How AI can be a ‘multivitamin supplement’ for many industries
It won’t replace humans in the same way that supplements don’t replace a healthy
diet. Still, it will strengthen companies’ existing operations and fill in the
gaps that are currently making work more burdensome for human laborers. ... It’s
exciting to realize that there will soon be professions that we don’t even have
names for yet. As the technology ages and matures and governing bodies create
the necessary laws and regulations, our current state of uncertainty will
transform into an exciting, bright new future of human-tech cooperation. We are
already seeing this future take shape. For instance, MarTech companies are
testing AI-powered fraud detection to supplement the work that human experts do
to monitor traffic quality and transparency. This not only eases the human
workload but helps companies save resources while getting better results
overall. Similar benefits of human-AI collaboration can be seen in healthcare,
with AI that can be trained to assist patients with recovery treatments or
perform routine tasks in medical offices or hospitals, freeing nurses and
doctors up to focus on patient outcomes.
Banking on Innovation: How Finance Transforms Technological Growth for Decision Makers
Regulation is a sensitive topic for the financial industry. While the need for a
certain degree of oversight is universally accepted, excessive regulation can
stifle the very innovation that drives economic growth. On the other hand, too
little regulation can open the doors to risk accumulation and financial crises.
Striking this balance is one of the most challenging tasks that government
leaders face. Policies must be evidence-based, derived from transparent risk-
assessment models and economic simulations. Regulatory sandboxes could offer a
safe environment for financial institutions to experiment with new services and
products under the watchful eye of regulators, thereby fostering innovation
while ensuring compliance. ... One of the most potent ways in which PPPs can
contribute to revenue management is through asset monetization. Governments
often sit on a wealth of underutilized assets, ranging from real estate to
utilities. A PPP can unlock the value of these assets by involving
private-sector expertise and investment.
Microsoft Releases Its Own Distro of Java 21
Microsoft’s continuing support for OpenJDK is a strong indicator of how
important Java is in the enterprise software space. “And the new features of
Java 21 such as lightweight threads are maintaining Java’s relevance in the
cloud native age,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse
Foundation. “Being one of the first vendors to ship Java SE 21 support shows how
focused Microsoft is in meeting the needs of Java developers deploying workloads
on Azure.” Also, Spring developers will be pleased to know that Spring Boot 3.2
now supports Java 21 features. Many other frameworks and libraries will soon
release their JDK 21-supported versions. “Microsoft has some of the best
developer tool makers in the world — to have them add Java to the mix makes
sense,” said Richard Campbell, founder of Campbell & Associates. “Of course,
that happened a couple of years ago, and JDK 21 is just the latest
implementation. In the end, Microsoft wants to ensure that Azure is a great
place to run Java, so having a team working on Java running in Azure helps to
make that true. What does it mean for the ecosystem? More choices for
implementations of Java, better Java tooling, and more places to run Java fast
and securely.”
Why embracing complexity is the real challenge in software today
The reason we can’t just wish away or “fix” complexity is that every solution —
whether it’s a technology or methodology — redistributes complexity in some way.
Solutions reorganize problems. When microservices emerged (a software
architecture approach where an application or system is composed of many smaller
parts), they seemingly solved many of the maintenance and development challenges
posed by monolithic architectures (where the application is one single
interlocking system). However, in doing so microservices placed new demands on
engineering teams; they require greater maturity in terms of practices and
processes. This is one of the reasons why we cautioned people against what we
call “microservice envy” in a 2018 edition of the Technology Radar, with CTO
Rebecca Parsons writing that microservices would never be recommended for
adoption on Technology Radar because “not all organizations are
microservices-ready.” We noticed there was a tendency to look to adopt
microservices simply because it was fashionable. This doesn’t mean the solution
is poor or defective.
Balancing Cost and Resilience: Crafting a Lean IT Business Continuity Strategy
Effective monitoring is the backbone of a resilient infrastructure. The
approach should focus on: Filtering out the noise - Monitoring solutions need
to ensure that only critical notifications are sent out, preventing
information overload and ensuring that the right people are alerted promptly
when critical events inevitably happen. Acting quickly and decisively -
Time is of the essence during disruptions. IT, DevOps, SIRT, and even PR teams
need to be well coordinated for various types of events. From security
breaches to data center fires or even just mundane equipment failures,
anything that might result in customer or operation disruptions will involve
cross-team communications and collaboration. The only way to get better at
handling these is to have documentation on what should be done, a clear chain
of command, and practice drills. In conclusion, a comprehensive backup and
recovery strategy is essential for businesses aiming for uninterrupted
operations. While there are many solutions available in the market, it’s
crucial to find one that aligns with your business needs.
How do you solve a problem like payments infrastructure?
Today, banks need to be willing to adopt new technology to change, and this
will involve working with a third-party service provider. Another roundtable
participant added that as part of this process, it is imperative to utilise
validation evaluation to recycle new enhancements. Otherwise, banks will end
up with the belief that the improvements that were made are unique, but in
fact, competitors will keep pace or even get ahead when it comes to the
innovation game or enticing new customers. This banker revealed that they
opted to not disconnect from their existing infrastructure, but instead chose
a top layer architecture to process payments in a more efficient way. In line
with this, the participant added that culture must be considered, because this
is what brings together the different components that are needed and
ultimately reveals when the time is right to change the systems. Providing
background information, this Sibos attendee mentioned that 15 years ago, the
bank considered whether it would be more cost effective to map local,
regional, or global ISO 20022 messaging into existing architecture or to
create a new platform that could work for the next 20 years.
GenAI: friend or foe in fraud risk management?
Building high-performance fraud detection algorithms today is dependent on
real-life customer and transaction data to train and validate the models,
which has remained a constraint. GenAI can help with realistic synthetic data
creation for model training and validation, scenario and fraud attack
simulation to identify vulnerabilities and design controls to mitigate these
risks. Customer due diligence (CDD) is a critical function in fraud prevention
– be it new client onboarding or new credit approvals (loans, credit cards,
increasing credit limits) for existing clients. GenAI can be a great tool to
go through piles of KYC documentation and reference them with customer-filled
forms and other subscribed data sources of the FI to come up with a CDD
summary report. GenAI can also be used to analyse user communications with FIs
– such as emails, chats, documents and product and service requests – to
extract insights on financial behaviour, sentiment analysis for intentions and
potential risks of fraud. Fraud investigations can also leverage GenAI for
alert and dispute resolution by accessing different sources of information on
the context and providing a summary of the case that will aid in its
decisioning.
Weaving Cyber Resilience into the Strategic Fabric of Higher Education Institutions
There is no shortage of steps that institutions can take to bolster their
cyber resilience and ensure that, should the worst happen, they’re prepared. A
good place to start is by assessing the institution’s current level of
resilience and looking for any gaps or obstacles. In many cases, Goerlich
says, the key is simplification. For example, adopting a zero-trust security
strategy can also improve a college or university’s ability to respond,
maintain continuity and bounce back following an adverse event, he says.
Another factor complicating resiliency for many institutions is overly complex
network environments, particularly in the cloud. As colleges and universities
clamor to embrace digital transformation and cloud networking, it’s not
uncommon for their environments to grow to a degree that becomes unmanageable.
But uncontrolled and unregulated cloud sprawl can have a serious impact on an
institution’s resilience. Developing easy-to-follow approaches and processes —
along with adopting simplified, automated and easy-to-use technology solutions
— can make a significant difference, Goerlich says.
How to make asynchronous collaboration work for your business
Asynchronous working can bring some benefits that synchronous work can't –
most notably speed. “Real-time communication means everyone must be in the
same place, or at least the same time zone, in order for work to happen. If
workers need to wait for syncs to decide or act on something, it slows down
the company as a whole and reduces its ability to compete,” says van der
Voort. Asynchronous collaboration allows people to work at their own pace, and
does not force them to wait for input from others. Morning people, evening
people, midnight oil people, collaborating across geographies, can in some
cases deliver higher quality results than forcing everyone to come together
for a 10am video call. To get this working well, policies such as having core
working hours for each staff member, and having very clear goals and
anticipated outcomes for all meetings, can be incredibly useful. “One of the
most significant and highly sought-after benefits asynchronous collaboration
offers is a dramatic reduction in meetings,” argues Lawyer. “It allows team
members to contribute in the least amount of minutes, freeing up time for
other work.”
Securing the Evolution of Smart Home Applications
Very few in the cybersecurity community have forgotten one of the most
noteworthy incidents, the Mirai Botnet, which took place back in 2017.
Attackers behind the botnet infiltrated the site of well-known cybersecurity
journalist Brian Krebs. The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack lasted
for days, 77 hours to be exact. It involved 24,000 Mirai-infected
Internet-of-Things devices, including personal surveillance cameras. Jumping
ahead to this year 2023, in June the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settled a
case with Ring’s owner, Amazon. The online retailing giant agreed to pay the
FTC nearly $31 million in penalties to settle recently filed federal lawsuits
over privacy violations. The FTC alleged that Ring compromised customer
privacy by allowing any employee or contractor to access consumers’ private
videos. The FTC also claimed hackers used Ring cameras’ two-way functionality
to harass and even physically threaten consumers – including children – if
they did not pay a ransom. These types of incidents clearly illustrate how
critical it is to secure devices like cameras in a smart home.
Quote for the day:
"Before you are a leader, success is
all about growing yourself when you become a leader, success is all about
growing others." -- Jack Welch
