Archive for November 2016

Cybersecurity

A new jargon or a buzzword? no it is not, cybersecurity has been evolving for the last three decades, since the birth of the internet. It is a topic that has gained more interest since 2011 with focus and initiatives coming from the US Government, other governments and universities from across the world. Today’s world is more interconnected than ever before. Yet, for all its advantages, increased connectivity brings increased risk of theft, fraud, and abuse. As the world evolves more reliant on modern technology, we have and are becoming more vulnerable to cyberattacks including  corporate security breaches, phishing, healthcare fraud and social media fraud.  The cybersecurity laws are increasingly looking at safeguarding and securing cyberspace, more so with the participation of the next generation from early millennials to kids with pacifiers. The data and information available are on-demand and free, how does one prevent and pre-empt strikes? with micro services architectures and web apps being the application forefront, how do you distinguish the predator from a genuine app? how do you prevent attacks from internet BOT’s that apply a million digital signatures everyday? how do you sniff insider threats? how do you ensure total security and privacy? all these areas need us to learn cybersecurity. There are several layers of laws to be applied and followed, new recommendations and updates to existing one’s. These updates focus on everything from safe harbor to financial fraud counter measures to social media and user privacy.

We will continue to discuss this subject more in the continued series of this blog with focus on NIST, IEEE and other experts.

Innovation

We as an industry have been seeing a lot of focus on this subject, “innovation”. A long and tiring journey for many of the teams that are pursuing this journey, often resulting in “minimalist” success. There are several reasons for this outcome, area of focus, leadership, industry pain points, delivering success and more. In fact some of the leaders who have driven this journey for the last thirty plus years have acknowledged that sometimes there is more frustration and failure than success. Examine this subject with a lens and we will see that innovation needs more than just a pursuit of the problem. it needs a relentless focus on not what the problem is but how to focus the layers of the architecture and the solution. If you look back at how “google” evolved “search” or how “Facebook” evolved “crowdsourcing”, the foundational goals were to solve a need that can be spread and used by a volume of people, which then opened up skills and lessons to learn for other companies in the same or alternative space. In the world of “digital life” which we are in the middle of a transformation to, the innovation to solve issues from the backend data processing to the frontend “application” space will need constant evolution and focus. We need to get this as our turnkey area of competence. We will be discussing this subject in the weeks to come across the layers and disrupt the solution space.