Cireson
Asset Management for the Modern World

Cireson Continues to Prioritize Compliance for Tikit with SOC 2 Achievement

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

SAN DIEGO, -- Cireson, the experts in Microsoft Service Management and a Gold Certified Microsoft partner, today announces another successful completion of our System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type II audit, performed by Sensiba LLP (Sensiba) for its cloud product, Tikit by Cireson. Tikit is a Microsoft 365 ITSM Platform that is built for the Microsoft Cloud.

A SOC 2 Type II report describes a service organization's system, whether the design of specified controls meets the relevant trust service criteria and assesses the effectiveness of those controls over a specified period of time. Cireson's SOC 2 Type II report did not have any noted exceptions and was therefore issued with a "clean" audit opinion from Sensiba. This is Cireson's second time achieving SOC 2 Type II compliance for Tikit by Cireson, first achieved in 2023.

Developed by the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA), the SOC 2 information security audit provides a report on the examination of controls relevant to the trust services criteria categories covering security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy.

"This is an exciting achievement for the Tikit by Cireson team as we continue to prioritize security and compliance at every step of Tikit's development and growth," said Paul Sutton, co-founder of Cireson. "We are committed to building leading Microsoft-aligned ITSM solutions that our customers feel secure in using and sharing their data within."

Any organization handling sensitive customer data must take data-privacy and protection seriously in today's digital landscape. Cireson is honored to be among those committed to this cause and successfully achieving SOC 2 compliance while providing our customers the assurances they need to know their data is secure.

"Compliance is not a set-and-forget effort, it is ever-changing and a constant effort on the parts of all Tikit by Cireson team members. This past year we have continued to take necessary steps to achieve compliance with SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR," said Marcus Bauer, Senior Director of InfoSec and GRC, Cireson. "Our employees undergo constant evaluation, semi-annual security training and education around current compliance standards to ensure we deliver security at the highest of expectations to our customers."

Cireson has continued to work with Drata, a security and compliance automation platform, to continuously monitor its internal security controls against the highest possible standards. With Drata, Cireson has real-time visibility across the organization to ensure the end-to-end security and compliance posture of their systems.

"Achieving SOC 2 attestation yet again underscores Cireson's dedication to maintaining the highest standards of data security and privacy. Continuous compliance is not just a milestone, but an ongoing journey that is essential for rising cybersecurity standards and regulatory demands," said Adam Markowitz, Co-founder and CEO of Drata.

Anyone interested in learning more about Cireson's commitment to security and reviewing SOC compliance reports are encouraged to contact the Cireson team at SecAdmin@cireson.com.

Tikit by Cireson Announces Winners of the Tikit ITSM Awards

Thursday, September 26, 2024

SAN DIEGO -- Tikit by Cireson, the leading Microsoft-aligned IT Service Management (ITSM) platform, today announces the winning organizations for the Tikit ITSM Awards.

This awards program was designed to recognize organizational achievements in the ITSM space using Tikit. Specifically, these awards aim to showcase customer successes, recognize achievements made by customers they can share with the ITSM community, inspire others in the ITSM space and offer networking opportunities among Tikit customers. By recognizing the outstanding contributions of these organizations with both the Tikit and broader ITSM communities, we hope to encourage more organizations to enhance their service desk and overall improve the employee experience across their organization.

When asked about this new awards program, Director of Product Management at Tikit, Adam Dzyacky, said: "The Tikit ITSM Awards were created not just as a place to give creators a chance to show off their service management expertise, but as a way to draw attention to the very real day-to-day work issues everyone deals with and how they are being improved, and ultimately solved. The submissions the Tikit Team has received highlight the creativity, dedication and passion teams across the board have for improving their internal request processes."

The Tikit ITSM Awards consist of five categories:

1. Best ITSM Process

2. Best Power Automate Flow

3. Best Custom Reporting

4. Best Multi-Department Experience

5. Best Tikit Virtual Agent Branding

For the Best ITSM Process, the winner is SERVEONE. SERVEONE is a Korean-based global procurement solution expert that upgrades procurement management and contributes to the sustainable innovation of clients. For their submission, SERVEONE outlines how when initially vetting ITSM solutions, it was critical to find a solution that easy to implement and intuitive for their workforce which consists of more than 1,200 employees across seven countries and eight corporate entities. As a result of Tikit's implementation, SERVEONE has been able to achieve an ITSM process which has centralized their service desk needs while simultaneously allowing them to harness data to optimize their workflows and introduce much needed optimization with such a lean IT team servicing so many end users. Specifically, they have been able to improve productivity by more than 30%.

"For years, I had wanted to identify areas for improvement based on internal feedback and reports from IT service requests across the company, while still maintaining productivity with our understaffed IT team. Using just email and Teams had its limitations, so I knew we needed a proper ITSM solution. However, implementing an ITSM solution requires significant commitment and change management from the top to the bottom of the organization, which discouraged me and our IT staff for many years until we finally incorporated Tikit as a key foundation in our digital transformation journey for internal IT services. Winning this award means we can receive more attention and recognition from our management and employees regarding the importance of facilitating Tikit. This will create a virtuous cycle for improving the effectiveness of our business applications and increasing the productivity of our IT staff," shared Tac-Seung Chung, IT Planning in Platform Business at SERVEONE.

For Best Power Automate Flow, the winner is Southern Illinois University (SIU). SIU is a public university located in southern Illinois, specifically in Carbondale, Il., USA. SIU was chartered in 1869. As of 2023, they had a total enrollment of 11,359 students from all 50 USA states as well as more than 100 countries. For their submission, SIU outlines their Power BI access request process. They use an API call to add information input into a Microsoft Form into an adaptive card that appears within the Custom Form answers dropdown. As Microsoft Forms are used in many of their processes, this was an essential piece of the puzzle for them. Ultimately, the full process has yielded positive results across the entire team noting it has helped the entire organization become more productive.

"We pride ourselves in our efficient and innovative processes, so it is a huge honor for both my team and I to be receiving this award. Being recognized by the product I spend every day in, is super rewarding, and it couldn't come from a better product team. We have had nothing but good interactions with the Tikit team and are so appreciative of all of the hard work that they have put into this product, we especially love the way they accept feedback, make quick changes and implement new features. I cannot thank you enough for this recognition and can't wait to see what the future of Tikit has in store for us here at Southern Illinois University Carbondale," shared Alexis Stallman OBrien, Associate, Information Technology Support, Information Technology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

For Best Custom Reporting, the winner is 98 Ventures. 98 Ventures is a South Carolina, USA-based executive management solutions company, servicing companies across various industries including logistics, fulfillment services and technology. For their submission, the 98 Ventures team shares how their journey with Tikit began with the desire to bring IT support back in-house versus outsourcing to an MSP. Upon implementation, they immediately recognized and addressed the need to establish KPIs to bring visibility into the team's work. Reports created by the team include open tickets, equipment requests & returns, ticket source, ticket category, tickets by type, ticket create and close dates, lifecycle status and more. To further promote awareness across the organization, the 98 Ventures team share their report dashboards on a mounted TV in the offices where their team works, refreshed every five minutes.

"This is amazing! It was great collaborating with our in-house analytics team to create our custom reports. These reports provide our newly established IT team with the critical information necessary to be efficient and successful. The reports they were able to create are invaluable to a new team like ours. Our analytics team members take great pride in what they do and Tikit really provides a platform for them to shine," said Phil Jenkins, IT Manager at 98 Ventures.

For Best Multi-Department Experience, the winner is also 98 ventures. As existing champions of Tikit, the 98 Ventures team have demonstrated an ongoing commitment to adoption of Tikit's functionality. Their Multi-Department experience is no exception to this commitment. For their submission, 98 Ventures outlines how they scaled multi-department rollout across their organization over time leading up to Tikit deployment to seven departments, with eight and nine planned in the near future. Ultimately, describing their experience with Tikit and providing a "one stop shop" for their IT support needs.

"Winning the Best Multi-Department Experience award is a proud moment for us. It validates our team's hard work in integrating Tikit across various departments, creating an efficient and unified support system. This recognition reinforces our goal of providing a seamless and efficient 'one-stop shop' for support across all departments in our organization," shared Hailey Keel, BI Automation and Process Lead at 98 Ventures.

Additionally, for Best Tikit Virtual Agent Branding, the winner is 98 Ventures. The Tikit Virtual Agent works exclusively for the end users in an organization to submit service requests, report incidents and self-service using the AI-powered service catalog. With an intuitive interface using natural language processing, Tikit Virtual Agent elevates the end user experience and increases engagement by empowering users to self-serve with AI-powered ticket deflection. For their submission, 98 Ventures was a clear champion of Tikit Virtual Agent having not only custom branded it, but having done it twice. With custom colors, graphics, name, description and overall esthetic to align with their organizational goals, 98 Ventures embodies the customization intended with Tikit Virtual Agent.

"The past year or so of using and working with the team at Tikit has been incredible. The team is always working on an exciting new feature and getting feedback from their clients, and it's almost as if they've been one or two steps ahead of our needs the entire way," shared Josh Mingus, Director of Information Systems at 98 Ventures. Adding, "When Tikit announced this competition, I thought we had a good chance to win something based on the time, thought and effort our team has put into these solutions as well the feedback and input we've received from the team at Tikit. Never did I think we'd bring home THREE of the possible five awards. Winning the best Tikit Virtual Agent branding award is especially exciting, as our branding has evolved with our use of the platform. This has not only allowed us to keep our users engaged and excited but has also helped us to share our vision of how Tikit helps further our mission and core values. We're grateful to the team at Tikit for giving us the opportunity to be a part of these awards and are excited to see what the future holds for this platform and our organization."

The Tikit Team extends their deep appreciation to all the organizations who took the time to submit to the Tikit ITSM Awards.

"The opportunity to learn about the innovative ways our customers are leveraging Tikit for their ITSM needs has been truly inspiring. At Tikit, we are passionate about driving innovation within the ITSM community, and we are honored to have such a dedicated and engaged customer base," said Paul Sutton, co-founder of Tikit by Cireson. "Our commitment to listening to direct customer feedback is the cornerstone of our development process. Partnering with outstanding organizations allows us to continuously enhance our Microsoft-aligned ITSM solutions, ultimately improving the employee experience."