The Ever-Expanding List of C-Level Technology Positions
In decades past, it was relatively uncommon for IT leaders to be part of the
top tier of executive management. Even those who held the title of chief
information officer (CIO) often reported to someone other than the chief
executive officer (CEO). But digital transformation has changed that. As
enterprises seek new ways of doing business, CIOs have begun playing a bigger
role in directing the overall strategy of the business. Several different
surveys have found that more than half of CIOs now report to CEOs, and many
CEOs list their CIOs as one of their most trusted advisors. ... However, while
they might not be ascending to the top job, IT leaders are finding more
opportunities to join the executive team. The twin trends of digital
transformation and the rise of big data analytics has led many enterprises to
create new C-level positions directly related to technology. In fact, some
industry analysts have begun to wonder if organizations have created too many
new C-level technology roles. Some are forecasting that in the years ahead
enterprises might be re-vamping their org structure to cut back on these new
C-level positions. But for now, IT leaders seem to have more opportunities to
fill C-level roles than ever before.
Applying Lean and Accelerate to Deliver Value: QCon Plus Q&A
It is important to understand that delay degrades the economic value of what
we deliver - there is a cost to delays, and it can be significant. Think about
the loss of opportunity or revenue if a software product is delivered late,
especially in a highly competitive market segment. Delays also slow down
feedback, which makes it harder to adapt to new information. You can also
incur significant risk of outages or customer turnover if features are
delivered late. With this in mind, just as we spend so much time optimizing
and tuning the latency and throughput of our software systems, we should spend
time to optimize and tune the latency and throughput of our development
process. It turns out when you look at the math and dynamics of product
delivery pipelines, the biggest contributor to delay is letting queues back
up. Unlike in manufacturing, these queues are invisible in software
development, so it is important that we make an effort to make them visible,
and then address them quickly and aggressively. Two powerful ways to reduce
queues are limiting work in progress and keeping your batch sizes small.
Banking Trojan Can Spy on Over 150 Financial Apps
The Kaspersky researchers first came across the Ghimob Trojan in August while
examining a Windows campaign related to another malware strain circulating in
Brazil. "We believe this campaign could be related to the Guildma [Brazilian
banking Trojan] threat actor for several reasons, but mainly because they
share the same infrastructure," according to the report. "It is also important
to note that the protocol used in the mobile version is very similar to that
used for the Windows version." Unlike other types of Android-focused malware,
the Ghimob Trojan does not disguise itself as a legitimate app that is hidden
within the official Google Play Store. Instead, the fraudsters attempt to lure
victims into installing a malicious file through a phishing or spam email that
suggests that the recipient has some kind of debt, according to the report.
The message includes an "informational" link for the victim to click on, which
starts the malware delivery. The malicious link is usually disguised to appear
as either a Google Defender, a Google Doc or a WhatsApp Updater, according to
the report. If opened, it installs the Ghimob Trojan within the device. The
malware's first step is to check for any emulators or debuggers which, if
found, are terminated.
How to stress-test your business continuity management
“You really need to be in a position to mitigate against any potential risks
both before a system is live, and afterwards, so there are no nasty surprises.
End to end testing of every platform, both independently and in terms of its
integration with the wider network of systems, is therefore critical. However
this needs to be balanced against the need to deliver with speed and certainty
– so strong automated testing should be seen as a standard component of your
production systems. “This will usually be provided by an independent quality
assurance specialist. At Expleo we actually automate this process for clients
to account for the complexity and speed of the technology and release cycles.
Automated testing not only safeguards quality, but also adds value by
providing immediate speed and efficiency gains. “First, ML cuts through the
testing workload and sieves the data at scale, surfacing the highest-priority
test cases. Then, AI analyses this data in real-time, so we can respond to
risks before they become issues. This is used as the basis for predictive
analysis – so you can predict where risk is going to emerge and mitigate it in
the most cost effective way.”
What's next for AI: Gary Marcus talks about the journey toward robust artificial intelligence
Marcus points out this is a really deep deficiency, and one that goes back
to 1965. ELIZA, the first expert system, just matched keywords and talked to
people about therapy. So there's not much progress, Marcus argues, certainly
not exponential progress as people like Ray Kurzweil claim, except in narrow
fields like playing chess. We still don't know how to make a general purpose
system that could understand conversations, for example. The
counter-argument to that is that we just need more data and bigger models
(hence more compute, too). Marcus begs to differ, and points out that AI
models have been growing, and consuming more and more data and compute, but
the underlying issues remain. Recently, Geoff Hinton, one of the forefathers
of deep learning, claimed that deep learning is going to be able to do
everything. Marcus thinks the only way to make progress is to put together
building blocks that are there already, but no current AI system combines.
... A connection to the world of classical AI. Marcus is not suggesting
getting rid of deep learning, but using it in conjunction with some of the
tools of classical AI. Classical AI is good at representing abstract
knowledge, representing sentences or abstractions. The goal is to have
hybrid systems that can use perceptual information.
Passage of California privacy act could spur similar new regulations in other states
The COVID-19 crisis has derailed a lot of legislative activity across the
country, making it difficult to get a solid sense of where privacy
initiatives are headed. “The challenge you're going to find is that
post-pandemic most of the state legislatures said anything that's not COVID
related is not being considered,” Stockburger says. After the pandemic
recedes from its urgent priority status, many states could kick new
legislative efforts into gear. “Next year, that's when you're going to see
big new developments and introductions,” he says. ... Another question that
remains is whether the federal government will step in to create a more
consistent privacy law framework. In the past, Silicon Valley giants stood
staunchly opposed to the stringent provisions of the CCPA and sought a
national privacy law to preempt and water down the CCPA’s requirements.
However, their resistance has weakened over the past several years. “At the
federal level, there's just a real challenge in getting any type of omnibus
legislative efforts pushed through,” Stockburger says. “That’s been a
challenge since probably 2016 when the Democrats got whooped in the
midterms, and since then, we've had divided Congress.”
5 Things We’ve Learned from Digital Transformation in the Last 5 Years
While mobile offerings may have been a luxury five years ago, they are now
an indispensable channel. Many organizations previously viewed mobile
services as a nice-to-have, or as an offering geared towards a younger
generation of tech-savvy consumers. However, now that contactless operations
are the norm, offerings that incorporate mobile capture and mobile
onboarding are a must-have for meeting the needs of the new digital-first
consumer. From check deposits to application submissions, mobile services
can go a long way in providing convenience, accessibility and ease.
Organizations that embrace mobile capabilities and seamlessly connect them
with back-end systems are well-positioned to enhance the customer experience
and improve customer retention. Five years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for an
organization’s process discovery methods to be defined by one-on-one
interviews, firsthand observations and manual analysis. It was typical for
business leaders to map out processes via post-it notes — what used to be
referred to as “walking the wall.” Now, however, organizations are turning
to machine learning and predictive analytics to discover and analyze their
processes in a more accurate way.
DDoS Protection for Workloads on AWS with GWLB & DefensePro VA
There are many ways to deploy DefensePro VA with AWS Gateway Load Balancer
to achieve north-south and/or east-west inspection. AWS Gateway Load
Balancer adheres to multiple deployment use cases and network architectures.
The AWS Gateway Load Balancer provides the VPC Endpoint Service, which
allows customers to mimic on-prem networking paradigms, such as
hub-and-spoke, across different VPCs and accounts. Customers can create a
VPC dedicated to DDoS inspection where a group of DefensePro appliances is
deployed with a Gateway Load Balancer. By utilizing AWS Ingress Routing,
customers have full control of traffic routing to and from the DDoS
inspection VPC. The following network topology illustrates a simplified
deployment of DefensePro VA in a dedicated DDoS inspection VPC. There are
two VPCs: the Customer VPC, which is Internet-facing, and DDoS-Inspection
VPC. The Customer VPC has two Availability Zones for high availability of
applications instances. Each zone includes an AGWe (end-point service) that
steers traffic to/from the Gateway Load Balancer located in the
DDoS-Inspection VPC. A group of DefensePro VAs is deployed in the DDoS
Inspection VPC, spanning two Availability Zones, for high availability.
Does Your Business Need a Digital Transformation?
Because a digital transformation inevitably involves new systems, processes,
and skills, it can be daunting for many leaders and teams. Embracing new
technology involves a willingness to disrupt current processes and to
develop new ones. This can be uncomfortable and challenging, and it’s
important for leaders to acknowledge that from the outset. For many
businesses, a digital transformation means completely rethinking systems and
processes in order to embed technology throughout them. From the start,
leadership teams need to be willing to make these major changes in order to
take advantage of new tools. ... Perhaps the most important thing you can do
is to prepare your team. Whenever there are major changes, leaders should
expect some pushback. It’s important to anticipate and proactively address
this issue to ensure that your team is ready and supportive of upcoming
changes. A simple way to prepare your team is by being transparent about the
planning process, goals, and anticipated shifts. Involving them in the
process as much as possible will lead to increased buy-in and engagement
from all levels of your team.
Stop thinking of cybersecurity as a problem: Think of it as a game
Companies can’t afford large-scale cyberattacks at any time, but especially
right now. The pandemic has caused consumers who may have lost significant
income to be picky with their purchases and investments. Companies need to
be focused on retaining customer relationships so that they’ll weather the
pandemic, and a take-down of the network could undercut customer trust in
unrecoverable ways. But many companies won’t take action. They may view
their older systems as good enough to ride the wave to the other side of the
pandemic, and once there, they’ll go back to what they had used before,
unprepared for the next attack. They may get through, but nothing will have
changed — things will not go back to how they were, and you will no longer
be able to rely on systems that protected a pre-COVID world. Now, there’s an
opportunity to huddle up, form a new strategy, and go on the offensive. The
pandemic can be an opportunity for businesses to take a look at their
vulnerabilities, map their attack surface, and take appropriate actions to
secure and strengthen their systems.
Quote for the day:
"Leadership is familiar, but not well understood." -- Gerald Weinberg
No comments:
Post a Comment