14 lessons CISOs learned in 2022
Ransomware attacks have increased in 2022, with companies and government
entities among the most prominent targets. Nvidia, Toyota, SpiceJet, Optus,
Medibank, the city of Palermo, Italy, and government agencies in Costa Rica,
Argentina, and the Dominican Republic were among the victims in 2022, a year in
which the lines between financially and politically motivated ransomware groups
continued to be blurred. A critical piece of any organization's defense strategy
should be employee awareness and training because "employees continue to be
targeted in threat actor strategies through phishing and other social
engineering means," says Gary Brickhouse, CISO at GuidePoint Security. ...
Organizations should also do more to keep up with vulnerabilities in both open-
and closed-source software. However, this is no easy task since thousands of
bugs surface yearly. Vulnerability management tools can help identify and
prioritize vulnerabilities found in operating systems applications.
Grow your own CIO: Building leadership and succession plans
To ensure the long-term health of the company, tech chiefs must focus on
building up that middle tier of IT leaders, a reality many CIOs are only now
recognizing the need to address. “There are not enough people out there — you
have to develop your own people,’’ says Roberts, who estimates that only 10%
to 20% of companies are “being intentional about doing formal development
programs.’’ Mike Eichenwald, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry Consulting,
agrees that it’s important to elevate individuals from vertical leadership
roles within the pillars of infrastructure, engineering, product, and security
to enterprise leadership roles. With technology converging in all aspects of
the business, doing so will help organizations leverage the diversity of
experience those midlevel managers have under their belts, and their learning
curve and degree of risk will be minimized, Eichenwald says. “Unfortunately,
organizations miss an opportunity to cultivate that talent internally and
often find themselves needing to reach out to the [external] market to bring
it in,’’ he adds.
Open source security fought back in 2022
Anyone paying attention to open source for the past 20 years—or even the past
two—will not be surprised to see commercial interests start to flourish around
these popular open source technologies. As has become standard, that commercial
success is usually spelled c-l-o-u-d. Here's one prominent example: On December
8, 2022, Chainguard, the company whose founders cocreated Sigstore while at
Google, released Chainguard Enforce Signing, which enables customers to use
Sigstore-as-a-service to generate digital signatures for software artifacts
inside their own organization using their individual identities and one-time-use
keys. This new capability helps organizations ensure the integrity of container
images, code commits, and other artifacts with private signatures that can be
validated at any point an artifact needs to be verified. It also allows a
dividing line where open source software artifacts are signed in the open in a
public transparency log; however, enterprises can sign their own software with
the same flow, but with private versions that aren’t in the public log.
Turning the vision of a utopic smart city into reality
It’s critical to consider what success looks like, and this can be measured by
how user-friendly and efficient a service is, as well as cost efficiencies. For
instance, reducing the time to find a parking space in a new city from an hour
to just a few minutes when using parking apps which can indicate spaces and
process payment. It’s almost impossible to consider smart cities without
thinking about the efficient energy management benefits of smart buildings.
Sustainable initiatives such as integrated workplace management systems already
have the capability to monitor over 50,000 data points per second, analyse data,
and send it to mobile apps. This could see millions of users saving energy. With
a long-term vision for smart city platforms to become unified or standardised,
one solution can potentially work seamlessly anywhere in the world. Platforms
could integrate city infrastructure and navigation, and access to emergency and
city services. Transformation will be driven by users empowered with the right
data, perhaps even according to their user type of student, tourist, or city
resident.
Can real-time data visualisation deliver trust and opportunity?
What is interesting is that so much of this is driven through an ecosystem of
partners. No one organisation can deliver the breadth and depth of data and
tools needed to make such projects work and there is much to learn from that.
Collaborations and partnerships can elevate and enhance real-time data
visualisation and value. For many organisations however, real-time data is still
virgin territory and real-time visualisation is one of those technologies where
reality cannot hope to match expectation, at least according to Jaco Vermeulen,
CTO of tech consultancy BML Digital. “Almost every customer says they want
real-time visualisation, but then nine out of 10 can’t qualify why they need it,
especially when it comes to what decisions or actions it will enable,” says
Vermeulen. “This is usually because they start from the belief that the data is
always available and therefore should be immediately understandable and yield
profound insight. The truth is a bit more challenging.” ... “It is the real-time
decisions that create impact,” he says. “Optimising supply chains, reducing
waste and pollution, optimising operations, and informing and satisfying
consumers.
IBM’s Krishnan Talks Finding the Right Balance for AI Governance
The challenge comes essentially from not knowing how the sausage was made. One
client, for instance, had built 700 models but had no idea how they were
constructed or what stages the models were in, Krishnan said. “They had no
automated way to even see what was going on.” The models had been built with
each engineer’s tool of choice with no way to know further details. As result,
the client could not make decisions fast enough, Krishnan said, or move the
models into production. She said it is important to think about explainability
and transparency for the entire life cycle rather than fall into the tendency to
focus on models already in production. Krishnan suggested that organizations
should ask whether the right data is being used even before something gets
built. They should also ask if they have the right kind of model and if there is
bias in the models. Further, she said automation needs to scale as more data and
models come in. The second trend Krishan cited was the increased responsible use
of AI to manage risk and reputation to instill and maintain confidence in the
organization.
13 tech predictions for 2023
“Different edges are implemented for different purposes. Edge servers and
gateways may aggregate multiple servers and devices in a distributed location,
such as a manufacturing plant. An end-user premises edge might look more like
a traditional remote/branch office (ROBO) configuration, often consisting of a
rack of blade servers. Telecommunications providers have their own
architectures that break down into a provider far edge, a provider access
edge, and a provider aggregation edge. ... As we enter 2023, CIOs have earned
a seat among the decision-makers and are now at the helm of company-wide
technology decision-making. Amid a volatile economic climate, IT leaders must
prioritize reducing costs, but they are finding themselves pulled between
contrasting concerns of managing spend, dealing with security risks, and
fostering innovation. As they navigate an uncertain market, CIOs will need to
analyze company usage, along with their previous experience, to rethink
business approaches and make decisions. The goal is to identify ways to reduce
spend across the company, but not at the expense of key areas like
cybersecurity and innovation.
Preventing a ransomware attack with intelligence: Strategies for CISOs
One of the most effective ways to stop a ransomware attack is to deny them
access in the first place; without access, there is no attack. The adversary
only needs one route of access, and yet the defender has to be aware and
prevent all entry points into a network. Various types of intelligence can
illuminate risk across the pre-attack chain—and help organizations monitor and
defend their attack surfaces before they’re targeted by attackers. The best
vulnerability intelligence should be robust and actionable. For instance, with
vulnerability intelligence that includes exploit availability, attack type,
impact, disclosure patterns, and other characteristics, vulnerability
management teams predict the likelihood that a vulnerability could be used in
a ransomware attack. With this information in hand, vulnerability management
teams, who are often under-resourced, can prioritize patching and preemptively
defend against vulnerabilities that could lead to a ransomware attack. Having
a deep and active understanding of the illicit online communities where
ransomware groups operate can also help inform methodology, and prevent
compromise.
What to do when your devops team is downsized
If you lead teams or manage people, your first thought must be how they feel
or how they are personally impacted by the layoffs. Some will be angry if
they’ve seen friends and confidants let go; others may be fearful they’re
next. Even when leadership does a reasonable job at communication (which is
all too often not the case), chances are your teams and colleagues will have
unanswered questions. Your first task after layoffs are announced is to open a
dialogue, ask people how they feel, and dial up your active listening skills.
Other steps to help teammates feel safe include building empathy for personal
situations, energizing everyone around a mission, and thanking team members
for the smallest wins. Use your listening skills to identify the people who
have greater concerns and fears or who may be flight risks. You’ll want to
talk to them individually and find ways to help them through their anxieties
or recognize when they need professional help. You should also give people and
teams time to reflect and adjust. Asking everyone to get back to their sprint
commitments and IT tickets is insensitive and unrealistic, especially if the
company laid off many people.
Our ChatGPT Interview Shows AI Future in Banking Is Scary-Good
ChatGPT is a large, advanced language processing model that is trained using a
technique called generative pre-trained transformer, or GPT. This allows
ChatGPT to generate human-like responses to questions and statements in a
conversation, making it a powerful tool for a wide range of applications.
Compared to traditional chatbots, which are often limited in their ability to
understand and generate natural language, ChatGPT has the advantage of being
able to provide more accurate and detailed responses. Additionally, because it
is trained using a large amount of data, ChatGPT is able to learn and adapt to
different conversational styles and contexts, making it more versatile and
capable of handling a wider range of scenarios. ... The banking industry can
use ChatGPT technology in a number of ways to improve their operations and
provide better service to their customers. For example, ChatGPT can be used to
automate customer service tasks, such as answering frequently asked questions
or providing detailed information about products and services. This can free
up customer service representatives to focus on more complex or high-value
tasks, improving overall efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Quote for the day:
"Strong leaders encourage you to do
things for your own benefit, not just theirs." -- Tim Tebow
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