Building digital trust to support digital transformation and a distributed workforce
In the UK, we have recently witnessed several issues around trust. These issues center around the ethics and control of data access and use, interaction through the Internet, digital risk resilience and how digital technology has eroded trust. In particular, this applies to trust in the government, whereby politicians have been called into question over their behavior, policies, protocols, appropriate use of technology, and more, especially post-pandemic.
To this point, the current stand-off between the Covid inquiry and the UK government calls trust into question again. In this case, the debate is about the use of appropriate messaging platforms as the government made some of the most important decisions in a generation.
Why cloud connectivity doesn't have to be complicated
Whether it’s a delay on the first leg of a connecting flight, buffering on Netflix, or a weak signal during a train journey, nobody likes it when a connection fails. We live in a world of instant gratification and downtime (even seconds) frustrates us all.
That’s especially true for organizations that have migrated their applications and workloads to the cloud. A study by Netwrix determined that, on average, companies have 41 percent of their workloads in the cloud and plan to reach 54 percent by the end of 2023. What’s more, Flexera found that 89 percent of businesses using cloud storage embrace a multi-cloud strategy, and 80 percent of those organizations take a hybrid approach. Cloud strategies are becoming more popular, flexible and complex than ever.
Cloud revolution: Reinventing IT infrastructure for the modern era
One of the greatest misconceptions about cloud technology? That it somehow downplays the significance of IT infrastructure. Nothing is more false than that. The importance of infrastructure to the success of the company has never been greater. That's because technology has never had a bigger role than it does now in assisting businesses in generating profitable growth, developing cutting-edge experiences, and conducting sustainable, accountable business.
The foundation of the modern "ever-ready" digital enterprise is infrastructure. Infrastructure serves as the framework on which businesses can run this enormous growth of potential with ease. It offers the computing, networking, workspace, and database platform characteristics required to execute the business-critical applications. Additionally, it offers the base upon which outstanding consumer and staff experiences can be created.
Three ways to reduce expenses without sacrificing an employee's digital experience
The cost of supporting employee devices continues to increase, as does spending on network bandwidth and cloud services. Unfortunately, for many organizations, IT budgets are not keeping pace with the rising costs.
While IT spending is expected to rise in the next year, a large portion of that increase will go toward increased labor costs, as inflation and a stubbornly tight tech labor market will force companies to increase salaries.
Solving the UK's digital identity dilemma
Earlier this year, a report was published in the UK with the aim of tackling the UK’s productivity and innovation crisis. Tony Blair and Lord William Hague are fronting the recommendations made, with a particular view to encourage the widespread adoption of digital ID cards. This has driven a discussion around the general public’s distrust towards government-controlled data schemes.
What’s interesting is that much of the UK population probably don’t realize just how many government IDs they already have; think tax returns, benefits, council payments and, of course, driving licenses. But even so, does this mean the UK is ready for a formal digital identity card? Many are more than happy to keep these various forms of ID in a disjointed manner, despite the inconvenience and inefficiency. Yet, the key issue here is trust, and the public needs to believe there is no overreach when they log in to a service.
Neobanks are on the rise: Can legacy banks keep pace?
Neobanks have shaken up the banking status quo since the introduction of PSD1 and PSD2, tempting customers in with user-friendly interfaces and streamlined processes. Legacy banks have struggled to keep up with the pace of innovation in the sector, and as a result, the industry is littered with rushed digital offerings that exacerbate the feeling that neobanks are pulling ahead in the digital transformation race.
In this day and age, having a low-quality digital banking platform is enough to turn customers away in favor of the digitally proficient neobanks. Customer loyalty doesn’t hold as fast as it once did, and customers are far more aware of the alternative services available to them at challenger digital banks. The traditional incumbents can’t continue to hope that their history and experience will win out as customers continue to experience low-quality customer service and deficient digital banking services.
Why data mobility matters
While digital transformation strategies may have been accelerated by the pandemic, as workers return to offices, organizations around the world are beginning to contemplate moving applications back on-premises. And with financial pressures starting to bite, where and how data is stored is becoming even more important. It’s not purely a financial decision, however, as technical and security requirements need to be considered to maintain performance and protect against cyber threats like ransomware.
As a result, businesses are increasingly re-assessing their cloud strategies and weighing up moving workloads to the cloud, exploring different providers, repatriating back to their data centers, or a mix of all three based on their unique needs. But to be able to make the most of these different options, it's crucial that they pay close attention to their data mobility.
Combating ransomware: Strategies for defense
In today's interconnected world, the threat of ransomware looms larger than ever before across industries. Malicious actors continue to exploit vulnerabilities, and the dark cloud of ransomware shows no signs of dissipating. Recent data from the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) shows that cost per ransomware incident doubled over the past two years and remains one of the top action types present in breaches.
In this article, we will explore how ransomware works and what steps organizations can take to protect employees and data from these attacks.
Why machine identities are crucial to zero trust strategies
The days when businesses operated within a defined perimeter that could be neatly protected by a firewall are long gone. Today’s enterprises are dynamic. In the era of cloud native, infrastructure is completely distributed -- from the traditional datacenter to multicloud instances, from physical servers and VMs to microservice-based applications and containerized workloads.
This change in how businesses operate necessitates a shift in how we defend. The old adage of "Trust but verify" has been replaced by, "authenticate everything all the time," otherwise known as "zero trust". Zero trust dictates that security teams must focus on each of the connection points on the network -- from the datacenter to the cloud to the endpoint, every connection must be verified and authenticated.
Amidst an energy crisis, energy companies can't risk a cyberattack further damaging their reputations
It’s no secret that rapidly rising prices, spurred by Russia’s war in Ukraine, have inflicted damage on the reputations of energy companies. While the companies themselves may not have caused those rising prices, it’s their logos that consumers see on top of their energy bills every month.
It should hardly be surprising then that a survey by Populous found that just 16 percent of Britons view the energy sector positively. These are people, remember, who’ve found themselves in the midst of one of the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades. Millions of them have also, at some point in the past few months had to choose between heating their homes and eating.
6 key takeaways from the 2023 Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit
The annual Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit is always fertile ground for discovering the latest trends in cyber security, with this year being no exception. The 2023 event was held in early June, and central themes of this year's summit were the increasing complexity of managing cybersecurity adversaries, the increase in data breaches, and the heightened risk identity poses in an ever-evolving digital landscape.
One of the most significant takeaways from this year's summit is the role of Privileged Access Management (PAM) within the Cybersecurity Mesh. The Cybersecurity Mesh distributed architectural approach to scalable, flexible, and reliable cybersecurity control. The Cybersecurity Mesh allows the security perimeter to be defined around the identity of a person or thing, highlighting the critical role PAM plays in modern cybersecurity strategies. The shift to remote work, accelerated by the global pandemic, and the subsequent rise in cloud-based infrastructures, have further emphasized the importance of the shift from infrastructure-based perimeters to identity perimeters.
SaaS adoption multiplies the security risks of shadow IT
Shadow IT has long posed ongoing security threats for IT teams and network administrators, such as the good old days when employees brought in unapproved external software on USB sticks. Back then, IT teams would use policies to lock down endpoints across a dedicated network perimeter.
Today, the problem of shadow IT is more fluid, with employees directly accessing software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to do their jobs without first getting approval from the IT department. With more SaaS applications being delivered via the browser to a remote workforce, IT teams now struggle to get clear visibility into their levels of risk.
ChatGPT as a development tool? Yes, if used judiciously
Despite the concerns of many programmers about ChatGPT and other generative AI making our profession irrelevant, the software industry will always need skilled human developers to solve hard problems. I’m certainly not ignoring ChatGPT’s ability to generate solid code. It definitely can. But, it’s not anywhere near ready to produce code without human supervision. Its developers are working to improve its accuracy, but ChatGPT currently has a hallucination problem, where it creates content -- including code -- that may look good at a cursory glance but isn’t actually correct.
That said, in the hands of an experienced programmer, ChatGPT can be a powerful development tool that significantly reduces the amount of time it takes to develop a solution. Note, "experienced" is not a throwaway adjective here. For code generation, ChatGPT is a tool that novice developers should employ carefully. You need good instincts for discerning what’s well-formed code and what isn’t, and those skills grow with years of development experience.
Industry cloud platforms: The complete guide
Although general-purpose cloud platforms paved the way for new business technologies, they only address horizontal market issues. Simply put, these cloud computing products provide generalized solutions. SaaS products leave little room for configuration, while IaaS and PaaS systems require extensive coding experience.
To tackle vertical market challenges, you need industry cloud platforms. They’re an emerging trend that combines SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS technologies into one out-of-the-box system, and you can configure them to focus on industry-specific issues. Since they’re new to the market, you might find them confusing. Don’t worry -- we’ll discuss everything you should know about industry cloud platforms, their advantage over general cloud products, and the common challenges faced when executing them.
Improving the digital employee experience
The widespread shift to a hybrid workplace during the pandemic has created many new challenges for business leaders including CIOs, vice presidents, and directors. Perhaps no concern is greater than the need to retain workforce talent by keeping employees in the digital workplace and remote locations engaged and fulfilled in their jobs.
We know that a better employee experience is directly correlated with a better customer experience. Yet improving the digital employee experience depends on keeping people productive while making everyone feel like they have opportunities for personal growth in the company.
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