Does the UK really have the potential to be an AI superpower?
Earlier this year, Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, announced his desire to cement the UK as an AI superpower. And it has been all hands on deck since then with an AI summit set to take place in November, government funds being channeled into research, and ongoing discussions around regulation. The UK is certainly determined to secure a podium position in the AI race.
It isn't difficult to understand why such high importance is being placed on AI at a governmental level. Predicted to increase UK GDP by up to 10.3 percent by 2030 -- the equivalent of an additional £232 billion -- embracing AI could hugely benefit the economy, whilst also boosting productivity and efficiency for businesses of all sizes and sectors. In the current economic climate, when all budgets are squeezed and workforces are stretched, AI has the potential to be hugely transformative. As Plamen Minev, Technical Director, AI and Cloud at Quantum, explains:
The (not so) secret behind successful DEI programs: build in diversity, equity and belonging, don't bolt it on
Why do organizations launch diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs? Simple: It's the right thing to do. Equity and inclusion are basic human rights. DEI is also better business. Multiple studies show companies highly rated for DEI enjoy superior employee engagement and belonging, EBIT margins, total shareholder return, revenue growth, and change agility.
DEI is clearly a slam-dunk must-have. In an HR context, DEI is the philosophical core of building and creating equal career development opportunities for all employees.
What to look for in a third-party vendor while cutting budgets
At the end of 2022, many companies (83 percent) feared a recession in 2023, with 60 percent of enterprise-level and 45 percent of SMB-level businesses preparing by tightening budgets, reducing non-essential spending, renegotiating payment terms and other strategies. Yet SWZD’s 2023 State of IT Report also found that over 50 percent of companies planned to increase YOY IT spending, with budgets expected to grow 13 percent YOY.
That same report indicated that 23 percent of companies had already implemented -- or planned to form -- strategic partnerships.
The future of AI lies in open source
I'm almost getting sick of hearing about AI and its ability to change the world for the better, for the worse, for who knows what? But when you get to the heart of what AI is and how it can be applied to unlock value in businesses and everyday life, you have to admit that we're standing on the edge of a revolution. This revolution is likely to change our lives significantly in the short term, and perhaps tremendously so in the medium term.
It wasn't that long ago I felt short-sold by the promise of AI. About eight years ago I saw someone demonstrating a machine's ability to recognize certain flowers. Although impressive, it was a clunky experience, and while I could imagine applications, it didn't excite me. Fast forward a few years, my real moment of surprise came when I found thispersondoesnotexist. My brain couldn't work out why these were not real people, and it stuck with me. My next big moment was podcast.ai and their first AI generated discussion between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs. But just like everyone else on the planet, the real breakthrough was ChatGPT and the conversation I had with the 'Ghost in the Machine'.
How financial services cyber regulations are hotting up for API security
Financial services firms deploy an increasingly complicated mix of technologies, systems, applications, and processes to serve customers and partners and to solve organizational challenges. Focused heavily on consumer hyper-personalization, banks are evolving more and more digital assets and services to meet and exceed growing customer experience expectations.
As a result, the modern banking environment is heavily reliant on APIs to the point that they are now indispensable. APIs allow financial banks to connect with their ecosystem, while inspiring innovative developers to create new products, improve existing services, and work more efficiently.
Why composability is the key to delivering outstanding digital experiences
In today’s fast-paced digital world, it’s tough enough for organizations to attract customers and keep them loyal let alone to build sustainable and profitable growth. Being up against competitors that invest further in tech, it’s a challenge to deliver the innovative and highly personalized experiences customers expect.
One of the biggest tech drivers for digital experiences, a Content Management System (CMS), is the digital transformation tool for elevating digital experiences. With the availability of modern (hybrid and/or headless) CMS , brands are realizing they need to reassess their approach if they are to deliver for users’ expectations and evolving business requirements.
Technology is a powerful tool for mitigating increasing business costs
Given rising inflation and a gloomy economic outlook for many companies in the UK, optimizing expenditures and cutting costs is essential to ensure the business continues to function effectively. It is imperative to maintain competitive performance, and controlling costs is often a critical step in obtaining robust business operations alongside operational efficiency.
Adopting the appropriate technology can drastically reduce the time invested in labour-intensive tasks, minimise human mistakes, and guarantee that projects are brought to fruition effectively, enabling a business to do more with less. As a result, your business will be better equipped to perform more proficiently, reduce expenses, and strengthen communication with customers and employees.
You're not already using zero trust authentication? Why?
Despite their weaknesses, many organizations continue to rely on a fundamentally flawed traditional security approach that exposes their systems, their data, their users, and their customers to significant risk. Yes, I’m talking here about passwords.
While password practices may have remained a security staple over the decades, the proliferation of digital services offers rich pickings for cybercriminals. Using various methods to gain access to digital accounts, cyber criminals typically target passwords to conduct an attack or account takeover. That’s because passwords are easy to steal and share.
Diagnostic fatigue is causing havoc on cyber efficiency
We can all agree that the effective detection and diagnosis of security threats is a fundamental component of cyber resilience. After all, you cannot protect yourself against what you can’t see, right? With organizations rapidly bolstering their security programs and allocating significant investments to advanced technologies to increase visibility into threats and exposures, many have made notable strides in their ability to expedite the detection of abnormal behavior within their environments. However, this hasn’t come without a cost.
Monitoring and threat analysis capabilities are deployed widely across most modern organization's technical infrastructure. Everything ranging from firewalls to email filtering and credential scanning. And the laundry list is proliferating as attackers leverage other weaknesses to spy on and steal data. This is where we begin to encounter challenges. Wading through these alerts, diagnostic analysis and remediation insights has caused a great deal of strain on cyber efficiency and security teams.
How can Europe create a thriving deep tech economy?
Europe possesses tremendous potential in the field of deep tech. Boston Consulting Group reports that European deep-tech investment has grown by approximately 50 percent annually since 2015. It stands as one of Europe's most promising areas for growth, with leading start-ups in AI, quantum computing, automation, and more.
Nevertheless, Europe faces a dilemma as an increasing number of deep-tech firms redirect their focus to the United States to accelerate their expansion. The decision of chip designer ARM to list on the US Stock Exchange was a particularly painful blow. State-backed initiatives in the US and China present a formidable challenge for European governments, with multi-trillion-dollar investment packages providing significant opportunities for American tech firms. Europe now has an opportunity to foster the growth of deep tech firms by developing a clear strategy that drives innovation and maximizes the continent's existing strength in STEM.
Will CISOs become obsolete in the future?
Navigating the complexities of today’s digital landscape, it's clear that cyber security can no longer be the sole accountability and responsibility of one person -- the CISO. As cyber threats evolve, becoming more frequent and sophisticated, a single individual can't feasibly manage it all. As a result, and at some point in the future, we may dare to consider that the traditional CISO role might eventually become obsolete as business units become secure-by-design.
We need to pivot. Rather than placing the weight of managing an organization's entire security on the shoulders of one person, we need to integrate cyber security throughout every layer of our operations. This means moving towards a world where every business unit and every employee in an organization understands and owns their role in maintaining cyber security.
Real-time feedback is the key to improving the digital experience
Companies are always looking for ways to optimize their business performance and customer success. Realizing that employee satisfaction is critical to advancing business goals, many companies are taking a stronger look at their employees' digital experience.
Team members who are unhappy with technology that is supposed to help them do their jobs are less productive and more likely to leave an organization than employees who are happy with the technology stack. But, as hybrid work has become the norm, IT departments have had a harder task monitoring their employees’ digital experience.
The state of SMB security
Headlines around the globe are typically focused on the big names and, more importantly, the big numbers when it comes to cyberattacks. From manufacturing to banking, education or healthcare, cyber incidents involving the loss of millions of records, or which have resulted in hefty fines are, inevitably, more likely to capture our attention.
Incidents involving a small firm of accountants whose data has been held to ransom, or a dentist’s practice that has been forced offline because of malware, may not reach the mainstream media but attacks on smaller businesses are happening with alarming regularity.
Improving the end user experience on the new network
The rapid shift to a remote workforce has transformed how IT manages business networks. Today, attention is shifting beyond the monitoring of traditional infrastructure made up of physical network devices such as switches, access points, and firewalls. The newly expanded network includes everything that connects end users to the applications they need to do their jobs, including cloud hosting services, collaboration platforms, smartphones, and all the underlying networks end users are connecting through.
The remote and mobile workforce requires IT to manage the end user experience no matter where employees work, whether from the office, home, or some other location. This distributed workforce creates challenges to ensure that all employees can maintain strong online connectivity. As IT teams strive to manage the extended network, they find a clear correlation between employee connectivity and performance. That is why it is so crucial to measure the end user experience and understand how individuals engage with all the digital tools that enable them to be effective in their job roles.
It's not always malware
Every day, cyber incidents and their subsequent downtimes seem to fill the news. These downtimes, both costly and damaging to consumer trust, have rightfully been something that CISOs and CIOs work to prevent with increasingly sophisticated security measures. But sometimes the most damaging "disasters" are the simplest.
Earlier this year, one of the hyperscale suffered a major data center incident in which a water leak triggered a fire in a co-location data center, knocking more than 90 services offline in France. This serves as a reminder to us all that, despite rising cybercrime stealing the headlines, preparing for physical disasters remains a vital part of any disaster recovery (DR) plan. It is crucial that businesses consider the impact that these incidents may create on their own day-to-day operations and invest in their own disaster recovery.
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