Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / 🗣️ ALL NEW PARALLEL: S1E3 - The Reboot Resistance

Transcript

🗣️ ALL NEW PARALLEL: S1E3 - The Reboot Resistance · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: From Next Think and the creators of the Decks Show.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: It's parallel one it story told week by week because
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: technology problems don't happen in isolation or by themselves, they
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: happen in parallel. I'm Tim Flower. Last week we uncovered
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: an invisible hand, a saboteur leaving undocumented changes in phantom scripts,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: wreaking havoc at Zentech. The team's continuing to look for
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: more clues, but as often happens in IT, they've been
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: pulled into yet another issue that's been plaguing them for years.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So we're shifting our focus to tell the story of
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: something much quieter, something insidious. Even it's not a rogue script,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: it's not a disgruntled ex employee. It's something much harder
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: to pin down, complacency. When people stopped fighting back against
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the problems that plagued them, what happens for zen Tech?
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: It turned into a storm of security risks, failed patches,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: and crashing systems, and the trail led to a surprising culprit,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the reboot button. When the Dex team analyzed zen Tech systems,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: they found something they knew existed but never knew the scope.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: A surprisingly large number of devices hadn't been rebooted in weeks,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: some in months, and this was information they never would
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: have had visibility into prior to having a DEX discipline.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: At first, it seemed like a coincidence, but the pattern
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: was far too consistent to ignore her.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: There's just so much data available nowadays, so.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: We really rely on the AI composed and it's of
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: our Deck platform to help us get to what really
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: matters most. What we found was that these devices, they
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: all had failed patches, uninstalled updates, and resource usage that
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: was off the charts, which didn't make much sense to
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: us until the system correlated to symptoms to reboot data.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: People had just stopped rebooting, and maybe that's because we
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: used to be some annoying about reminding everybody to do it,
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: whether they needed to or not, so we'd just become
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: a sort of background noise they'd started to ignore, and
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: it just stopped doing it.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: But why why would anyone avoid such a simple action?
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: The answer turned out to be frustratingly human. It wasn't
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: that employees didn't know how to rebuild their machines, or
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: even that they needed to. It was that they didn't
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: want to. Rebuilding had become a nightmare.
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: If I know I'm going to lose least in and
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: it's waiting for the system to restart, allowed me back
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: in and eventually allow me to start working again, that's
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: time I don't have. It's easier to just leave it running.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just the log in time. Employees described
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: a cascade of frustrations, apps taking forever to reload, browser tabs, disappearing,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: and re entering passwords for every system they used. One
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: employee called it the reboot tax. Another called it soul crushing.
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: I mean, you stop tearing. You figure what's the worst
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: that could happen. I mean, it's just one bad day, right,
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: except the day turns into a week, then a month,
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: and suddenly it is yelling at you because your system's
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: out of date and out of compliance.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: The reboot tax. It was more than just an annoyance.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: It was creating a domino effect. Devices that weren't rebooted
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: couldn't install updates or patches, leaving them vulnerable to security threads.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Overloaded memory led to system crashes, and in the past,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: when employees were forced to reboot, it often happened at
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the worst possible time, like during a client presentation.
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: It's not just a productivity issue. It's a stability issue,
• 4:11
  Speaker 5: a security issue, and it's not just the employees who suffer.
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: The entire organization is at risk. And when we become
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: the bad guys, we're either being a nuisance to them
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: or the reason the problem isn't solved yet.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The problem wasn't just the employees,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: it was the system they were stuck in. Over time,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: the employees at Zentech had become resigned to the way
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: things were. They weren't lazy or negligent. They were just exhausted.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: You just stop hoping things will get better.
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: It's like why bother? It doesn't fix it. Management doesn't care.
• 4:47
  Speaker 5: So you do what you can to get through the day,
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: and if that means never rebooting your machine, so be it.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: The text team realized this was more than a technical issue.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: It was cultural. Employees didn't see the value in REA
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: booting because no one had shown them the value, and
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: it wasn't helping. In fact, it was making things worse
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: by force fitting a bad solution and then ignoring the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: problem to let the help us candle it.
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: We thought it was a behavior issue. Like employees, you
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: know just need to do better. But when we saw
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: the log in times, the crashes, the amount of friction
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: they were dealing with, we realized it was on us.
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: We weren't giving them a system they could trust.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: To fix the problem. The DECKS team didn't just tell
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: employees to reboot. They rebuilt the whole reboot experience. First,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: they cut log in times in half by analyzing boot
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: up sequences and automating much of the processing. Once they
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: had their full set of robust findings, they removed unnecessary
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: startup items and streamlined authentication. And then they optimized GPO
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and startup script processing to minimize impact. And finally, they
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: launched a campaign to show employe how rebooting wasn't just
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: about keeping their devices running smoothly, it was about protecting
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the company as a whole. And the automated processes included
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: reminders so they didn't go more than a week in
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: between reboots and the icing on the cake. They also
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: included reminders for passwords that were about to expire and
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: hard drives that were about to fill up. They automated
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: their entire maintenance task list, involving the employees only when
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: they absolutely needed to.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: So we showed them the numbers, how fell patches were
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: leaving the company open to ransomware attacks, how unoptimized devices
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: were costing however many thousands in lost productivity, and how
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: a very simple reboot could prevent it all. That's when
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: the behavior finally started to shift.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: But as Zentec celebrated their victory over the reboot resistance,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: new questions began to surface, Questions about the deeper systems
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: that had created this problem in the first place.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: This isn't just a zen tech issue. It's everywhere you look.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Companies have been treating the reboot as an afterfat for
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: decades because it's such a hot potato, and the longer
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: they ignore it, the more problems pile up because of it.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: It's not just rebooting, it's everything. It's about the culture.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: And then there was this a new finding that was
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: previously missed in the middle of all this noise, this
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: time buried in the complexity of the VDI platform, flagged
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: after the reboot of thousands of sessions, a long idle
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: virtual session named the Foundation. Tune in next Time on Parallel,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: where we continue to search for answers about who or
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: what the Foundation is and how far does their influence reach.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: We'll dig deeper into the shadowy forces shaping workplace technology
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: and why they were now being found in VDI Bobok