Digital Is Great, But Where Are The New Business Models?
While executives are knowledgeable and aware of digital technologies, "the bad
news is that most companies do not seem to act on this knowledge to transfer
their business to the future,” according to the study’s co-authors, Philip
Meissner, chair of strategic management and decision making at ESCP Business
School, and Martin Mocker, research affiliate with MIT CISR. “And creating
such a business model does not seem to be top of mind for most executives
either. Only one-third said that they primarily think of digital business
models when they think about digitization. Two-thirds focus on digital
processes instead." The single most important focus of a transitioned business
model is the customer, pure and simple. "Digital business models take your
company directly to the consumer, wherever they are,” Meissner and Mocker
state. “Their smartphone is always with them and is so is your business.” The
recent Covid-19 crisis demonstrated to the world the immense value of a
digital, customer-focused business model, they add. “While some businesses saw
revenues decrease by more than 80% within weeks, companies with a digital
business model thrived.
Top 5 Questions (and Answers) About GRC Technology
Business continuity plans (BCP) — and solid governance, risk, and compliance
(GRC) policies, in general — can help businesses prepare for and navigate many
disruptive events, including natural disasters, cybersecurity breaches,
terrorist attacks, fraud, and embezzlement. We believe in the benefits of
implementing technology to streamline policies, automate processes, and create
repeatable workflows so organizations can quantify risk into digestible
dashboards to gain a singular source of truth. [Editor's note: The author's
company is one of several providers of GRC technology.] Most businesses, we've
found, have the same questions about implementing tech to strengthen their GRC
programs. So we asked our customer success team, who all come from GRC
consulting backgrounds, what they're typically asked. ... Before choosing to
implement any GRC technology, it's important that organizations align people
and teams to a common goal and define the existing processes surrounding GRC.
One of the biggest mistakes we see GRC leaders make during an implementation
is overcomplicating a process that should be simple. Don't get distracted by
shiny bells and whistles at initial go-live.
Augmented Intelligence: Blazing a Trail in Business Enterprises
With number of headlines suggesting that AI will soon take over a great number
of jobs, thereby leaving a large proportion of the workforce’s skills
redundant, this advanced technology is often more feared than revered.
However, our research shows that over half of UK workers (59%) don’t actually
believe their jobs are at risk of being replaced by AI in the next decade, and
instead, embrace it as a tool to help enhance the way they work. 64% of UK
employees say AI as making them more efficient. This is the definition of
Augmented Intelligence – a combination of human power and AI to achieve
stronger results, time after time. Above all, this concept relies on a
seamless collaboration between people and AI to innovate, solve problems,
and improve workplace processes with precision and ease. London’s black cab
drivers are a prime example of how Augmented Intelligence can assist workers
in performing their roles better. For decades, drivers have been required to
pass the gruelling knowledge test, which demands a virtually encyclopaedic
mastery of London’s streets. However, GPS technology is now so advanced that
it could eliminate the need for this extensive familiarity – and the tradition
of acquiring it – in one fell swoop.
The Key Benefits for High Availability Load Balancing
High availability, which is the ability of a system or system component to be
continuously operational for a desirably long period of time, can help IT
departments implement an architecture that uses redundancy and fault tolerance
to enable continuous operation and fast disaster recovery. ... High
availability begins with identifying and eliminating single points of failure
in the infrastructure that might trigger a service interruption—for example,
by deploying redundant components to provide fault tolerance in the event that
one of the devices fails. Load balancing, whether provided through a
standalone device or as a feature of an ADC, facilitates this process by
performing health checks on servers, detecting potential failures, and
redirecting traffic as needed to ensure uninterrupted service. While ensuring
fault tolerance for servers is obviously critical, a high availability
architecture must also consider the load balancing layer itself. If this
becomes unable to perform its function effectively, the servers below run the
risk of overflow, potentially compromising their own health as well as
application performance and application availability. This makes redundancy
just as important for the load balancer or ADC as for any other component in
the data centre.
Cybersecurity Recuperation: Ensuring a Safe Return to Work
Unlike the rushed, unexpected manner in which many organizations sent their
employees home, the return to the office is something that can be planned and
prepared for in a more organized and orderly fashion. Cybersecurity teams must
not miss this window – they need to act now to ensure the necessary processes
and tools are in place before employees head back to their workplace. To
reduce risk and facilitate a quick return to normal operations, cybersecurity
teams need to consider what threats employees may bring back with them to the
office environment. Once these are identified, cybersecurity teams must take
proactive steps to mitigate these risks. Below, are three key factors to
consider as organizations prepare to return to work. Patching: Remote working
creates new cracks through which users can slip. For instance, a VPN might not
be able to sustain the high traffic generated by so many employees working
from home; with users not connecting to the VPN for extended periods their
laptops or desktops may fall behind on regular updates and patches. Some
computers and servers left on-premise may have been shut down throughout the
home-working period and could also have missed regular security upgrades;
before returning to the office, cybersecurity teams must make sure that all
software is patched across all devices or may expose users to cyber risks.
Digital public services: How to achieve fast transformation at scale
Navigating public services can be bewildering. Information about how to access
services is often presented in hard-to-understand bureaucratic language, and
users must visit different websites or offices for each service. Applications
routinely require hard copies of supporting documents to still be printed and
signed, and many online forms are just as complicated to complete as the paper
versions. Furthermore, the user experience tends to vary across government
websites, and users often require multiple accounts and digital IDs to manage
their needs. All of this stands in stark contrast to expectations. More and
more often, people see no reason why public services should be more
complicated than shopping online. They want to be able to quickly find the
most relevant services. They want information in clear and simple language and
expect to complete all transactions via digital channels—ideally, through a
single digital journey. For example, new parents could get a birth
certificate, apply for child benefits, register for parental leave, and access
other relevant services through one easy process instead of interacting with
multiple agencies, often in-person, and sharing the same information multiple
times.
Twitter hack jolts companies into a social media security check
While the nature of this hack suggests there was little account holders
themselves could have done to prevent themselves from falling victim to this
particular hack, there are several security measures any company that manages
social media accounts should take regularly to avoid other potential risks. On
the day following the hack, one large advertising company sent around internal
communications emphasizing the importance of password security and reminding
employees to ensure that people who no longer require access to advertising
management accounts are removed from those systems. Similarly, employees were
reminded that only people with a certain level of seniority and sign off
should have the ability to be administrators, according to an executive at
that agency who declined to be named. On Twitter specifically, account holders
can review the number of active “sessions” and opt to log out other users and
devices within their account settings. Often in the advertising and media
industries, mid-level employees can have access to powerful tools — from CMS
access, to customer-relationship management software and client social media
accounts.
Cybercriminals Targeted Streaming Services to Provide Pandemic Entertainment
Attackers not only sought access to video services, but also access to
industry services—such as first-release movies—and data on the subscribers,
such as their location. The increase likely had to do with a combination
of attackers having time ans an increase in demand for streaming content, says
Steve Ragan, security researcher at Akamai. "Credential stuffing is a
low-hanging, high-reward type of attack," he says. "Easy to do, and if
successful, a complete ATO [account takeover] is the result. The trends show
that the problem is consistent and continuing to rise." While much of
the increase in the first quarter of 2020 can be attributed to a single
campaign against a popular broadcast TV service—the identity of which Akamai
declined to discuss—the overall trend underscores that digital services
continues to be a major focus of credential-stuffing attacks. Such attacks
attempt to use usernames and passwords stolen from one provider against other
providers, in hopes that the victim reused their credentials across services.
"The criminal economy is a chained instance, where everything is connected
somehow, and no piece of information is without worth," Akamai stated in the
report.
5 Trends in Big Data and SQL to Be Excited About in 2020
SQL and analytics are becoming more collaborative. As discussed earlier,
getting insights from data is becoming more prolific. That means more people
are getting involved in creating queries, analytics, and metrics.
Collaborative work started with products like Google Sheets. The trend has
continued to expand into SaaS products like Figma (collaborative design) and
PopSQL (collaborative SQL). Technologies like PopSQL offer the ability for
your team to collaborate and track your work on queries easily through folders
and version control. Now you don’t have to worry about someone accidentally
changing your query on a report or dashboard. Version control allows you to
revert what the query was at a previously saved state. This ensures that your
team is constantly on the same page as far as SQL and the logic you are using
to calculate your metrics. You also can easily share queries, update them,
fork them, and visualize data. Also, tools like Figma, Google Sheets, and
PopSQL integrate easily with other collaborative tools like Slack. These
integrations further allow your team to share charts, queries, designs, and
insights with ease.
Banks need to think like Google and not just follow it
Banks have for a long time been huge IT organisations, with the biggest often
recruiting more IT professionals than the major IT suppliers. But a change in
recruitment practices was brought on by digital transformation and the need
for banks to keep pace with a changing tech environment. Today it is more
about recruiting senior thinkers rather than foot soldiers and the people that
fit the bill often work for the tech giants. Gareth Lodge, analyst at Celent,
said banks have always been IT companies that offer financial services, but
the ethos within is changing. “It’s more a realisation that effective IT can
be a competitive differentiator,” he said. “Until now, many banks have seen IT
as how they deliver products.” One IT professional in the financial services
sector agreed there has been a change in mindset, with banks realising they
are increasingly IT-driven and happen to sell financial services. Now, through
recruitment, they are “looking for inspiration on how to do that better”, he
said. “It has taken banks a long time to accept that IT is no longer a painful
cost to be outsourced and is the key to their future.” The need for a new
approach to IT will require more recruitment from outside the banking sector
because the tech-savviness of parts of the industry might be overestimated,
according to David Bannister, analyst at Aite.
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