Category Archives: Cloud Servers

Cloudera CTO Ram Venkatesh speaks with iTWireTV about the … – iTWire

Ram says he is excited by the applicability of disruptive modern data architectures such as the data lake house, data fabric, and data mesh. He says the pendulum will continue to swing between centralisation through data lakes and lake houses, and the impending decentralisation with data mesh.

But what does this mean in practice? We all want our organisations to be data-driven but in the midst of a flood of data, and lots of noise, it can be hard to know how to get started, and what the marketing terminology all means.

You can watch and listen to our conversation here.

Ram explains he is visiting Australia to focus on customers, of which Cloudera has many valuable customers across a wide range of industries including telco, financial, government, and more. Ram notes that as 5G adoption grows in the telco space so too will more data be increasingly generated, so telco is particularly a big customer for a business like Cloudera.

Ram specifically mentions Deakin University which has adopted Clouderas products to find new ways of interacting with students and providing a greater personalised experience for them.

Ram also spoke about the Australian Defence Force, which is rolling out a system around personalised medicines on top of Cloudera.

I put to Ram that people say, "data is the new oil, and questioned if this metaphor was appropriate. Ram humorously responded with a resounding yes! Data is the fuel that powers new ways of doing business. Theres a lot of value, he said. But like oil, bad things happen if there is a leak or breach or spill. You have to be careful how you manage and handle it, and then you can monetise it and make new customer experiences.

Data is the enabler," he said.

That brought us nicely to the issue of challenges. Companies want to extract actionable insights out of their data, but most organisations will not have their data nicely categorised or packaged.

"What causes a lot of complexity is that data is everywhere, Ram said. It used to be in nice transitional systems that you got a batch report out of once per day. Now data is in social media, the cloud, SaaS applications, catalogue feeds from outside companies - there is so much data and so many kinds of data that being able to handle all consistently is a big challenge.

However, there is hope. Firstly, Ram explains, you need to think about data management. Regardless of whether data is on-premises or in the cloud, you must think about your data management and treat it as the same from a security standpoint so you set your policies once.

This is where the data fabric comes in; "the whole point is to make data management consistent, regardless of where the data is under the fabric, Ram explained.

Here is where a product like Cloudera comes in; it effectively implements a fabric that can work with hybrid multi-cloud so it does not matter where your data is located. Cloudera will manage it consistently.

Having the right use of data is very topical, Ram says. You want it accessible, but only to the right people. Here, he says, Cloudera can make a big difference - and just like cybersecurity, protecting data access must be a defence in depth. One set of controls around who can access it, another on encryption, another on personally identifying information, others on masking sensitive data further - you must use a variety of techniques.

This is like "having both a belt and suspenders so youre never caught without your pants, Ram said.

Ram also says the way we deal with complexity is to put data in the hands of the people who need it.

"Five to six years ago IT teams would interact with a product like Cloudera, he said. Now as more companies are data-driven, they need thousands of people who can store and manage data.

This is why it is critical to meet people where they are, he explained, and to provide a big range of tools. SQL is important, but now we have notebooks, machine learning, and self-service data analytics. If you have a consistent experience thats good, but you need to put it in the hands of people to make decisions. You must enable practitioners to get access to the data they need using the tools they know.

When it comes to 2023 and beyond, Ram says the data mesh is something we will increasingly hear about. It comes down to time-to-value. If you could do something in three months last year, you now need to do it in three weeks this year. You have a need for speed, to quickly take data use cases from concept to production, that all directly leads to business outcomes.

Ram also noted that data sovereignty in Australia and the rest of the APAC region is ahead of where the USA is today. As individuals, we all care about how data will be used, and this is a trend where complying with regulations helps us build systems more responsive to what the customer wants.

Finally, Ram spoke about ChatGPT and how amazing it is that this has so quickly become part of our conversation. Ram says this way of interaction is very new and impressive, with a language model following along with your conversation. Conversational analytics will become very compelling, he said.

"For us in the data world, our tagline used to be 'ask bigger questions - ChatGPT is allowing people to ask whatever they want in a conversational way and they will want the same from their enterprise data, Ram said.

"Once an interaction pattern becomes exposed we learn from it, but put in the guard rails so that applications like education and healthcare have precision as well as conversation.

"That's what's nice and exciting for me about the data space. We wouldnt have been having this conversation six months ago, Ram said.

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Cloudera CTO Ram Venkatesh speaks with iTWireTV about the ... - iTWire

Delinea Platform debuts with latest release of Secret Server to Unify … – iTWire

The Delinea Platform combines a best-in-class vault with secure remote access, enabling rapid future enhancements that accelerate PAM adoption

COMPANY NEWS: Delinea, a leading provider of solutions that seamlessly extend Privileged Access Management (PAM), has introduced the Delinea Platform, a cloud-native foundation for Delineas industry-recognised PAM solutions that empowers end-to-end visibility, dynamic privilege controls, and adaptive security.

The Delinea Platform supports the latest version of Secret Server, its award-winning vault solution, as well as a VPN-less secure Remote Access Service for vendors and remote workers and a rich integrations ecosystem through the Delinea marketplace.

According to Identity Defined Security Alliance research, 84% of organisations have experienced an identity-related breach in the last year. Compromised identities are a common thread for almost all cyber incidents, necessitating a more unified approach to cybersecurity in todays complex IT environments. According to Gartner, organisations that adopt cybersecurity mesh architectures will reduce the financial impact of security incidents by an average of 90% by 2024. The adoption of a strategic platform for Privileged Access Management aligns with a cybersecurity mesh strategy that encourages organisations to move away from numerous point solutions, increasing visibility while improving both security and efficiency.

The Delinea Platform provides authorisation for all identities, controlling access to an organisations most critical hybrid cloud infrastructure and sensitive data to help reduce risk, ensure compliance, and simplify security. With the launch of the Delinea Platform, organisations can now centrally manage and access privileged credentials through Secret Server, administer VPN-less secure remote access and session monitoring for third-party vendors and contractors with Remote Access Service, and integrate with critical IT and security solutions from the Delinea marketplace all from the same cloud interface. Supporting these critical PAM capabilities on the Delinea Platform makes the first step toward PAM maturity less complex.

The expanding number of siloed security tools and an exponential growth of human and machine identities with privileges make it difficult to manage privileged access confidently. As more capabilities are continuously delivered on the Delinea Platform, organisations can manage the authorisation of all identity types with unified and centralised management to optimise productivity while enhancing security. Future enhancements to the Delinea Platform will continue to enable seamless security with analytics-based access controls and adaptive privilege automation across IT infrastructure ensuring that identities have the right access with approved permissions at the appropriate time.

The Delinea Platform will revolutionise the market by unifying and extending Privileged Access Management, dramatically reducing risk from the most common thread across all cyberattacks compromised identities, said Phil Calvin, Chief Product Officer at Delinea. We are excited to take this first step by unifying the critical and core PAM capabilities on the Delinea Platform to provide world-class usability, seamless security, and simplified pricing that will accelerate adoption for our customers.

Organisations can start a free trial of the latest versions of Secret Server and Remote Access Service on the platform at https://delinea.com/products/secret-server andhttps://delinea.com/products/remote-access-service.

About Delinea

Delinea is a leading provider of Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions for the modern, hybrid enterprise. The Delinea Platform seamlessly extends PAM by providing authorisation for all identities, controlling access to an organisations most critical hybrid cloud infrastructure and sensitive data to help reduce risk, ensure compliance, and simplify security. Delinea removes complexity and defines the boundaries of access for thousands of customers worldwide. Our customers range from small businesses to the worlds largest financial institutions, intelligence agencies, and critical infrastructure companies. Learn more about Delinea on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.

Reducing WAN latency is one of the biggest issues with hybrid cloud performance. Taking advantage of compression and data deduplication can reduce your network latency.

Research firm, Markets and Markets, predicted that the hybrid cloud market size is expected to grow from US$38.27 billion in 2017 to US$97.64 billion by 2023.

Colocation facilities provide many of the benefits of having your servers in the cloud while still maintaining physical control of your systems.

Cloud adjacency provided by colocation facilities can enable you to leverage their low latency high bandwidth connections to the cloud as well as providing a solid connection back to your on-premises corporate network.

Download this white paper to find out what you need to know about enabling the hybrid cloud in your organisation.

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Marketing budgets are now focused on Webinars combined with Lead Generation.

If you wish to promote a Webinar we recommend at least a 3 to 4 week campaign prior to your event.

The iTWire campaign will include extensive adverts on our News Site itwire.com and prominent Newsletter promotion https://itwire.com/itwire-update.html and Promotional News & Editorial. Plus a video interview of the key speaker on iTWire TV https://www.youtube.com/c/iTWireTV/videos which will be used in Promotional Posts on the iTWire Home Page.

Now we are coming out of Lockdown iTWire will be focussed to assisting with your webinars and campaigns and assistance via part payments and extended terms, a Webinar Business Booster Pack and other supportive programs. We can also create your adverts and written content plus coordinate your video interview.

We look forward to discussing your campaign goals with you. Please click the button below.

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Delinea Platform debuts with latest release of Secret Server to Unify ... - iTWire

Ericsson, Virgin Media to expand 4G and 5G reach in UK – iTWire

Swedish telecommunications equipment provider Ericsson has paid a fine of US$207 million over breaches of a deferred prosecution agreement reached with the US Department of Justice in 2019, the company says.

In a statement issued on Friday, the company said it would enter a guilty plea over previously deferred charges relating to its actions prior to 2017.

Ericsson, one of the world's big three telecommunications outfits, said the agreement with the DoJ was over violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act between 2010 and 2016 in a number of countries.

Since the agreement had been struck, it had not been charged with any further FCPA violations, it said.

{loadposition sam08}The agreement was reached in connection with alleged bribes paid by Ericsson to the terrorist groups Al Qaeda and Islamic State in Iraq to facilitate its business activities.

In March 2022, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists shared internal Ericsson files with a number of newspapers, including The Guardian, detailing the alleged bribery.

The leak took place just prior to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the biggest industry event for mobile firms, and one which was being held in 2022 after a gap of two years.

Ericsson, which was made aware of the forthcoming leak, issued a public statement two weeks before the ICIJ leaked the files, admitting serious breaches of compliance in Iraq from 2011 to 2019.

Chief executive Brje Ekholm said on Friday: "Taking this step today means that the matter of the breaches is now resolved. This allows us to focus on executing our strategy while driving continued cultural change across the company with integrity at the centre of everything we do.

"This resolution is a stark reminder of the historical misconduct that led to the DPA. We have learned from that and we are on an important journey to transform our culture. To be a true industry leader, we must be a market and technology leader while also being a leader in how we conduct our business.

"The Ericsson Executive Team and I remain committed to this transformation and we continue to implement stringent controls and improved governance, ethics and compliance across our company, with corresponding enhancements to our risk management approach. The change continues and we are a very different company today and have made important changes since 2017 and over 2022.

A DoJ spokesperson said about the agreement: [Ericsson] has significantly enhanced its compliance program and internal accounting controls through structural and leadership changes, including but not limited to the hiring of a new chief legal officer and new head of Corporate and Government Investigations and the establishment of a multi-disciplinary Business Risk Committee comprised of Group-level senior executives and has committed to continuing to implement and test further enhancements.

[Ericsson] has significantly enhanced its co-operation and information sharing efforts.

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Ericsson, Virgin Media to expand 4G and 5G reach in UK - iTWire

Machine Translation Market Size Grows at CAGR of 11.42% & to Reach US$ 339.6 Million By 2028 | IMARC Group – openPR

Machine Translation Market

IMARC Group's latest report, titled "Machine Translation Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2023-2028", the global machine translation market size reached US$ 179.0 Million in 2022. Looking forward, IMARC Group expects the market to reach US$ 339.6 Million by 2028, exhibiting a growth rate (CAGR) of 11.42% during 2023-2028.

Machine Translation Uses:

Machine translation (MT) refers to the sub-field of computational elements that decode the source content into target languages. These are fully automated software, which allow customization and enhance the overall output by limiting the scope of admissible substitutions. The MT software can be categorized into various types, such as statistical machine translation (SMT), rule-based machine translation (RBMT), neural machine translation, etc. These tools are useful in domains where formal or formulaic language is used. In addition, the MT software can work without human intervention to translate considerable amounts of information that cannot be decoded conventionally. As a result, these software find extensive utilization across several sectors, including automotive, electronics, healthcare, military, defense, etc.

Request Free Sample Report (Exclusive Offer on this report): https://www.imarcgroup.com/machine-translation-market/requestsample

Machine Translation Market Growth and Development:

The escalating demand for cloud-based applications is among the primary factors driving the machine translation market. Besides this, cloud technology provides access to various services via cloud servers, thereby reducing the need for investing in in-house hardware installations, which is further augmenting the market growth. Moreover, the elevating requirement for organizations to localize their content in various languages and capture international markets is also catalyzing the global market. Apart from this, the leading players, such as Lilt Inc., an artificial intelligence (AI) powered language service provider, are launching adaptive neural machine translation systems, which is acting as another significant growth-inducing factor. Furthermore, the inflating need for these services to distribute healthcare information in various regional languages, owing to the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe, is anticipated to propel the machine translation market over the forecasted period.

Competitive Landscape with Key Players:

Applications Technology IncAsia Online Pte LtdCloudwords IncInternational Business Machines CorporationLionbridge Technologies IncPangeanicRaytheon Technologies CorporationSDL Plc (RWS Holdings Plc)Smart Communications Inc. (PLDT Inc.)Systran Welocalize Inc

Ask Analyst for Instant Discount and Download Full Report with TOC & List of Figure: https://www.imarcgroup.com/machine-translation-market

Key Market Segmentation:

Breakup by Technology Type:

Statistical Machine Translation (SMT)Rule-Based Machine Translation (RBMT)Neural Machine TranslationOthers

Breakup by Deployment Type:

On-PremisesCloud-Based

Breakup by Application:

BFSIAutomotiveElectronicsHealthcareIT and TelecommunicationsMilitary and DefenseOthers

Breakup by Region:

North America (United States, Canada)Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, Australia, Indonesia, Korea, Others)Europe (Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Others)Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Others)Middle East and Africa (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Other)

Key Highlights of the Report:

Market Performance (2017-2022)Market Outlook (2023-2028)Porter's Five Forces AnalysisMarket Drivers and Success FactorsSWOT AnalysisValue ChainComprehensive Mapping of the Competitive Landscape

Note: If you need specific information that is not currently within the scope of the report, we can provide it to you as a part of the customization.

Browse More Research Reports:

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Contact us:IMARC Group134 N 4th St. Brooklyn, NY 11249, USAEmail: sales@imarcgroup.comTel No:(D) +91 120 433 0800Americas:- +1 631 791 1145 | Africa and Europe :- +44-702-409-7331 | Asia: +91-120-433-0800, +91-120-433-0800

About Us:

IMARC Group is a leading market research company that offers management strategy and market research worldwide. We partner with clients in all sectors and regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their businesses.

IMARC's information products include major market, scientific, economic and technological developments for business leaders in pharmaceutical, industrial, and high technology organizations. Market forecasts and industry analysis for biotechnology, advanced materials, pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, travel and tourism, nanotechnology and novel processing methods are at the top of the company's expertise.

This release was published on openPR.

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Machine Translation Market Size Grows at CAGR of 11.42% & to Reach US$ 339.6 Million By 2028 | IMARC Group - openPR

EMVision appoints Prof Alan Couthard to Clinical Advisory Board – iTWire

Professor Alan Coulthard, Professor of Neuroradiology, University of Queensland

Medical imaging technology.company EMVision Medical Devices has appointed Professor Alan Coulthard to its advisory board.

Professor Coulthard is Professor of Neuroradiology at the University of Queensland and a full-time Senior Staff Specialist in diagnostic and interventional neuroradiology at the Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital - and is Director of Research for the Department of Medical Imaging with an emphasis on mentoring junior doctors in research.

Professor Coulthard has over 35 years of experience in medical imaging and 20 years experience in the endovascular treatment of cerebrovascular diseases including ischaemic stroke.

EMVision says Professor Coulthards research interests and collaborations have included neurodegenerative disease, neuroncology, neurovascular disease, neurointervention, epilepsy, neonatal imaging and multiple sclerosis - and he has a National leadership profile, having served as President of ANZSNR, inaugural chair of CCINR and in many roles for RANZCR, stepping down from the Board of Directors at the end of 2022.

Professor Alan Coulthard commented: Effective stroke intervention requires efficient and robust patient selection with minimal delay to treatment. This technology will lead to better outcomes for a larger geographical range of stroke patients in Australia and internationally.

EMVision CEO, Dr Ron Weinberger said: Alan will bring further insight and skills to our already impressive clinical team to ensure that we are developing a fit for purpose commercial product. His willingness to come on board reflects the support that exists to treat stroke in the most timely and urgent way possible

EMVision says Professor Alan Coulthards appointment is an unsalaried position.

Reducing WAN latency is one of the biggest issues with hybrid cloud performance. Taking advantage of compression and data deduplication can reduce your network latency.

Research firm, Markets and Markets, predicted that the hybrid cloud market size is expected to grow from US$38.27 billion in 2017 to US$97.64 billion by 2023.

Colocation facilities provide many of the benefits of having your servers in the cloud while still maintaining physical control of your systems.

Cloud adjacency provided by colocation facilities can enable you to leverage their low latency high bandwidth connections to the cloud as well as providing a solid connection back to your on-premises corporate network.

Download this white paper to find out what you need to know about enabling the hybrid cloud in your organisation.

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Marketing budgets are now focused on Webinars combined with Lead Generation.

If you wish to promote a Webinar we recommend at least a 3 to 4 week campaign prior to your event.

The iTWire campaign will include extensive adverts on our News Site itwire.com and prominent Newsletter promotion https://itwire.com/itwire-update.html and Promotional News & Editorial. Plus a video interview of the key speaker on iTWire TV https://www.youtube.com/c/iTWireTV/videos which will be used in Promotional Posts on the iTWire Home Page.

Now we are coming out of Lockdown iTWire will be focussed to assisting with your webinars and campaigns and assistance via part payments and extended terms, a Webinar Business Booster Pack and other supportive programs. We can also create your adverts and written content plus coordinate your video interview.

We look forward to discussing your campaign goals with you. Please click the button below.

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EMVision appoints Prof Alan Couthard to Clinical Advisory Board - iTWire

Attentive picks Australia for first APAC office – iTWire

Attentive APAC regional vice president Zach Hotchkiss

Conversational commerce platform operator Attentive is opening an Australian office, its first in the region and the second outside the US.

"We're thrilled to build the next pillar of international expansion in Australia to unlock the full value of our SMS-first platform to brands," said Attentive vice president and general manager of international Anup Khera.

"While Australia is familiar with text messaging as a marketing channel, there is a desire to drive higher ROI via personalisation and move away from bulk SMS sending. Our world-class technology is known for top-performing list growth tools, advanced audience management, and targeted two-way messages that create a superior customer experience at every stage of the shopping journey."

More than 8,000 brands work with Attentive, including regional names such as Charlotte Tilbury, CASETiFY, Cupshe, and HartCo. Home & Body.

Attentive has appointed Zach Hotchkiss as its Sydney-based APAC regional vice president, and he will be responsible for building out Attentive's Australian presence.

Reducing WAN latency is one of the biggest issues with hybrid cloud performance. Taking advantage of compression and data deduplication can reduce your network latency.

Research firm, Markets and Markets, predicted that the hybrid cloud market size is expected to grow from US$38.27 billion in 2017 to US$97.64 billion by 2023.

Colocation facilities provide many of the benefits of having your servers in the cloud while still maintaining physical control of your systems.

Cloud adjacency provided by colocation facilities can enable you to leverage their low latency high bandwidth connections to the cloud as well as providing a solid connection back to your on-premises corporate network.

Download this white paper to find out what you need to know about enabling the hybrid cloud in your organisation.

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Marketing budgets are now focused on Webinars combined with Lead Generation.

If you wish to promote a Webinar we recommend at least a 3 to 4 week campaign prior to your event.

The iTWire campaign will include extensive adverts on our News Site itwire.com and prominent Newsletter promotion https://itwire.com/itwire-update.html and Promotional News & Editorial. Plus a video interview of the key speaker on iTWire TV https://www.youtube.com/c/iTWireTV/videos which will be used in Promotional Posts on the iTWire Home Page.

Now we are coming out of Lockdown iTWire will be focussed to assisting with your webinars and campaigns and assistance via part payments and extended terms, a Webinar Business Booster Pack and other supportive programs. We can also create your adverts and written content plus coordinate your video interview.

We look forward to discussing your campaign goals with you. Please click the button below.

MORE INFO HERE!

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Attentive picks Australia for first APAC office - iTWire

Banking in the Cloud: How Financial Institutions Can Mitigate the … – JD Supra

As organizations in the financial sector continue to migrate IT and business services to the cloud and adopt other cloud offerings, it is important that financial institutions understand the risks associated with each. A U.S. Treasury report issued on February 8, 2023, showed that regulators are closely monitoring how the financial sector uses cloud services. With cloud service providers becoming more assertive in shifting risks to their customers, financial institutions may experience higher levels of regulatory scrutiny.

Over the past decade, the financial services sector has steadily migrated many information technology (IT) functions to cloud service providers everything from video teleconferencing to internal communications to customer-facing applications. However, models of adoptions and associated risk vary widely across the sector. As the Financial Services Sector Risk Management Agency , the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a report on February 8, 2023, assessing these risks and associated challenges affecting the financial sector.

At its most basic level, cloud computing is a means by which organizations can access on-demand network services and infrastructure without having to host their own servers. It is flexible and scalable, so companies can easily add or remove resources as needed. The financial sector, in particular, has found cloud services to be valuable for a range of purposes, such as supporting remote work and using cloud-native capabilities.

Financial institutions are motivated to increase cloud adoption due to benefits such as cost reduction, quicker deployment of new IT assets, faster product and service development, and improved security and resilience. However, these benefits bring with them both risks and other challenges that organizations in the financial sector should consider as they migrate their IT and business functions to the cloud.

In its report, Treasury found as a symptom of rapid adoption of cloud services across the sector the vast majority of financial institutions have implemented cloud services, but at significantly varied maturity levels. A survey by the American Bankers Association (ABA) in 2021 revealed that more than 90 percent of banks surveyed reported maintaining some form of data, applications, or operations in the cloud. Furthermore, more than 80 percent of those surveyed reported being in the early stages of adopting cloud services. Only 5 percent of the surveyed banks described their use of cloud technology as mature.

Various types of cloud offerings public, private, and hybrid exist to cater to diverse service requirements. Public cloud, for instance, allows multiple customers, or "tenants," to share resources. Private cloud, by contrast, is an environment operated exclusively for a single organization, either on or off premises, and allows the cloud to be tailored to meet specific needs, such as security, compliance, or performance. A hybrid model incorporates both public and private cloud services alongside in-house data centers and is the preferred choice for many large financial institutions.

In contrast, some smaller and mid-sized institutions have adopted models using purely public cloud environments, significantly reducing their cost and data center usage but also increasing their risk. If set up properly, public cloud services can offer a resilient and secure setting. However, the level of resilience and security for a specific cloud service may differ dramatically depending on the provider, service, configuration, provisioning, and management. And, importantly, not all of these functionalities may be accessible in every situation.

Treasury has highlighted six primary obstacles to the adoption of cloud technology in the financial industry:

Treasury plans to take a number of steps to assist financial institutions in mitigation risk from the operational disruption of cloud services. As a preliminary step, Treasury plans to establish a Cloud Services Steering Group to address issues raised in this report. The Steering Group's functions will include:

In light of this regulatory focus on how financial institutions are using cloud technologies, financial institutions can take several steps to mitigate the regulatory and security risks associated with cloud adoption.

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Banking in the Cloud: How Financial Institutions Can Mitigate the ... - JD Supra

Huawei Cloud Backup and Recovery the answer to SA IT risks – ITWeb

The ongoing and potentially worsening load-shedding in South Africa is impacting a great deal more than IT running costs, it is also putting data and business continuity at risk. Moving strategically to the cloud can mitigate these risks.

This is according to Siphiwe Matore, Cloud Solution Architect at Huawei South Africa, who says powering on-premises data centres with generators can cost organisations hundreds of thousands or even millions of rands in diesel and operational staff. Equally concerning is the risk of costly business downtime and the loss of transactional data during power outages.

Load-shedding has made it very clear that keeping business IT operations running is critical for continuity, and just a few hours of downtime can result in the loss of millions of rands. To experience this multiple times a day is something businesses just cant recover from, she says.

Matore says backup power is not the solution as it becomes apparent that load-shedding may drag on for years to come. Relying on UPS devices, inverters and generators is like putting a plaster on the wound, she says. Constantly switching between mains and backup power can result in service interruptions and damage IT hardware in the long run, she notes.

But it is important to note that load-shedding is not the only reason to worry about a company's data protection and IT service availability. Eighty-six percentof South African businesses experienced some form of cyber security attacks in 2022 alone, and now we're the eighth most attacked country in the world, Matore says. Apart from malicious attacks, there are also other threats such as natural disasters like the storms we experienced in KwaZulu-Natal or hardware failures due to degradation or power surges, or even unintentional areas like staff deleting critical files and data. All these threats will be detrimental to businesses and continuing operations. So organisations really need to ask themselves what are they going to do in the event of a disaster?

She says it has become imperative that organisations move to the cloud to ensure that backup and recovery services are easy to use, efficient, reliable and secure, to ensure uninterrupted and ongoing business continuity.

Matore notes that backup and disaster recovery (DR) are distinctly different. Backup is about data protection, where a copy of your data is created to be used in the event of the original data being lost or unavailable. Traditionally, these data copies were written to tapes or removable drives and storage appliances. Now they are increasingly being stored in the cloud, which can be more economical and secure. On the other hand, DR is a set of measures to ensure the timely recovery of data, applications and systems to a separate physical site following a system failure, natural catastrophe or ransomware attack. So if your primary site were to be compromised, the business could seamlessly continue its IT operations from the cloud and mitigate the loss of business operations and money.

She adds: The use of a hybrid cloud is expected to increase by 31% in the next year in South Africa alone, with 53% of companies using backup as a service and 20% using DR as a service. As predicted at the 2019 Cloud Conference and Expo.

Huawei Cloud with the support of its partners is helping customers migrate to the cloud to mitigate the new data loss and continuity risks they are facing.

Huawei Cloud Backup and Recovery (CBR) enables organisations to backup elastic cloud servers (ECSs), bare metal servers (BMSes), elastic volume service (EVS) disks, SFS turbo file systems, local files and directories, and on-premises VMware virtual environments with ease. In case of a virus attack, accidental deletion or software or hardware fault, organisations can restore data to any point in the past when the data was backed up. CBR protects your services by ensuring the security and consistency of your data, she says.

CBR supports crash-consistent backup for multiple disks on a server and application-consistent backup for database servers, ensuring data security and reliability. Incremental forever backups shorten the time required for backup by 95%. With Instant Restore, CBR supports recovery point objective (RPO) as low as one hour and recovery time objective (RTO) within minutes.

With three availability zones in South Africa, Huawei Clouds Storage Disaster Recovery Service (SDRS) provides cross-AZ disaster recovery (DR) protection for your servers, allowing you to achieve a recovery point objective (RPO) of zero through its high-speed network and continuous replication, while greatly reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). If a fault occurs in the source AZ, you can quickly restore services in the target AZ. Equipped with world-class infrastructure and solid power generation capacity, Huawei Cloud has not recorded a second of downtime since its arrival in South Africa three years ago. Huawei Cloud is invested heavily in R&D, capacity, redundancy and specialist technical support teams in the country, to help partners and customers keep systems running and avoid data loss.

** Sources: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cloud-hosting/306766-cloud-services-in-south-african-companies-here-are-the-latest-stats.html

How vendors and attackers are still exploiting FUD

http://www.securitysa.com/15370r

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Huawei Cloud Backup and Recovery the answer to SA IT risks - ITWeb

Forget the hybrid cloud; its time for the confidential cloud – VentureBeat

As cloud adoption gains traction, its clear that security teams have been left to play catch up. In diverse hybrid cloud and multicloud environments, encrypting data-at-rest and in-transit isnt enough; it needs to be encrypted in use, too. This is where confidential computing comes in.

Today, The Open Confidential Computing Conference (OC3) gathered together IT industry leaders to discuss the development of confidential computing. Hosted by Edgeless Systems, the event welcomed more than 1,200 attendees, technologists and academics.

Speakers included Intel CTO Greg Lavender and Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich. They discussed how the role of confidential computing will evolve as organizations migrate to confidential cloud models.

One of the core panel discussions from the event, led by Russinovich, centered on defining what confidential computing is and isnt.

The most succinct definition is the third leg in the data protection triangle of protecting data at rest, protecting data in transit; confidential computing is protecting data in-use, Russinovich said in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. The data is protected while its being processed.

More specifically, a vendor using confidential computing will create a secure piece of hardware that stores encryption keys within an encrypted trusted execution environment (TEE). The TEE encrypts data and code while in use so they cant be modified or accessed by any unauthorized third parties.

Data in use means that, while an application is running, its still impossible for a third party even the owner of the hardware the application is running from ever seeing the data in the clear, saidMark Horvath, senior director analyst at Gartner.

Encrypting data-in-use, rather than at-rest or in-transit, means that organizations can confidentially and securely process personally identifiable information (PII) or financial data with AI, ML and analytics solutions without exposing it in memory on the underlying hardware.

It also helps protect organizations from attacks that target code or data in use, such as memory scraping or malware injection attacks of the likes launched against Target and the Ukraine power grid.

One of the underlying themes at the OC3 event, particularly in a presentation by Lavender, was how the concept of the confidential cloud is moving from niche to mainstream as more organizations experiment with use cases at the networks edge.

The use cases are expanding rapidly, particularly at the edge, because as people start doing AI and machine learning processing at the edge for all kinds of reasons [such as autonomous vehicles, surveillance infrastructure management], this activity has remained outside of the security perimeter of the cloud, said Lavender.

The traditional cloud security perimeter is based on the idea of encrypting data-at-rest in storage and as it transits across a network, which makes it difficult to conduct tasks like AI inferencing at the networks edge. This is because theres no way to prevent information from being exposed during processing.

As the data there becomes more sensitive particularly video data, which could have PII information like your face or your drivers [license] or your car license [plate] number theres a whole new level of privacy that intersects with confidential computing that needs to be maintained with these machine learning algorithms doing inferencing, said Lavender.

In contrast, adopting a confidential cloud approach enables organizations to run workloads in a TEE, securely processing and inferencing data across the cloud and at the networks edge, without leaving PII, financial data or biometric information exposed to unauthorized users and compliance risk.

This is a capability that early adopters are aiming to exploit. After all, in modern cloud environments, data isnt just stored and processed in a ring-fenced on-premise network with a handful of servers, but in remote and edge locations with a range of mobile and IoT devices.

Organizations that embrace confidential computing unlock many more opportunities for processing data in the cloud. For Russinovich, some of the most exciting use cases are multi-party computation scenarios.

These are scenarios where multiple parties can bring their data and share it, not with each other, but with code that they all trust, and get shared insights out of that combination of data sets with nobody else having access to the data, said Russinovich.

Under this approach, multiple organizations can share data sets to process with a central AI model without exposing the data to each other.

One example of this is Accentures confidential computing pilot developed last year. This used Intels Project Amber solution to enable multiple healthcare institutions and hospitals to share data with a central AI model to develop new insights on how to detect and prevent diseases.

In this particular pilot, each hospital trained its own AI model before sending information downstream to be aggregated within a centralized enclave, where a more sophisticated AI model processed the data in more detail without exposing it to unauthorized third parties or violating regulations like (HIPAA).

Its worth noting that in this example, confidential computing is differentiated from federated learning because it provides attestation that the data and code inside the TEE is unmodified, which enables each hospital to trust the integrity and legitimacy of the AI model before handing over regulated information.

While interest in confidential computing is growing as more practical use cases emerge, the market remains in its infancy, with Absolute Reports estimating it at a value of $3.2 billion in 2021.

However, for OC3 moderator Felix Schuster, CEO and founder of Edgeless Systems, confidential computing is rapidly deepening adoption.

Everything is primed for it, said Schuster. He pointed out that Greg Lavender recently spoke in front of 30 Fortune 500 CISOs, of which only two had heard of confidential computing. After his presentation, 20 people followed up to learn more.

This unawareness is a paradox, as the tech is widely available and amazing things can be done with it, said Schuster. There is consensus between the tech leaders attending the event that all of the cloud will inevitably become confidential in the next few years.

Broader adoption will come as more organizations begin to understand the role it plays in securing decentralized cloud environments.

Considering that members of the Confidential Computing Consortium include Arm, Facebook, Google, Nvidia, Huawei, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, EMD, Cisco and VMware, the solution category is well-poised to grow significantly over the next few years.

So far, confidential computing adoption has largely been confined to regulated industries, with more than 75% of demand driven by industries including banking, finance, insurance, healthcare, life sciences, public sector and defense.

As the Accenture pilot indicates, these organizations are experimenting with confidential computing as a way to reconcile data security with accessibility so that they can generate insights from their data while meeting ever-mounting regulatory requirements.

Keeping up with regulatory compliance is one of the core drivers of adoption among these organizations.

The technology is generally seen as a way to simplify compliance reporting for industries such as healthcare and financial services, said Brent Hollingsworth, director of the AMD EPYC Software Ecosystem.

Instead of dedicating costly efforts to set up and operate a secure data processing environment, organizations can process sensitive data in encrypted memory on public clouds saving costs on security efforts and data management, said Hollingsworth.

In this sense, confidential computing gives decision makers both peace of mind and assurance that they can process their data while minimizing legal risk.

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Forget the hybrid cloud; its time for the confidential cloud - VentureBeat

How to Apply NIST Principles to SaaS in 2023 – The Hacker News

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is one of the standard-bearers in global cybersecurity. The U.S.-based institutes cybersecurity framework helps organizations of all sizes understand, manage, and reduce their cyber-risk levels and better protect their data. Its importance in the fight against cyberattacks cant be overstated.

While NIST hasnt directly developed standards related to securing the SaaS ecosystem, they are instrumental in the way we approach SaaS security.

NIST recently released its Guide to a Secure Enterprise Network Landscape. In it, they discuss the transformation from on-premise networks to multiple cloud servers. Access to these servers, and the accompanying SaaS apps, is through both secure and unsecured devices and locations across disparate geography.

The move to the cloud has effectively obliterated the network perimeter. As a result, companies have increased their attack surface and are experiencing an escalation of attacks that span across network boundaries.

Rather than focus on network-centric security, security must take a three-pronged approach. The user, endpoint, and application are keys to protecting data. This new paradigm emphasizes the importance of identity, location, and contextual data associated with the user, device, and service.

Learn how Adaptive Shield can help enforce NIST compliance.

Todays security tools need to scale to meet the volume, velocity, and variety of todays applications. They need to integrate seamlessly with SaaS applications and provide coverage for the entire SaaS stack.

To be effective, these tools need to minimize human intervention for monitoring and remediation. Automation is critical for an ecosystem that demands secure configurations for each user account that has access to the application. Large organizations may have millions of configurations to secure across their entire SaaS stack; closing them manually is an impossible task.

SaaS security tools must be able to integrate with all the apps on the stack and identify each application through the SaaS apps APIs. Once connected, it must monitor the security configurations, staying alert to any changes. This configuration drift can have severe consequences, as it exposes SaaS applications by removing the safeguards put in place to prevent unauthorized access. It needs to continuously monitor applications, and issue alerts as risk increases.

Effective SaaS security tools use contextual data to detect threats to the application and its data. These threats can come from humans and machines and may have access to the system using verified credentials.

Contextual data from across the SaaS stack can help identify paradoxical travel, spikes in failed authentication attempts from the same IP address for multiple accounts, or attempts where automated tools test weak and common passwords against known user names. It can also recognize malicious third-party applications that are significantly overprivileged for their functionality.

Get a demo of how Adaptive Shield can help secure your SaaS stack

In the world of SaaS, the devices represent the network perimeter. Accessing SaaS applications with devices that have poor hygiene can put all the data at risk. Compromised devices can hand over login credentials to threat actors, who can leverage that into breaching and stealing data.

Effective SaaS security tools partner with endpoint security providers to ensure that the devices that access SaaS apps have an up-to-date operating system, all software has been updated, and any patches have been applied.

While devices may be the perimeter, user ID is the barrier preventing unfettered access to company data. Access should be given using a zero-trust approach. All access should be granted through an SSO connected to an enterprise-managed IdP. Organizations should reinforce this entryway with a phishing-resistant MFA authenticator.

Effective SSPM platforms are built on robust security checks that review each SaaS configuration to ensure they are optimized for protection. Typically, security setting recommendations are influenced heavily by NISTs cybersecurity approach, and their guidance enables SSPM vendors to monitor and track usage, users, and behaviors, as well as identify threats.

See how Adaptive Shields SSPM could protect your SaaS stack

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How to Apply NIST Principles to SaaS in 2023 - The Hacker News