Roadmap to RPA Implementation: Thinking Long Term
Ted Kummert, executive vice president of products and engineering at UiPath,
says RPA should be viewed as a long-range capability meant to empower
organizations to evolve strategically and increase business value. It is a
journey that can start small, within one division or one department, and grow
organically across the business as additional ideas form and the organization’s
vision for automation’s potential comes to fruition. He says RPA can clear
backlog, create new capacity, and free up resources, and improve data quality by
integrating software robots into workflows. “It is a truly transformative
technology that can reduce or eliminate manual tasks and elevate creative,
high-value work,” Kummert says. “Digital transformation is often talked about,
but many times can fall short of its goals. Automation is the driver to achieve
true digital transformation.” Adam Glaser, senior vice president of engineering
for Appian, says many businesses use one automation technology, adding
third-party capabilities in patchwork fashion to automate complex end-to-end
processes.
How to start and grow a cybersecurity consultancy
To be successful, an entrepreneur must be resilient. Any comment that runs along
the lines of “That’s not possible,” or “That can’t be done” should be treated as
a challenge to prove the speaker wrong. An entrepreneur needs to have the
ability to see through what’s not important. Entrepreneurs don’t just need money
– they also need support in the form of encouragement and advice. I would advise
budding entrepreneurs to attend meetups within their industry or local community
and seek out online support via forums and groups. You’ll be surprised just how
willing others will be to help and offer advice for free. Asking questions,
getting reassurance and sanity checks from peers can be invaluable at all stages
of your businesses journey. There will always be someone a little further down
the path you’re taking. Starting a business can be exhilarating, rewarding and
fun, but can be exhausting, relentless and stressful in equal measure.
Surveillance tech firms complicit in MENA human rights abuses
“When operating in conflict-affected or high-risk regions as the MENA region,
the surveillance sector must undertake heightened human rights due diligence
and, if it cannot do so or it identifies evidence of harm, it should stop
selling its technology to companies or governments,” said Dima Samaro, MENA
regional researcher and representative at the Business & Human Rights
Resource Centre. “Lack of adequate due diligence measures by private companies
will only worsen the situation for those from marginalised communities, putting
their lives in jeopardy as the absence of robust regulation and effective
mechanisms in the region allows surveillance technologies to be operated freely
and without scrutiny.” The report added that, although the United Nations’ (UN)
Guiding principles on business and human rights were adopted a decade ago –
which establish that companies must take proactive and ongoing steps to identify
and respond to the potential or actual human rights impacts of their business –
the principles’ non-binding, voluntary nature means there are “glaring gaps in
human rights safeguards” at the firms.
How companies can accelerate transformation
Ensuring that customer value drives technology architecture and investment is
one way to optimize technology usage. Another way is to ensure that an
organization is getting the most out of the investments it has already made.
Inefficiency in any aspect of technology usage represents a drag on businesses’
ability to change quickly. ... While enterprise architects (EAs) play a central
role in identifying opportunities for this type of technology optimization, they
have an even greater role to play when it comes to optimizing the entire IT
landscape. A “business capability” perspective makes this possible. ...
Efficiency doesn’t improve on its own. The business needs to decide to improve
it. Making those decisions, however, is not always easy. As mentioned, relying
on business capabilities to evaluate technology needs is one way to simplify the
decision process. The other is visibility. Business leaders can’t make decisions
if they can’t see the problem. In terms of business architecture, EAs help guide
leaders in the decisions they make by showing them business capability maps,
data-rich process diagrams and dashboards highlighting the connection between
architectural issues and business value.
Optus reveals extent of data breach, but stays mum on how it happened
Optus says its recent data breach impacted 1.2 million customers with at least
one form of identification number that is valid and current. The Australian
mobile operator also has brought in Deloitte to lead an investigation on the
cybersecurity incident, including how it occurred and how it could have been
prevented. Optus said in a statement Monday that Deloitte's "independent
external review" of the breach would encompass the telco's security systems,
controls, and processes. It added that the move was supported by the board of
its parent company Singtel, which had been "closely monitoring" the situation.
Elaborating on Deloitte's forensic assessment, Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin
said: "This review will help ensure we understand how it occurred and how we can
prevent it from occurring again. It will help inform the response to the
incident for Optus. This may also help others in the private and public sector
where sensitive data is held and risk of cyberattack exists." In its statement,
Optus added that it had worked with more than 20 government agencies to
determine the extent of the data breach.
Why cyber security strategy must be more than a regulatory tick-box exercise
While technology plays a critical role in an effective cyber security strategy,
it alone does not provide the solution. Business leaders must also consider the
organisation’s processes and people. If organisations don’t have the right
processes or people in place to manage new technologies, it can be easy to
revert to old habits. Many organisations opt for a hybrid Security Operations
Centre to underpin their MDR strategy, which combines the cyber skills of
in-house engineers, cyber security teams and an MSSP to create a single
facility. MSSPs fill in the gaps in defences while upskilling in-house teams to
stay on top of changing threats and technologies. This approach can also free
in-house staff to drive projects and internal improvements while the MSSP takes
the lead on high value incidents. If the goal is to improve cyber security
whilst meeting your organisational goals, then regulations will only ever go so
far in tackling the issue. Attacks will continue to plague all sectors and
proper detection, response and remediation will be what makes the difference
between those that make the news and those that don’t.
Mozilla is looking for a scapegoat
Not so long ago, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer dominated market share. Antitrust
authorities helped change that, but Google, not Mozilla, stepped up to take
Microsoft’s place, yet without the bully pulpit of a dominant operating system.
Meanwhile, as far back as 2008, I was writing about Mozilla’s chance to make
Firefox a true community-developed web platform. It didn’t succeed, though
Mozilla has gifted us incredible innovations such as Rust. Clearly there are
smart people at Mozilla and they have demonstrated the ability to push the
envelope on innovation. But not with Firefox. DuckDuckGo has carved out a
growing, sizeable niche in privacy-oriented search, but Mozilla keeps losing
similar ground in browsers. Why? In its report, Mozilla says browser freedom has
been “suppressed for years through online choice architecture and commercial
practices that benefit platforms and are not in the best interest of consumers,
developers, or the open web.” This would be more credible in Mozilla’s mouth if
this weren’t the same company that completely mismanaged its entrance into the
mobile market.
Indonesia Data Protection Law Includes Potential Prison Time
The Indonesia data protection law took some eight years to come to fruition,
with contentious ongoing debate about what government body should oversee the
new regulations and exactly how strong the penalties should be. A recent wave of
cyber attacks and data breaches in the country seems to have prompted
legislative action; Kaspersky reports that the country experienced 11.8 million
cyberattacks in the first quarter of 2022, a 22% increase from the prior year,
and the country has become the leading target for ransomware attacks in
Southeast Asia. This includes data breaches of various government agencies, one
of which exposed the vaccination records of President Joko Widodo. Stats from
SurfShark indicate that Indonesia now has the third-highest rate of data
breaches in the world. Regulation oversight has fallen to the executive branch,
with the President slated to form an oversight body tasked with determining and
administering fines. Similar to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR), which the Indonesia data protection law drew from substantially, there
is a maximum potential fine of 2% of global annual turnover for violations.
How To Protect Your Reputation After A Hack Or Data Breach
Part of transparency and recovery is working with the relevant authorities and
experts to track the scope of the breach. A post-mortem analysis can be
critical. For one thing, it can determine what data was stolen, by who and how.
It can also help track where that data ends up and how it is used. In cases
where the cause has something to do with software or hardware being exploited,
it can be essential to inform the developers or manufacturers of the breach and
how it occurred. They may also need to issue patches or recalls to prevent other
businesses using that hardware or software from being compromised. No business
stands alone. ... Recovery after a breach is a sensitive time. You will
undoubtedly see a deluge of negative reviews and bad press, which will be
difficult to counteract. Clear and transparent messaging is part of it; breaches
happen, and there's no surefire way to avoid them. Demonstrating that your data
security policies prevented usable data from being stolen or that you've been
able to protect users proactively can be critical to repairing your
reputation.
Data quality is at the heart of successful data governance
The downstream effects of data quality have ramifications felt throughout data
governance efforts. Recent findings from a survey by Enterprise Strategy Group
showed that data management is greatly challenged by a lack of visibility and
compounded by data quality issues. Concerningly, 42 percent of all respondents
indicated at least half of their data was “dark data” - retained by the
organization, but unused, unmanageable, and unfindable. An influx in dark data
and a lack of data visibility often leads to downstream bottlenecks, impeding
the accuracy and effectiveness of operational data. Data quality was the top
driver for organizations’ data governance programs but was also the top
challenge that these organizations have to overcome to maximize the return on
their data governance efforts. When you consider the fact that many
organizations are experiencing data quality issues, which are difficult to
manage, and in many cases have significant amounts of data that is dark, there
is a clear need for more robust data governance solutions providing data
landscape transparency united with business context and guidance.
Quote for the day:
"Perhaps the ultimate test of a leader
is not what you are able to do in the here and now - but instead what
continues to grow long after you're gone" -- Tom Rath
