts the productivity of both the user and the service desk members. Often a request of this nature (suspend security protection) will require the approval (disruption) of senior IT management.
With PowerScripts, an IT Administrator can safely grant their most junior Support Desk personal access to run on-demand PowerShell commands that enable and disable multi-factor authentication. Users can now avoid the downtime spent waiting for the upper management authorization of the service desk to suspend MFA – instead, the end-user gets the rapid service they are seeking – the company benefits from the improved efficiencies and the highly secure process.
Sales Teams & Virtual Machines:
Often an Account Manager will have a client reach out at the last minute to request that they schedule a product demo. In software sales, for example, to conduct a product demo, many times the IT team must start-up and access a virtual machine for the product to be shown. This only serves to slow the sales process down.
With PowerScripts, an IT Administrator can safely / securely grant an Account Managers access to run on-demand PowerShell commands that turn virtual machines on or off. This eliminates the downtime experienced while waiting to contact and secure a technical resource within the organization to perform the VM startups and stops.
Litigation Holds:
Many organizations, for reasons of legal requirements, documentation or research must place a Litigation Hold on various individual’s mailboxes. Typically a PowerShell command is utilized to put the Litigation Hold in place. The application of the Litigation Hold process would typically include a request from either legal counsel or HR (or both) to the IT unit to place a “Hold” on all mail to and from a specific account and not allowing for the deletion of mail from that account.
There is usually a delay time between the request from legal and the actual application of the “Litigation Hold” by IT personnel. There is also the requirement that the IT personnel take the time to perform the action by using a Power Shell command to apply (and remove) the Litigation Hold.
By leveraging VitalSigns’ PowerScripts, the original requestors (legal counsel or HR) can be empowered to safely and securely apply the Litigation Hold themselves – Not IT. With the tight security of PowerScripts, this is the only action they can do. They cannot “run another script” nor can they “change the script” – the lawyers can only do what IT management lets them do – refreshing isn’t it?
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Large Organizations:
Typically, at large organizations, there is a dedicated team of people who manually write and execute PowerShell commands for the rest of the organization. Even though they have a dedicated team, there are still numerous scripting tasks that need to be executed, and they frequently get backed up. This heavy volume of scripting tasks causes backups that can lead to performance slowdowns and other issues such as misuse of the script or the credentials.
PowerScripts allow large organizations to automate and streamline the execution of PowerShell commands so they can stay ahead of all potential failures whether by error or misuse.
Small Organizations:
With smaller organizations, often they only have limited PowerShell scripting resources. Having one user run all the PowerShell commands for the entire organization can be extremely inefficient and will cause a bottleneck when that resource is busy or out of the office.
With PowerScripts, smaller organizations can empower the front-line to securely execute PowerShell commands, drastically increasing productivity and eliminating the heavy reliance on a resource-strapped IT team.
FEATURES
On-Demand Library
PowerScripts Library – Is our one-click library of pre-approved PowerShell commands, that can’t be modified, and is continuously growing from our own real-world experiences, client inputs, and internal research. Each user the PowerScripts Library can access and deploy ONLY those scripts they have authorized to utilize. Users can’t change the script and they can’t reuse the credentials for anything else.
In Fact: Users cannot even see any specific PowerScripts in the library unless they are authorized to utilize that particular PowerScript.
Audit Trail
Remain in complete control of script execution with the PowerScripts Audit Log. Easily view in real-time who ran what script, when, as well as the results.
GUI Design
Ditch your old command-line interface for the PowerScripts GUI and empower end-users to begin executing scripts on their own. The easy to use, foolproof VitalSigns PowerScripts process will make sense out of a complex IT procedure allowing even non IT personnel (even lawyers) to safely leverage the immense power of PowerScripts.
Role-Based Delegation
Sync with Active Directory to seamlessly delegate the ability to execute specific scripts based on a user’s job role, location or other custom parameters. Simple, Safe and Secure!!
Complete Integration
Interact directly with third-party systems and other technologies to automate processes and increase overall IT efficiency.
Event-Based Triggers
Automate and schedule the execution of PowerShell commands by configuring specific events or parameters to launch a script.
Easy Configurator
Easily add new PowerScripts to the growing library, manage user access settings, edit roles, and assign rights from the VitalSigns Configurator.
Script Vetting
Every command in the PowerScripts library has been professional vetted by our team and is continuously updated to the latest version. More coming from us and the greater PowerScripts user community.
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