Accessibility & performance -- & morale: How fusing IT initiatives with workplace training can improve transformation success, increase employee retention and enhance business outcomes
A perfect storm of social and technological circumstances has forever changed the way we do business. Lockdowns and evolving guidelines throughout the pandemic forced most organizations to quickly adopt hybrid and remote working business models. And advancements in communications and other innovative technologies have not only ensured the success of such a transition, but have made hybrid working models the preferred choice for many organizations moving forward.
Digital transformation spending is estimated to exceed $1 trillion by 2025, according to Finances Online, making it clear that businesses will continue to look to cutting-edge tools, like artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, to fuel performance and drive outcomes. However, a July 2022 Emergn survey, titled The Pursuit of Effective Workplace Training, of over 1,200 business leaders and learners found that the paradigm around IT initiatives has shifted over the few years. Sixty-four percent of respondents said that their organizations’ IT initiatives have focused primarily on providing better support for remote work, followed by implementing technology to increase the speed and productivity of teams (63 percent) and migrating applications to the cloud (37 percent).
Fast secure: Achieving secure continuous delivery of cloud native applications [Updated]
Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) are critical to achieving DevOps success across organizations -- offering the ability to get software changes into production safely, quickly, and sustainably. By reducing the time between when code is written and deployed, while allowing developers to maintain high quality and minimize risk, CD enables teams to release new features quickly.
However, for CD to be a success, speed cannot come at the detriment of security. By building security validation into the CI/CD pipeline, developers will see benefits in productivity by reducing time to market and build consumer trust by developing more secure apps and data.
Go forth and conquer: New technologies shaping IT in 2023
One of the IT sector’s great strengths is its ability to embrace innovation and new services. As we enter the new year, this trait will be called upon -- with IT departments under more strain than ever.
A combination of sky-high expectations for digital services from users and customers, as well as skilled professionals like software developers in short supply, means IT teams are feeling the pressure. To continue to meet soaring demand, while streamlining workloads, IT teams are exploring new technologies and working methods.
Implementing automation? Plan for the long-term
It is now widely understood that automation can offer huge benefits to the business world. And yet, for every story of a company successfully leveraging automation to streamline its operations and boost productivity, there seems to be another example where it has failed to deliver on initial hopes.
In 2022, I had the privilege of chairing an OpenOcean roundtable on automation with a robust line-up of leading thinkers and business leaders. One of the central takeaways from the event was that stories of automation and AI’s failure are very often the result of the same mistakes in implementation being made repeatedly. However, there are a few key areas that organizations need to focus on to ensure they can avoid these common pitfalls and introduce automation successfully.
Cybersecurity trends to expect in 2023
We’ve come to the end of another year characterized by heightened cybersecurity risk within an environment defined by rising political, social and economic challenges. As such, it’s time once again to look forward and take stock of the future trends that are expected to shape the cybersecurity landscape in the year ahead so that organizations can ensure they are prepared to respond to future threats and are able to mitigate any risk.
For the most part, this coming year we can expect threat actors to continue to look for ways to exploit already existing vulnerabilities within organizations, as well as those newly introduced, as organizations keep pace with new innovations and applications of technologies in order to stay ahead of the pack in an ever-evolving digital world.
How automation will fill IT labor gaps
People who have viewed automation and artificial intelligence with a sense of dread may be beginning to appreciate how it can reduce the boring, repetitive work that is the bane of their lives. In fact, rather than being a threat to human contributions to the enterprise, automation is a powerful enabler of creative, innovative work.
An unwillingness to accept new technology goes back to the beginning of the Industrial Age when people (including the original Luddites) saw machines as infringing on their livelihoods. But the opposite proved true, as industrialization increased employment.
Are vendors taking the initiative in vulnerability disclosure?
Vulnerability disclosure is an important process for improving security and is especially crucial when it comes to the Extended Internet of Things (XIoT). Today’s cyber-physical systems have a direct connection to the real world and hence a vulnerability in these systems can immediately impact the lives of humans.
XIoT is an umbrella term that consists of all cyber-physical devices that are connected to the internet. The XIoT of an enterprise can include cyber-physical systems like operational technology (OT) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS), building management systems and Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices.
The missing piece in the MSP data security puzzle
In the dynamic world of Managed Service Providers (MSPs), it has become quite evident that the time has come for next generation Data Security Solutions, and that such a solution should be added to your technology stack.
For some time and becoming ever more frequent today, organizations and MSPs are facing major data security challenges that are likely to increase exponentially over the coming decade.
Look back and look forward when walking into a new MDR relationship
The managed services market is bringing more and more providers into the mix, as an increasing number of organizations decide it makes fiscal and operational sense to outsource key functions, even those which traditionally have been considered especially critical, such as certain information security-oriented tasks. Perhaps the fastest-growing segment of service providers in this space is MDR -- managed detection and response.
The MDR concept is relatively young in the service provider space. MDR offerings are typically designed to augment your SOC (security operations center) function by providing detective and reactive tools and expertise. In some cases, it may even replace your tier one, or triage-level, security analysts, who are focused on reviewing and confirming the sometimes overwhelming flood of incoming security alerts.
Why proactive protection is key to effective cybersecurity
Compared to many industries, cybersecurity operates in a highly adversarial environment, with organizations investing huge levels of time, money and resources into defeating a range of determined threat actors. If that weren’t enough, security teams are pitted against highly motivated, well-organized criminal and nation-state groups who constantly shift tactics to gain the upper hand.
The result is that security teams are frequently inundated with alerts, false positives and negatives, which nevertheless, they are compelled to address rather than being allowed to concentrate on proactively securing their networks.
In 2023, organizations must prepare for a growing attack surface, the war for cyber skills, and the rise of unknown threats
In the world of cybersecurity, year after year we encounter new threats and challenges, and 2023 is going to be no different. Currently, organizations are dealing with a growing number of unknown cyber threats targeting on-premises systems, cloud infrastructure, and SaaS applications. Added to this, the skills shortage is worsening too, causing analysts to becoming overloaded and burnt-out. Combined, this is creating a perfect storm, leaving organizations more vulnerable to a breach in 2023.
So, what specifically do organizations need to be aware of? Here are four trends that will shake up the cyber landscape next year.
2023 predictions: Automation, right sizing cloud requirements, zero trust and the growing importance of AI observability
2022 was a year of extreme complexities. With the post-pandemic and Brexit fallout, cost of living rises and inflationary pressures, geo-political issues, ongoing climate crisis, supply chain shortages and growing cybersecurity and data security threats, it was undoubtably another unprecedented year.
In fact, ransomware set annual records again, with new ransomware strains emerging. Additionally, cloud adoption continued to grow, while the IT jobs market experienced significant skills shortages. As we look forward to the start of a new year, what trends are on the horizon in 2023 and what issues will organizations be grappling with?
Is AI the future of content marketing?
As technology advances, so does how we market our products and services. And with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), businesses are beginning to explore how this innovative technology can be used to improve their marketing strategies.
AI offers several content marketing advantages, including personalizing content, targeting specific audiences, and optimizing campaigns. As more businesses adopt AI-powered content marketing, it is becoming increasingly clear that this technology is the future of content marketing. This article will explore the various ways in which AI is shaping the future of content marketing.
The age-old question in 2023: How to deal with ransomware?
It has been a devastating year for organizations in the fight against ransomware, with the news this year being a revolving door of ransomware breaches. Research by Zscaler revealed that there had been an 80 percent increase in ransomware attacks year-over-year.
It’s not just an increase in the number of ransomware attacks but also the catastrophic impact they can have on businesses, employees, customers and the wider popular itself. Shockingly, the average cost of a ransomware attack is $4.54 million, and destructive attacks can increase this cost by over $430,000. So, as 2023 quickly approaches, what ransomware threats should we expect?
How access monitoring keeps providers at bay from data breaches
Health care data breaches affected almost 250 million people from 2005 to 2019. But there are ways your medical practice can prevent these breaches and protect your patients’ private health information. Access monitoring is one such way.
As its name indicates, access monitoring occurs when a person or system’s use (access) of a computer system is evaluated (monitored). It’s a process that observes and analyzes what happened when a user accessed a system during a session.
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