Amazon

Recode reporter Jason Del Rey on Tuesday wrote a story about Amazons latest commerce-centric endeavor: the Amazon One payment kiosk. Amazon One is a biometric technology that allows customers to, according to Del Rey, pay at stores by placing their palm over a scanning device when they walk in the door or when they check out. Amazon is rolling out the new technology at its Amazon Go cashierless convenience stores in Seattle, but will expand to its other outposts in the future. The company also hopes to sell the tech to third-party retailers as well.

Del Reys piece delves into the privacy issues regarding sending ones handprints to Amazons cloud servers, but there is another interesting use case: accessibility. At first blush, the contactless nature of Amazon One is seemingly a more accessible way to authenticate payment than competitors such as Apples Apple Pay. The reason is there is no need to interact with a device with which to scan; with Amazon One, you are literally using yourself as a token.

Compare and contrast the Amazon One experience with Apple Pay. Since Apple Pay was introduced in 2014, the usability gains of the service are obvious. As the company explained at the time, Apple Pay was not only more secure (more on this below), it also was fast and easyno longer did someone need to fumble through their wallet to find their credit card. All that was needed was to place your iPhone (or Apple Watch) near the NFC reader, and the transaction is done. The fluidity of the user experience here is even more significant when you consider it from an accessibility vantage point. People with fine-motor delays, for instance, are saved from the friction of not only finding their physical card, but also inserting it into the chip reader. The same goes for buying things on the web, as Apple Pay automatically enters in personal details such as card number and shipping information. Not only does this save on typing, it also reduces cognitive load for users who have certain kinds of cognitive impairments.

Whether Amazon One gains wide adoption is obviously an open question, but its not difficult to see where Amazon has leveled up on usability from an established player like Apple Pay, theoretically at least.

Still, the idea of Amazon One as a more accessible payment system is predicated upon the reality that many people with disabilities have trouble manipulating everyday objects. Thus, Amazon One completely removes such a barrier by letting the person literally do the paying. There are questions, however. The foremost one is whether Amazon has or will built in voiceover technology for the blind or low vision. Will it tell you how close you are to the kiosk? Will it alert you when youve placed your hand in the optimal position for scanning? How accessible is the initial setup process? These are scenarios Amazon must account for if they truly wish to extend their retail dominance to the physical world, as Del Rey attests.

As for privacy concerns, Apple Pay has a decided advantage over Amazon One because not only is the former accessible (in a disability sense) its also designed with privacy in mind. Apple has staked much of its reputation on how they safeguard users personal data, so if privacy is a primary concern, Apple Pay is the better system overall. To trust Amazon with ones biometric data is an individual decision; this is the same company, after all, who last week announced a camera-fitted drone that flies around your house ostensibly for security purposes.

Its very early days for Amazon One, but its worthwhile to ponder the possibilities of the tech as it relates to accessibility. Whatever happens going forward, its important to remember that the more innovation around accessibility is good for every user. It will be exciting to see how well Amazon One works in practice despite its limited availability.

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Anticipating The Accessibility Of The Amazon One Payment System - Forbes

COVID-19 has already forced major changes to the way we live our lives. Many of these may outlast the pandemic, especially those related to the modern workforce. New working patterns may in the long-run have significant benefits to organisations and their employees, but there are also challenges; reduced IT visibility and control creates serious security gaps. As we get used to the new reality of mass remote working, IT leaders need to formulate a long-term plan to enhance cyber-resilience, by minimising these gaps and optimising controls.

Security side-lined

A return to business-as-usual once the pandemic recedes is unlikely. Indeed, a quarter (26 percent) of Fortune 500 CEOs believe the majority of their staff will end up working from home indefinitely. This might even be a conservative estimate if potential productivity and cost benefits materialise. If the prediction is true, the coming months could see another wave of digital transformation akin to the initial flurry of activity back in March. The early days of the pandemic included roll-outs of cloud-based communications software like Zoom and Teams, and productivity platforms including Office 365 to enable employees to log-in, collaborate and work from anywhere in the world.

Some organisations also had to increase investments in cloud infrastructure to support new business models and operations. Microsoft estimated it saw two years worth of digital transformation in just two months, and a recent Fortune 500 poll found 75 percent of companies have seen work-from-home initiatives accelerate digital plans. Unfortunately, amidst these efforts, security has often fallen to bottom of the priority list. According to one study of global IT leaders, while 90 percent reported an increase in cyber-attacks, 93 percent also side-lined key security projects like regular patching.

Stretched to the limit

Cyber-threats are on the rise as attackers spot new gaps to exploit in distributed workforces. Personal devices at home may not be as well secured as corporate equivalents and may be shared with users that engage in risky behaviour. Even if the IT function can locate and manage such endpoints, VPNs are increasingly overwhelmed with the load, delaying patches. Home workers may also be their own worst enemy. Trend Micro found more than half (56 percent) have used a non-work application on a corporate device, and 66 percent of them have uploaded corporate data to that app. Many more (80 percent) use their work laptops for personal browsing. On the other side, 39 percent said they often or always access corporate data from a personal device.

At the same time, IT security teams are stretched to the limit. A recent poll of its members by industry body ISACA found less than two thirds (59 percent) feel their cybersecurity team has the right tools at home to perform their job effectively. Just 51 percent are confident teams can detect and respond to rising threat volumes. In short, organisations are more exposed than ever to the risk of ransomware, data breaches, bot attacks, and more. Trend Micro alone blocked nearly 28 billion cyber-threats in the first half of 2020 including almost nine million COVID-themed attacks most of which were destined for remote workers inboxes. Cyber-criminals are even cold-calling victims with new vishing and voicemail phishing tactics.

Time for action

The global average cost of a data breach is now almost $3.9m. Remediation and clean-up, lost productivity, legal fees, regulatory fines and reputational damage can all seriously undermine growth and customer confidence at a time of tremendous business uncertainty. So, how can organisations regain the initiative?

The most essential task is to update remote working policies. The first six months of the year were characterised by a struggle to adapt to the new reality. Now its time to prioritise security and eliminate IT blind spots, using technology controls to support upgraded policies. The IT security function must have full visibility into all remote working endpoints, and the ability to manage patching, ensure approved AV is installed and up-to-date, and that corporate log-ins are manged securely, or even better, enhanced with multi-factor authentication.

Security must also work at the network layer, email/web gateway, and all on-premises and hybrid cloud servers. Businesses must look for providers that can offer a range of controls to stop the many threats in the modern hackers toolkit. IPS and file integrity monitoring are useful tools to spot suspicious behaviour early on, while virtual patching adds a layer of defence for vulnerable systems until an official security update is available.

The final piece of the puzzle is, of course, the people in the organisation. Security leaders will need to revisit and update user training and awareness programmes and communication channels to take account of the new reality of home working. Courses should be flexible enough to adapt as threats evolve. Theres no such thing as a silver bullet in security. But with budgets under scrutiny and staff in short supply, IT leaders may find that the best option is to seek a trusted partner to help them navigate their way through the current landscape. This can not only help with technical implementation of security but also on the people side of things, to assist in adapting and adopting new behaviours required to protect themselves from the security threats. If this is the new normal, its time to start managing cyber-risk more effectively going forward.

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Tackling The Security Challenges Of A New Remote Working Reality - ISBuzz News

Companies are today turning out to be more data-driven as their data is the fuel to their development engine to create new products, outsmart the opposition and give clients better experiences. Thus, big data management and processing for different partners, for example, Data Analysts, Data Engineers, Data Operations companies should be quick, automated and scalable.

Companies need powerful financial governance for data processing that can constantly monitor, safeguard against startling spend, and give a direct proof of the advantages received against spend.

Financial governance is a fundamentally unique challenge in the cloud compared with on-premises, which includes consenting to costs in advance for long-term commitments. Essentially all cloud administrations are services are on-demand, usage-based systems, and financial governance guarantees that inefficient spending is distinguished and inevitably wiped out while measuring the ROI of important spend.

A significant number of the challenges that impact reliable financial governance for data processing platforms in the cloud are equivalent to those for delivering any cloud-based framework. But, cloud-based data platforms face explicit challenges special to the processing of information.

A checked contrast between on-premise infrastructure costs (huge forthright responsibilities for long term savings) versus cloud infrastructure is the on-demand, per instance usage of cloud computing resources. A fairly disentangled comparison is pursuing an exceptionally optimized data package from your ISP yet consuming huge usage pools of bandwidth without real-time checks and filters. This can cause undesirable amazements in your cloud bill. Governance is the thing that keeps the checks and balances set up and is basically a progression of regular tasks that are important to keeping accountability and control on cloud spending.

Moving to the cloud has fewer dangers today. The move finished with legitimate arranging and POCs is simple and not very tedious. Most cloud payment models are pay as you go and on-demand so companies dont see a strong forthright bill. However, as cloud projects develop, use cases and occurrences get layered, more intricate; the danger for a runaway cloud bill goes up.

Its easy to container some of the purposes behind this. As application demands are not known ahead of time, server allocations are made ahead of time consequently increasing server running time. Most web applications are designed to decrease latency for better customer experience as opposed to costs. This implies we need to forgo the on-demand advantage that cloud servers take into consideration for changing workloads and leads to poor performance optimization.

While most applications are planned to expect slow increment and reduction of data processing necessities, in reality data can represent burstiness which forcefully expands the requirement for additional servers. This is reciprocal to the idea of idle time also. Most web applications can have a consistent traffic flow however, huge workloads at hand can be dispersed as the day progresses, leading to idle times when usage is much lower.

Capacity management in the cloud is presently about infrastructure utilization streamlining with financial governance guard rails for groups to move quickly on their activities as well as not to stress over unforeseen bills. The companys objective during the optimization is to manufacture systems that continually give adequate ability to be marginally over that required while keeping up the traceability and predictability on user, cluster and job cost metrics level.

More developed applications can use present day technology platforms including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to drive more grounded governance. Companies should take a look at platforms which empower Workload Aware Autoscaling so as to reinforce the financial governance within a company. This will help uphold different teams run big data in a shared cloud environment or separate ones which can be consolidated to deliver more savings without compromising performance.

Furthermore, it additionally needs to incorporate the solid precepts of Optimized Upscaling to recover and reallocate unused assets, Aggressive Downscaling To prevent cost overwhelms because of idle nodes, Container Packing as resource allocation strategy and Diversified Spot which diminishes the odds of mass interference of Spot hubs by your Cloud Provider.

Ungoverned spend harms more than rising cloud costs. Governance, by and large, is about control, responsibility, and accountability. Financial governance is the same. All the time we will feel that lone incredible force can keep evil, otherwise known as cost overruns, under wraps. However, actually, the ordinary deeds of each and every stakeholder are what keep the cost overruns at bay.

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Importance of Financial Governance in the Cloud - Analytics Insight

The cloud is a crowd pleaser, but security is often unamused. As the software as a service landscape expands, so does the data and users connecting to it.

Cloud apps and web-based security properties are colliding. It's security's job to find where and how to blend security components. The cloud is a sore spot for security, but cloud access security broker (CASB) capabilities discovery, data loss prevention, threat protection, encryption and logging should sit between every kind of app a company houses.

Companies should consider mixing and matching CASB capabilities because draping a single vendor or solution across all apps is unnecessary, according to said Ramon Krikken, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, while speaking during the virtual Gartner 2020 Security & Risk Management Summit Wednesday.

If a company is already working with a patchwork of vendors, security needs to pay attention to the details. Maybe the company only needs CASB for firewall log feeds, for example.

"A lot of CASB buying decisions are made around discovery capabilities," said Krikken. It could be discovery of shadow IT, cloud app usage or data.

CASB is also applied to adaptive access control, where only approved individuals can access certain apps, and data loss prevention (DLP) for controlling the flow of data.

For many apps, endpoints manage the access point. "It matters what talks to what," said Krikken. IT and security have unmanaged and managed endpoints, unmanaged/unapproved cloud apps, and managed/approved cloud apps.

CASB integration is sensitive to the architecture of an organization's cloud and IT. Organizations can deploy CASB in two ways:

The choice "matters in terms of the kinds of capabilities that you can bring to bear," said Krikken, and the use cases that best suit the business.

For example, while IT can technically configure APIs at will, APIs are not created equal. "If I want to prevent a certain piece of data being downloaded from a cloud application, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to do via an API integration," said Krikken. A proxy server, however, can pick up on the gaps in traffic inspection APIs leave.

The forward proxy is used when there are some managed endpoints "and we want to see what they're doing, regardless of what it is that they're talking to," or managed/unmanaged apps, said Krikken. However, forward proxy doesn't capture traffic from unmanaged endpoints enter reverse proxy.

Reverse proxy "sits right in front of that cloud application and regardless of where the traffic comes from," but stops short of covering unapproved apps, said Krikken.

Traditional proxy servers, such as firewalls, act similarly to CASB proxies but also fail to address all types of apps or endpoints.

"One thing that is important here is that one of the use cases is never covered by any of these CASB architectures," said Krikken. " You have an unmanaged endpoint, talking to an unmanaged or an unapproved cloud application, because there's just nothing that gets in between the traffic."

But Krikken recommends security not to just grab and deploy certain CASB features. "When you essentially start with the feature that you need, then you can work your way back to the integration options that are required."

For example, organizations shouldn't request DLP for all cloud apps but instead define when DLP is required, like uploading or downloading data from the cloud. If companies can segment where certain features are absolutely necessary, they may come to find where their architecture can "bear" more CASB.

"It also allows you to look at other solutions that live side by side with CASB, and either on which CASB depends, or with which CASB needs to coexist in order to function properly," said Krikken.

Finding where CASB interacts with existing solutions is also key to its deployment. "You may already have various things that are either a prerequisite for CASB, or that overlap in such a way that you need to make them work together," said Krikken. Adaptive access control, for example, needs to work in conjunction with identity and access management to account for user directories or single sign on.

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How cloud threat protection takes on shadow IT - CIO Dive

NEW YORK, Sept. 21, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- According to market research report on"Cloud Analytics Marketby Solution (Analytics Solutions, Hosted Data Warehouse Solutions, and Cloud BI Tools), Deployment Mode (Public Cloud, Private Cloud, and Hybrid Cloud), Organization Size, Industry Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2025", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Cloud Analytics Marketsize to grow from USD 23.2 billion in 2020 to USD 65.4 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23.0% during the forecast period.

The major factors driving the growth of the Cloud Analytics Market are increasing data connectivity through hybrid and multi-cloud environments, the cost benefits of cloud-based analytics solutions, and growing trend of digitalization and massive rise in big data. Furthermore, Insufficient in-house IT expertise and equipment, and growing use of mobile apps due to the COVID-19 pandemic are expected to provide opportunities for enterprises operating in various verticals in the Cloud Analytics Market.

Browseand in-depth TOC on"Cloud Analytics Market"

359 Tables 48 - Figures 357- Pages

Download PDF Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=959

The analytics solution segment to record the highest growth rate during the forecast period

Under the solutions segment, the analytics solution is expected to grow at the highest growth rate during the forecast period. The high market share of analytics solutions is attributed to the increasing demand for the dashboards provided by various vendors, which help businesses retain customers and identify new opportunities for future growth. The demand for cloud analytics solutions is increasing globally due to the increasing demand for offering enhanced customer support across major verticals. These solutions are further capable of creating a detailed analysis of the data through the integration of various technologies. Cloud analytics solutions comprise cloud BI tools; hosted data warehouse solutions; complex event processing; Enterprise Information Management (EIM); Enterprise Performance Management (EPM); Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC); and analytics solutions.

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These solutions help businesses to improve their business decision-making ability. It provides a platform that has cloud-based analytical capabilities, which helps various industries remain competitive in the market. To handle huge data volumes from heterogeneous data sources, and to extract useful informational insights from the data corpus, businesses need to set up more servers and other hardware equipment, along with highly skilled IT personnel. Cloud analytics solutions resolve work-intensive and resource-intensive issues as the on-demand characteristics eliminate the costs associated with setting up more servers and other hardware equipment required by the data centers of business organizations. The cloud analytics solution providers offer end-to-end solutions to cater to the industry-specific requirements of verticals, such as BFSI, healthcare and life sciences, retail and consumer goods, research and education, government, media and entertainment, energy, telecom and IT, manufacturing, and other verticals that include infrastructure management, logistics, and transportation and automotive

The hybrid cloud deployment segment to record the higher CAGR during the forecast period

In the Cloud Analytics Market by deployment mode, the hybrid cloud segment is expected to record the higher CAGR during the forecast period. Data is a valuable asset for formulating business strategies. Organizations are becoming highly dependent on data, which helps them gain a competitive advantage. Organizations are increasingly focusing on channelizing and harmonizing critical reference data. Enterprises have now started investing in maintaining a central repository of data for easy access and better analysis of data. Enterprises prefer the deployment mode based on their requirements regarding scalability and level of data security.

Speak To Analyst @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalystNew.asp?id=959North America to hold the largest market size during the forecast period

North America is expected to hold the largest market size in the global Cloud Analytics Market during the forecast period. The US has emerged as the largest market, due to the increasing investments and a growing presence of vendors who are exploring the use of AI and NLP technologies for various applications. The US market widely adopts AI and NLP technologies in its business establishments and other verticals, catering to customers in a better way and continually improving business efficiencies. The country has advanced infrastructure, innovations, and initiatives necessary to evolve cloud analyticsinto robust solutions with innovative benefits.

Key and emerging Cloud Analytics Market players include Microsoft (US), Google (US), Oracle (US), IBM (US), Salesforce (US), SAP (Germany), TIBCO Software (US), SAS Institute (US), Teradata (US), AWS (US), MicroStrategy (US), Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (US), Sisense (US), Atos (France), Cloudera (US), Hitachi Vantara (US), ThoughtSpot (US), Qlik (US), Domo (US), GoodData (US), Alteryx (US), Absolutdata (US), Infor (US), Yellowfin (Australia), Guavus (US), Looker (US), Board International (Switzerland), and Pyramid Analytics (Netherlands).

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Cloud Analytics Market worth $65.4 billion by 2025 - Exclusive Report by MarketsandMarkets - Yahoo Finance