7 ways to foster IT innovation
Asking your team to be innovative is like asking an athlete to play better.
While it may feel motivational and instructive to say it, it’s most often
taken as disapproving and vague to the person receiving it. So if you want
people to innovate, define specifically what you’re looking for them to do.
Think specificity. My definition of IT innovation: The successful creation,
implementation, enhancement, or improvement of a technical process, business
process, software product, hardware product, or cultural factor that reduces
costs, enhances productivity, increases organizational competitiveness, or
provides other business value. ... Building an innovative culture is not only
people-oriented but process-oriented. You must develop a formalized process
that identifies, collects, evaluates and implements innovative ideas. Without
this process, great ideas and potential innovations die on the vine. There
also has to be an appreciation and understanding that innovative ideas can
come from many directions, including your employees, internal business
partners, customers, vendors, competitors, or through accidental discovery.
Shift Left Approach for API Standardization
Having clear and consistent API design standards is the foundation for a good
developer and consumer experience. They let developers and consumers
understand your APIs in a fast and effective manner, reduces the learning
curve, and enables them to build to a set of guidelines. API standardization
can also improve team collaboration, provide the guiding principles to reduce
inaccuracies, delays, and contribute to a reduction in overall development
costs. Standards are so important to the success of an API strategy that many
technology companies – like Microsoft, Google, and IBM as well as industry
organization like SWIFT, TMForum and IATA use and support the OpenAPI
Specification (OAS) as their foundational standard for defining RESTful APIs.
... The term “shift left” refers to a practice in software development in
which teams begin testing earlier than ever before and help them to focus on
quality, work on problem prevention instead of detection.
3 ways CIOs can empower their teams during uncertainty
By understanding data from different parts of the business, CIOs are in a unique
position to see first-hand what efforts are producing the highest return. They
can also identify gaps in knowledge and efficiency. Data analytics provide
information used to set goals and expectations that allow the company to adapt
in real-time as priorities change. As data stewards, CIOs will determine the
origin of the most relevant data points and must be able to present these to
other C-suite executives to help them make the best-informed choices. ... As the
face of the IT department, CIOs can set the tone for a company’s culture, both
inside and outside the building’s walls. They can articulate why new digital
technologies are implemented and foster a forward-thinking environment.
Additionally, they can connect the day-to-day actions of IT with their greater
strategic vision. ... CIOs can help drive enterprise agility by always putting
the customer at the center of decisions. The CIO can collaborate closely with
business leaders to understand the business priorities and then develop a plan
for how technology can drive the most value for the customer.
In defense of “quiet working”
Leaders need to raise their game and do their part to make work more engaging
and crack down on bad managers who make life miserable for their teams. They
need to more clearly articulate how people can contribute and what is expected
of them. Companies need to rethink the “why” behind return-to-office policies,
for example, so they don’t just feel like ham-handed directives based on a lack
of trust in employee productivity. This issue of quiet quitting is fraught, and
I want to be clear that there is a balance of shared responsibility here. Bad
bosses give their employees plenty of reasons to throw up their hands and
disengage. Companies need to make work more engaging beyond just coming up with
lofty purpose statements. But let’s also give a shout-out to the value of a
strong work ethic. A lot of companies are making progress and doing their part
to try to figure out the new world of work. And so are the #quietworking
employees. Green’s story captures a quality I’ve always admired in many people:
they own their job, whatever it is.
Cancer Testing Lab Reports 2nd Major Breach Within 6 Months
The narrow time span between CSI's two major health data breaches will
potentially raise red flags with regulators, says Greene, a former senior
adviser at HHS OCR. HHS OCR will often look at what actions the entity took in
response to the first data breach and whether the multiple breaches were due to
a similar systematic failure, such as a failure to conduct an enterprisewide
risk analysis," he says. While there are definite negatives involving major
breaches being reported within a short time frame, there can also be a sliver of
optimism related to the subsequent incident. ... "While multiple breaches may
reflect widespread information security issues, I have also seen it occur
for more positive reasons, such as an entity improving already-good audit
practices and, as a result, detecting more cases of users abusing their access
privileges." ... "We believe the access to a single employee mailbox occurred
not to access patient information, but rather as part of an effort to commit
financial fraud on other entities by redirecting CSI customer health care
provider payments to an account posing as CSI using a fictitious email address,"
CSI says.
Ransomware: This is how half of attacks begin, and this is how you can stop them
While over half of ransomware incidents examined started with attackers
exploiting internet-facing vulnerabilities, compromised credentials – usernames
and passwords – were the entry point for 39% of incidents. There are several
ways that usernames and passwords can be stolen, including phishing attacks or
infecting users with information-stealing malware. It's also common for
attackers to simply breach weak or common passwords with brute-force attacks.
Other methods that cyber criminals have used as the initial entry point for
ransomware attacks include malware infections, phishing, drive-by downloads, and
exploiting network misconfigurations. No matter which method is used to initiate
ransomware campaigns, the report warns that "ransomware remains a major threat
and one that feeds on gaps in security control frameworks". Despite the
challenges that can be associated with preparing for ransomware and other
malicious cyber threats – especially in large enterprise environments –
Secureworks researchers suggest that applying security patches is one of the key
things organisations can do to help protect their networks.
Landmark US-UK Data Access Agreement Begins
“The Data Access Agreement will allow information and evidence that is held by
service providers within each of our nations and relates to the prevention,
detection, investigation or prosecution of serious crime to be accessed more
quickly than ever before,” noted a joint statement penned between Washington and
London. “This will help, for example, our law enforcement agencies gain more
effective access to the evidence they need to bring offenders to justice,
including terrorists and child abuse offenders, thereby preventing further
victimization.” However, legal experts have also warned that any UK service
providers responding to requests from US law enforcers would have to consider
whether there was a “legal basis” for data transfers under the GDPR. Data
flowing the other way would not be subject to the same concerns given the
European Commission’s adequacy decision regarding the UK. That said, Cooley
predicted that OPOs would still come under intense legal scrutiny.
What IT will look like in 2025
To succeed, both now and as the future unfolds, CIOs will need to synthesize a
range of technologies cohesively to deliver experiences, functionalities, and
services to employees, partners, and most definitely customers. “When you
think about 2025, our teams will continue to focus on serving both customers,
internal and external, and to find ways to make our business better on a daily
basis,” says Richard A. Hook, executive vice president and CIO of Penske
Automotive Group and CIO of Penske Corp. “In addition, our teams will continue
to evolve their skills to ensure everyone has at least a security baseline of
knowledge (deeper depending on roles), increased depth on various cloud
platforms and configurations, and the skills necessary to build automation
within IT and the business.” ... “We see that leaders increasingly recognize
the next phase of new value will come from transformational efforts — seeking
to change their business models, finding new forms of digitalized products and
services, new ways to reach new customer segments, etc.,” says Gartner’s
Tyler.
Understanding Kafka-on-Pulsar (KoP): Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
To provide a smoother migration experience for users, the KoP community came
up with a new solution. They decided to bring the native Kafka protocol
support to Pulsar by introducing a Kafka protocol handler on Pulsar brokers.
Protocol handlers were a new feature introduced in Pulsar 2.5.0. They allow
Pulsar brokers to support other messaging protocols, including Kafka, AMQP,
and MQTT. Compared with the above-mentioned migration plans, KoP features the
following key benefits:No Code Change: Users do not need to modify any code in
their Kafka applications, including clients written in different languages,
the applications themselves, and third-party components Great Compatibility:
KoP is compatible with the majority of tools in the Kafka ecosystem. It
currently supports Kafka 0.9+ Direct Interaction With Pulsar Brokers: Before
KoP was designed, some users tried to make the Pulsar client serve the request
sent by the Kafka client by creating a proxy layer in the middle. This might
impact performance as it entailed additional routing requests. By comparison,
KoP allows clients to directly communicate with Pulsar brokers without
compromising performance
How to Adapt to the New World of Work
Burnout is a real and serious issue facing the workforce, with 43% of
employees stating they are somewhat or very burnt out. Burnout is a
combination of exhaustion, cynicism, and lack of purpose at work. This burden
results in employees feeling worn out both physically and mentally, unable to
bring their best to work. It often causes employees to take long leaves of
absence in an attempt to recover and is a key driver of turnover, as they seek
new roles that they hope will reinvigorate their passion and drive. Sources of
burnout might include overwork, lack of necessary support or resources, or
unfair treatment. Feedback tools can help find the root cause of burn out and
how to mitigate them. Implementing wellness tools are another way to address
this issue and demonstrate that the company prioritizes mental health.
Employees whose organizations provide wellness tools are less likely to be
extremely burnt out. Currently, only 26% of tech employees say their company
provides wellbeing support tools.
Quote for the day:
"Leadership is the wise use of power.
Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it "
-- Warren Bennis
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