June 14, 2016

How To Make A Digital Risk Plan And Sell It To The Board

The plan should find the top half-dozen risks that threaten the business, and those are not necessarily the same as the ones that affect IT, says Garner analyst Jeff Wheatman. The question to address is, “What are top IT related risks that could lead to business risks becoming real?” he says. That’s what the corporate decision makers care about. Security executives have to create controls that balance the need to protect the business with the need of to keep it running efficiently. To do that the security experts have to talk to the business leaders while they are creating the plan, he says. That acts as a trial run of what might fly when the plan is presented to the board. Reactions from business group leaders can go three ways: We never thought of that; we worry about something else that’s not on your list; your list has items we don’t care about.


No robots required: AI will eliminate these jobs first

"AI doesn't have to pretend to be a person to have a huge value to the world," says Scott Crowder, CTO and vice president of technical strategy and transformation at IBM Systems. "It's about providing information and insight to humans, so we can do a better job." That's one reason why IBM prefers the term "intelligence augmentation" -- IA, not AI -- and defines its "Jeopardy" champion Watson supercomputer as "a cognitive computing technology that extends and amplifies human intelligence, working in partnership with professionals." AI is already serving on the front lines of service and support via voice-enabled virtual customer agents like Amelia. But because it also excels at analyzing massive amounts of unstructured data, the technology is ideally suited for identifying potential security threats or helping drive business decisions.


Blockchain Is Not Going To Change The World

The haggling process does not affect our ledger balances. But it does affect our messaging. We are establishing a relationship of some kind of trust. If we don’t trust the other person – for example, if the trader thinks the coins are debased, or I suspect the sword has been stolen (and I think the real owner might turn up to claim it) – we are unlikely to agree to trade. Money issued by a trusted source reduces the need for personal trust: if the trader trusts that the money is real, he may agree to sell me a sword even if he suspects I am a jihadi. (I am not advocating this, by the way). But even so, he isn’t going to hand over the sword until he knows for certain that I have the money to pay for it.


What’s Next for Artificial Intelligence

Deep learning, modeled on the human brain, is infinitely more complex. Unlike machine learning, deep learning can teach machines to ignore all but the important characteristics of a sound or image—a hierarchical view of the world that accounts for infinite variety. It’s deep learning that opened the door to driverless cars, speech-recognition engines and medical-analysis systems that are sometimes better than expert radiologists at identifying tumors. Despite these astonishing advances, we are a long way from machines that are as intelligent as humans—or even rats. So far, we’ve seen only 5% of what AI can do.


We’ve hit peak human and an algorithm wants your job. Now what?

Bank executives know what’s coming. So they’re setting up coder labs and investing in startups, teaming up with digital competitors or buying them outright. JPMorgan Chase, the biggest U.S. lender by assets, is using AI to identify potential equity clients. And it’s marshaling OnDeck Capital’s client-vetting algorithm to speed lending to small businesses. Both Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, which together employ more than 32,000 human financial advisers, are developing automated robo-advisers. More than 40 global banks have joined forces with startup R3 to develop standards to use blockchain, software that allows assets to be managed and recorded through a distributed ledger, to overhaul how assets are tracked and transferred.


How To Foster Curiosity And Creativity In The Workplace

Leaders, like their teams, must become more curious or risk becoming irrelevant. In fact, if they are going to create a corporate climate of curiosity, it is a must for them. So why don’t they embrace this? Mostly because they have to work at it. Curiosity is a developed skill and one that has to be nourished constantly. This takes time and effort, and unfortunately most leaders want to rely on what has put them in their jobs versus what is going to keep them relevant and in their jobs. Liz Wiseman sums it up best in her book, “Rookie Smarts”: “In a growing company everyone is under qualified every day. In business today, it is not about what you know but how fast you learn.” As such, leaders must become experts at learning and practicing curiosity.


The future of the IoT job market

In a nutshell, IoT will do exactly what technology does everywhere — it supplants low-skill jobs with high-skill jobs. Eventually, the Internet of Things will lead to widespread replacement of simple and repetitive jobs in areas such as manufacturing, administration, quality control and planning. But more importantly,IoT will lead to the creation of new jobs that will help organizations champion and pioneer not only their personal success with IoT, but the success of the business as well. So what are these jobs, and how should you rework your resume to be prepared for them? Many of these opportunities are new enough that they don’t even have titles yet. But don’t worry, we made some up.


Is it time to buy cyber insurance?

Cyber insurance is coverage that public- and private-sector organizations can buy to help manage the costs of cyber incidents -- costs that can be astronomical both in terms of dollar figures and loss of reputation. For example, the Office of Personnel Management has spent at least $133 million just on credit monitoring services. Studies last year of the per-record costs of data breaches ranged from $154 to $964. Cybersecurity insurance has been available for nearly a decade, but it’s only recently begun to catch on.  “Now you have like 60, 70 carriers writing policies, you have annual premiums of $2 billion and growing, which is I think big. I think that’s sizable,” Sasha Romanosky, a policy researcher at Rand Corp., said. “That’s not the level of car insurance or health, but it’s still significant.”


Forget the Cloud, Microsoft/LinkedIn Deal Is All About the Data

“What makes the most sense is the untapped value of all that content,” Laney says. “What makes the least sense is -- well, perhaps the price tag, but I'm no financial analyst -- is whether Microsoft is, or can be, positioned quickly enough to monetize all this content.” Laney takes issue with fellow analysts that claim this deal is all about Microsoft’s move to the cloud. “Financial analysts I listened to this morning yapping about "cloud this" and "platform that" have totally missed the big picture. It's all about the data,” Laney stresses. “What can Microsoft do with all this content? Almost anything,” Laney says. “LinkedIn Ts & C's are pretty clear (just like WhatsApps and every other social media co) that they can do almost whatever they want with the content, including transfer it.”


Hiring Disrupters in the Age of Disruption Part 1: Re-imagining Executive Search

Unless you’ve been living under a rock in recent times, you must be well aware of the waves of disruption sweeping through the world. Uber is upending the taxi industry and to think they are just a software tool and don’t even own any cars! Airbnb is practically the biggest hotel company in the world although they don’t own any properties. Google, Tesla, Netflix, Apple, Amazon. The list is endless – there’s never a dearth of newer business models and new technologies, or companies finding new ways to exploit existing technologies. Disruptive players are coming out of nowhere and toppling empires. Remember Kodak? In 1998, they had over 170,000 employees and sold 85% of photo paper worldwide. But in just a few years, their business model practically disappeared, and they were soon relegated to the has-been list.



Quote for the day:


"One if the hardest things in life to learn are which bridges to cross and which bridges to burn.” -- @Oprah


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