February 15, 2024

CISO and CIO Convergence: Ready or Not, Here It Comes

While CIOs are still responsible for setting and meeting technology goals and for staying on budget, their primary mandate is determining how the company can harness technology to innovate, and then procure and manage those resources. While plenty of companies still maintain large, on-premise IT estate, it's just a matter of time before they digitally transform. Either way, the CIO role has become markedly less operational over time. On the other hand, the profile of CISOs has been growing since the early 2000s, set against a non-stop carousel of compliance mandates, data breaches, and emerging cybersecurity threats. While data breaches may have forced businesses to pay attention to security, it was compliance mandates that funded it. From HIPAA and PCI DSS to GDPR, SOC 2, and more, compliance has been a double-edged sword for CISOs. Compliance increased the role of cybersecurity teams and made them more visible across IT and the business as a whole, providing CISOs with bigger budgets and increased latitude on how to spend it. However, all the effort they put into compliance did little to stymie phishing, ransomware, big breaches, and/or malicious insiders.?

Will Generative AI Kill DevSecOps?

Beyond having automation and guardrails in place, you also need security policies at the company level, Moisset said, to make sure that DevSecOps understands all the generative AI tools colleagues are using. Then you can educate them on how to use it, like creating and communicating a generative AI policy. Because a total ban on GenAI just won’t fly. When Italy temporarily banned ChatGPT, Foxwell said there was a visible decrease in productivity across the country’s GitHub organizations, but, when it was reinstated, “what also picked up was the usage of tools that circumvented all of the government policies and firewalls around the prevention of using these” tools. Engineers always find a way. Particularly when using generative AI for customer service chatbots, Moisset said, you need guardrails in place around both the inputs and outputs, as malicious actors can potentially “socialize” the chatbot via prompt injection to give a desired result — like when someone was able to buy a Chevy for $1 from a chatbot. “It’s back to educating the users and developers that it’s good to use AI, we should be using AI, but we need to actually put guardrails around it,” she said, which also demands an understanding of how your customers interact with GenAI.

Combining heat and compute

Data centers offer a predictable supply of heat because they keep their servers running continuously. But the heat is “low-grade:” It is warm rather than hot, and it comes in the form of air, which is difficult to transport. So, most data centers vent their heat to the atmosphere. Sometimes, there are district heat networks, which provide warmth to local homes and businesses through a piped network. If your data center is near one of these, it is a matter of extending it to connect to the data center, and boosting the grade of heat. But you have to be in the right place to connect to one. “There are certain countries that have established or developing heat networks, but the majority don't have a heat network per se, so it's going on a piecemeal basis,” Neal Kalita, senior director of power and energy at NTT, tells DCD. You are unlikely to find one in the US, says Rolf Brink of cooling consultancy Promersion: “The United States is a fundamentally different ecosystem. But Europe is a lot more dense in terms of population, and there is more heat demand.” The Nordic countries have a lot of heat networks. Stockholm Data Parks is a well-known example - a data center campus in urban Stockholm, where every data center has a connection to the district heating network and gets paid for its heat.

Harmonizing human potential and AI: The evolution of work in the digital era

The evolving landscape of work is witnessing a profound transformation as the fusion of human potential with AI takes center stage. Concerns about the ethical implications of AI are well-known, including the potential for perpetuating bias and discrimination and its impact on employment and job security. Ensuring that AI is developed and deployed ethically and responsibly is crucial, taking into account fairness, transparency and accountability. ... Optimizing human-centric capabilities with automation and an AI-first mindset is significant for long-term success. Consider a telecoms operator with employees struggling to grapple with the labor-intensive process of manually reviewing a high volume of mobile tower lease contracts. By embracing an AI-powered platform equipped with capabilities for faster and more accurate extraction of contract clauses, employees were able to shift their focus toward leveraging hidden risks identified by the platform. This enabled the renegotiation of existing contracts, leading to millions of dollars in savings. It’s no coincidence that the enterprises that are more inclined to augment human potential are those resilient enough to maximize the value of AI-led transformations.?

5 Wi-Fi vulnerabilities you need to know about

Like wired networks, Wi-Fi is susceptible to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, which can overwhelm a Wi-Fi network with excessive amount of traffic. This can cause the Wi-Fi to become slow or unavailable, disrupting normal operations of the network, or even the business. A DoS attack can be launched by generating a large number of connection or authentication requests, or injecting the network with other bogus data to break the Wi-Fi. ... Wi-jacking occurs when a Wi-Fi-connected device has been accessed or taken over by an attacker. The attacker could retrieve saved Wi-Fi passwords or network authentication credentials on the computer or device. Then they could also install malware, spyware, or other software on the device. They could also manipulate the device’s settings, including the Wi-Fi configuration, to make the device connect to rogue APs. ... RF interference can cause Wi-Fi disruptions. Instead of being caused by bad actors, RF interference could be triggered by poor network design, building changes, or other electronics emitting or leaking into the RF space. Interference can result in degraded performance, reduced throughput, and increased latency.

AI outsourcing: A strategic guide to managing third-party risks

Bias may persist in many face detection systems. Naturally, this misidentification could have severe consequences for the parties involved. Diverse training data and transparent algorithms are necessary to mitigate the risk of discriminatory outcomes. Furthermore, complex AI models often encounter the “black box” problem or how some AI models arrive at their decisions. Teaming with a third-party AI service requires human oversight to navigate the threat of biased algorithms. ... Most of us can admit that the risk of becoming overly reliant on AI is significant. AI can quickly become a go-to solution for many challenges. It’s no surprise that companies face a similar risk, becoming too dependent on a single vendor’s AI solutions. However, this approach can become problematic. Companies can “get stuck,” and switching providers seems almost impossible. ... Quality and reliability concerns are top-of-mind for most company leaders partnering with third-party AI services. Some primary concerns include service outages, performance issues, and unexpected disruptions. Operational resilience is necessary, and contingency plans are a significant piece of the resiliency puzzle, given the damage business downtime can cause.?

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