Among the topics we discussed:

1. Let’s talk about the iPaaS sector, and what drives company interest in this sector?
2. What about the market for low code automation: what are a couple of key trends you see in 2023?
3. How is Tray.io addressing the needs of its clients? What’s the Tray.io advantage?
4. The future of low code automation? What developments can we expect in the years ahead?

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Among the topics we covered: 

• Clearly it appears that tech will face headwinds in 2023. It seems that a recession or slowdown is ahead. How do you expect this to influence tech next year?
• Digital transformation remains top of mind for tech execs. What will drive digital transformation in the year ahead?
• Supply chains have gotten more attention during the pandemic than ever before. You’ve mentioned how supply chain control towers will be critical for achieving resiliency. Please explain.
• Let’s look beyond next year, out a few years ahead. What’s a core tech trend that companies need to be preparing for now?

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The post Infosys Consulting CEO Andrew Duncan on Tech Headwinds in 2023 appeared first on eWEEK.

Among the topics we discussed: 

• What trends are moving the RPA market here in 2022? It feels like the technology is still quite new but gaining rapid adoption.
• As companies move to adopt intelligent automation, what obstacles typically occur? What advice would you give?
• What’s the Automation Anywhere approach to these enterprise challenge?
• The future of intelligent automation? What milestones should we expect?

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Among the topics we discussed:

• There is a lot of buzz around the metaverse. What exactly is the metaverse? How will this help us work more collaboratively?
• We now live in a world where “hybrid work” – collaboration between professionals across locations and time zones – is primary and essential. What trends do you see driving this overarching theme?
• What’s the Nvidia advantage when it comes to supporting hybrid work and virtual worlds. Let’s talk about key tools.
• The future of hybrid work? Clearly it will only get more primary. What milestones or major developments do you foresee?

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Among the topics we covered:

• Prediction: “Data deluge, data gravity, and the need for predictive insights will propel the Edge toward whole new application development and experience paradigms.”

I agree that the Edge is a new era dawning, but doesn’t the Edge also pose an entirely new range of security concerns?

• Prediction: “Ethical, responsible, and explainable AI – from design and development to deployment – will become a top priority for organizations and governments worldwide if we are genuinely interested in an inclusive future for all.”

No doubt that AI offers enormous potential. Are you concerned that AI may be hard to govern, because the massive investment poured into it may dwarf that of any governing organization?

• Prediction: “The future of innovation and business is tied to unlocking the power of data in an application-driven world created with a secure, observable, and API-first mindset.”

This clearly seems like a good idea. How close are we to this ideal? Are most major applications currently built with an API-first approach?

• Prediction: “Only through the delivery of predictive and seamless Internet access will the metaverse be realized, and access to technology and innovation become ubiquitous.”

This is interesting – what timeframe do you see for the metaverse becoming a reality?

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The post Cisco’s Liz Centoni on the Future of Edge, Ethical AI and the Metaverse appeared first on eWEEK.

• What is AI Service Management? How does it differ from AI Management?
• How is AI being used in the real world, in conjunction with IT service management? What are the top use cases? Let’s talk about the recent survey results.
• What about pairing AISM with AIOps?
• What do you forecast as the key trends for the use of AI in the enterprise in the years ahead?

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In a recent survey by ZK Research, we found that 62% of businesses have accelerated SD-WAN plans in the past year. Similarly, SASE has seen a sharp rise in interest, although deployments are still relatively modest as organizations put their strategies in place.

I’m expecting 2021 to be a year in which we see SASE hit that “hockey stick” adoption as organizations shift from planning to deployment.

Complexity of SD-WAN and SASE gives rise to an increased in managed services

The rise of SD-WAN and SASE provides a tremendous opportunity for service providers to become a true strategic partner to their enterprise customers. Network modernization to SD-WAN and SASE holds a tremendous amount of promise as it increases network agility. It improves application performance by limiting the amount of traffic that needs to be backhauled to a data center, and makes the environment more secure and lowers overall total cost of operations.

However, shifting to this new network is more complex than with legacy networks. This is one of the reasons why 66% of respondents to a recent ZK Research study of US companies stated they would use a managed service provider for all or part of their SD-WAN / SASE deployment, up sharply from the historical 25% that use managed services for legacy network services.

This means, for service providers, their choice of technology vendor for SD-WAN and SASE is critical to capitalize on this market opportunity. The strategic value of the network has never been higher as hybrid work and digital transformation are built on network-centric technologies such as cloud, mobility and IoT. The right vendor will enable the service provider to quickly capture share while the wrong one can set the network operator back for years.

Palo Alto partners with service providers for managed services

Palo Alto Networks is one vendor that has a dedicated focus on helping its service provider partners be successful in this area. Palo Alto has long been a primary security vendor to enterprises and recently, with the acquisition of CloudGenix (now Prisma SD-WAN), it has a strong set of network products and is now bolstering its products to meet the demands of its telco customers.

As an example, Palo Alto Networks and AT&T recently announced a collaboration where AT&T is expanding its global managed SASE offering with Palo Alto Networks, bringing together SD-WAN, security capabilities and AT&T fiber-based connectivity. AT&T’s massive customer base, which includes large enterprises, as well as state and local governments, benefits. They get a single provider to help with network modernization to improve application performance and improve security and visibility.

AT&T’s cybersecurity consulting practices can provide upfront design and implementation services and the security operations centers provide day-to-day management and monitoring.

The foundational technologies for AT&T SASE with Palo Alto Networks is the combination of Palo Alto Networks’s Prisma Access cloud delivered security and Prisma SD-WAN (formerly CloudGenix). The former includes a broad set of security services, such as firewall as a service (FWaaS), secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB) and zero trust network access (ZTNA), while the latter enables the use of broadband Internet connections to reduce branch WAN costs and leverages machine learning to optimize WAN performance.

The use of machine learning is key to success for many services providers. As mentioned, SD-WANs and SASE introduce more complexity into the network as there are many more factors to consider. Service Providers use the support of these technologies to work more quickly and accurately in meeting the demands of their customers, whose expectations are high as they turn over network operations to a service provider.

AT&T brings together a global network and modernized network and security

The combination of AT&T and Palo Alto Networks brings together a global, high performance network with a next generation SD-WAN and SASE solution to ensure consistent services at scale, anywhere in the world. Main benefits for customers include:

• Unified security for all users regardless of whether applications are being accessed over the Internet, in a public cloud or private cloud.
• Consistent experience for all users across devices and locations through the use of consistent policies that follow the user, wherever they go without requiring manual intervention.
• Rapid network modernization as SASE eliminates the requirement for appliances to support overlay security and networking stacks.
• Improved visibility and security as the single, cloud delivered solution provides dashboards and detailed drill downs across users and devices with fully integrated threat protection.
• Lower total cost of ownership as SASE reduces the number of vendors, tools and technology stacks. This reduces both operational and capital expenses.

SASE and SD-WAN are now top of mind for businesses of all sizes, but most companies have been slow to deploy as the complexity can be overwhelming. This is where service providers can have a big impact, as they can enable customers to quickly evolve their network while reducing risk. This is dependent on the service provider using the right vendor partner to ensure their customers business outcomes are being met.

The post Palo Alto Networks Enables Service Providers to Fast Track Managed SD-WAN and SASE appeared first on eWEEK.

Often, responding to such emergency situations requires massive efforts from the IT team. This is not just about keeping the network up and running, but also ensuring that data and resources are secure. In fact, the security implications of making what often amounts to a dramatic transition in a short period of time cannot be overstated.

Covid-19 is an example of where organizations around the globe relied on their IT teams to quickly implement dramatic shifts and scale to maintain business continuity, and in an unprecedented manner and timeframe. Under normal circumstances, moving an entire workforce from corporate networks to home networks, with all of the risks of an unpredictable home environment, would take significant planning and preparation. But time was of the essence.

The rapid transition to remote work did not come without its risks to organizations. Cybersecurity has always been a dynamic space, and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the idea that effective cybersecurity must include the ability to adapt to changing environments and evolving threat strategies.

But in this era of rapid digital transformation, the response to the pandemic simply accelerated the inevitable. Beyond 2020 it will remain essential for IT planning to include and account for hybrid IT. Business users will still need to access critical applications from increasingly distributed data centers that extend across a hybrid IT infrastructure. In fact, it will become more important than ever. Workflows and data will not only exist, but expand across on-premise networks, co-location environments, and private and public clouds—and this broad distribution of valuable and vulnerable content will continue to create an ever-expanding attack surface for organizations.

Gartner predicts that organizational plasticity and IT adaptability will be the central strategic technology trend that businesses should plan for in 2021. Enterprises will have assets in their own data centers, some in private clouds, and other assets in a number of public cloud environments. And the mix of these asset allocations will be dynamic. As a result, organizations will no longer have a single compute model – now or in the future.

While the specific details across industries may vary, what is certain is that organizations need to plan now to support both remote and in-person work well into the future. And that means cybersecurity teams must make sure that infrastructures are prepared to address all scenarios, including utilizing a security-driven networking approach that converges networking and security to protect the enterprise at every edge, from network to cloud.

Cybersecurity and the Remote Workforce: The Data says…

To explore the challenges organizations faced as a result of the shift in remote work, and examine how organizations are planning to secure their remote workforce moving forward, Fortinet conducted a survey and issued the 2020 Remote Workforce Cybersecurity Report. This analysis was conducted mid-way through this incongruous year, surveying security leaders across industries—including the public sector—in 17 different countries.

It has eight specific areas of focus:

1. The Sudden Shift to Remote Work Was Challenging for Most Organizations

As expected, the rapid shift to a new work paradigm was not easy. Nearly two-thirds of businesses had to transition over half of their workforce to remote work practically overnight. And to complicate matters further, only 40% of organizations had a business continuity plan in place prior to the pandemic.

But as a result of this rapid shift to remote work, 32% have now invested further in this area. These investments are critical to ensure continued operations not just now, but for future crises as well. Those organizations that did not a remote worker strategy in place quickly recognized the need for one.

General lack of preparation resulted in 83% of organizations finding this transition to be moderately, very, or extremely challenging. Organizations faced the most significant difficulties when it came to secure connectivity, followed by business continuity assurance and access to business-critical applications. 40% of those surveyed ended up spending more on skilled IT workers to support the additional reliance of remote workers on IT staff to troubleshoot issues, enable security, and ensure productivity for employees working from home.

2. Cyber Attackers Saw Telework as an Opportunity

Inherent cybersecurity challenges of moving workers outside the traditional perimeter were exacerbated by the unprecedented cyber threat activity that resulted from an increased reliance on personal device usage. Almost overnight, cybercriminals shifted their focus to target those workers outside the corporate network. The spike in employees remotely connecting to the corporate network led directly to an increase in breach attempts and overall cyberattacks targeting remote workers, endpoint devices and vulnerable home networks. The report shows that organizations identified the most challenging aspects of this transition as being ensuring secure connections, maintaining business continuity, and providing secure access to business-critical applications.

From opportunistic phishers to scheming nation-state actors, cyber adversaries found multiple ways to exploit the global pandemic for their benefit, often at enormous scale, as evidenced by a recent FortiGuard Labs Global Threat Landscape Report. Threats included new phishing and business email compromise schemes, modified and new ransomware attacks, and even nation-state backed campaigns. In fact, according to the 2020 Remote Workforce Cybersecurity Report, 60% of organizations revealed an increase in cybersecurity breach attempts during the transition to remote work, while 34% reported actual breaches in their networks.

During this time, the FortiGuard Labs team documented an average of about 600 new phishing campaigns per day during the spring. And because home users were no longer protected by corporate security devices, web-based malware became the most common attack vehicle, outranking email as the primary delivery vector used by cybercriminals for the first time in years.

3. Defending the Dynamic Perimeter

Network security today is at a turning point because perimeter-based security is no longer sufficient. Expanding security surfaces and compute demands, new edges and edge devices— including the WAN Edge, data center edge, multi-cloud edge, and even home edge, and increasing network complexity makes managing threats practically untenable. Given the volume of cyber threats targeting remote workers, and the indication that cybercriminals are aggressively targeting the expanding attack surface, organizations need to carefully consider what technologies and approaches are needed to secure remote work and an increasingly dynamic perimeter moving forward. In particular, defense strategies need to be adjusted to fully account for the extension of the network perimeter into the home.

4. Securing Different Types of Users

Not every employee in an organization requires the same level of access to company resources when working remotely. Organizations should tailor securing telework to each remote worker:

• Basic teleworker. The basic teleworker usually only requires access to email, internet, teleconferencing and similar business applications, limited file sharing, and function-specific capabilities (finance, HR, etc.) from their remote work site. This includes access to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications in the cloud, such as Microsoft Office 365, as well as a secure connection to the corporate network. Basic teleworkers should connect to the organization using a VPN and use multifactor authentication (MFA).
• Power user. These are employees that require a higher level of access to corporate resources while working from a remote location. This may include the need to access critical or sensitive information, use bandwidth-intensive applications such as teleconferencing plus screen sharing, or simultaneously connecting to corporate resources using multiple devices. Power users include system administrators, IT support technicians, and emergency personnel. For these power users, deployment of a dedicated access point at their alternate work site provides the consistent access, reliable performance, and level of security that they require. This secure access point should also deliver protected wireless connectivity to the corporate network through a secure tunnel.
• Super user. A super user is an employee that frequently processes extremely sensitive and confidential information. They require the highest level of security as they access confidential corporate resources, even when working from an alternate office location. This employee profile includes administrators with privileged system access, emergency personnel, and executive management. For these super users, their alternate work site should be configured as an alternate office location, creating a secure enclave within their home network.

5. Securing Remote Work: Best Practices

While many organizations have made improvements in the securing of their remote workforces, survey data reveals several best practices that should be considered for improving secure remote connectivity. These include:

• Multi-factor Authentication (MFA). While the survey revealed that 65% of organizations had some level of VPN solution in place pre-pandemic, only 37% of those used MFA. While VPNs play an important role in ensuring secure connectivity, they are simply one part of securing access. If not already in place, it is recommended that organizations consider integrating MFA into their remote security plans to prevent cybercriminals from spoofing remote workers to gain unauthorized access to network resources.
• Network Access Control (NAC) and Endpoint Security. As more employees work remotely, organizations have seen the need to control the influx of non-trusted devices on their networks. As a result, 76% of organizations now plan to acquire or upgrade their NAC technologies. By adopting NAC solutions, IT teams gain increased visibility and control over the users and devices on their network. Organizations also have concerns over the security of remote worker endpoint devices and the risks they introduce once they have been granted network access. This is why 72% of organizations also plan to acquire or enhance endpoint security with endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions. EDR solutions deliver advanced, real-time threat protection for endpoints both pre- and post-infection.
• Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) for the Home. According to the data, 64% of organizations plan to either upgrade or adopt SD-WAN, with many of them now targeting home office use in addition to branch deployments. The critical advantage of extending secure SD-WAN functionality to individual teleworkers, especially super users, is that they can enjoy on-demand remote access, secure Wi-Fi for better home office flexibility, and dynamically scalable performance regardless of their local network availability through redundant connections that leverage things like LTE and 5G.
• Intent-based Segmentation. Traditional network-based segmentation strategies tend to stop at the edge of each network environment. Instead, intent-based network segmentation supports the explosive adoption of IoT and mobile devices, as well as applications and services from multiple clouds, by extending security policies beyond the network edge across multiple networked environments. 60% of organizations, for example, plan to upgrade or invest in segmentation to support an inverted network model by extend segmentation functionality into the home.
• Skilled Security Professionals. While 73% of organizations stated their intention to invest further in skilled IT workers over the next 24 months, the historical lack of skilled IT security professionals could present a challenge as accelerated cloud demand exacerbates shortage of cloud and security architects.

6. Securing Remote Work: Cyber Education is Critical

Now more than ever, employees should understand the part they play in their organization’s security posture.

Organizations need to adopt a cyber education that includes educating remote workers on how to keep themselves, their data and resources, and the organization safe. Many cybersecurity awareness and training courses are currently free during this pandemic, whether non-technical courses targeted to teleworkers and their families, or more advanced training to educate advanced users about enhanced protection and visibility across every segment, device, and appliance on the network, whether virtual, in the cloud, or on-premise.

It’s highly recommended that all teleworkers – technical or not – take time to educate themselves about proper security protocols to keep themselves and their organizations safe.

7: Enterprises Must Adapt to Secure Remote Work for the Long-Term

According to the 2020 Remote Workforce Cybersecurity Report, nearly a third of organizations anticipate that more than half of their employees to continue working remotely full-time after the pandemic. As a result, security leaders must carefully consider what technology and strategies are required to secure telework well into the future. Temporary fixes and solutions must be made permanent, with an eye towards flexibility, scalability, and security.

8. The Future of Work: IT Flexibility

According to Gartner analysts, there are nine top strategic technology trends that businesses should plan for in 2021, and organizational plasticity is the overarching message. Brian Burke, research vice president at Gartner, explained, “What we’re talking about with the trends is how do you leverage technology to gain the organizational plasticity that you need to form and reform into whatever’s going to be required as we emerge from this pandemic.”

Hybrid IT continues to be a key element that organizations need to incorporate in their IT planning because there is no one compute model. Very few companies will be cloud-only or only have a data center. Even if an organization is a very cloud focused, there are still endpoints that must be secured – especially with today’s highly remote workforce – and those endpoints are part of the organization’s network.

To address this challenge, enterprises need to invest in security solutions that provide the flexibility they need to support evolving networks and shifting priorities. Organizations must be able to cope with growing attack surfaces, advanced threats, increased infrastructure complexity, and an expanding regulatory landscape while also adapting their business to evolving consumer and competitive demands.

To achieve their desired business outcomes, while effectively managing risks and minimizing complexities, organizations need to adopt a cybersecurity platform that provides broad visibility across their environment and a means to easily manage both security and network operations, ensure full integration to enable automation for end-to-end protection, and that can operate seamlessly and consistently across multiple, highly dynamic environments.

To achieve this, the convergence of infrastructure and security (Security-driven Networking) has emerged as one of the most important concepts for today’s networking and security teams. It offers organizations the ability put security anywhere on any edge by weaving security and advanced network functionality into a single, highly responsive solution.

This next-generation approach is essential for effectively defending today’s highly dynamic environments—not only by providing consistent enforcement across today’s highly flexible perimeters, but by also weaving security deep into the network itself. It is also designed to encompass the entire network development and deployment life cycle, ensuring that security functions as the central consideration for all business-driven infrastructure decisions, now and into the future.

About the author: 

Peter Newton is senior director of products and solutions, IoT and OT at Fortinet. He has more than 20 years of experience in the enterprise networking and security industry and serves as Fortinet’s products and solutions lead for IoT and operational technology solutions, including ICS and SCADA.

The post Eight Best Practices for Securing Long-Term Remote Work appeared first on eWEEK.

The data points below can help companies gain a better understanding of how the pandemic has affected CX, and what they can do to meet and exceed customer expectations now and in the future. 

Data Point No. 1: Feedback has gone remote, and there’s no going back

Prior to the pandemic, most companies relied on a mix of both in-person and remote methods to gather customer feedback and conduct research. 

Naturally, in the wake of the pandemic, most feedback and research have since been gathered remotely. However, according to a recent study, this change may be here to stay. Many CX teams expect remote methods to not only remain, but overtake in-person methods even when meeting face-to-face is safe again.

This is a great thing for customer-centric teams, who have learned that empathy can be achieved remotely, and taking a remote-first approach to customer and user feedback is a powerful strategy that promotes a customer-centric culture.

Data Point No. 2: The time for digital transformation is now

The pandemic has accelerated most companies’ digital transformation efforts. In 2019, only 56 percent of businesses noted they were either in progress or had completed their digital transformation, compared to a whopping 71 percent in 2020. 

The pandemic served as a powerful incentive for CX teams to dedicate more time and resources to digital transformation in an effort to improve the customer experience. Digital transformation initiatives that were on the roadmap years into the future were suddenly thrown into the spotlight as teams pivoted to find ways to connect with their customers through more digital channels.

Data Point No. 3: Companies are doubling down on CX

One side effect of the pandemic is that it stripped CX teams of the luxury of analysis paralysis. As companies shifted their priorities to meet the needs of customers in a completely new environment, anything that didn’t directly impact CX or the bottom line instantly became a lower priority. 

This helped teams to cut through the noise and step up their CX game. Although many customer experiences have changed, consumer expectations remain at an all time high. It’s for this reason that 72 percent of companies plan to increase the frequency of their customer feedback and research to meet changing customer needs in 2021, and beyond. 

Data Point No. 4: CX teams need to get resourceful 

Nearly 70 percent of companies report that either their spending or workforce was reduced as a result of the pandemic. Adding to this challenge, over half (53 percent) noted that their workload had increased since the start of the pandemic. Today’s CX teams have to do more with less.

Leading CX teams are working harder than ever to meet their customers where they’re at. Lack of time and resources, or increased demand and workload can’t get in the way of creating an amazing customer experience. Now more than ever, CX teams must work smarter and more efficiently to stay competitive and continue to exceed customer expectations. 

The pandemic has accelerated changes within the industry that were already underway, pushing customer-centric cultures and strategies into the forefront, no longer as options, but as a necessary means of survival for every company.

Janelle Estes is Chief Insights Officer at UserTesting, an on-demand human insight platform.

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When IBM sold IBM Microelectronics, it created the false impression that IBM was exiting the Microprocessor segment. However, IBM still has significant processor efforts tied to its servers, mainframes, and storage offerings. As a result, IBM Research, one of the few remaining focused technologies, quietly continued their work and this week announced they have a viable 2nm process they are willing to license to others.

The Processor Landscape

Interestingly, IBM announced a close partnership with Intel just a short time ago; an ex-IBM Microelectronics executive runs AMD. Samsung produces IBM’s processors, and NVIDIA partners closely with IBM to create AI accelerators. If any of these companies, currently in competition with each other, could use this technology, they have the potential to leapfrog their competitors. The possibility of this outcome makes IBM a kingmaker in the processor space, and the deals they cut (or don’t cut) could redefine the competitive landscape for processors. With Intel and Samsung on the shortlist, things could get very interesting.

The Power Of Process Leadership

Process technology takes a while to adapt to any microprocessor architecture, so the improvements IBM discovered will likely take between one and two years to place into products depending on how compatible this process is to a chip’s architecture.

In terms of time to market, Samsung, which is linked most closely to IBM thanks to their production of IBM chips, has the most potential to ramp rapidly. This advantage isn’t just because they are already building for IBM but also because they use ARM, the most open of the chip architectures and the one that has platforms that appear to be the most tolerant of significant changes.

But Samsung, while incredibly powerful as a solutions company, is less potent with parts because their solutions can, at times, make them less attractive to companies that might otherwise consider Samsung processors. Samsung competing with the firms that could go to them for parts undoubtedly lowers their market power in this segment regardless of how good they are in it. And, to many, Samsung is excellent.

But suppose Samsung can make this process technology work. In that case, the resulting competitive advantage that processors would receive using this process should drive some firms that currently wouldn’t trust Samsung to revisit their position to prevent a significant loss in market share.

Intel’s recent alliance with IBM to build microprocessors puts them on this shortlist as well, and the FABs that Intel is funding could now be built to embrace 2nm. This manufacturing capability should come online within the two-year timeframe to apply this new process to Intel’s lines. Intel has also indicated they will go more aggressively after the third-party chip-making market placing them against Samsung with substantial US funding to help ensure Intel gets this technology working first. Intel could then take IBM’s processor business from Samsung, placing it back in the US, consistent with US Presidential needs, and then aggressively offer this capability to others.

Firms like TSMC and Global Foundries, which build chips for others, would then have to face the genuine possibility of losing some of their most valuable business – high-performing processors – to a vastly improved Intel.

Who Benefits from IBM’s Process Technology?

IBM’s process technology is a potential game-changer, but its real impact is 1 to 2 years out. They are planning to license the technology, and the firms most likely to benefit are Intel and Samsung. Still, nothing is stopping AMD and NVIDIA from licensing the technology as well. Qualcomm, as part of the Intel FAB announcement, could come in from the side as an ARM advocate and surprise everyone.

This week IBM reminded us that they are still a power to be reckoned with, and while this won’t make them a king, it will make them a kingmaker, and sometimes kingmakers can be the source of significant change. You may recall that IBM initially blessed Intel and Microsoft and forced Intel to license AMD, creating much of the current market dynamic. If you can create something, you can shake it up, and this week, IBM demonstrated they could massively shake up the processor market. It is going to be an interesting 12 to 24 months.

Image courtesy of IBM

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