BetaNews Staff

Organizations have a critical part to play in combating climate change through more sustainable supply-chains, the source of approximately 70 percent of business carbon emissions. Not only will this prevent them from being caught off-guard in the short and long term, but it will also be significant for laying out the company's green future. Failure to do so could see businesses alienate customers, lose sales and become irrelevant in an eco-driven world. Businesses in the UK must wake up -- it's time to think sustainably about supply chains.

In the face of upcoming sustainability regulations, there is more emphasis than ever for UK businesses to renew their focus on ESG. We've already begun to see changes following the creation of the Green Claims Code, which aims to ensure that organizations are not misleading consumers by making claims about sustainability without actually having a concrete plan in place. The green agenda has also been bolstered by upcoming requirements for listed UK businesses to publish net zero plans.

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From healthcare and education to housing, transport, energy, and so much more, governmental departments across the UK are the critical components of the country’s democratic system which ensures continued good governance through the dispensations of services that meet citizens' needs while representing their interests.

Alongside extraordinary financial challenges, the local government sector has had to grapple with a quickly-changing environment brought on by the disruption of the pandemic, rising geopolitical tensions, and a rapidly digitizing global society. This has driven the need for the digital transformation of the UK’s public sector in order to not only keep pace with the shifting landscape, but also take advantage of the opportunities that emerging technologies have to offer in improving efficiencies and enhancing service delivery.

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A recent Statista report revealed the financial consequences of cybercrime in 2022 were higher than ever, with the average cost of data breaches in the U.S. totaling more than $9 million. With 2023 poised to be the year of reduced spending given an uncertain economy, protection against the rise of cyber incidents and data breaches will impact numerous industries and become more costly due to inflation. The human cost, however, is just as great, as businesses face increasing pressures to protect employees’ and customers’ personal information as well as their time and trust.

When a data breach occurs there’s little room and time for error: victims, as well as employees and stakeholders, expect a swift and appropriate incident response. Companies that handle mass amounts of personal data, especially in the legal sector where PII-containing case data is at stake, should look to new solutions rooted in artificial intelligence to complete similar tasks at faster speeds and reduced price points. This will also provide senior leadership much-needed peace of mind amid security-compromised induced stress.

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Knowledge management (KM) -- a concept first established in the 1980s -- is now witnessing both a rapid comeback and a transformation. A perfect storm of factors is contributing to these trends, including the shift to remote and hybrid work; dramatic changes in customer and employee perceptions; "The Great Resignation" that took place in 2021 and the wave of tech company layoffs that followed it; and most notably, the continued explosion in the amount of unstructured content -- scattered across a growing number of siloed applications.

Knowledge Management has made its way back on the CIO agenda as one of the most important initiatives for business resiliency in the years ahead. And, now IT leaders assess how best to implement technologies that discover, cultivate and protect the collective knowledge of an organization and seamlessly disseminate it to employees where and when they need it. This new version of KM promises that the latest technology can help tame content chaos; however, doing that successfully means addressing a number of challenges.

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While the Metaverse is still somewhat in its infancy, it has tech-heads all over the globe coming up with all sorts of theories and concepts for the future. The world of augmented virtual reality is currently so undefined that we’re seeing governments like Dubai building strategies to create 40,000 jobs in the metaverse and bring $4 billion to their economy.

There have been all sorts of talk surrounding personal avatars and property in this futuristic landscape, but what about vehicles? Could we see the potential for people to buy or rent vehicles in this virtual reality?

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The requirements and standards for information security are continuously being enhanced and revised, driven by various external factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the rising expertise of cyber attackers. As a result of this cyber arms race, novel methods and vectors of attacks are emerging. In addition, an increasing number of people in the world are utilizing mobile devices and other remote work means.

This poses additional security challenges. Implementing antifraud systems in financial institutions can considerably mitigate the impact of both traditional and new types of fraudulent schemes.

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In a tumultuous geopolitical environment, organizations use digital transformation initiatives to accelerate and maintain their productivity. Companies want IT to increase innovation and improve the efficiency of processes across their business. At the same time, IT leaders are under mounting pressure to gain full visibility of their infrastructure. This pressure stems from the need to minimize or mitigate the risk of any disruption that could directly impact customers, shareholders and employee data.

Without a clear understanding of where your tech stack sits today, those future goals will forever be out of reach. Whether you are a brand new CIO taking on IT responsibility for the first time, or a seasoned CIO with years of experience, being able to go between the big picture and the nuanced details is a necessary skill to develop.

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On the 25th of May, 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was passed, bringing into law a number of privacy and data protection regulations for those within the EU. Any business that operated within the EU had to immediately begin to respect the regulations laid out by this law.

Yet, even businesses outside of the EU are impacted, due to the fact that anyone that does business with someone within the EU area still must fall under these regulations. This meant that the vast majority of international companies, stretching from Asia and South America to North America and beyond, all had to start abiding by these laws.

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Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture has become a cornerstone for IT and security teams in recent years. SASE became important when demand for cloud-based operations soared, and organizations needed a better way to ensure consistent, fast, and secure access to resources on any device at any location. Today, SASE architecture continues to grow and by 2024, at least 40 percent of enterprises will have strategies in place to adopt SASE. But managing architecture that combines secure access and SD-WAN capabilities with cloud-native security functions, like web gateways, cloud access security brokers, firewalls, and zero-trust network access, is no small feat.

Understandably, SASE deployments can be complex and make end-to-end visibility challenging for IT. In this article, I’d like to explore some of the key criteria to consider when implementing SASE (outside of the obvious cyber security requirements). But first, I’d like to review a few foundational elements including integration, visibility, and remote access.

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In today’s mobile and cloud-first world, zero trust has become a key requirement for organizations looking to secure the digital infrastructures where their applications, data, users and devices reside.

There’s little doubt that COVID-19 changed the rules of the game where enterprise security is concerned. Historically, security models were based on 'castle and moat' style architectures where the enterprise’s network and data center were guarded by firewalls on the perimeter. When users left the 'trusted' enterprise network, VPNs were used to extend the enterprise network to them.

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A rising tide lifts all boats, and the mobile industry has learned that cooperation and collaboration helps everyone. Standardization has helped the sector evolve, touching everything from commerce to healthcare. In 2019, mobile technologies and services contributed $4.1 trillion of additional economic value (around 4.7 percent of global GDP), equating to around $490 billion in tax revenue.

These figures are only likely to grow as more people globally take up mobile services, especially in rapidly-developing nations like China and India. Additionally, with the introduction of wireless 5G technology, more devices are able to connect to the internet, helping to expand the Internet of Things (IoT) market.

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Historically, retailers and their IT partners have looked at Black Friday and Cyber Monday as critical markers, wanting all technology and website changes to be locked ahead of the busiest shopping days of the year. They have wanted the customer journey to be free from the unexpected detours that lead to abandoned shopping carts. But these days, while companies must execute flawlessly during the major holiday season, they can't let any balls drop throughout the year. Customers have so many online options. For retailers, every day is a critical shopping day, and companies need to put their best foot forward. Otherwise, customers will walk away.

Sometimes, before a customer abandons a shopping cart, they will contact a customer service representative for assistance. Because companies know how important it is for their customer service teams to help customers navigate through their shopping journeys, companies are investing more tech resources into making sure that the employees’ digital experiences are free from hassles.

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The "Global DataSphere" is exploding in size. IDC predicts that by 2026, the amount of data in the world will have doubled again. While most enterprises have digitized their operations, they continue to add more strategic workloads and create more and more data. So, as the amount of data enterprises have to deal with grows exponentially, moving to the cloud based on an elaborated strategy offers significant benefits like scalability, flexibility and cost-effective storage.

But can this go on forever? Gartner expects total worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services will reach a record $592 billion this year, a 21 percent increase from 2022. This rapid level of growth and migration raises some concerns at an enterprise level, with fast "lift and shift" migrations meaning best-practices for modern data protection aren’t followed. The Cloud security alliance (CSA) reported that 96 percent of companies say they have insufficient security for sensitive cloud data -- so across the board we have a long way to go on this journey. Here are three best practices for enterprises to protect their data in the cloud. 

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CIOs are under constant pressure to cut costs, reduce tech waste, and increase productivity, but never more so than this year with the looming threat of recession. Rather than concerning themselves with the issues a weakened economy may bring, savvy CIOs should consider the opportunity 2023 brings to meet longstanding efficiency and sustainability goals.

By gaining observability to the health of their IT infrastructure -- specifically, the end-user experience -- executives can gain insights, software and hardware performance analysis to find critical cost reductions. An IT infrastructure review could improve efficiency and, in turn, make business more productive, profitable, and sustainable.

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As we begin a new year, things look bleak for the global economy. In January, the World Bank predicted global GDP to hit just 1.7 percent growth, the worst since 1993 outside of recessionary periods.

Organizations around the world are tightening their belts in preparation for lean times. Hiring freezes and reduced spending on facilities and IT are usually the natural reaction to economic uncertainty.

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