Transforming transformation
Transformation has been a way of extracting value rather than re-invention.
Financial services companies are particularly guilty of this. For example, in
banking, digital has been a way of reducing costs by moving the “business of
banking” into the hands of the end customer – hence why we all do things
ourselves that the bank used to do for us. This focus on cost reduction has
meant that processes have been optimised for the digital age at the expense of
true innovation. The days of extracting value are almost over for the
financial services industry. There are not many places left to reduce costs.
So, they must become value creators, which means taking a leaf out of the
digital giants’ book and finding ways of identifying and solving problems. ...
But, according to Paul Staples, who was, until recently, head of embedded
banking for HSBC, success will not be determined by technology but by the
proposition, approach, and processes that the banks wrap around it. Pain
points and value must be identified up front, forming the basis of what gets
delivered.
Five Megatrends Impacting Banking Forever
The first megatrend impacting banking is the democratization of data and
insights. More than ever, data is being collected everywhere, and it is
the lifeblood of any financial institution. The democratization of data
and insights refers to the process of making data and insights accessible
to a wider audience, including both employees and customers. ... The
explosion of hyper-personalization is driven by the use of significantly
larger amounts of data, such as browsing and purchase history, interests
and preferences, demographics and even survey information. With advanced
technologies that include facial recognition, augmented reality and
conversational AI, it is now possible to also offer customers highly
personalized experiences that cater to their unique delivery preferences –
in near real-time. ... Traditionally, banks and credit unions have viewed
their relationship with consumers as a series of transactions. However, in
recent years, there has been an increasing focus on providing a seamless
and integrated engagement opportunity that can result in a more stable and
long-term relationship.
Understanding the Role of DLT in Healthcare
Finding actual healthcare circumstances where this DLT technology could be
useful and relevant is crucial. Instead of implementing a solution without
first identifying an issue to answer, organizations must take into account
any current requirements or challenges that the technology may help
address. Organizations employing this technology must be aware of and
receptive to the new organizational paradigms that go along with these
solutions. Recognizing the paradigm shift to decentralized, distributed
solutions is essential to evaluating this technology. ... In shared
ledgers, the validity and consistency of which are maintained by nodes
using a variety of processes, including consensus mechanisms, protecting
the secrecy of data entail ensuring that only authorized access is granted
to data. Institutions are employing a multi-layered strategy for
blockchain in healthcare, using private blockchains where all of the
linked healthcare organizations are well-known and trusted.
Control the Future of Data with AI and Information Governance
“The average company manages hundreds of terabytes of data. For that data
to prove an asset rather than a liability, it must be located, classified,
cleansed, and monitored. With so much data entering the organization so
quickly from so many disparate sources, conducting those data tasks
manually is not feasible.” “For organizations to make accurate data-driven
decisions, decision makers need clean, reliable data. By the same token,
AI-powered analysis will only prove useful if based on complete and
accurate data sets. That requires visibility into all relevant data. And
it requires exhaustive checks for errors, duplicates, and outdated
information.” “An important aspect of information governance includes data
security. Privacy regulations, for example, require that organizations
take all reasonable measures to keep confidential data safe from
unauthorized access. This includes ensuring against inappropriate sharing
and applying encryption to sensitive information.”
BI solution architecture in the Center of Excellence
Designing a robust BI platform is somewhat like building a bridge; a
bridge that connects transformed and enriched source data to data
consumers. The design of such a complex structure requires an engineering
mindset, though it can be one of the most creative and rewarding IT
architectures you could design. In a large organization, a BI solution
architecture can consist of: Data sources; Data ingestion; Big data /
data preparation; Data warehouse; BI semantic models;
and Reports. At Microsoft, from the outset we adopted a systems-like
approach by investing in framework development. Technical and business
process frameworks increase the reuse of design and logic and provide a
consistent outcome. They also offer flexibility in architecture leveraging
many technologies, and they streamline and reduce engineering overhead via
repeatable processes. We learned that well-designed frameworks increase
visibility into data lineage, impact analysis, business logic maintenance,
managing taxonomy, and streamlining governance.
When finops costs you more in the end
Don’t overspend on finops governance. The same can be said for finops
governance, which controls who can allocate what resources and for what
purposes. In many instances, the cost of the finops governance tools
exceeds any savings from nagging cloud users into using fewer cloud
services. You saved 10%, but the governance systems, including human time,
cost way more than that. Also, your users are more annoyed as they are
denied access to services they feel they need, so you have a morale hit as
well. Be careful with reserved instances. Another thing to watch out for
is mismanaging reserved instances. Reserved instances are a way to save
money by committing to using a certain number of resources for a set
period. But if you’re not optimizing your use of them, you may end up
spending more than you need to. Again, the cure is worse than the disease.
You’ve decided that using reserved instances, say purchasing cloud storage
services ahead of time at a discount, will save you 20% each year.
However, you have little control over demand, and if you end up underusing
the reserved instances, you still must pay for resources that you didn’t
need.
Core Wars Shows the Battle WebAssembly Needs to Win
So the basics are that you have two or more competing programs, running in
a virtual space and trying to corrupt each other with code. In summary:The
assembler-like language is called Redcode. Redcode is run by a program
called MARS. The competitor programs are called “warriors” and are
written in Redcode, managed by MARS. The basic unit is not a byte,
but an instruction line. MARS executes one instruction at a time,
alternatively for each “warrior” program. The core (the memory of the
simulated computer), or perhaps “battlefield”, is a continuous wrapping
loop of instruction lines, initially empty except for the competing
programs, which are set apart. Code is run and data stored directly on
these lines. Each Redcode instruction contains three parts: the operation
itself (OpCode), the source address and the destination address. ... While
in modern chips, code moves through parallel threads in mysterious ways,
the Core War setup is still pretty much the basics of how a computer
works. However code is written it, we know it ends up as a set of machine
code instructions.
Data Fear Looms As India Embraces ChatGPT
Considering the vast amounts of data that OpenAI has amassed without
permission—enough that there is a chance that ChatGPT will be trained on
blog posts, product reviews, articles and more—its privacy policy raises
legitimate concerns. The IP address of visitors, their browser’s type and
settings, and the information about how visitors interact with the
websites—such as the kind of content they engage with, the features they
use, and the actions they take—are all collected by OpenAI in accordance
with its privacy policy. Additionally, it compiles information on the
user’s website and time-based browsing patterns. OpenAI also states that
it may share users’ personal information with unspecified third parties
without informing them to meet its business objectives. The lack of clear
definitions for terms such as ‘business operation needs’ and ‘certain
services and functions’ in the company’s policies creates ambiguity
regarding the extent and reasoning for data sharing. To add to the
concerns, OpenAI’s privacy policy also states that the user’s personal
information may be used for internal or third-party research and could
potentially be published or made publicly available.
Booking.com's OAuth Implementation Allows Full Account Takeover
While researchers only divulged how they used OAuth to compromise
Booking.com in the report, they discovered other sites with risk from
improperly applying the authentication protocol, Balmas tells Dark
Reading. "We have observed several other instances of OAuth flaws on
popular websites and Web services," he says. "The implications of each
issue vary and depends on the bug itself. In our cases, we are talking
about full account takeovers across them all. And there are surely many
more that are yet to be discovered." OAuth provides an easy solution to
bypass the user login process for site owners, reducing friction for which
is a "long and frustrating" problem, Balmas says. However, though it seems
simple, implementing the technology successfully and securely is actually
very complicated in terms of proper technical implementation, and a single
small wrong move can have a huge security impact, he says. "To put it in
other words — it is very easy to put a working social login functionality
on a website, but it is very hard to do it correctly," Balmas tells Dark
Reading.
More automation, not just additional tech talent, is what is needed to stay ahead of cybersecurity risks
Just over three-quarters of CISOs believe that their limited bandwidth and
lack of resources has led to important security initiatives falling to the
wayside, and nearly 80% claimed they have received complaints from board
members, colleagues or employees that security tasks are not being handled
effectively. ... Stress is also having an impact on hiring. 83% of the
CISOs surveyed admitted they have had to compromise on the staff they hire
to fill gaps left by employees who have quit their job. “I’ve never tried
harder in my career to keep people than I have in the past few years,”
said Rader. “It’s so key to hang onto good talent because without those
people you’re always going to be stuck focusing on operations instead of
strategy.” But there are solutions — and it’s not just finding more
talent, says George Tubin, director of product marketing at Cynet. He said
CISOs want more automated tools to manage repetitive tasks, better
training, and the ability to outsource some of their work.
Quote for the day:
"No great manager or leader ever fell from heaven, its learned not
inherited." -- Tom Northup
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