World class IT support

I attended a talk by James Stanger from CompTIA at the SITS17 conference in 2017 (I totally forgot I’d written these notes until now). He talked a lot about the sort of skills and knowledge that world class Service Desk staff needed to have, and it dovetailed nicely with a list I drew up myself a couple of years earlier, and also with ideas from other presentations from the same conference.

What follows is notes I took at the time (with my observations in italics)

Tech support today

  • Evolving endpoint – IOT
  • Analytics
  • Automation
  • The cloud and mobility – BYOD
  • Cyber / security
  • Complexity of privacy
  • Device diversity
  • We are all knowledge workers

Helpdesk are the frost line of defence against security.
More Mac and Linux now than 10 years ago.
More business units than ever before
Service desk and service management is a growing industry and there are more jobs available. This should be an increasing trend.
Need a more diverse skills set – increase in cloud, and move from Helpdesk to service desk.

Technical skills that Service Desk staff need

  • Security
  • Database
  • PC
  • Storage
  • Backups
  • Cloud
  • Telecoms
  • Web dev
  • Server
  • Mobile
  • Etc.

Top skills

  • Troubleshooting
  • App management
  • PC
  • Security
  • Data
  • Mobility
  • Repair
  • Ticketing
  • Cloud
  • Permissions and directory services

It’s about accessing data from any device rather than the device itself. The device breaks, then you just try and access it on another device.

Five essential skills

  1. Cybersecurity
  2. Linux
  3. Programming – shell scripts and python
  4. Networking – TCP/IP, network segmentation, VPN
  5. Soft skills – customer service mindset, project management, ability to turn negatives into positives.

Can we take these 5 skills and turn them into a blueprint for the sort of person we want to recruit into IT support roles (and I’m talking across the institution here, not just Service Desk people)? Should also add some stuff from the other lists though – especially around cloud, troubleshooting and application management. Do our people need to be lesss skilled but more knowledgeable? Or is it just that they need to be skilled and knowledgeable about different things?

I look at this list and see a lot of things that have previously been on our “nice to have” list. Things like cybersecurity, Linux and the ability to script solutions to IT problems have never been things we have tried to recruit at first line, and maybe even most second line teams. That is going to have to change if we are going to meet the demands of our customers and provide the sort of service they need from us.

Other things:

We want someone who loves problems

Can this person really look beneath the hood?

Can they see around the corners of a problem? Trend analysis and documenting new things and fixes to hard problems.

Hackers will go after the points where one technology interacts with another (where people are a technology – interface between people and technology is a big vulnerability).

Security trends

  • Notice the unknown (Ransomware, social engineering etc.)
  • Zero day attacks
  • Malware

Top security skills

The usual, plus social engineering, authentication methods.

Attacks occur where people and technology converge. This isn’t news.

We have too much information, too much data, if we had less there would be less to attack.

A good Helpdesk person will spot trends in security, and will help visualise data in a way that other people can understand.

Multi factor authentication – something you know and something you hold. 3rd factor is something you are (fingerprint, iris scan, face etc.)

Understanding monitoring and performance via command line tools is an important skill. All the stuff I have been talking about for years.

Saying things the right way is absolutely vital. Change geek speak into plain language. This is a key skill.

Give suggestions / say no / transfer a call

  • Identify the problem
  • Define the problem
  • Explore and examine the options
  • Act on the solutions
  • Look back at the solution and the consequences, or learn from the problem.

80% technical, 20% soft skills. And technical skills are much easier to teach, so recruit people who already have the soft skills.