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How are modern CIOs making an impact with multi-cloud? A recently released VMware report, “CIO Essential Guidance: Modernizing Applications in a Multi-Cloud World,” outlines these four key factors that influence success:

Drive Developer Velocity

The best applications are created by the most talented developers, so it’s crucial to attract and retain the best talent. Taking it a step further, according to a recent Forrester poll, 69% of business leaders agreed that a good Developer Experience (DevEx) results in a better customer experience (CX).1 In fact, it’s clear that DevEx directly impacts CX: 45% of enterprise IT executives report that their dev teams push software releases on a monthly or faster pace (on average).2

With so much at stake, it’s critical to enable your developers to do what they do best: code. But all too often, barriers prevent this from happening. Cumbersome legacy platforms and tools slow down developers, which is why CIOs need to remove friction from the underlying development infrastructure and create an environment where teams can focus on achieving outcomes.

This may include creating agile workflows and automating manual processes as well as handoffs, provisioning and even meetings and paperwork. Adopting a cross-cloud development platform that offers the programs and codes your developers prefer, including pre-selected open-source products, will also elevate velocity, improve DevEx and unleash innovation.

VMware

Embrace Unified Cloud Management

Despite all the advantages of multi-cloud development environments, if you can’t easily manage your cloud estate, you’re not reaping the full benefits. You could be underutilizing resources from one cloud provider, while maxing out on another. Moreover, lack of visibility means greater risk.

VMWare

A successful strategy for overcoming these types of challenges is to choose the best cloud provider for each app – whether it’s an application platform for developers, an observability app for risk management, automation for operations, or something else — yet manage all clouds as if they were one, using a single platform. This approach reduces operational complexity and presents opportunities for greater governance, cost savings and risk management. 

Shift Security Left

Shifting security left – meaning building in features that bolster security across the entire app pipeline, from the build phase all the way through deployment and optimization – is essential in today’s complex threat landscape. This approach, combined with a unifying security platform and modern development principles, reduces risks and allows you to identify vulnerabilities and issues faster.

VMWare

When security management controls reside on a central platform, CIOs can better manage risk,compliance, and more across their overall cloud strategy – spanning entire application development and operations processes.

Take a Platform-as-a-Product Approach

Unifying platforms are vitally important to the success of your modern apps in a multi-cloud world. The operation of these platforms should be of the utmost importance, seeing as they are the product that keeps the company running.

If you view your unifying multi-cloud platforms as drivers of innovation, growth and data protection, and run them as a product, you can reimagine the way you prioritize and manage your apps and cloud estate. With a Platform-as-a-Product approach, it’s easier to keep your focus on the big picture.

Bringing It All Together

With almost 75% of businesses operating across multiple public clouds 5, it’s become clear that efforts to modernize need to be executed strategically. CIOs who’ve enjoyed success in this area are realizing cost savings, revenue growth, and improved innovation. They have taken the time to standardize functions across clouds, chosen the clouds that best meet the needs of their apps, and operated unifying platforms that maintain seamless business control over multiple cloud providers. They have also improved DevEx to make the best use of one of their greatest assets: their Dev team.

For more ways to influence multi-cloud success, download the complete report: CIO Essential Guidance: Modernizing Applications in a Multi-Cloud World

Learn more by clicking here.

[1] Taking it a step further, according to a recent Forrester poll, 69% of business leaders agreed that a good Developer Experience (DevEx) results in a better customer experience (CX).

[2] In fact, it’s clear that DevEx directly impacts CX: 45% of enterprise IT executives report that their dev teams push software releases on a monthly or faster pace (on average).

VMware

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Karl Nicholson, Technology Evangelist at Slack

Ask any tech team, and they’ll tell you that the use of workplace apps has skyrocketed in recent years. Off the back of the pandemic, an age of technological empowerment swept in — where employees had greater autonomy in choosing the best tools they needed to do their best work.

While best-in-breed solutions might suit individual needs, it can lead to more information silos cropping up and employees being overloaded with endless context-switching and notifications. This can be hugely damaging to productivity for most teams — but especially for sales teams, who are the backbone of any organisation’s growth and have a critical role to play in the current economic climate.

With Salesforce’s new State of Sales Report showing that 66% of sales reps are overwhelmed by using too many sales tools — spending just 28% of their week selling —CIOs must focus on helping to transform their organisation’s sales function.

One way of doing this is to centre tech strategies around a single platform where all the tools, and all team members, can deliver the most value — the digital headquarters (HQ).

Tying all your tools together

The digital HQ is so revolutionary for the tech suite because, by definition, it’s a single place that connects employees, the tools they use, partners and customers. By squashing departmental silos, and bringing information and apps onto one platform, the digital HQ empowers employees through visibility and accessibility — and helps them grow more productive and efficient in the process.

By using the digital HQ as a single space for managing deals, and integrating it with key tools like Salesforce Sales Cloud, IT leaders can transform sales performance. They can help those teams align all relevant stakeholders using up-to-date customer information, and ultimately close deals faster. Just ask fintech, Revolut.

Slack

Bringing the power of Salesforce into the digital HQ

With over 25 million users, Revolut is one of the most innovative businesses in Europe. Starting a sales department at the peak of the pandemic, the business relied on Slack’s digital HQ to onboard almost a thousand salespeople remotely, escape back-to-back video calls, and move to asynchronous ways of collaborating.

When it comes to driving sales performance, the Revolut tech team also rely on the digital HQ – namely, the game-changing integration between Slack and Salesforce’s Sales Cloud, and its ability to improve the way sales teams can share, search for, and find information.

For instance, within a dedicated Slack channel, Salesforce’s artificial intelligence technology, Einstein, makes answering important questions and getting up to speed on accounts even easier for co-workers. This way, Revolut’s tech team has helped its salespeople save time so they can focus on impactful work — like engaging with customers.

By putting AI to work in the digital HQ, Revolut’s tech team has turbocharged the business’s sales performance and empowered the team to close even more deals.

Growing your business, without damaging your impact

For businesses set on growth, tech consolidation does not mean pulling back on the reins —instead, it offers a route to promote efficient growth, while managing budgetary pressures.

Slack and Salesforce is a great example of this, with the power of Sales Cloud integrating seamlessly into the digital HQ and bringing untold benefits in the shape of scalable automation. This way, the Revolut sales team — with help from their partners in tech — is reaping the benefits of both platforms and boosting their business impact.

For more information on how Slack’s Digital HQ can help your business click here.

Artificial Intelligence, Salesforce Automation 

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , ,

Risk management and mitigation is a high priority for CEOs and other senior executives worldwide — including CIOs and cybersecurity executives. The fact is, it’s impossible to separate risk from technology implementations and the potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities they present.

One of the biggest challenges of risk management, as it relates to IT, is the emergence of a growing number of government and industry regulations regarding data privacy and security. The difficulty of complying with all the regulations — particularly for heavily regulated organizations such as financial services firms, healthcare institutions and government agencies — is daunting.

Some of the regulations that address specific sectors have been in place for a number of years. For example, in financial services the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA) requires financial firms to protect customer data and disclose all of their data-sharing practices with customers.

In the healthcare sector, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires the protection of sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge. Risk management and technology leaders in the industry have been grappling with HIPAA compliance since the law was enacted in 1996.

In the US federal government, agencies have to deal with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), a government-wide initiative that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services.

And in retail and other sectors, companies need to be compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), a cyber security standard for organizations that handle branded credit cards from the major card companies. The PCI Standard, mandated by the card brands and administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, was created to increase controls around cardholder data to reduce credit card fraud.

More recently, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was enacted in the European Union (EU) in 2018 to protect the privacy of data about EU citizens. GDPR’s primary aim is to enhance individuals’ control and rights over their personal data. And the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was enacted in the state in 2018 to enhance privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California.

Many other states have pending legislation related to data protection and privacy, and some of these might be enacted in the near future.

Then there’s the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) a proposed federal online privacy bill that would regulate how organizations keep and use consumer data. The bipartisan bill is the first American consumer privacy bill to pass committee markup. ADPPA would regulate how organizations keep and use consumer data. It has several main principles, including data minimization, individual ownership, and private right of action. The burden of evaluating each organization’s programs would fall to the organization.

As the first federal user data privacy legislation, ADPPA would largely supersede state laws such as CCPA and Colorado Privacy Act.

We’re in the midst of an environment in which governments, organizations, consumers, business partners and indeed regulators are feeling increased risk aversion and a desire for increased security consciousness, which motivates regulatory change.

Regulators, in particular, want more transparency and increased controllability from organizations in virtually all industries regarding data and how it’s used.

How to manage the risks

With all of this data privacy regulatory activity going on, how can organizations ensure they remain in compliance?

One of the most important things is to be aware of any existing and emerging regulations that apply to the company. This goes without saying for regulated industries. But really, any business needs to devote resources to evaluating the regulatory scene, including keeping up on all the latest regulatory activities that apply to the organization.

Create a team that can assess and coordinate compliance activities. Whether this team is led by the head of risk management, compliance, audit, data governance or some other executive, the CIO and the CISO need to be involved because so much of data privacy involves the IT infrastructure. Other interested parties should include the legal and human resources departments.

Close and ongoing coordination among different facets of the organization is vital because data is such an all-encompassing entity within businesses today.

Another important organizational practice is to hire the necessary compliance experts. As with any technology-related skills today, it might be a challenge to find and retain people. If this proves to be impossible, there are countless consulting firms that handle data privacy issues for companies.

Of course, it’s also important to have access to the right tools and services to help ensure data privacy compliance. These tools should be capable of identifying vulnerability and compliance exposures within a very short period of time across widely distributed infrastructure components.

Some conduct vulnerability and compliance assessments against various operating systems, applications and security configurations and policies. They provide the data needed to help eliminate exposures, enhance overall security and simplify the preparation for audits.

Compliance functions are maturing, moving from a reactive and advisory role to becoming a proactive partner with the business, according to IT consulting and services firm Accenture.

A study the firm released in May 2022 showed that there’s an increased commitment to establishing a culture of shared compliance responsibility across the enterprise. The firm surveyed 860 compliance leaders and found that nearly half planned to upskill their compliance staff to drive a culture of compliance across the enterprise, and about 40% planned to invest in new technology to achieve this goal.

More than half of the respondents said they are using leading technologies to strengthen their compliance function, and 93% said new technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud make compliance easier by automating human tasks, standardization, and making the process more effective and efficient.

Assess the risk of your organization with the Tanium Risk Assessment. Your customized risk report will include your risk score, proposed implementation plan, how you compare to industry peers, and more.

Risk Management

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , ,

Risk management and mitigation is a high priority for CEOs and other senior executives worldwide — including CIOs and cybersecurity executives. The fact is, it’s impossible to separate risk from technology implementations and the potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities they present.

One of the biggest challenges of risk management, as it relates to IT, is the emergence of a growing number of government and industry regulations regarding data privacy and security. The difficulty of complying with all the regulations — particularly for heavily regulated organizations such as financial services firms, healthcare institutions and government agencies — is daunting.

Some of the regulations that address specific sectors have been in place for a number of years. For example, in financial services the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA) requires financial firms to protect customer data and disclose all of their data-sharing practices with customers.

In the healthcare sector, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires the protection of sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge. Risk management and technology leaders in the industry have been grappling with HIPAA compliance since the law was enacted in 1996.

In the US federal government, agencies have to deal with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), a government-wide initiative that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services.

And in retail and other sectors, companies need to be compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), a cyber security standard for organizations that handle branded credit cards from the major card companies. The PCI Standard, mandated by the card brands and administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, was created to increase controls around cardholder data to reduce credit card fraud.

More recently, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was enacted in the European Union (EU) in 2018 to protect the privacy of data about EU citizens. GDPR’s primary aim is to enhance individuals’ control and rights over their personal data. And the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) was enacted in the state in 2018 to enhance privacy rights and consumer protection for residents of California.

Many other states have pending legislation related to data protection and privacy, and some of these might be enacted in the near future.

Then there’s the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) a proposed federal online privacy bill that would regulate how organizations keep and use consumer data. The bipartisan bill is the first American consumer privacy bill to pass committee markup. ADPPA would regulate how organizations keep and use consumer data. It has several main principles, including data minimization, individual ownership, and private right of action. The burden of evaluating each organization’s programs would fall to the organization.

As the first federal user data privacy legislation, ADPPA would largely supersede state laws such as CCPA and Colorado Privacy Act.

We’re in the midst of an environment in which governments, organizations, consumers, business partners and indeed regulators are feeling increased risk aversion and a desire for increased security consciousness, which motivates regulatory change.

Regulators, in particular, want more transparency and increased controllability from organizations in virtually all industries regarding data and how it’s used.

How to manage the risks

With all of this data privacy regulatory activity going on, how can organizations ensure they remain in compliance?

One of the most important things is to be aware of any existing and emerging regulations that apply to the company. This goes without saying for regulated industries. But really, any business needs to devote resources to evaluating the regulatory scene, including keeping up on all the latest regulatory activities that apply to the organization.

Create a team that can assess and coordinate compliance activities. Whether this team is led by the head of risk management, compliance, audit, data governance or some other executive, the CIO and the CISO need to be involved because so much of data privacy involves the IT infrastructure. Other interested parties should include the legal and human resources departments.

Close and ongoing coordination among different facets of the organization is vital because data is such an all-encompassing entity within businesses today.

Another important organizational practice is to hire the necessary compliance experts. As with any technology-related skills today, it might be a challenge to find and retain people. If this proves to be impossible, there are countless consulting firms that handle data privacy issues for companies.

Of course, it’s also important to have access to the right tools and services to help ensure data privacy compliance. These tools should be capable of identifying vulnerability and compliance exposures within a very short period of time across widely distributed infrastructure components.

Some conduct vulnerability and compliance assessments against various operating systems, applications and security configurations and policies. They provide the data needed to help eliminate exposures, enhance overall security and simplify the preparation for audits.

Compliance functions are maturing, moving from a reactive and advisory role to becoming a proactive partner with the business, according to IT consulting and services firm Accenture.

A study the firm released in May 2022 showed that there’s an increased commitment to establishing a culture of shared compliance responsibility across the enterprise. The firm surveyed 860 compliance leaders and found that nearly half planned to upskill their compliance staff to drive a culture of compliance across the enterprise, and about 40% planned to invest in new technology to achieve this goal.

More than half of the respondents said they are using leading technologies to strengthen their compliance function, and 93% said new technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud make compliance easier by automating human tasks, standardization, and making the process more effective and efficient.

Assess the risk of your organization with the Tanium Risk Assessment. Your customized risk report will include your risk score, proposed implementation plan, how you compare to industry peers, and more.

Risk Management

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , ,

Even as many business leaders debate the boundaries of remote work styles and schedules, there is little doubt that hybrid work will persist for most enterprises.

Yet, how hybrid work takes shape for any given business will likely evolve as business needs and employee expectations change over time. For IT and network security teams, the challenge is to secure their environments, regardless of where people are working.

The disruptions of the pandemic has caused more businesses to explore remote and hybrid work. “COVID-19 has accelerated a trend toward a massively distributed enterprise moving network functionality to the edge of the network,” IDC analysts advise. “The WAN architecture must cater to the needs of office and remote workers with parity in terms of routing policies, security profile, and management of the WAN.”  

Certainly, worker expectations have shifted dramatically. The Gallup organization studied experiences, needs, and future plans of more than 140,000 U.S. employees since the onset of the pandemic and concludes the workplace will never be the same as it was. Just 23% of surveyed workers expect to work fully on-site in 2022 and beyond, compared to a pre-pandemic number of 60%, Gallup reports. More than half expect to participate in hybrid work, while 24% expect to be fully remote.

That’s causing a rapid reevaluation of wide-area network (WAN) infrastructure and accelerating deployment of new security technology and policies, such as zero trust network access and secure access service edge (SASE).

CISOs are “revisiting the stopgap security tools and the temporary policies they enacted to quickly enable remote work to replace them with stronger permanent solutions,” declares CSO. Now those leaders are “laying out roadmaps for the future, with plans that feature investments in new technologies and processes to better secure the work-from-anywhere environment that is the norm today and moving forward.”

Shifting locations and network connections

IT leaders must strive to adapt their infrastructure and services to run as efficiently as when everyone mostly worked in the office. They must be able to provide a flexible, seamless experience that fosters collaboration and productivity within a secure framework, all while handling hundreds or thousands of locations and network connections that can often shift depending on where individual users may be located.

“CIOs are challenged with securing an ever-more cloud-reliant, distributed, data-driven, and bandwidth-consuming enterprise with largely the same resources at their disposal,” writes Bob Victor, senior vice president Customer Solutions with Comcast Business. “Addressing the security needs of this new reality comes in part through a unified networking and security approach that not only covers networking from edge to cloud and back again, but better protects an ever-growing attack surface.”

Victor asserts that the “surprising success” of work-from-anywhere has spurred new levels of digital innovation as businesses securely bring together data, applications, and users across environments that are distributed, complex, and expanding. How that will all play out remains to be seen.

Learn more about evolving security frameworks in the on-demand webinar from Comcast Business: “Beyond the Buzzwords – Networks and Security Converge”

Network Security