October 03, 2022
Kannan Subbiah
FCA | CISA | CGEIT | CCISO | GRC Consulting | Independent Director | Enterprise & Solution Architecture | Former Sr. VP & CTO of MF Utilities | BU Soft Tech | itTrident
Ted Kummert, executive vice president of products and engineering at UiPath, says RPA should be viewed as a long-range capability meant to empower organizations to evolve strategically and increase business value. It is a journey that can start small, within one division or one department, and grow organically across the business as additional ideas form and the organization’s vision for automation’s potential comes to fruition. He says RPA can clear backlog, create new capacity, and free up resources, and improve data quality by integrating software robots into workflows. “It is a truly transformative technology that can reduce or eliminate manual tasks and elevate creative, high-value work,” Kummert says. “Digital transformation is often talked about, but many times can fall short of its goals. Automation is the driver to achieve true digital transformation.” Adam Glaser, senior vice president of engineering for Appian, says many businesses use one automation technology, adding third-party capabilities in patchwork fashion to automate complex end-to-end processes.
To be successful, an entrepreneur must be resilient. Any comment that runs along the lines of “That’s not possible,” or “That can’t be done” should be treated as a challenge to prove the speaker wrong. An entrepreneur needs to have the ability to see through what’s not important. Entrepreneurs don’t just need money – they also need support in the form of encouragement and advice. I would advise budding entrepreneurs to attend meetups within their industry or local community and seek out online support via forums and groups. You’ll be surprised just how willing others will be to help and offer advice for free. Asking questions, getting reassurance and sanity checks from peers can be invaluable at all stages of your businesses journey. There will always be someone a little further down the path you’re taking. Starting a business can be exhilarating, rewarding and fun, but can be exhausting, relentless and stressful in equal measure.
“When operating in conflict-affected or high-risk regions as the MENA region, the surveillance sector must undertake heightened human rights due diligence and, if it cannot do so or it identifies evidence of harm, it should stop selling its technology to companies or governments,” said Dima Samaro, MENA regional researcher and representative at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. “Lack of adequate due diligence measures by private companies will only worsen the situation for those from marginalised communities, putting their lives in jeopardy as the absence of robust regulation and effective mechanisms in the region allows surveillance technologies to be operated freely and without scrutiny.” The report added that, although the United Nations’ (UN) Guiding principles on business and human rights were adopted a decade ago – which establish that companies must take proactive and ongoing steps to identify and respond to the potential or actual human rights impacts of their business – the principles’ non-binding, voluntary nature means there are “glaring gaps in human rights safeguards” at the firms.
领英推荐
Ensuring that customer value drives technology architecture and investment is one way to optimize technology usage. Another way is to ensure that an organization is getting the most out of the investments it has already made. Inefficiency in any aspect of technology usage represents a drag on businesses’ ability to change quickly. ... While enterprise architects (EAs) play a central role in identifying opportunities for this type of technology optimization, they have an even greater role to play when it comes to optimizing the entire IT landscape. A “business capability” perspective makes this possible. ... Efficiency doesn’t improve on its own. The business needs to decide to improve it. Making those decisions, however, is not always easy. As mentioned, relying on business capabilities to evaluate technology needs is one way to simplify the decision process. The other is visibility. Business leaders can’t make decisions if they can’t see the problem. In terms of business architecture, EAs help guide leaders in the decisions they make by showing them business capability maps, data-rich process diagrams and dashboards highlighting the connection between architectural issues and business value.
Optus says its recent data breach impacted 1.2 million customers with at least one form of identification number that is valid and current. The Australian mobile operator also has brought in Deloitte to lead an investigation on the cybersecurity incident, including how it occurred and how it could have been prevented. Optus said in a statement Monday that Deloitte's "independent external review" of the breach would encompass the telco's security systems, controls, and processes. It added that the move was supported by the board of its parent company Singtel, which had been "closely monitoring" the situation. Elaborating on Deloitte's forensic assessment, Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said: "This review will help ensure we understand how it occurred and how we can prevent it from occurring again. It will help inform the response to the incident for Optus. This may also help others in the private and public sector where sensitive data is held and risk of cyberattack exists." In its statement, Optus added that it had worked with more than 20 government agencies to determine the extent of the data breach.
While technology plays a critical role in an effective cyber security strategy, it alone does not provide the solution. Business leaders must also consider the organisation’s processes and people. If organisations don’t have the right processes or people in place to manage new technologies, it can be easy to revert to old habits. Many organisations opt for a hybrid Security Operations Centre to underpin their MDR strategy, which combines the cyber skills of in-house engineers, cyber security teams and an MSSP to create a single facility. MSSPs fill in the gaps in defences while upskilling in-house teams to stay on top of changing threats and technologies. This approach can also free in-house staff to drive projects and internal improvements while the MSSP takes the lead on high value incidents. If the goal is to improve cyber security whilst meeting your organisational goals, then regulations will only ever go so far in tackling the issue. Attacks will continue to plague all sectors and proper detection, response and remediation will be what makes the difference between those that make the news and those that don’t.