Functional Focus
Information Technology
Each quarter in Functional Focus, we highlight KBR’s functional departments, explaining how their work affects you and benefits KBR. In this edition, we’re proud to feature KBR’s global Information Technology (IT) team and the crucial work they’re doing to ensure our business runs smoothly, securely and at the forefront of innovation.
IT Keeps You Running
Let’s face it — it can be all too easy to take for granted the work being done by a company’s functional departments. But there’s an almost comic lack of attention paid to a company’s IT department — unless an issue pops up that directly affects us, the end users.
Right now, there is a team of roughly 500 people stationed all over the world — in Chennai, India; Leatherhead in the UK; and Houston, Texas, with additional employees along the U.S. East Coast and throughout Australia and Singapore — who work largely behind the scenes to keep our business moving forward. And their expertise goes far beyond just making sure your PC, monitor and printer (wait, you have a printer?) are up and running on your start date.
From modernizing and automating processes, to piloting and implementing next-level security solutions, to ensuring our employees have the tools and access they need to work remotely, KBR IT is improving performance across our operations and keeping our information and IP (and that of our partners and customers) secure.
Security Tips
Information security is one KBR IT’s top priorities. But security isn’t just IT’s responsibility. It’s on all of us, especially as threat actors become more sophisticated in the ways they extract information. Here are some helpful tips to stay ahead of potential scams.
- Look at every single email carefully, being aware of anything that seems suspicious or out of the ordinary. Notice if an email is from outside the company (any message from outside the KBR network is tagged as “External”).
- If you don’t recognize the sender, immediately be on alert.
- Look for misspellings or if an email doesn’t display properly.
- Notice if it’s asking for a password, account details (i.e., account number) or personal ID numbers.
- Do not open attachments or click links in a suspicious email.
Here are a few examples of how IT is getting it done.
The Very Model of a Modern, Agile Company
Microsoft Enterprise Voice
A key focus at KBR has been equipping our people with the tools they need to be an agile, modern and connected workforce. KBR employees will soon be able to stay even more connected to colleagues and customers thanks to the rollout of Enterprise Voice, integrated with Microsoft Teams. This cloud-based phone system comes enabled with Microsoft 365 Phone System (think of a private internal call exchange but without the expensive hardware), domestic and international calling options, and audio conferencing. Soon, your office number will be directly connected to your Teams client no matter where in the world you are.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Automation is one of the hallmarks of the Digital Age. Machines can now be programed to take on repetitive, time-consuming tasks that, though necessary, eat up too much time. RPAs can be programmed to work 24/7 to perform those tasks accurately and more efficiently. Currently, a small KBR IT team is working on developing RPA solutions that will free up employees to be more innovative and allow them to focus on more important aspects of solution delivery. One example is the SAP password reset process. Our IT professionals wrote an RPA that detects when an old password is expiring, generates a new one, and contacts the employee to log in and update their account information.
An Upgraded DASH System
KBR’s new cloud-based DASH system is key to how IT runs. With its upgraded look and feel, a modernized asset management and configuration management database, and an updated ticketing system, the new DASH system is constantly improving processes. An example is auto-onboarding. When a new employee has been entered in the Workday system and accepts a job offer, IT gets a notification in their feed, which starts the process of communicating with supervisors to ascertain what equipment the employee will need, where it needs to be, and when they need it. This also automates the setup of accounts, mailboxes, home drives and more. Additionally, if the employee is in the appropriate age group for membership in IMPACT, the system will automatically send a message inviting them to join and also inform the local IMPACT chapter leadership that the new employee is starting.
Keep IT Secure, Keep IT Safe
Cybercrime. Malware. Ransomware. Phishing scams. In the age of digitalization, these are words that strike fear into the hearts of businesses and governments, which lose billions of dollars each year due to cyberattacks.
KBR currently spends close to $9 million on information protection. This includes securing our network around and within its perimeter, protecting inbound and outbound email from malware, and employing additional support around ransomware. KBR IT is constantly monitoring our tech stacks with regard to how we protect our endpoints. One upcoming step to bolster our security will be the implementation of Microsoft Defender over the next year. The antivirus protection program combines machine learning, big-data analytics, in-depth threat resistance research, and Microsoft cloud infrastructure to protect endpoints across the company. Another example is Microsoft Azure Information Protection. KBR IT is currently running a pilot of this cloud-based solution that enables organizations to discover, classify, and protect documents (e.g., attachments, files) and emails by applying custom labels to content. IT will be able to create custom rules for what a specific file can do both inside and outside of the KBR network. For example, if a file is marked “highly confidential” and is sent outside of KBR, the recipient might receive a protected link to view the file instead of an attachment. Another example is a time bomb — a file only available for a limited time before it “self-destructs.”
