Category Archives: Technology

Data, News, Tech, Technology

Nearly Half of Data Engineers Say Data Quality Issues are ‘Biggest Frustration’

A poll of data engineers has found data quality is still their biggest frustration and a showstopper for delivering impact and value quickly – with almost half ranking it above other common pipeline challenges.

Over 100 data engineers responded to the poll that was published by recently launched data transformation and infrastructure management tool, Pipeliner.

The poll found that almost 1 in 5 engineers find integrations with other systems to be their biggest challenge, while just less than 20 per cent point to performance bottlenecks. Engineers who took part also stated GDPR compliance, poor team cooperation and lack of access and permissions are high on their list of frustrations when carrying out their role.

Speaking on the results of the poll, Xavi Forde, founding engineer of Pipeliner and a data engineer himself, said:

“It’s no secret that data quality continues to be a root of major frustration for many data engineers. Couple this with an increasing number of organisations looking into adopting AI to support enterprise growth – and data engineers are under increasing pressure to ensure data is insight and AI ready.

“We know data is never perfect – but there are absolutely ways engineers can reduce the chances of data being compromised as it moves through the pipeline, and it all starts from having a well-documented pipeline with a complete traceability between your intended data transformation rules and your data transformation code so that no engineer has to spend hours and hours trying to untangle someone else’s badly written sql.”

To support data engineers in tackling some of their most common obstacles, Pipeliner launched its meta-data driven data transformation and infrastructure management tool in July. It takes mapping specification as an input and delivers data pipeline and infrastructure code directly to a data engineers’ GitHub repository, accelerating the development of data lakes, all while enforcing data governance.

With the Pipeliner, an engineer can go from a mapping specification to a live pipeline in a few minutes as opposed to hours if not days. It specialises in bespoke data pipeline design and implementation, enabling organisations to streamline data integration, optimise workflows, and uphold data quality through automated end-to-end pipeline creation.

Talking about the innovation behind Pipeliner, founder, Svetlana Tarnagurskaja, who will be hosting a panel of Great British Data Founders at Big Data LDN, says: “Pipeliner can help you build production-grade complex data transformation pipelines significantly faster – it’s a tool built by engineers for engineers, with users retaining a full control and ownership of their code, which was of paramount importance to us.

“The mission of Pipeliner is to make the build and maintenance of high-quality bespoke data lakes more affordable and accessible for the industry, whether it’s a small team in a charity sector or an established engineering team under a pressure of unlocking cost-savings in a large enterprise. Pipeliner automates the most-time consuming part of infrastructure and data transformation code  creation to remove bottlenecks, increases productivity and reduces cloud costs. It could save engineers days, even weeks of time.”

Pipeliner works through a typical three stage process:

  • Define – analysts or engineers define source to target transformation logic and data structures that need to be created, it is captured in a mapping specification
  • Generate –  Pipeliner takes the mapping specification as an input and generates the ETL jobs and infrastructure code.
  • Deploy –  Pipeliner delivers fully editable code straight to the Git repo of your choice, ready to be deployed, allowing the engineering team to retain full control of their code.

Backed by a team of experienced data engineers and leveraging cutting-edge technology, Pipeliner empowers businesses to extract actionable insights, make informed decisions, and foster growth through efficient data management.

Technology

New Panasonic Auto Setting Feeder Brings Autonomous SMT Production One Step Closer

The Panasonic Auto Setting Feeder is a breakthrough in automated parts supply with automatic loading improving work efficiencies by reducing labour and loss rate while enhancing daily operations on the shop floor.

Munich, DE. September 2024 – Panasonic Factory Solutions introduced its new Auto Setting Feeder (ASF) taking a significant step towards autonomous SMT production. Automatic setting and loading are key aspects of automating the supply of parts in the production process. In an industry-first, the Panasonic ASF technology automates setting and loading reducing set time drastically and removing the need for human intervention.

Components can be smoothly inserted into the production line without requiring operator skills to physically connect the old component reel with the new reel using splices, tapes and clips. Feed speed and accuracy are significantly increased with up to 60 seconds saved per session.

Automated material supply

The ASF automatically peels off the cover tape for feeding surface-mounted components ranging from a width of 4mm to 104 mm. The loading unit then automatically feeds the next tape and refills as required. This enables customers to maintain uptime with predictive maintenance scheduling, reduce work effort and loss rate as well as increase placement and utilisation rates.

The ASF is part of the latest Panasonic NPM G Series and compatible with previous NPM and X-Series. The NPM G Series is an integrated range of Surface Mounted Technology (SMT) production systems designed to respond in real-time to customer supply and demand changes through continuous, autonomous updates – helping to make the autonomous factory a reality.

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automated production to improve processes, the G-Series includes the Auto Setting Feeder, the NPM-GP / L Stencil Printer and the NPM-GH Pick and Place machine that enable customers to set up individual, flexible, efficient, and economical production lines.

Stefan Hauck, Head of Marketing at Panasonic Factory Solutions comments: “Our factory automation technologies help customers to take a significant step towards 24-hour manufacturing. As supply chain challenges continue to be a major concern for businesses around the world, assembly lines need to respond to sudden changes at any time of the day. The ASF is a game-changer by enabling them to increase efficiencies, stop splicing and keep production running.”

For the full details on Panasonic ASF, visit: Auto Setting Feeder | Panasonic Connect

Cybersecurity

It’s Time to Overhaul Enterprise Cybersecurity Alerting Systems – What Every Storage Admin should know about Their SOC

Written By Eric Herzog

Storage administrators bear a lot of responsibility for their enterprise’s data. Some would argue this is one of the most challenging aspects of the administrator role. As soon as the security team gets any indication that a cyberattack may be occuring, a phone call is immediately made to the storage admin, alerting them to the threat. It’s all part of ongoing, reactive efforts to protect the enterprise’s mission and business-critical data. Precious minutes and seconds tick by, as this manual cyberattack warning system gets underway. The storage admin just has to stop whatever it is they are doing and focus on the fact that a cybersecurity incident could be underway.

When this happens, storage administrators need to be ‘firing on all cylinders,’ asking the key questions and ensuring the right outcomes. And in these situations, there is really only one right outcome – that enterprise data, lifeblood of all organisations today, is properly safeguarded. But will the storage admins have been quick enough to respond? Will they have succeeded in taking an immutable snapshot of all the data during that split second window? Can all the data be recovered rapidly in the event of a ransomware attack or another type of malware incident?

Hanging in the balance is their entire enterprise’s data infrastructure security. Can the storage admin guarantee that a known good copy of the data is recoverable? When one examines the critical stages in this process it’s clear that a great deal of responsibility is resting on the shoulders of storage administrators and their ability to make lightning fast reactions. Is that even possible? What if something else goes wrong? Automation has crept into just about every other aspect of enterprise IT, so why is it that this process and one where the stakes are especially high, is still operating in a silo and dependent on manual intervention?

The reality is that without a fully automated process to capture immutable snapshots of the data before it gets encrypted, corrupted or taken hostage through a ransomware attack, the reaction time is, most likely, simply too slow. Cyberattacks happen so fast, that the loss of even seconds to reaction times can make a significant difference to whether an enterprise can resist, withstand and recover with any certainty. And instead of being the heralded as a hero, the storage admin could be slated for poor performance in the aftermath of a security incident. Is that even fair?

How could the enterprise cybersecurity alerting process be improved?

One way to ensure a more dynamically cyber resilient storage infrastructure and improve security of the entire data centre as a whole, would be to seamlessly integrate automated cyber storage capabilities into an enterprises’ Security Operation Centre (SOC).  Currently, this lack of integration is the missing link between data storage systems and enterprise cybersecurity. In order to reach this point, the role of storage admin needs to gain a greater organisational appreciation. And CTOs, CIOs, and CISOs will need a deeper understanding of SOCs and how, by linking existing security systems with enterprise storage, they can give their organisations an immense advantage when it comes to recovery from a somewhat inevitable cyberattack.

A SOC has many applications, but is broadly designed to ensure that an enterprise has the most coordinated and effective capabilities for cyber threat detection and response, as well as cyberattack prevention. As most IT professionals know, a SOC is dedicated to monitoring the enterprise’s entire IT infrastructure – and they do it seven days week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is supposed to detect and respond to any security-related incident in real-time. IT is continually analysing threat data but are missing a trick when it comes to integrating SOC and storage systems.

Enterprise storage needs to be tightly integrated into a SOC strategy, because the SOC is a control centre and unifies all the cybersecurity technologies, including the emergence of cyber resilience tech. Rather like the conductor of an orchestra. And now, due to new technological innovation, cyber resilient storage capabilities can help reduce the threat window – if the alerting triggers the right split second protection mechanisms.

What if a trigger can be defined for cyber storage to proactively take action based on a security incident?

An enterprise’s security team can put all its information from security operations through an enterprise storage intelligence grid to create highly sensitive triggers that may otherwise get missed by existing technologies and techniques. IT solution providers have identified this ability to automate data snapshot commands and data pathways as critical to early detection and worry-free cyber recovery that minimises the effects of even the most vicious and deceptive cyberattacks of malicious actors. There are three ‘must haves’ to guarantee rapid action:

  1. Your enterprise needs automated cyber protection, utilising triggers that security teams define based on security incidents. These may even be barely detectable aberrations that require a deep scanning of the cyber infrastructure.
  1. You need an enterprise-wide cyber storage capability that orchestrates the automatic taking of immutable snapshots of data, at the speed of compute, to stay ahead of cyberattacks by creating a cyber realm to cut off the proliferation of data corruption.
  1. You need an automated cyber protection solution that seamlessly integrates into SOC environments to add a powerful cybersecurity capability to an infosec teams’ toolbox in the security infrastructure. It enables more dynamic monitoring that speeds up response to the start of a cyber issue and enables a “handshake” between monitoring for security incidents (the event) and expressing the fabric of core storage – the data (the outcome).

This integration of cyber resilient storage into SOC needs to be considered mission critical because the stakes are simply too high. It extends our thinking beyond traditional enterprise storage to span the layers of cyber infrastructure that need to be reshaped for today’s emerging cyberattack vectors and more sophisticated AI-driven infiltration designed to inflict harm to enterprises.

Today it’s less a question of ‘if’ a cyberattack will take place and rather a matter of ‘when.’ It’s time for enterprise storage to stop being relegated as a backroom function and it’s time to ‘put a SOC’ into it.

www.infinidat.com

Business Mergers, Acquisitions & Partnerships, Tech, Technology

Silobreaker expands US reseller programme with ThreatQuotient

Strengthened collaboration to deliver ​unique ​threat insight​,​ ​leveraging​​ ​contextualisation and analysis of unstructured threat data at scale.

London, UK, 5th August 2024 – Security and threat intelligence technology company, Silobreaker, today announced the expansion of its US reseller programme through a strengthened partnership with threat intelligence platform innovator, ThreatQuotient. This collaboration leverages Silobreaker’s vast datasets from open, deep and dark web sources to enrich the ​​ThreatQ Platform, providing organisations with advanced capabilities to contextualise technical threat indicators and analyse unstructured threat information at scale. 

Silobreaker reseller programme expansion 

Building on the success of its existing reseller programme, Silobreaker’s expanded partnership with ThreatQuotient aims to extend its reach and enhance service offerings in the US market. This strategic move underscores Silobreaker’s commitment to working closely with resellers to deliver cutting-edge threat intelligence solutions. 

By integrating Silobreaker’s rich data sources, ThreatQuotient is strengthening the partnership between the two companies, ensuring that users benefit from a seamless and powerful threat intelligence experience. 

Utilising enrichment for enhanced threat intelligence 

The integration ​brings in​ several new features that significantly boost threat intelligence capabilities. On-demand querying allows users to easily access and query Silobreaker’s unequalled dataset of sources using intuitive search terms from the ThreatQ ​​Platform. 

Silobreaker provides powerful insights on threat indicators, drawn from a customisable pool of relevant data, as well as advanced correlation of high-relevance entities from Silobreaker documents, such as malware, threat actors, attack types and more. 

Integration use cases 

The integration supports a variety of key use cases, including threat monitoring across open sources and the deep and dark web, including novel attack methods and campaigns targeting various industries. It also facilitates vulnerability tracking and offers enhanced credential monitoring and indicator enrichment for IPs, domains and subdomains.  

“Our expanded reseller programme with ThreatQuotient underscores our commitment to providing top-tier threat intelligence solutions,” said Kristofer Mansson, CEO of Silobreaker. “The integration of Silobreaker’s capabilities with the ThreatQ ​P​latform not only enhances our collective offerings but also provides organisations with a sharper, more holistic view of potential threats. Together, we enable our partners and customers to detect, analyse, and mitigate risks before they escalate into critical incidents, ensuring they have the crucial insights needed to make proactive, informed decisions to protect their organisations.” 

John Czupak, CEO, ThreatQuotient comments: “Today’s threats are constantly evolving and if we are to remain one step ahead of adversaries we need to share, involve, collaborate, respond, learn and take swift action. Our partnership with Silobreaker enables us to deliver even deeper insights into real world threats in open and dark web sources, so customers can accelerate understanding and harden their defences. These critical insights enable customers to ensure that incident handlers, malware researchers, SOC analysts and investigation leads gain more control, and are able to take the right steps at the right time to better manage risks.” 

For more information, please visit Silobreaker and ThreatQuotient. 

About Silobreaker
Silobreaker is a leading security and threat intelligence technology company, that provides powerful insights on emerging risks and opportunities in near-real time. It automates the collection, aggregation and analysis of data from open and dark web sources in a single platform, allowing intelligence teams to produce and disseminate high-quality, actionable reports in line with priority intelligence requirements (PIRs). This enables global enterprises to make intelligence-led decisions to safeguard their business from cyber, physical and geopolitical threats, mitigate risks and maximise business value.  

Learn more at www.silobreaker.com 

About ThreatQuotientTM  

ThreatQuotient improves security operations by fusing together disparate data sources, tools and teams to accelerate threat detection, investigation and response (TDIR). ThreatQ is the first purpose-built, data-driven threat intelligence platform that helps teams prioritise, automate and collaborate on security incidents; enables more focused decision making; and maximizes limited resources by integrating existing processes and technologies into a unified workspace. The result is reduced noise, clear priority threats, and the ability to automate processes with high fidelity data. ThreatQuotient’s industry leading integration marketplace, data management, orchestration and automation capabilities support multiple use cases including threat intelligence management and sharing, incident response, threat hunting, spear phishing, alert triage and vulnerability management.  

For more information, visit www.threatquotient.com 

 

Media Contact 

Michelle Edge, Eleven Hundred Agency 

T: +44 (0) 20 7688 5202 

E: silobreaker@elevenhundredagency.com 

 

 

Cybersecurity

It’s Time to Overhaul Enterprise Cybersecurity Alerting Systems – What Every Storage Admin should know about Their SOC

Written By Eric Herzog

Storage administrators bear a lot of responsibility for their enterprise’s data. Some would argue this is one of the most challenging aspects of the administrator role. As soon as the security team gets any indication that a cyberattack may be occuring, a phone call is immediately made to the storage admin, alerting them to the threat. It’s all part of ongoing, reactive efforts to protect the enterprise’s mission and business-critical data. Precious minutes and seconds tick by, as this manual cyberattack warning system gets underway. The storage admin just has to stop whatever it is they are doing and focus on the fact that a cybersecurity incident could be underway.

When this happens, storage administrators need to be ‘firing on all cylinders,’ asking the key questions and ensuring the right outcomes. And in these situations, there is really only one right outcome – that enterprise data, lifeblood of all organisations today, is properly safeguarded. But will the storage admins have been quick enough to respond? Will they have succeeded in taking an immutable snapshot of all the data during that split second window? Can all the data be recovered rapidly in the event of a ransomware attack or another type of malware incident?

Hanging in the balance is their entire enterprise’s data infrastructure security. Can the storage admin guarantee that a known good copy of the data is recoverable? When one examines the critical stages in this process it’s clear that a great deal of responsibility is resting on the shoulders of storage administrators and their ability to make lightning fast reactions. Is that even possible? What if something else goes wrong? Automation has crept into just about every other aspect of enterprise IT, so why is it that this process and one where the stakes are especially high, is still operating in a silo and dependent on manual intervention?

The reality is that without a fully automated process to capture immutable snapshots of the data before it gets encrypted, corrupted or taken hostage through a ransomware attack, the reaction time is, most likely, simply too slow. Cyberattacks happen so fast, that the loss of even seconds to reaction times can make a significant difference to whether an enterprise can resist, withstand and recover with any certainty. And instead of being the heralded as a hero, the storage admin could be slated for poor performance in the aftermath of a security incident. Is that even fair?

How could the enterprise cybersecurity alerting process be improved?

One way to ensure a more dynamically cyber resilient storage infrastructure and improve security of the entire data centre as a whole, would be to seamlessly integrate automated cyber storage capabilities into an enterprises’ Security Operation Centre (SOC).  Currently, this lack of integration is the missing link between data storage systems and enterprise cybersecurity. In order to reach this point, the role of storage admin needs to gain a greater organisational appreciation. And CTOs, CIOs, and CISOs will need a deeper understanding of SOCs and how, by linking existing security systems with enterprise storage, they can give their organisations an immense advantage when it comes to recovery from a somewhat inevitable cyberattack.

A SOC has many applications, but is broadly designed to ensure that an enterprise has the most coordinated and effective capabilities for cyber threat detection and response, as well as cyberattack prevention. As most IT professionals know, a SOC is dedicated to monitoring the enterprise’s entire IT infrastructure – and they do it seven days week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is supposed to detect and respond to any security-related incident in real-time. IT is continually analysing threat data but are missing a trick when it comes to integrating SOC and storage systems.

Enterprise storage needs to be tightly integrated into a SOC strategy, because the SOC is a control centre and unifies all the cybersecurity technologies, including the emergence of cyber resilience tech. Rather like the conductor of an orchestra. And now, due to new technological innovation, cyber resilient storage capabilities can help reduce the threat window – if the alerting triggers the right split second protection mechanisms.

What if a trigger can be defined for cyber storage to proactively take action based on a security incident?

An enterprise’s security team can put all its information from security operations through an enterprise storage intelligence grid to create highly sensitive triggers that may otherwise get missed by existing technologies and techniques. IT solution providers have identified this ability to automate data snapshot commands and data pathways as critical to early detection and worry-free cyber recovery that minimises the effects of even the most vicious and deceptive cyberattacks of malicious actors. There are three ‘must haves’ to guarantee rapid action:

 

  1. Your enterprise needs automated cyber protection, utilising triggers that security teams define based on security incidents. These may even be barely detectable aberrations that require a deep scanning of the cyber infrastructure.

 

  1. You need an enterprise-wide cyber storage capability that orchestrates the automatic taking of immutable snapshots of data, at the speed of compute, to stay ahead of cyberattacks by creating a cyber realm to cut off the proliferation of data corruption.

 

  1. You need an automated cyber protection solution that seamlessly integrates into SOC environments to add a powerful cybersecurity capability to an infosec teams’ toolbox in the security infrastructure. It enables more dynamic monitoring that speeds up response to the start of a cyber issue and enables a “handshake” between monitoring for security incidents (the event) and expressing the fabric of core storage – the data (the outcome).

 

This integration of cyber resilient storage into SOC needs to be considered mission critical because the stakes are simply too high. It extends our thinking beyond traditional enterprise storage to span the layers of cyber infrastructure that need to be reshaped for today’s emerging cyberattack vectors and more sophisticated AI-driven infiltration designed to inflict harm to enterprises.

Today it’s less a question of ‘if’ a cyberattack will take place and rather a matter of ‘when.’ It’s time for enterprise storage to stop being relegated as a backroom function and it’s time to ‘put a SOC’ into it.

www.infinidat.com

News, Tech, Technology

Ransomware in the Global Healthcare Industry

Written by Leon Ward, VP, Product Management, ThreatQuotient 

 

The World Health Organisation (The WHO) recently hosted a webinar to discuss the critical importance of cybersecurity in the healthcare sector, which highlights the severity of the situation the industry is currently facing. Healthcare organisations are increasingly relying on digital systems to facilitate their daily workflow, but the prevalence of outdated legacy technology in the sector is rendering it vulnerable to cyber-attacks with severe consequences.

As has been demonstrated with this year’s high-profile attacks on healthcare organisations, such as incidents concerning the UK’s NHS and the US’ Ascension and Change Healthcare, the healthcare industry must review its priorities, the threats it faces, and its security measures, without delay.

Investing in data availability

Healthcare organisations store valuable personal and health information within Electronic Health Records (EHR). These records contain data that are hot commodities on the black market: from full names, birth dates, and health monitoring information to social security numbers, billing and insurance details. Storing data digitally allows healthcare organisations to share important information quickly between staff and across borders, facilitating faster, more comprehensive patient care, but it also carries risk.

Employees often have access to more information than they need to see. Should an employee accidentally click a phishing link or be exposed to malware, a bad actor can potentially access an organisation’s entire system. Further, storing data digitally makes healthcare organisations dependent on their systems, meaning that in the event of a cyber-attack they can be brought to a standstill. For example, the Ascension Healthcare Incident resulted in ambulances being diverted, and staff resorting to writing information on paper, slowing essential operations.

Immediate access to accurate patient data is not just a convenience; it’s a matter of life and death. However, this urgency for data accessibility must be balanced with stringent security measures. The vulnerability of confidential medical data to malware and ransomware attacks necessitates unwavering vigilance and robust security controls.

Relying on legacy systems

Many medical facilities and clinicians operate on outdated systems and devices, often running obsolete software versions and lacking adequate security measures. A single compromised legacy system can serve as a gateway for major data breaches, highlighting the critical need for modernisation and security upgrades. The risk for such an event is high, as legacy systems are often unsupported by their original developers, leaving them without essential security patches and updates.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the resilience of their own systems healthcare organisations should be considering. An emerging trend that is quickly gaining traction in the threat landscape is supply-chain attacks: which is when an organisation is subjected to a cyber-attack, and it travels to their partners and customers. The NHS fell victim to a ransomware attack on its third-party partner, Synnovis. This can result in considerable impacts on healthcare services, and potentially life-threatening delays.

This places healthcare organisations in a precarious position, as these attacks can be inserted at any point in the supply chain. To mitigate this risk, they must understand the cybersecurity posture of their partners, and establish a collaborative relationship that emphasises sharing threat intelligence. This will improve the cybersecurity posture of the entire supply chain.

Integrating modern assets

Another challenge the healthcare industry faces is that while they embrace new technologies to enhance efficiency and patient care, like IoT medical devices and EHR applications, they also expand and complicate their attack surface. This exposes sensitive data to a myriad of threats and makes it hard to monitor for threats and anomalies. The intersection of innovation and security presents a daunting challenge for healthcare organisations striving to embrace progress without compromising patient privacy and safety.

This puts the healthcare industry in a difficult position. Shying away from adopting new technologies can cause organisations to sacrifice the quality of their care, and lead to them having outdated technology and security measures, which increases the risk of a cyber-attack. However, integrating new technologies and driving innovation in their sector can create numerous challenges that their security teams struggle to keep pace with.

Ransomware is becoming democratised

From a risk perspective, valuable, easily accessible data with outdated cybersecurity measures, and an industry with a low tolerance for downtime, creates the perfect target for cyber-attacks. Bad actors are economic with their attacks: often valuing low-risk, high-reward targets that are likely to acquiesce to their demands. According to a recent Sophos State of Ransomware 2024 Report, ransomware attacks within the healthcare industry are not only on the rise, but over half the victims would pay up to 111% of the original ransom.

The threat landscape is also evolving, with ransomware quickly becoming a democratised industry. New developments such as Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) and Ransomware-for-Hire Services enable anyone to launch a ransomware attack, even if they lack technical skills. Gen AI-based attacks are also increasing; resulting in more sophisticated attacks and phishing campaigns that can be more difficult to identify.

Combating the Threats

To combat the threats outlined above, a threat intelligence platform emerges as a robust solution that helps simplify cybersecurity efforts and support digital transformation. By aggregating all sources of threat intelligence and vulnerability data into a central repository, healthcare organisations can gain a holistic view of their cybersecurity landscape, enhancing visibility and informed decision-making.  They can also enable an organisation to prioritise threats based on their impact on the health system environment. This means that teams can filter out noise and focus on critical assets and vulnerabilities, ensuring that resources are allocated where they are most needed.

Additionally, they can automate the dissemination of threat intelligence, empowering healthcare organisations to quickly share information against cyber adversaries. Armed with intelligence, teams can proactively hunt for malicious activity, swiftly identifying and neutralising threats before they can wreak havoc on patient records and organisational integrity. A threat intelligence platform accelerates analysis and response to attacks, enabling rapid mitigation against evolving threats.

Through assessing and understanding its current cybersecurity posture, and the threat landscape, the healthcare industry will be able to update its cybersecurity infrastructure in a more comprehensive fashion. Threat intelligence platform solutions, enable healthcare organisations to improve the overall security of their supply chain, and patch its existing cybersecurity issues, whilst maintaining its daily operations.

AI

Leading digital tax solutions partner hosting ‘power of AI’ seminar alongside industry figureheads

APARI Pro, a digital self-assessment solutions partner, is set to host a speaker event alongside the AI industry’s most notable names.
The modern business landscape is a constant source of evolution, with the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) beginning to implement its way into organisations worldwide.
And APARI is at the forefront of bringing this revolution into the digital tax industry, offering services across accountancy, platforms and individual self-assessments.
The company is passionate about discussing these industry changes with other members, and is set to host a seminar around ‘The Power of AI for Personal Tax’ at London’s Home Grown Club on Tuesday 24 September.
Speakers include former Dragons’ Den investor Piers Linney, strategic growth expert and 2003 Rugby World Cup winner Matt Dawson MBE, Evelyn Partners’ Head of Technology & Transformation Services Laurence Kiddle, and APARI Founder & CEO Sudesh Sud.
The event will explore how accountancy firms can utilise AI-driven self-assessment solutions and leverage artificial intelligence to enhance efficiency, improve compliance and boost ROI in tax.
Matt Dawson MBE is set to open the event, and added: “I am very proud to be invited to launch this exclusive event. AI is going to have a huge impact on the way we work going forward.
“At the event you will learn how to unlock the power of AI to boost efficiency and maximise ROI in tax digitisation, so I implore everyone: don’t miss out!”
Piers Linney also added: “Exploring the importance of AI integration in business has been at the forefront of my focus for a number of years. The effect its implementation can have on accountancy, wealth management and e-commerce services in particular is huge.
“I recommend everyone to reserve a spot at this event, and not miss out on this innovative opportunity.”
Sudesh Sud commented: “I’m really looking forward to showcasing how AI is set to transform the way we work.
“I’ll be sharing insights on how our AI solutions can drive efficiency, cut costs, and boost revenue, all of which are incredibly important in modern business. I can’t wait to see everyone on September 24.”
The event runs from 10am until 2pm, with lunch and networking opportunities for the final hour and a half. For more information, or to register your interest for the exclusive event, visit: https://www.apari-digital.com/ai-seminar
Technology

VertiGIS Announces New Global Cloud Infrastructure Platforms for Customers

Following the launch of VertiGIS Networks, VertiGIS Studio and VertiGIS FM, the company is excited to continue to scale with its cloud platforms hosting all its applications.

VertiGIS, the leader in spatial asset management solutions, today announced its new cloud infrastructure to unite all VertiGIS solutions into global cloud platforms.

Having grown through multiple acquisitions over recent years, VertiGIS has a variety of different product applications, and it has now unified these solutions under cloud infrastructure platforms.

The primary platform will be Microsoft Azure’s public cloud, which offers high degrees of flexibility, scalability, security, compliance, and privacy – all of which were decisive in VertiGIS choosing Azure over comparable cloud providers. Additionally, Azure has data centers around the world, ensuring low-latency access to services. This global footprint was beneficial to VertiGIS which operates in 23 countries and has a global customer base.

Christoph Ihnenfeld, VP Global IT VertiGIS said: “Many of our customers are still on-premises but they are struggling to manage their infrastructure in today’s modern digital environment. This is where cloud really comes into its own, enabling organizations to move their existing applications into a cloud infrastructure. We are also providing customers with the option of a private cloud managed service capacity depending on their needs, but we believe many will take advantage of the multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure that we have set up. The advantage of Azure is that it seamlessly integrates with on-premises data centers to Azure or vice versa, which means we can provide our customers with choice, depending on where they are in their cloud journey.”

This means that VertiGIS customers can reduce their hosting costs while optimizing their technology in a more secure, scalable, and modern environment. VertiGIS understands that customers struggle to host a cloud environment internally; often they don’t have the resources or expertise. VertiGIS’ new cloud platform will help to alleviate these challenges.

Additionally, many organizations are not equipped to adequately deal with the increasing threat of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. VertiGIS has obtained SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certifications which asserts first-class cybersecurity posture, ultimately giving customers peace of mind that their applications and data are truly secure.

VertiGIS already has a wealth of experience in deploying and managing cloud environments and was recently recognized as having attained the ArcGIS Cloud Services Speciality designation from Esri, a market leader in GIS, with whom VertiGIS has a strong partnership. To attain this speciality, VertiGIS demonstrated proficiency across key areas of cloud including cloud deployments, systems architecture, migrations, and managed services for ArcGIS, undergoing a rigorous review and certification process.

For security and privacy reasons, some companies do not want to store their data in public cloud environments where they must share resources with other users. For customers concerned about where their data resides and is stored, VertiGIS is working with a secondary private cloud provider, Open Telekom Cloud (OTC), part of Deutsche Telekom.

Based in Germany, this provider is already supporting a couple of large VertiGIS customers, with the city of Berlin, and the cities of Hamburg and Bremen utilising this infrastructure. VertiGIS also offers an additional hybrid-cloud option which allows customers to use its SaaS infrastructure for applications while keeping their data behind their own firewall. This is a unique option that also addresses customers’ concerns about data privacy or ownership.

Based upon decades of deep industry experience and research into cutting-edge technology, VertiGIS will continue to invest in configurable, cloud-ready solutions and infrastructure that solves real-world challenges for its customers.

Thomas Buchmann, Senior Cloud Architect at VertiGIS concludes: “We want to offer our customers ultimate choice and the VertiGIS platform is flexible and configurable to address their unique requirements. We’re adept at making sure that customers stay on top of the latest trends whilst remaining responsive to the pace of technology change and ensuring their environment meets future requirements.”

About VertiGIS 

VertiGIS is a leading asset management and geographic information systems (GIS) solution provider and software developer. Their focus is on the development of software solutions and services that enable professionals in the utilities, government, telecommunications, and infrastructure market segments to connect their business processes with spatial management technology. Used by more than 5,000 customers and millions of end users around the world, VertiGIS’ product portfolio is designed to enhance the capabilities of leading GIS software, especially Esri’s ArcGIS®. For more information visit www.vertigis.com. 

Business Leaders, Creative News, Entertainment, Leadership, News, Thought Leadership

Navigating the spotlight: How to be the face of a business

Being the face of a company comes with its own set of challenges and responsibilities. Whether you’re steering a business through turbulent markets or captivating audiences on stage, your reputation can significantly impact your brand’s success. Especially, in today’s interconnected world, where every word can be scrutinised and leaves a digital footprint, the art of cultivating and safeguarding a positive reputation is now more critical than ever.

Offering valuable insights, Terence Rodia, Founder of YOU Management provides practical, firsthand advice.  From strategies on maintaining authenticity while projecting a professional image to handling critiques and negative comments, here, Terence aims to empower business leaders and performers alike with the tools needed to thrive in the spotlight.

As the founder and public face of YOU Management, how do you approach maintaining a positive reputation both for yourself and your company?

Maintaining a positive reputation for both myself and YOU Management has definitely been a journey, full of challenges and rewards. As the founder and public face of the company, I’ve always believed in presenting a genuine and holistic view of who I am. This means celebrating all facets of my identity, including being a proud gay man who loves to share joyful moments. Whether it’s intimate family gatherings, exciting travels, or lively parties, I embrace these experiences and share them on social media.

I get that my vibrant personal life might not always seem to fit the traditional mould of a rigorous work ethic, however, there are equally many times that I have worked long hours and overtime or been stressed with a mountain of work to finish. But I choose not to share these moments online as they’re not the positive fun parts of my life I want the world to see. I’m dedicated to showing that a passion for life and a commitment to work can go hand in hand. Through consistent hard work and dedication, I’ve built YOU Management into a company recognised for its achievements, driven by heart and passion to succeed for our clients.

Authenticity is the cornerstone of my brand, and I strive to ensure that both my personal and professional lives reflect this. My goal is to demonstrate that being true to oneself can coexist with professional excellence. By staying genuine and grounded in my values—integrity, positivity, and hard work—I aim to inspire my team at YOU Management, our clients, and the broader community.

It’s about showing that you don’t have to hide who you are to be successful. You can be your full, authentic self and still achieve great things. And that’s a message I hope resonates with everyone who interacts with me and YOU Management.

How has social media impacted how performers represent themselves?

Back in my performing days, social media wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is today. This gave us performers the freedom to separate our personal and professional lives much more easily. We could hit the town after a show, let loose, and not worry about our actions being plastered online and causing issues the next day at rehearsal. It was a different world back then.

Nowadays, things have changed dramatically. Casting directors regularly check social media to assess a performer’s credibility and reliability. For example, if someone cancels an audition claiming they’re sick but then posts about a night out, it can seriously harm their reputation. This is why I emphasise to my clients the importance of integrity. Managing your public persona, especially in today’s social media-driven world, is crucial for long-term success. It’s all about understanding how your online presence can impact your career and making sure it works in your favour, not against you.

Can you share a pivotal moment where managing your reputation as a performer and business leader intersected? How did you navigate it?

A specific moment which springs to mind occurred when I was performing in A Chorus Line. At that point, I had already established YOU Management and was navigating the delicate balance of being a performer while running an agency.

I had the unique experience of signing one of my fellow cast members, a friend I had previously worked with. This situation required me to smoothly navigate the dual roles of friend and agent. Despite our personal relationship, I maintained a professional distance, ensuring that my decisions as an agent were always in her best professional interest, not influenced by our friendship.

As a founder of a global business, what strategies do you employ to ensure consistent messaging and reputation across various locations?

At YOU Management, we’re all about consistency across our global operations, and we’ve got some great strategies to make sure we achieve this. First off, we make sure every agent truly represents the core values and spirit of our company. This starts right from the hiring process, where we carefully screen candidates to find those who naturally resonate with the heart and principles of YOU Management. We believe that maintaining our values is so important that it’s a key part of our hiring process, ensuring that every team member meets our high standards.

Communication is another critical element of our strategy. We stress the importance of valuing and respecting our clients as artists, and this is a big part of our training and everyday interactions. By fostering a culture of respect and client-focused service, we ensure that our agents consistently provide top-notch experiences, which in turn, reflects positively on our brand.

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Terence Rodia is the Founder of YOU Management

Technology

Resilience Blueprint: Strategic Steps to Build Operational Resiliency

Written by Sean Tilley, Senior Director of Sales at 11:11 Systems

Globally cybersecurity is soaring to critical levels of concern for organisations. The Veeam 2023 Data Protection Report highlights that 85% of organisations have been hit by at least one cyber attack, illustrating the difficult journey towards recovery. The average recovery from an attack can drag on for a staggering three weeks, not only impacting operations but also carrying with it significant financial implications. Therefore, cyber resilience must adopt comprehensive strategies to ensure operational and cyber resilience. This means companies must not only take proactive cybersecurity measures to prevent disruptions but must also implement reactive measures to ensure a quick response and complete recovery in the event of a successful cyber attack. 

To improve their cyber resilience and smoothly adapt to regulatory shifts, organisations must embark on a strategic journey, weaving together crucial strategies and best practices to ensure they not only survive a threat but thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape. 

The role of risk assessments in crafting effective layered defence strategy 

To start the journey to cyber resilience, companies must implement a multi-layered security approach that includes firewalls, antivirus software, intrusion detection systems, and other defensive mechanisms. It is also important to minimise the human risk and to achieve this organisations must make sure that their staff are trained on cybersecurity best practices and the implications of non-compliance with regulations. This training should be an ongoing process that employees take part in.Organisations need to implement systems to continuously monitor operations for signs of potential disruptions as well as conduct regular reviews of resiliency plans to ensure they remain current and effective.  

It is also vital that comprehensive risk assessments to identify vulnerabilities in the systems take place regularly. This process should align with the requirements of relevant regulations and standards like GDPR, HIPAA, NIS2, and DORA. It is also valuable to evaluate how the regulations affect the business and at the same time verify if the organisation is covered.  

The dual power of technology investments and regular updates 

Investing in cutting-edge solutions for data protection, disaster recovery, and real-time oversight to stay ahead in compliance can go a long way in improving a company’s defences against possible attack. It is equally valuable to review and update policies and procedures to mirror the current compliance landscape, covering everything from data protection to crisis management and ongoing operations assurance. This not only provides the organisation with peace of mind that it is adhering to the regulatory requirements but it also provides best practice advice on how to keep data safe and secure in the event of a breach. 

In addition to this, companies must ensure their technology arsenal is fortified with the latest security patches as this routine maintenance can prove detrimental to defending against recognised threats. 

Bridging education and access control with the power of continuous monitoring and testing 

The weakest link in an organisation’s cybersecurity chain is human error. While mistakes happen, companies can minimise the possibility of employees falling for phishing attacks or similar by driving an education culture where employees are made aware of cybersecurity awareness risks and trained to avoid becoming victims.  

However, while education is important is not enough to completely minimise risks.  Stringent access controls form the backbone of a comprehensive security strategy, ensuring that the principle of least privilege is rigorously applied meaning that each member of the team possesses only the keys strictly required to unlock their duties, significantly reducing the surface area for potential security breaches. This approach, known as Zero Trust, provides security teams with the tools needed to constantly monitor the IT environment and ensure they are equipped to detect and respond to possible threats immediately. At the same time, it is equally important to ensure ongoing mapping and testing are carried out to stay on top of any new sophisticated threats and vulnerabilities.

Integrating Incident Response Plans with data back-up and recovery protocols 

The main target of ransomware attacks is the data. To protect it, organisations must start with reliable backups, where they can significantly reduce the danger of data loss. To do this it is vital to frequently backup critical data using cutting-edge data security methods and regularly test the recovery procedures. Incorporating cyber incident response drills into recovery tests and emphasising the ability to restore operations in a clean room environment are also important steps for resilience in the event of a cyberattack or data loss.  

By incorporating these key strategies and best practices, organisations can navigate the shifting regulatory terrain with solid cybersecurity infrastructure that will help them not only withstand threats but integrate resilience into their core operations and culture.  

Fundamental to the resilience strategy is a thorough, routinely updated Incident Response Plan. This roadmap should clearly outline the actions for handling security breaches, aligning seamlessly with regulations and being prepared to adjust strategies based on lessons learned from past disruptions and emerging threats.

Board-level strategies and expert engagement enhance third-party risk management 

As part of most new regulations, boards of directors are going to be legally responsible for organisations not being compliant. As such it is necessary for the resilience plan to include senior stakeholders in cyber risk management. Further, evaluate the security posture of the supply chain, focusing on the partners and third-party vendors and ensure that they meet security benchmarks, especially when managing sensitive data. Collaborating with different cyber resiliency experts and managed security service providers is also beneficial as they provide specialised skills and resources to keep abreast of regulatory updates and new compliance requirements. 

In today’s digital age, the landscape of cyber threats and regulatory requirements is ever-changing, therefore maintaining compliance and resilience is more challenging than ever before. When it comes to cybersecurity and cyber recovery, businesses must evaluate their strategies from multiple angles. This includes business risk, technological vulnerabilities, reputation management, and regulatory compliance perspectives. Given the absence of a one-size-fits-all approach, the role of a specialised partner becomes pivotal. Organisations must choose the right partner for their business needs offering services that cater to the unique needs of cybersecurity, data protection, recovery and compliance.