Inspyrus Velocity: The Proof is in the…Concept

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Inspyrus Velocity:  The Proof is in the…Concept

By: Marvin Martinez | Senior Developer

The Inspyrus Invoice Automation solution can significantly streamline a company’s accounts payable (AP) process.  With automated PO matching, workflow routing, streamlined and even touchless approvals of purchase orders, it can greatly increase efficiency of invoice processing. Deep prebuilt integrations into the world leading ERP software allow Inspyrus to ensure all exception handling is done upfront, minimizing errors and ensuring accuracy. However, sometimes just hearing about it isn’t enough.  Sometimes, one has to see it to believe it.  That is where TekStream’s Inspyrus Velocity option can help.

Inspyrus Velocity is a Tekstream offering that allows the deployment of a usable Inspyrus implementation, connected to your ERP and Active Directory, for proof-of-concept (POC) and hands-on evaluation purposes.  With this offering, a prospective customer can get an idea of the kind of improvement and benefit that the Inspyrus Invoice Automation solution is able to provide.  This simplified POC environment, while likely a subset of the entire solution that a customer might require, still showcases plenty of standard Inspyrus features that are sure to impress anyone.

Included with the Inspyrus Velocity offering are the following standard features:

  • Out-of-the-box standard Inspyrus workflows, including 2-way POs, 3-way POs, Non-PO, prepayment, and credit memo invoices
  • Real-time integration to a non-production EBS ERP system
  • AP Initial Review assignments to a single AP work queue
  • Automated pairing for 2-way and 3-way POs
  • Batch Matching to automate receipt matching of 3-way PO invoices if invoice was received before shipment was received
  • Configuration of 1 organizational/operating unit
  • Approval hierarchy for approvals, including email approvals
  • Email monitoring of 1 customer email inbox for invoice ingestion
  • Up to 5 routing reason codes/exception codes
  • Integration to 1 Active Directory domain
  • Dedicated site to site connectivity through VPN for ERP and Active Directory connections
  • Recurring invoices

These out-of-the-box features, while only a subset of the suite of features that the solution offers, still constitute a feature-rich application able to showcase the power, ease of use, and versatility of the Inspyrus Invoice Automation solution.  With this proof-of-concept offering via TekStream’s Inspyrus Velocity, a prospective customer can get a feel for how their accounts payable process could be streamlined and how their day-to-day processes greatly improved.  If an out-of-the-box proof of concept can demonstrate these improvements, imagine how much additional features like available auto-coding and predictive coding of non-PO invoices and customized validation logic for proprietary/internal procedures and policies can do? 

Want to learn more about what Inspyrus Invoice Automation can do for you, and even see it working in real-time for your ERP? Contact us today!

Email Routing Using Sendemail in Splunk Enterprise Security

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Email Routing Using Sendemail in Splunk Enterprise Security

By: Bruce Johnson | Practice Lead, Operational Intelligence

This was the use case scenario: Something went bump in the night. We needed to be able to send alerts from correlation searches to the security guards after hours and on weekends for a few specific correlation searches. Certain categories of activity (e.g, access violations, creating a new account, getting deleted, getting locked out, clearing security or system logs, using service accounts, etc.) needed to alert the after-hours team.

Now there are plenty of tools that do this very effectively (VictorOps among them). We needed something simple and, in Splunk, it really couldn’t be simpler.

The brute force method would have been to create correlation searches that run after hours and send to different email aliases. In other words, you have a different schedule to run a correlation search because you want that correlation search to route to different people, so create a duplicate search with different schedule settings. I suppose this would have been appropriate if the after-hours search had different levels of severity because of the timing, in which case I would have definitely taken that approach, but that was not the case. There is also no way to use cron to do conditionals. So I couldn’t  do a single secondary search that would run on both after hours on weekdays and all hours on weekends (e.g. <*/15 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,19,20,21,22,23 * * 1-5> OR <*/5 * * * 6-7>). Practically speaking that would mean three different correlation searches – untenable for Splunkers like me that are aspirationally lazy (not very successful yet but someday).

What we needed was a means to determine whether a search result was run after hours or on weekends and set a flag. Then use a lookup to return the emails that we would route to and pass that as a parameter to the email action set up in the correlation search. This was just so much simpler than I thought it would be.

The lookup (mail_recipients.csv) for routing purposes at its simplest level:

email after_hours
bjohnson@whitehouse.gov 1
bruce.johnson@tekstream.com 0
bruce.johnson@match.com 1

I added other columns for userid, escalation level, cc, bcc and some fields that we might anticipate using should our routing need to be more complex, but for now we focused simply on the “after hours” use case. By The Way – the Sendresults app makes sending emails to a column dead simple but our use case was so basic, it really wasn’t needed. If you want to play with it: https://splunkbase.splunk.com/app/1794/

Here’s the search – formatted to use _internal instead of CIM or wineventlog for testing purposes. The sendemail is included for testing as well. All we want to do in the format of the correlation search is to set the routing to $result.recipients$ in the To field. This may not work if you have no errors in your environment (insert appropriate emoji).

In the final version I pulled out the code between the evals and the recipient creation and put it in a macro (stripping all the fields I used except for recipients. Then inserted the macro into every correlation search that needed the routing.

The eventual correlation searches just needed to insert the macro, ensure that the recipients field was in the final result, and change the routing on the email action to go to $result.recipients$ – simple but useful.

The eventual search looked similar to this…

Next up: Modify the search to use data models and to actually use the max hour for the search so that if the search results that come back have a mix of times that cross the current hour boundary, the most conservative path is chosen.

Want to learn more about email routing in Splunk Enterprise Security? Contact us today! 

TekStream Named One of Atlanta’s Fastest Growing Technology Companies in 2019

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For the fifth time in just six years, The Atlanta Business Chronicle has recognized TekStream as one of “Atlanta’s 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies” at the 24th annual Pacesetter Awards.

Atlanta, GA, April 26, 2019 — For the fifth time in just six years, The Atlanta Business Chronicle has recognized TekStream as one of “Atlanta’s 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies” at the 24th annual Pacesetter Awards. These awards honor local companies that are taking business to the next level and experiencing growth at top speed. TekStream joins tech powerhouses LendingPoint, QGenda, and Total Server Solutions as being one of Atlanta’s top private tech companies and ranks 75th overall.

“We are very proud to be recognized by the Atlanta Business Chronicle for this award four years in a row and five out of the last six years,” said Chief Executive Officer, Rob Jansen. “The accelerated growth we are seeing to help clients leverage Cloud-based technologies and Big Data solutions to solve complex business problems has been truly exciting. We are helping our clients take advantage of today’s most advanced recruiting and technology solutions to digitally transform their businesses and address the ever-changing market.”

“Customers are clamoring to figure out how to leverage Cloud technologies to replace capital expense and increase the speed and agility of their IT infrastructure. TekStream will continue their digital transformation by helping them streamline and enhance their infrastructure, lower their operating costs, and free up resources so they can be used to develop innovative solutions to existing problems that are more core to their business,” stated Judd Robins, Executive Vice President of Sales.

“We continue to adapt to our clients’ hiring needs with new solutions and a tried and true recruiting team. The additional recognition is an honor and demonstrates the strength and commitment of our staff,” stated Mark Gannon, Executive Vice President of Recruitment. “We look forward to additional successes in 2019 and to continually pushing to meet our client and consultant expectations.”

TekStream has seen a three-year growth of over 166% and added over 50 jobs in the last 12-18 months. The company’s impressive rise has allowed it to receive accolades from groups like Inc. 5000 and AJC’s Top Workplaces; however, the sky is the limit for this tech firm. Look for TekStream to continue to introduce next-generation solutions for Business, Government, Healthcare, and Education.

About TekStream
We are “The Experts of Business & Digital Transformation”, but more importantly, we understand the challenges facing businesses and the myriad of technology choices and skillsets required in today’s “always on” companies and markets. We help you navigate the mix of transformative enterprise platforms, talent and processes to create future-proof solutions in preparing for tomorrows opportunities…so you don’t have to. TekStream’s IT consulting solutions combined with its specialized IT recruiting expertise helps businesses increase efficiencies, streamline costs and remain competitive in an extremely fast-changing market. For more information about TekStream, visit www.tekstream.com or email Shichen Zhang at Shichen.zhang@tekstream.com.

Using Oracle Integration Cloud Service Libraries

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Why Do I Need to Certify?

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Why Do I Need to Certify? Here’s Four Good (and Brief) Reasons By: William Phelps | Senior Technical Architect   In the normal day-to-day work life in the software industry, there is usually enough real work (meaning “paid” work) to keep an IT worker busy.  Most of us want to just simply relax after a […]

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Using Splunk to Monitor USB Removable Storage Devices

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Using Splunk to Monitor USB Removable Storage Devices By: Pete Chen | Splunk Practice Team Lead   Windows Event Log Monitoring Abstract Information security is only as effective as physical security policies. Splunk continues to be a valuable tool in providing insight into risk and threat detection. As more security operation centers (SOC’s) look to limit sensitive […]

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TekStream Promoted to Premier Tier in Splunk> Partner+ Program

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TekStream Promoted to Premier Tier in Splunk> Partner+ Program

TekStream, an Atlanta-based digital transformation technology firm, today announced it has achieved Premier Partner status in the Splunk Partner+ Program.

By including TekStream in its Premier Partner Tier, Splunk has recognized TekStream for its outstanding achievement and commitment to Splunk market development, strategic prioritization, and customer success.

“It is a significant accomplishment to become a Splunk Premier Partner,” said Matthew Clemmons, Managing Director of Splunk practices at TekStream. “This recognition is a positive affirmation of our commitment to helping our clients get the most from their Splunk investment by aligning with and executing on Splunk’s strategic vision. Premium Partner status will provide us with access to an even greater range of Splunk resources and support. In turn, this enables us to deliver even higher levels of world-class service to our customers for their Security, IT Operational Intelligence, and Support needs.”

In order to achieve Premier Partner status, partners must attain a level of annual bookings and staff accreditations commensurate with the tier. With its Premier status, TekStream’s Splunk customers benefit from an enhanced level of engagement, commitment, and support.

TekStream
TekStream is an Atlanta-based technology solutions company that offers business and digital transformation, managed services, and recruiting expertise to help companies manage their applications, business processes, content, human capital, and machine data as well as take advantage of next-generation cloud-based solutions. TekStream’s IT consulting solutions combined with its specialized IT recruiting expertise helps businesses increase efficiencies, streamline costs, and remain competitive in an extremely fast-changing market. For more information about TekStream Solutions, visit www.tekstream.com or email Shichen Zhang at shichen.zhang@tekstream.com

Press Release: TekStream Achieves SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance Certification

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TekStream Achieves SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance Certification

TekStream’s information security practices, policies, and procedures are officially approved to meet the SOC 1 and 2 trust principles criteria for security, availability, processing integrity, and confidentiality

ATLANTA, GA, January 10, 2019 /24-7PressRelease/ — TekStream announced today that the company has achieved the Service Organization Control (SOC) 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance certification, an attestation standard defined by the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA), certifying that TekStream’s information security practices, policies, and procedures are officially approved to meet the SOC 1 and 2 trust principles criteria for security, availability, processing integrity, and confidentiality.

In today’s global economy, more and more companies begin to outsource core business operations and activities to outside vendors. Service providers must have sufficient controls and safeguards in place when hosting or processing customer data. With SOC certification, customers can now be confident that TekStream has the controls and auditing in place to maintain the security, availability, and confidentiality of their systems. TekStream is organized to handle the data privacy concerns of the largest enterprises in highly regulated industries.

“Despite technology advancements, the Cloud and On-Premise environments are not getting any easier to maintain.” explains Judd Robins, Executive Vice President. “In fact, as Cloud and hybrid digital transformations become increasingly common; supporting and managing today’s leading technologies with security controls and protocols becomes even more difficult. Customers are no longer looking to maintain an expensive internal team of architects, developers, support personnel, admins, and infrastructure experts for critical applications. TekStream’s Support and Managed Services takes this burden off customer teams, so they can focus on growth while leaving the IT details to us.”

TekStream’s support and managed services offerings are designed to provide companies with flexible support hours to ensure enterprise solutions are running smoothly, securely and efficiently at all times. Our support technicians are dedicated to rapid request response and providing real-time solutions and services based on years of practice with Amazon, Hyland, Liferay, Oracle, and Splunk.

Our support and MSP services include:

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) Support – Eliminate infrastructure headaches and the associated drain on your technical teams by outsourcing your AWS support to TekStream
  • Hyland Support – Enhance system security, prevent outages, and ensure that your OnBase solutions continue to run smoothly 24/7
  • Liferay Support – Continually optimize the stability of your implementation. By monitoring and maintaining your environment, TekStream ensures not just that your initial investment in the platform is protected, but that future issues are identified and addressed before they arise.
  • Oracle Cloud Support – Let TekStream’s team of experienced Oracle Cloud Support consultants take care of the management and maintenance of your business’ IaaS and PaaS technologies.
  • Oracle On-Prem Support – Save time by letting TekStream take responsibility for the operational management of your Oracle WebCenter environment. Our support services assess the stability of your current implementation and optimize to provide better security, ensure your applications run smoothly, and prevent outages.
  • Splunk Support – Whether you need guidance in setting up a new environment or creating new solutions to optimize existing environments, Our team of certified support engineers ensure your company is getting the most out of your investment. With proactive identification of errors and anomalies, we can prevent lengthy outages and keep your system running smoothly to keep operational disruptions to a minimum.

TekStream’s commitment to enterprise-level security, privacy, availability, and performance is driven by our unique and entrepreneurial culture built by individuals who are fanatically driven to exceed client expectations. With our SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliance, customers are in good hands with our team of experts.

TekStream
TekStream is an Atlanta-based technology solutions company that offers business and digital transformation, managed services, and recruiting expertise to help companies manage their applications, business processes, content, human capital, and machine data as well as take advantage of next-generation cloud-based solutions. TekStream’s IT consulting solutions combined with its specialized IT recruiting expertise helps businesses increase efficiencies, streamline costs, and remain competitive in an extremely fast-changing market. For more information about TekStream Solutions, visit www.tekstream.com or email Shichen Zhang at shichen.zhang@tekstream.com.