Digital Bulletin - Issue 20 - September 2020

DIGITAL BULLETIN Issue 20 | Sep ’20

ENCRYPTION’S HOLY GRAIL How Enveil has taken homomorphic encryption from the NSA to the enterprise

SEEING IS BELIEVING Fresh off a funding round, Varjo has grand ambitions in the VR/XR space

CONQUERING DIGITAL’S FINAL FRONTIER Aveva CEO Craig Hayman talks about the company’s mission to digitalise the industrial sector and thinking the unthinkable during COVID-19

JAMES HENDERSON Content Director

W

hen you think of areas of enterprise that have embraced the potential of digital technology and services, the industrial sector is probably not the first that comes to mind.

That’s understandable; the likes of oil and gas, shipping, construction and energy are digital stragglers, with the wider industrial sector considered to be one of the least digital in the world.

That wasn’t always the case, with the oil and gas industry, in particular, using digital tools more than 30 years ago to design its rigs and platforms.

But that progress stagnated and, in the meantime, financial services, commerce and supply chain have all overtaken the industrial sector to become end-to-end digital sectors.

But in this month’s Digital Bulletin, Aveva’s CEO Craig Hayman tells us why things are changing in the industrial space.

“What has happened is that cloud, big data and AI are all available very cheaply, they are almost free, the cost of standing up a cloud server or running an AI technology is really low and is still dropping,” he reveals.

“Every day it becomes cheaper to run things on the cloud and run AI algorithms, so those technologies are being applied for the first time at scale in the industrial sector.”

Inevitably, COVID-19 has also played a role, with companies having to mobilise at speed to implement IT and software services to allow their staff to work remotely.

The pandemic, says Hayman, has forced companies - including Aveva itself - to stop making excuses and make decisions that would have seemed unthinkable just six months ago.

Elsewhere, we take a look at how a former scientist at the National Security Agency has taken homomorphic encryption - often referred to as security’s ‘Holy Grail’ in cryptology circles - and applied it in the enterprise space.

Amongst a number of other features, our debate piece this month asks four industry experts what are the main roadblocks that are preventing businesses from automating their networks.

I hope you enjoy the issue

PUBLISHED BY BULLETIN MEDIA LTD, Norwich, UK Company No: 11454926 TALK TO US editorial@digitalbulletin.com business@digitalbulletin.com

CONTENTS

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4 18

MONTH IN REVIEW NEWS, VIEWS AND ANALYSIS

SECURITY ENVEIL The rise and rise of homomorphic encryption

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DATA INTELLIGENCE

AVEVA Taking the digital fight to the industrial sector

34 IT SERVICES

EQUINIX UK MD, Russell Poole, on expanding during a pandemic

44 8

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A LIFE IN TECH

PEOPLE

CIISEC Addressing the danger of burnout in the cybersecurity community

4 62

Landmark Information Group CDO, Gavin Ray, on three decades in tech

74 52 EVENTS

CONNECTIVITY

DEBATE Discussing the roadblocks to network automation

FUTURE VARJO Delivering XR/VR to the world’s leading companies

The best digital technology events for your diary

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An exclusive column from John Gilbert, General Manager UK&I, Yubico

MONTH IN REVIEW

NEWS UPDATE Digital Bulletin rounds up the news that shaped the enterprise technology space over the last month

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NEWS UPDATE

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

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y far the biggest acquisition of the month came from Liberty Global, which announced a deal to acquire Sunrise Communications in a deal worth $7.4 billion. Last year, Sunrise attempted to buy UPC Switzerland from Liberty but failed. This flipped deal will create a strong rival to market leader Swisscom, while also hastening the rollout of 5G in the country. “The real winners are Swiss consumers and businesses,” said Liberty Global’s CEO Mike Fries.

Automotive lidar technology company Luminar is to go public through a merger with specialist acquisition company Gores Metropoulos Inc. The deal values Luminar at $2.9 billion and market capitalisation of approximately $3.4 billion. Transaction proceeds will be used to accelerate commercial growth and the expansion of its product roadmap for its highway autonomy and proactive safety ADAS solution.

EQT Infrastructure has agreed to acquire EdgeConneX, a global data centre provider serving the fast growing Hyperscale and Edge ecosystems. The deal is reportedly worth between $2.5 billion and $3 billion. EdgeConneX

has a global footprint, operating and developing over 40 facilities in 33 markets across North America, Europe and South America.

Cognizant has reached an agreement to acquire New Signature, one of the world’s largest independent Microsoft public cloud transformation specialists. The acquisition of New Signature expands Cognizant’s hyperscale cloud advisory services, and will provide the foundation for a new, dedicated group within Cognizant centred on Microsoft cloud solutions. The deal is expected to close in Q3 2020.

Accenture has acquired CreativeDrive, a tech-driven content production company that simplifies, automates and scales the creative asset production process. Accenture said the addition will complement its existing content, digital marketing, media and commerce service offerings.

CreativeDrive’s client roster includes

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Estée Lauder, Michael Kors and Walmart.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Mimecast has acquired messaging security provider MessageControl. The company’s technology is designed to help stop social engineering and human identity attacks with the use of machine learning. Mimecast said the additional security offered by MessageControl will offer stronger protection against advanced phishing and impersonation attacks when using platforms such as Microsoft 365.

Open cloud company Mirantis has agreed a deal to acquire Kubernetes integrated development environment Lens. Mirantis said the deal will bring multi-cluster management into the mainstream and greatly simplifying the experience for developers working with Kubernetes and cloud-native applications. The agreement follows the Mirantis acquisition of the team behind the product in February.

Israeli AR and computer vision business Camerai was secretly sold to Apple 18 months ago in a deal worth “tens of millions of dollars”, according to a report from Calcalist. Apple is notoriously guarded about its acquisitions and often makes no announcements about its buying activity. Camerai was apparently bought in early 2019 and integrated into Apple’s computer vision business unit.

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FUNDING Rippling has raised $145 million from a new funding round. The startup has developed a platform for companies to manage employee data. It was co-founded by Parker Conrad, former Zenefits co-founder. This latest round values the company at $1.4 billion. Investments were led by Founders Fund. Another backer said Rippling is “solving an enormous pain point” for businesses.

HMD Global has been backed to the tune of $230 million. Existing investors Google and Qualcomm were among those to have got involved in the Series A2 round. HMD hinted that there could be more cash to come.

HMD designs and markets Nokia mobile phones. Nokia’s consumer

NEWS UPDATE

division also supported the round.

Earlier this year HMD, a Finnish firm, unveiled its first 5G device.

Rigetti, the quantum computing company that wants to challenge the likes of IBM and Microsoft, has raised $79 million in new funding. The startup has built systems and software to enable quantum computing, last year releasing its 32-qubit quantum computer.

Bessemer Venture Partners led the Series C round. “This brings us one step closer to delivering quantum advantage,” said Rigetti’s founder.

Waterdrop, the Chinese insurtech firm, has confirmed a $230 million Series D funding round. Tencent, a long-time investor, contributed once again, along with Swiss Re. The money was raised against a valuation of around $2 billion.

Waterdrop’s platform distributes insurance policies, while the company also crowdsources funds for its members. It is in the process of filing for an IPO in the U.S..

Gong, the AI intelligence platform for sales teams, has raised $200 million, taking its value to $2.2 billion. Funding was led by Coatue, joined by Index Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and Thrive Capital, with participation from existing investors Battery Ventures, NextWorld Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Wing Venture

Capital. Gong’s total funding raised is now $334 million.

Google has invested $450 million in smart home security firm ADT, equivalent to a 6.6% stake. The partnership will combine Google’s Nest hardware with ADT’s security and monitoring service to create fully integrated devices, software and services for smart homes. “We’re excited to partner with ADT to further our mission of building helpful devices for the home,” said Rishi Chandra, GM, Nest.

Industrial-grade VR/XR hardware and software firm Varjo has raised $54 million in Series C funding. Tesi, NordicNinja, and Swisscanto Invest by Zürcher Kantonalbank are among the new investors. There was also participation from existing investors including Lifeline Ventures, Atomico, EQT Ventures and Volvo Cars Tech Fund. In addition, it named its previous COO Timo Toikkanen as its new CEO. Exo has picked up $40 million in new funding. The company has built a handheld ultrasound transducer, and an accompanying platform that uses AI to deliver insights. It is hoping to have its products available on the market by next year. Exo’s total funding raised now sits at close to $100 million. Ex-workers from the likes of Apple and Google are employed by the startup.

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MOVERS AND SHAKERS Hewlett Packard Enterprise North America Managing Director Dan Belanger has unexpectedly stepped down from his position after more than 30 years with the company. His replacement will be Paul Hunter, brings more than 25 years of experience to the role, including his most recent role leading HPE Worldwide Channels & Ecosystem. The company will now look for a replacement for Hunter’s role.

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Dell has announced the appointment of former Cisco Canada President, Rola Dagher, as its new global channel chief.

The appointment follows the departure of former channels head Joyce Mullen last month. Dagher returns to Dell after three years away from the business, having held a number of sales and management positions within its enterprise and infrastructure solutions group.

The health insurance giant Cigna has tapped former Hilton executive, Noelle

NEWS UPDATE

Eder, to take over as its new global CIO. Eder will lead Cigna’s global technology strategy, and oversee the development and delivery of leading-edge capabilities and solutions. Eder will join Cigna from Hilton Worldwide Holdings, where she served as the company’s Chief Information and Digital Officer.

Ed Walsh is leaving IBM as its GM, Storage, to take up the position of CEO at log data analytics startup ChaosSearch. Walsh joined IBM four years

ago from Catalogic Software, where he had served as CEO. “The decision to leave IBM was extremely difficult for me, but the decision to join ChaosSearch was very easy,” said Walsh.

Walsh has successfully led and sold four high-growth starts-ups as CEO. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has appointed Lindy Cameron as its new CEO. Cameron is currently serving in the Northern Ireland office and will start her new role in October.

She has over two decades of experience in national security policy and crisis management. Cameron replaces Ciaran Martin, who was appointed as the division’s first CEO back in 2013.

Former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski will spend 18 months behind bars after stealing trade secrets from the company. Levandowski took files on Google’s self-driving plans prior to joining Uber as its autonomous driving chief. The judge in the case said it was the “biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen”. Levandowski loaded more than 14,000 Google files onto his personal laptop.

Stay right up to date with the latest news shaping the enterprise technology sector with The Bulletin, available at digitalbulletin.com

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IaaS continues unstoppable rise The Infrastructure as a Service market continues to grow at an incredible rate, with COVID-19 only accelerating its growth. Digital Bulletin looks at the sector’s seemingly unstoppable trajectory...

AUTHOR: James Henderson

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NEWS ANALYSIS

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t is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic is changing the face of global enterprise, with businesses scrambling to bolt on services and applications to allow them to operate in this new reality.

Indeed, a new report from Deloitte shows that businesses consider cloud computing and cybersecurity as the two most important technologies in the response to the pandemic.

The findings chime with other figures that suggest the pandemic has been a boon for the cloud commuting giants, with companies leveraging the technology to enable remote working. In truth, COVID-19 has served to accelerate an already prevalent trend, making the need for digital transformations and cloud journeys more urgent.

To illustrate the point, last month Gartner released a study that showed

Ed Hoppitt

worldwide infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market grew 37.3% in 2019 to total $44.5 billion, up from $32.4 billion in 2018 - figures that predate the pandemic. In a surprise to absolutely nobody, Amazon retained its leading position in the IaaS market in 2019, followed by Microsoft, Alibaba, Google and Tencent.

“Cloud underpins the push to digital business, which remains at the top of CIOs’ agendas,” said Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner.

“It enables technologies such as the edge, AI, machine learning and 5G, among others. At the end of the day, each of these technologies require a scalable, elastic and high-capacity infrastructure platform like public cloud IaaS, which is why the market witnessed strong growth.”

Nicholas Dimotakis

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Ed Hoppitt, VMware’s EMEA Director - Modern Apps and Cloud Native Platforms, tells Digital Bulletin that such significant year-on-year growth is not a surprise given the longer-term trend towards digital, which requires speed, automation and built-in security.

“Waiting for a firewall change window is no longer acceptable. In fact, when I worked in my previous role 10 years ago, getting changes to the network approved within a month would have been fast,” he says. “It is the network that provides the connectivity and secure foundation for today’s modern applications and workloads - and for some organisations it’s still the last piece of the data center to transform into something truly software-defined.”

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Speaking to Digital Bulletin, Nicholas Dimotakis, VP of Field Engineering – Datacentre at Canonical, offers his thoughts on the trend of ‘cloudification’: “The move to cloud infrastructure has been gaining significant momentum in the last couple of years, with an uptrend that seems to be accelerating.

“Public cloud providers have now managed to break all the taboos in the market about keeping your IT outside your datacentre, which has allowed even the most laggard of CIOs to consider them as a viable IT strategy. It is now up to the sales teams of the public cloud providers to help customers transition their infrastructure and applications.”

Gartner’s report makes it crystal clear that the upward trajectory of the cloud

NEWS ANALYSIS

market will be carried over into 2020 and beyond, with the pandemic proving to be a successful use case for many enterprises undertaking cloud migration and digital transformation initiatives.

“In the recovery and rebound phase, CIOs are recognising that they don’t need to bring workloads back on premises, which will further increase cloud spending and drive new applications around cloud-hosted collaboration that incorporate emerging technologies such as virtual reality and immersive video experiences,” said Nag. Gartner revealed that moving forward it will be combining the IaaS and platform as a service (PaaS) segments into a single, complementary platform offering, cloud infrastructure and platform services

(CIPS). The worldwide CIPS market grew 42.3% in 2019 to total $63.4 billion, up from $44.6 billion in 2018. Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba secured the top three positions in the CIPS market in 2019, while Tencent and Oracle were in a virtual tie for the number five position with 2.8% of the market each.

“In terms of the relationship between IaaS and PaaS, rather than a convergence - as PaaS is usually built on top of an IaaS - what we’re likely to see is organisations getting much better at asking the question ‘What should I run, where and why?’, with the choices between IaaS, PaaS and SaaS (software as a service) needing to be understood and evaluated,” says VMware’s Hoppitt.

“There is nothing stopping an organisation from choosing to expose the IaaS on which their PaaS sits, enabling those two worlds to live together.”

Dimotakis points out that cloud providers have made it abundantly clear that they want to find every way possible for businesses to consume cloud resources, and that the best way to do that is to make application deployment and workload operations as easily consumable as possible.

“As a result, if one goes to any of the public clouds they will experience a combination of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, all accessible through the same interface ISSUE 20

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and combined in a way that allows businesses to consume services and integrate applications effortlessly.” he says.

“This results in a cloud of aaS-type services that, in the end, make it irrelevant for how consumers obtain their applications and infrastructure.”

The march towards cloud means that more companies - particularly large enterprises with multiple business units - are embracing hybrid and multi-cloud approaches, with a 2019 study from Sumo Logic naming multi-cloud as the fastest growing modern infrastructure.

“Enterprises are going to have to adopt a multi-cloud strategy going forward - in just the same way that 15 years ago

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they adopted a multi-vendor strategy around servers and infrastructure,” comments Hoppitt. “With true multicloud portability you can now choose to move and place workloads seamlessly between your private environment and public environments.”

But despite a convergence to multicloud operations, we are unlikely to see new players emerging to take on the established public cloud providers that dominate the large majority of the market.

“There is currently no indication that any other public cloud provider is pushing themselves up the list. The big five are doing everything they can to maintain market share, closing any gaps

NEWS ANALYSIS

in terms of functionality, geography or security that might be filled by a smaller player,” says Dimotakis.

“There is always the possibility for smaller providers to emerge in specific geographies where AWS and Azure might have trouble establishing a datacentre, in order to serve government sovereignty requirements, but it is not expected that these might hold any significant market share.”

What we can expect, says Hoppitt, is greater collaboration between the industry’s leading businesses as they look to shore up their market positions, key to which will be satisfying customer demands for common infrastructure: “All of the clouds represented in the report represent a silo of services, with little or

no interoperability between them - try connecting your Azure cloud to your Google cloud in a single network - and as such they are very much closed shops.

“However, AWS, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Oracle have all realised the importance of providing a common infrastructure story across clouds and customers’ private data centre environments, and all are now investing alongside VMware to help bring that experience. It is this hybrid-cloud that exists across all of those mega-cloud players that people should be keeping a close eye on.”

Looking ahead, Hoppitt believes the next three years will be characterised by customers getting to grips with a clearer understanding of where and when to place their workloads - either into private cloud IaaS, public cloud IaaS or elsewhere.

“Already we’re starting to see workloads that have migrated to the cloud, coming back to the private data centre environment, as well as workloads that previously had to remain on-prem, succeeding in the public cloud,” he concludes.

“The future of the market is an ever-growing hybrid play, with customers looking for interoperability, simplicity and a way to minimise silos whilst ensuring they can secure and connect their environments to their end users.”

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TAKING ON DIGITAL’S FINAL FRONTIER Having initially embraced the potential of digital technology more than three decades ago, the industrial sector has been left behind. AVEVA’s CEO, Craig Hayman tells Digital Bulletin how it is helping change the perception of industry’s least digitised sector and the company’s reaction to COVID-19 AUTHOR: James Henderson

O

ver the last three decades, digital technology has been embraced at various speeds by the different corners of the enterprise. Supply chains were some of the first processes to become digitised end-to-end with the emergence of SAP and enterprise resource planning tools, while financial services and then ecommerce have since followed. These are digital success stories.

The same cannot be said for the industrial sector, home to the likes of oil and gas, construction, energy and shipping - some of the enterprise’s least digitised 18

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areas. The reasons for this are myriad, but the fact is that industrial companies are often considered to be the last commercial frontier to fully embrace the potential of digital transformation.

It is no coincidence that the industrial sector is home to many of the more traditional and conservative industries, a reputation borne from a reluctance to change and an inability to embrace agile ways of working. They are often huge, global monoliths with histories dating back centuries, reinforcing the stereotype.

It’s fair to say that trying to shake up the industrial sector wouldn’t be for

AVEVA

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I’d seen other industries go through dramatic change because of digital technology, but clearly the industrial sector has not” everyone, but for Craig Hayman it was a challenge too enticing to pass up. Hayman had spent most of his life working in senior positions for the likes of IBM, eBay and PTC until he got a call in 2018 asking him whether he’d be interested in becoming CEO at AVEVA, one of the world’s leading industrial software companies.

“At the time, AVEVA was going through a transformational change with the Schneider Electric merger, meaning it was going to double in size,” he recalls during a wide-ranging interview with Digital Bulletin.

“I’d seen other industries go through dramatic change because of digital technology, but clearly the industrial sector has not. When I looked at the AVEVA, 20

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I could see it had the right people, the right locations and the right technology to drive change and it was something I really wanted to be a part of.”

AVEVA counts more than 16,000 companies as customers, with 40% working in the oil and gas space, illustrating the scale of the challenge Hayman and his team has on their hands. But a combination of factors, he believes, is beginning to tip the scales in their favour, helping industrial companies to complete their journeys to full digitalisation that actually began many years ago.

The first factor is the emergence, availability and cost base of technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics. “The question is: why is the industrial sector going through a digital transformation now when it hasn’t for several decades?” says Hayman.

“What has happened is that cloud, big data and AI are all available very cheaply, they are almost free, the cost of standing up a cloud server or running an AI technology is really low and is still dropping. Every day it becomes cheaper to run things on the cloud and run AI algorithms, so those technologies are being applied for the first time at scale in the industrial sector.

“The industrial sector was the first to use 3D design tools to manufacture

AVEVA

facilities such as oil rigs or ships, and it was the first to monitor gas pipelines, for example. Somehow, other industries have become almost all digital, while the industrial sector hasn’t been able to completely make the leap.”

The rise of AI from a future technology to one that is being used to add value to businesses in the here and now has gone a long way to helping convince industrial companies about the benefits of digital technologies.

AI is being leveraged by AVEVA’s asset performance management platform to monitor its customers’ systems and collect valuable data around ancillary systems, with impressive results.

Hayman draws a parallel between AI’s ability to predict equipment issues with

the human ability to instinctively know when something they use regularly a car, for example - is not quite right.

“We were working with an energy provider in the United States and we determined that there was something wrong with a large gas turbine. The manufacturer said it was fine but when we continued to monitor it, we could see there was an issue. We convinced our customer to machine into a low utilisation mode so they could look at it in more detail.

“What they found was loose aluminum inside the turbine, not from looking inside the machine but from looking at the data that we were receiving. We prevented a catastrophic failure and that saving was around $35 million. We are taking the ISSUE 20

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data and using it to analyse performance and make accurate predictions.”

Hayman says that the last two years have seen rising numbers of Chief Digital Officers and Chief Technology Officers being appointed by industrial companies.

“A number of industrial companies have had success with digital initiatives such as Energy 4.0 and Oil & Gas 4.0, and so view digital as the mechanism to drive their companies forward. There are still companies that had thought they 22

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didn’t have to do these things, but that has all changed with COVID-19.”

If the value of big data insights and the wonder that is AI hadn’t convinced many of the industrial sector’s biggest players of the need to go all-in on digital, then the once-in-a-lifetime threat that is coronavirus has.

What COVID-19 has done is get people to think the unthinkable and get comfortable with ways of working that would have seemed impossible just six months

AVEVA

Every day it becomes cheaper to run things on the cloud and run AI algorithms, so those technologies are being applied for the first time at scale in the industrial sector”

ago. Teams in their thousands have fragmented from one single building to locations all around the world, accelerating digital transformation programme timetables from years to mere days.

“Some people don’t like change and will use excuses or reasons about why they don’t want to do something.

Working from home was always an interesting concept, well now you don’t have a choice - it’s something that is just done,” Hayman reflects.

“When I’d speak to customers about adopting cloud, many would have issues with the idea. They had a litany of reasons, maybe they didn’t think it was secure enough, or cost was prohibitive, or it didn’t fit in with their company culture.

“None of those reasons mean a thing in this new world and I’ve had customers who have previously shied away from these technologies on the phone asking me how quickly they can get set up in the cloud so their employees can ISSUE 20

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work remotely and be as productive as possible from home.”

Understandably, many customers have looked to AVEVA to help them navigate this new normal. The chemicals multinational Henkel has leveraged AVEVA’s asset performance management platform to reduce its energy output and ramp-up its production schedule, while well-known food and nutrition company Danone has used AVEVA’s software to better inform its performance and workflows.

“COVID-19 has forced companies to prioritise, and what our customers want is capital flexibility and to reduce enterprise risk. Capital flexibility means they can prioritise very quickly where they are spending their money, and make decisions quickly about whether it is still sensible to build a new office or chemical factory.

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“They are having to prioritise rapidly because they need to predict how the world will be. With risk reduction, the projects that they are going to run need much less risk, they want to add more certainty. It is very clear that now is not the time for lofty discussions and abstract concepts, but rather being in response mode.”

While helping its customers scramble to maintain operations during this unprecedented time, Hayman has had to steady the ship at AVEVA, with employees, shareholders and stakeholders alike looking to him for leadership during the most trying of times.

He admits that he has had to change his worldview and “mental model” of what constitutes business as usual since the scale of the pandemic became clear. Along with his executive team,

AVEVA

For AVEVA, COVID-19 is a reminder that you have to accept change and rapidly manage through it, because the world is changing faster than many companies are able to deal with” Hayman says AVEVA has used a set of principles - including flexibility, learning, integrity and innovation - to guide it through the coronavirus storm.

After meeting with his executive team in the first week of March, it was decided that everyone should work from home, a move that he says would previously have been “completely outrageous”.

“My brain was explaining all the reasons why it couldn’t happen, but you had to change your thinking and this is something that has to happen, that is going to happen,” Hayman says. “For AVEVA, and certainly myself, COVID-19 is a reminder that you have to accept change and rapidly manage through it, because the world is changing faster than many companies are able to deal with - it’s a real challenge.”

Initially there were teething problems, such as not being able to procure computers and desks for some of the company’s most important employees to use from their homes.

“We invest £100 million a year in R&D and that is centred around what we call scrum teams of 10 to 12 people, which are given sets of priorities every 90 days based on conversations with our customers. We have 150 of these teams and we couldn’t get them computers or desks for the love of money,” he comments with a laugh.

“That meant productivity took a hit initially, but once everyone was set up and working remotely we had this productivity boost because they weren’t commuting and they weren’t switching between tasks - it was a very qualitative thing. That means we have to ask what is the future of our work, what is the right mix of having people work remotely and in an office as the world returns back to normal?

“We don’t have the answer, we are still in a learning mode, but learning is very much one of our values and sometimes to learn something you have to ask the difficult questions.”

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CRACKING ENCRYPTION’S HOLY GRAIL

Homomorphic encryption has long been considered the ‘holy grail’ of data encryption. Digital Bulletin speaks to Dr. Ellison Anne Williams, former NSA researcher and founder and CEO of Enveil, about how the technology is enabling secure data monetisation and meeting the challenges of anti-money laundering and financial crime

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquia

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he United Nations recently estimated the amount of money laundered globally at $2 trillion, 5% of the global GDP. As a result, one of the predictions of the 2020 PEI CFO & COO Forum held this past January was an increase in anti-money laundering and Know your Customer regulations, as well as the enabling of increased data sharing and collaboration to fight financial crime.

Homomorphic encryption (HE) is one of the technologies that is making data sharing a reality, and many have called it the ‘holy grail’ of data encryption, 26

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as they believe that it will be able to meet the challenges of AML, as well as many others, such as cloud services and data monetisation.

“We have never seen the global demand for privacy the same way that we have today,” says Dr Ellison Anne Williams, former National Security Agency (NSA) senior researcher, and CEO of Enveil, a data security company specialising in homomorphic encryption protecting data in use.

Although the push for privacy-enhancing technologies that facilitates secure data monetisation has been present for

ENVEIL

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years, COVID-19 has made this need an urgent one. The International Monetary Fund has projected global growth in 2020 will fall 6.3 percentage points from January 2020. Therefore, as companies look for new sources of revenue, many will and seek to leverage the value of their data assets.

Enveil, the company founded by Williams four years ago, uses homomorphic encryption to allow companies to do this while respecting privacy regulations. It has raised $15 million 28

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in funding and is currently collaborating with strategic backers such as Thomson Reuters, Refinitiv, Bloomberg and In-Q-Tel. Moreover, they have been recently named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer.

“We were the only company chosen working around privacy-enhancing technology. That’s a huge honor,” says Williams, speaking exclusively to Digital Bulletin. HE, the solution that Enveil presents, is not a new one. It has been around for 30 years, and has

ENVEIL

been deemed as the ‘holy grail’ of data encryption. However, despite its “paradigm-changing” potential, HE was, for decades, too computationally-intensive to be useful.

It was only after the NSA made significant breakthroughs that the use of HE could become a reality. Williams, who was involved in these discoveries, recalls:“We were faced with very specific mission-problems, centred around how we could work in trusted compute and data environments and locations that we don’t own, control or trust at all, but were given lawful access to.

“As an example, we looked at how we could run a search for ‘joebadguy@ yahoo.com’ and go and run it out in these data environments that we don’t trust, in such a way that nobody knows that we’re looking for ‘joebadguy@yahoo.com’ or any kind of results associated with that.

That is a perfect use case for homomorphic encryption, but it’s not practical.

“I turned it upside down and took a hard look at how we could advance the science and the leveraging of this powerful capability of homomorphic encryption to allow it to be practical. We looked at how to encrypt that search, send it outside of our walls, have it processed in an encrypted state, and produce those encrypted results that we could decrypt without exposing what we were doing.

We have never seen the global demand for privacy the same way that we have today” “So we had those breakthroughs and realised it could change the paradigm of how and where organisations can securely and privately leverage data assets.” Thus, Williams created Enveil to leverage and develop the technology.

Enveil’s technology, she says, has “progressed light-years” in the last four years. “You have to keep in mind, homomorphic encryption only gets you two things: the ability to add or multiply two encrypted values. We take the basic powerful primitives of homomorphic encryption and build them into what you and I would call ‘an encrypted search’ to solve a business problem.”

Enveil’s technology has been tested and recognised in prestigious forums, and was the youngest company ever to be in the RSA Innovations Sandbox in 2017.

Williams recalls how the technology was perceived as something of a concept by ISSUE 20

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We were faced with very specific missionproblems, centred around how we could work in trusted compute and data environments and locations that we don’t own, control or trust at all, but were given lawful access to” some industry peers at the time, so used the event to state her case that it could be leveraged in the here and now.

“I stood up on that stage and said ‘No. It’s here and it’s now. We have breakthroughs, and it’s going to change everything. And, in particular, it’s going to change cloud.’ We ended up being one of the winners, and you can track our progress from there.”

One of the greatest challenges of creating a product is also creating the commercial space for it, although Dr Williams says she also saw the chance to create a new market as a “great privilege” In this journey, she stresses two main use cases of HE that businesses gravitate towards: secure data monetisation and AML. On the one hand, “using homomorphic encryption, organisations can monetise data assets such that the privacy of the underlying data itself and the users of 30

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the platform are maintained at all points.

That’s huge,” Dr. William remarks.

On the other hand, HE has been showing huge success in AML. “It’s a problem that sits at the nexus of the commercial enterprise with the banks and with the regulators. But, given our background, we’re uniquely qualified to position in that space.”

Moreover, AML can also have a significant social impact: “If you say: ‘who is laundering money?’, then you get to things like human trafficking, the drug trade and terrorism.”

HE’s success in this area is attested

by Enveil’s first prize award at the FCA’s Privacy Enhancing Technology TechSprint last summer, where it where it led a team with EY, Refinitiv and BAE, while also working alongside financial heavy-hitters such asHSBC, Barclays and ING. “We solutioned for a KYC/CDD (Know Your Customer/Customer Due Diligence)

ENVEIL

use case, and were able to demonstrate that we are very uniquely positioned for that with our capabilities, and we won.

That was enormous. It really gives the blessing of, not only the banks, but the regulators,” Williams says.

Enveil has also partnered with different financial organisations for AML use cases, recently working with the Future of Financial Information Sharing (FFIS) on a project focused on an specific EU-headquartered bank.

“We were looking at customer-profile matching across jurisdictions. Because, even in the same bank, different jurisdictions are storing their data very differently, and so, you can’t just, in an automated way, reach across and say ‘Hey Turkey, Christina just walked up

to me in the UK. Do you know anything about her?’. And, even if you could, the data is so dirty and non-standardised that it’s ineffective,” Williams comments.

“We have the capabilities to encrypt that enquiry about Christina and, because our software is deployed in Turkey, that search is never decrypted.

That’s important because we’re respecting both countries’ access control provisions. The encrypted result is sent back to the UK, and they can decrypt it and say: ‘Oh, yes.Turkey exited Christina as a customer’, and perhaps make a very different determination in an onboarding process”.

Moreover, Enveil’s software can also make “fuzzy searches”, which take into account the possible name variants while

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still getting meaningful results. These abilities were tested in the partnership with FFIS and the bank, with customer-profile matching and hundreds of millions of “fuzzy searches” successfully completed in a matter of seconds.

In addition, homomorphic encryption can also support the use of private cloud. “There’s situations where you have the same organisation that’s moving to the cloud, but they have to do so respecting localization requirements” says Williams. “So, they’re deploying our software in different cloud-based

jurisdictions around the world to share and collaborate with each other.”

A proof of the success of homomorphic encryption is Enveil’s rapid growth, having recently set up a UK subsidiary and secured significant investment. “We looked at where we wanted to invest as a company, and so that UK/EU market was a big one for us, so we got connected with C5. We were actually the first series A investment they’ve ever done.”

Along with C5, Enveil also obtained funding from Capital One and Mastercard, raising $10 million in series A investment.

We had those breakthroughs and realised homomorphic encryption could change the paradigm of how and where organisations can securely and privately leverage data assets”

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ENVEIL

Enveil has followed this injection of capital with a new product line, ZeroReveal, which allows companies to securely and privately query or analyse data across organisational boundaries, privacy jurisdictions, and third parties; and which has already led to 13 patent applications.

“Everything we’re doing with our ZeroReveal product line is pushing the boundaries of science in terms of what is possible with secure and private advance decisioning via machine learning.

Williams’ vision is to “enable banks to perform encrypted typology runs and checks via encrypting these machine learning models that are representing the typologies and having them across jurisdictions”.

There are also ambitions to expand not only across geographical boundaries but also across sectors. The next sector that she believes could greatly benefit from this new technology is healthcare.

“I think the same thing that we’re seeing with secure data-monetisation is true of healthcare now. The need for a global health picture has never been more acute than it is today. Offering the ability to look across global health jurisdictions and gain a better idea of what’s happening from a diagnosis perspective, from a vaccine-development perspective. I think it has a ton of potential,” she explains, and mentions that Enveil has begun “meaningful conversations” with healthcare providers.

Homomorphic encryption perhaps does have the potential to “change everything” by allowing business, from financial institutions to healthcare and many more, to bridge the gap between data privacy regulations and data monetisation, as well as meeting the challenges of AML, financial crime and globalisation. Williams certainly believes so.

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PROVIDING DATA’S BACKBONE Speaking exclusively to Digital Bulletin, Equinix’s MD for UK, Russell Poole outlines the impact of COVID-19 on the data centre industry, the adoption of multi-cloud and the company’s recent foray into the increasingly important Indian market

T

hanks for speaking to us Russell; you’ve worked in your current role at Equinix and, before that, IXEurope for 20 years what is it about the position that has kept you passionate and made you stick around?

Twenty years is a long time to be with one company, but it really hasn’t felt like it. Throughout our history change has been the only constant as we have evolved our business model to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers. The pace of innovation at Equinix makes every day a new and interesting challenge and working with an excellent global team of committed and talented 34

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people keeps me enthused about our future. By focusing on what our customers need and on building a great culture we have enjoyed tremendous growth.

Let’s address the elephant in the room immediately - how has COVID-19 impacted Equinix and the data centre market as a whole?

COVID-19 has certainly had a global impact. However, throughout this pandemic, Equinix has kept all data centres open and operational in continued support of the digital economy. Given that many governments across the world have categorised data centres as “critical infrastructure” we recognise the responsibility

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COVID-19 has accelerated the transition to digital for many companies. This is ultimately driving the need for more data centre usage and the distribution of digital solutions” Russell Poole

we have to maintain operations throughout this uncertain time. Despite the global pandemic, our priorities remain – as they have always been – the safety of our employees, customers and partners while we maintain data centre operations.

More broadly, the pandemic has forced businesses to become more virtual, geographically dispersed and mobile than ever. This necessitates a business environment in which organisations are able to leverage data centres to connect with each other, with service providers and with customers. This presents an opportunity for the data centre market to thrive.

We believe our continued investment in the data centre industry during these difficult times, including the recent announcement of our planned expansion in Canada – through the acquisition of 13 Bell Canada data centre sites – is a testament to our strength and consistent focus on expanding our global reach to help businesses accelerate their digital transformation with interconnection.

Anecdotally, it does seem that the pandemic has acted as the catalyst for companies to seriously look at their digital transformation strategies - does this correlate with what you’re seeing?

COVID-19 has accelerated the transition to digital for many companies. This is ultimately driving the need for more data

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EQUINIX

centre usage and the distribution of digital solutions.

Many businesses had to transition to remote working almost overnight, thus the pandemic has only sped up their approach to digital transformation. For many companies going through this transformational period, Equinix has been a trusted partner ensuring resilience as they accelerate shifts in their IT infrastructure to the edge, to seamlessly meet the needs of users in dispersed locations that require robust internet bandwidth.

This change has accelerated the need for scalable, secure digital infrastructures. To meet this need, global IT strategies are progressively moving towards multi-cloud solutions to enjoy all the benefits of improved agility, speed to market, rapid innovation, scalability, boosted productivity, enhanced security and cost efficiencies.

It’s even more crucial now that enterprises are able to adopt flexible practices at a moment’s notice. Data centre companies can facilitate this by helping businesses leverage their digital transformation to remain resilient, despite changing global circumstances, to progress with the times.

What were some of the main trends you were seeing pre-COVID-19, and have they endured through the crisis?

Even prior to COVID-19, the cloud market was accelerating as companies adjusted their IT infrastructure to shift to the edge. Interconnection plays a crucial role in the continued growth of data traffic from mobile, social, cloud, big data and IoT. The adoption of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud solutions is now much more of a priority for enterprises and it’s moved ISSUE 20

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The adoption of multicloud and hybrid cloud solutions is now much more of a priority for enterprises and it’s moved firmly into the mainstream�

firmly into the mainstream. Companies are distributing their applications over multiple clouds, picking and choosing between the best cloud for the job. Many organisations are also relying on redundant clouds to support business continuity and disaster recovery initiatives.

This necessitates a multi-cloud strategy that can be deployed on a hybrid IT (on-premises and cloud) infrastructure.

The cloud has become a core business enabler, which is only set to grow as organisations seek to modernise their core business applications, expedite their time to market, connect to industry clouds 38

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to boost innovation and move services closer to users, partners and clouds.

What would you say are the main challenges and opportunities of operating a colocation space as opposed to a facility owned by a single party?

The explosion in web traffic, as a result of COVID-19, has amplified the need for enterprises to locate their services at the digital edge, so they can be closer to major metropolitan areas where vast numbers of people are using digital solutions. Within this context, distance plays

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a significant role on latency impacting the user experience. Putting exchange points in closer proximity to customers, employees, partners and clouds is one of the most effective ways to provide real-time, on-demand services.

While data centres offer physical proximity to customers, employees and partners that is vital to the success of many businesses, on-demand access to networks, cloud/ Software as a service (SaaS) and edge ecosystems helps them create enhanced value for their businesses and customers. Colocation data centres offer the flexibility and scalability required by enterprises to seamlessly handle the demands of a remote workforce and increased online activity safely and securely, primarily because they operate away from the public internet.

Could you speak about some of the work Equinix is doing to enable customers to run workloads and applications at the edge and how important that technology is going to become?

As mobile use has become ubiquitous over the last decade, the expectations of mobile and digital users have also grown exponentially as they demand organisations deliver an instantaneous, high-quality experience. Those that rely on the public internet are finding it in-

creasingly difficult to meet these expectations. The sheer amount of data being exchanged requires companies to adjust their IT strategies.

Challenges arise in this regard when businesses take a more siloed approach to IT that doesn’t account for digital interactivity in all locations. Chronic end-user performance issues, security concerns, unexpected IT costs and diminishing returns can all indicate a sluggish IT architecture that is struggling to keep up with business at the edge. This makes Equinix’s digital edge solution even more important.

Converging trends in cloud, digital collaboration, mobility and IoT mean that currently the digital edge can be anywhere at any time. Bringing data, content and collaboration apps out to the digital edge decreases latency, improving the user experience and increasing productivity.

How are the likes of big data analytics and IoT changing customer demands and expectations?

IoT has been an industry buzzword for some time now, but it’s only in the past few years that we have been able to begin realising its true value.

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that meet business or customer needs. Traditional IT infrastructures and high-latency networks make integrating distributed IoT capabilities with business systems, digital technologies, security, networks, clouds and industry ecosystems impossible, resulting in inefficient and insecure data exchange workflows, increased costs and stunted innovation.

To remain relevant and stay competitive business IT infrastructures must be re-architected. Placing IoT platforms at the digital edge allows businesses to capture device data and gather actionable insights from it in real time. Interconnecting IoT systems and processes at the digital edge, using distributed control points closest to users, IoT assets, applications, mobile networks and clouds delivers the performance, security and scalability required to meet critical business and customer needs, and gain the greatest value as an IoT-enabled digital business.

How do you reflect on the rise of 5G and its potential in the data centre space?

There is no question that 5G holds tremendous promise, delivering major advances in data transfer speeds, latency, connectivity, capacity, reliability and mobility – but none of this will 40

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be effective without data centres in place to support the associated proliferation of data.

5G will provide users with access to much higher bandwidth levels which people will quite quickly learn to consume.

This will ultimately lead to increased interconnection bandwidth (the capacity to privately exchange data), as people take advantage of higher download speeds, and therefore require increased levels of interconnection to bypass the slow speed of the public internet.

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Equinix’s LD6 data centre facility in Slough, UK

Furthermore, there will be a significant increase in the number of enterprises looking to interconnect, including already large consumers of interconnection such as BT, Three, Sky, Virgin, Amazon and Google. Providers such as these will build and develop applications that can fully utilise the higher bandwidth that 5G will provide.

The impact of 5G on data centres (or those are highly interconnected at least) will be a rise in demand for interconnection, both in terms of volume and in the

variety of customers interconnecting. It will also mean data centres of all kinds will become even more vital to the global economy.

We’ve seen a spike in phishing activities and cyber attacks since the beginning of the pandemic, how has that impacted Equinix’s practices and procedures?

Last year data breaches were up 33%, and cyber criminals launched more attacks than any other year on record.

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Placing IoT platforms at the digital edge allows businesses to capture device data and gather actionable insights from it in real time�

Data breaches can have catastrophic repercussions for enterprises, ranging from sizable fines to significant, lasting reputational damage.

To mitigate these risks, companies are increasingly adopting Zero Trust security methods to secure networks, systems, clouds, data and applications. Zero Trust is grounded on the concept that organ42

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isations should not automatically trust anything inside or outside its security perimeters and should validate everyone and everything trying to gain access.

We work with our customers to leverage Zero Trust principles, helping them to significantly strengthen their perimeter defense to combat critical vulnerabilities posed at the digital edge. Despite the

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security concerns raised by new users and devices, implementing Zero Trust to protect edge computing frameworks can help organisations guard against both known and unknown threats.

This has become increasingly important during the period of increased remote working brought about by COVID-19 as the number of attack surfaces has grown exponentially as people connect to their company networks remotely.

How will the acquisition of Packet be of benefit to Equinix’s UK and Nordic operations?

Packet is a leading bare metal automation provider for developers. Its proprietary technology automates physical servers and networks without the use of virtualisation or multi-tenancy. It offers its bare metal public cloud in 22 key markets globally.

By the first quarter of 2021, Equinix plans to deliver an expanded, enterprise-grade bare metal offering across Platform Equinix. This will allow our customers to rapidly deploy the private infrastructure components of their hybrid cloud at a global scale – something our customers do today with colocation.

By offering servers on-demand we are adding customer choice between a more DIY approach using colocation and their own physical server infrastructure that

they deploy directly, or a new deployment model that supports more rapid, on-demand access to dedicated servers.

Are there any other recent project wins/announcements from Equinix UK and Nordics you’d like to speak about?

Equinix recently announced its intent to expand to India through the acquisition of the India operations of GPX Global Systems, Inc. in an all-cash transaction of $161 million. The acquisition is expected to close in Q1 2021, subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approval.

The acquisition will extend Platform Equinix to India with the addition of two world-class, highly interconnected data centres, providing a platform for additional expansion across the country.

Equinix customers will have access to a network-dense data centre campus with more than 130 internet service providers (ISPs), four operational Internet Exchanges and leading cloud service providers in India.

India is an important new market Equinix. It emerged as the world’s fifth largest economy in 2019, overtaking the UK and France. According to Synergy Research, the data centre market in India is expected to exceed $1 billion in 2020 and grow at a 12% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2019-2024, the third highest rate in the world.

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PUTTING SECURITY INTO OUR DNA New evidence from the Chartered Institute of Information Security suggests more than half of cybersecurity professionals are suffering from the effects of burnout. With cyber attacks increasing rapidly both in number and sophistication, CIISec CEO Amanda Finch gives business leaders some tips on how to support their security teams

AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

O

ne of the damaging side effects of our technological revolution is the concurrent rise of cybercrime.

As individuals we are all becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyberthreats because technology is now essential to our lives, both at work and at home. For businesses, the spectre looms larger than ever before, as do the consequences of a cyberattack.

The average cost of a breach is $3.9 million for SMEs, and considerably more for publicly traded companies.

Attacks have risen by 67% globally since 2014, and the FBI in the United States 44

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recently revealed that during COVID-19, it has recorded a 300% increase in cybercrime. To fight the threat, industry continues to spend trillions of dollars every year on cybersecurity.

All of this means that security has emerged as a critical function within organisations. Cybersecurity professionals are under huge pressure to shield their businesses, and to innovate and deliver new solutions for a digital world. But what if they can’t cope?

What if a skills shortage and poor management is leading to overworked and under resourced security teams?

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If you look at the current environment, where people are working remotely or you’re trying to work around holidays or peaks or things like that, then you’re getting stretched even more” Amanda Finch

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This is a very material concern, and one highlighted in a new report from the Chartered Institute of Information Security (CIISec). It found that 54% of cybersecurity workers had either left a job due to burnout, or have worked with someone who has.

“It’s quite scary I think, in some ways,” admits Amanda Finch, the CEO of CIISec who has taken some time out to talk over the study’s findings with Digital Bulletin.

CIISec’s “State of the Security Profession” survey has been running for five years, and aims to uncover the main trends in the security space and shine a light on concerns the industry may have, such as overworking.

CIISec itself accredits cybersecurity professionals in the UK and develops ethical standards for the sector. It was awarded Royal Charter status by Her Majesty The Queen in December 2018.

Fundamental to CIISec’s work is a people-centric view of cybersecurity, which draws more attention to the headline findings of its 2019/20 report.

Not only did the majority of respondents confirm they had been affected by burnout, but 64% said their businesses simply “hope to cope” with fewer resources when necessary. Eighty-two percent said security budgets were not keeping pace with rising threat levels.

CIISEC

Finch believes the industry currently finds itself in a dangerous cycle, and one which has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

“People are getting burned out, which means you get shortages within an organisation, which means people are then working harder,” she says. “If you look at the current environment, where people are working remotely or you’re trying to work around holidays or peaks or things like that, then you’re getting stretched even more.

“And I think security people don’t like to fail, so they’ll keep going the extra mile to try and fix something - we don’t like walking away from problems. We try to do our best to fix things.”

Budget cuts in the wake of COVID-19 won’t have helped either, with maybe the worse still to come. Even though threats have increased exponentially during the virus outbreak, security teams aren’t protected from fiscal realities.

“Security will have to tighten its belt just like everyone else,” Paul McKay, a senior analyst at Forrester, recently told The Wall Street Journal.

Finch is of the same opinion, admitting that businesses “need to try and do more with less” - but she is adamant that better is still possible, in spite of cuts. For her, it comes down to creating a meaningful security culture within an organisation.

“I have this thing about putting security into people’s DNA, so they are almost

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I have this thing about putting security into people’s DNA, so they are almost innately aware of issues that are out there”

innately aware of issues that are out there,” she says. “It’s getting people to understand the motives attackers may have, and the range of attacks.

It’s a continual thing to make sure that people are actually thinking about security in their own minds.”

Cultural change should begin with the makeup of the security teams themselves. Historically, Finch says, teams haven’t been diverse enough in terms of skills, focusing too heavily on technical expertise and not enough on developing strength in areas like communication and project management.

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She believes burnout could be reduced if a team’s technical “superstars” are freed up by supporting staff who could take on the more trainable security disciplines.

“The thing that you need to have is the right people with the right skills,” Finch explains. “You shouldn’t wear out your A-team by putting them in roles that could be carried out by others. Security is often seen as a very technical discipline, but the human side is not.

“There’s a lot of supporting skills you can bring in; potentially you can bring in people who are not technical but under-

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stand the business, who can help with awareness campaigns, or policy, doing some of the aspects that you can train people fairly rapidly to do. People have innate skills that they can bring into security. Then it’s a question of mapping knowledge onto them so they can apply it and help protect the organisation.”

Making better use of the talent across a business when it comes to security could convince “overworked” security professionals to stay in their roles. Related to this, the CIISec study also revealed the main factors behind workers leaving, citing a lack of oppor-

tunity or progression, unpleasant or bad management, and poor remuneration.

All three can read as an employer not attaching enough value to an employee’s work. According to Finch, this harks back to her point about creating the best culture with the best people in the most relevant roles. She focuses on the perils of poor management.

“Bad management is one of the factors that make people leave, and the associated issue with that is that sometimes you get people who are promoted into management positions who are not great managers. We need to realise that managing people is a whole specific skill area on its own, and that technical managers may not have the skills needed,” she says.

Finch has been working in cybersecurity for the best part of three decades “I started back in the 1990s when it was called ‘computer security’!” - and is a fellow of The British Computer Society.

She is therefore well-versed in the challenges faced by cybersecurity teams, and is determined to help solve them.

A significant barrier is the oft-highlighted skills gap, prevalent not just in security but in technology as a whole.

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has been made in addressing the problem of demand and supply of cybersecurity professionals.

While Finch believes cutbacks might actually result in more skilled workers becoming available on the market, she admits this is still a major concern. What role could supportive technologies like artificial intelligence and automation play to redress the balance?

“I think this is a very important part of the dynamic,” she says. “Robots, AI, machine learning - they’re all really, really useful. If you can filter things that you don’t need to worry about, or use them

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to identify trends, then that is fantastic.

But they are not a silver bullet - you need to be mindful of how you use things like machine learning to define patterns. If it’s using a limited dataset, then you can end up with some false positives.

“But having said that, it comes back to the whole thing of thinking differently to harness the resources that are available to you, and these are very useful tools in your armoury, as long as you use them with an open mind and an element of caution.”

Alongside the skills gap is the longstanding issue of diversity in cybersecurity.

A deep dive into CIISec’s report reveals

CIISEC

If you went to a careers event and stood up in front of parents and careers advisors and said ‘we’ve got a career here; it’s pretty well paid, there’s a skills shortage, the work is really interesting, and they’re very unlikely to be unemployed’, you’d probably get a whole load of people interested” that little progress has been made; only 10% of the respondents were women, and those women were being paid significantly less than their male counterparts in similar roles. Thirty-seven percent of women earned less than £50,000 per year, compared to 21% of men.

Finch says that CIISec’s aim for the security industry is for it to eventually reflect the 50-50 gender split in society, although she admits there’s a long way to go. Career paths into cybersecurity have traditionally come from areas like IT, law enforcement and the military, sectors where the workforce is male-dominated.

These issues can be traced right back to education, where Finch also says there are problems to be addressed.

Pupil interest in STEM subjects is “stagnating” according to research from Accenture, despite the career prospects on offer - not least in cybersecurity.

Finch is optimistic that the tide can turn, however, and that the security industry can build the skilled and content workforce that it needs for the future.

“If you went to a careers event and stood up in front of parents and careers advisors and said ‘we’ve got a career here; it’s pretty well paid, there’s a skills shortage, the work is really interesting, and they’re very unlikely to be unemployed’, you’d probably get a whole load of people interested,” she concludes.

“It’s the whole thing of attracting people to the industry and what can be a fabulous career. There are some technical roles which are brilliant, but it’s also about saying there is a whole raft of roles that rely on psychology, communication, lots of different things, that could appeal to a wide cross-section of people.”

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BRINGING NETWORK AUTOMATION TO THE FORE Each month, Digital Bulletin picks the brains of experts in a particular sector of the technology world. This month, we ask: What are the main roadblocks to automating networks and what can companies do to address them?

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DEBATE

“ Timing is key” Kamal Bhadada, President of Communications, Media and Information Services, Tata Consultancy Services

AI-powered network automation is set to become one of the central pillars of the telco industry. Before the pandemic hit, IDC forecasted AI spend to grow from $37.5 billion in 2019 to $97.7 billion by 2023, and we can expect this growth to increase further.

The pandemic has brought about significant increases in network data consumption, with the shift to remote working creating more demand for reliable, secure, fixed, and high-speed networking services. The opportunities for automating networks are greater than ever.

Of course, this isn’t ‘new’. Several communications service providers (CSPs) are already using automation for simple admin tasks and some have even applied AI for intelligent assistants and bots, but there are plenty of obstacles to making this progress a reality.

One of the most common roadblocks is, ironically, too much technology too soon. Organisations must understand the business need first, and implement

technology second, otherwise the benefits of automation will never arrive.

When data such as network traffic information or key performance indicators are kept in silos, CSPs lack a complete view of their network.

This means they’re unable to use the automation services to their full potential and adapt to moving trends. To combat this, CSPs need to approach network automation with a purpose-centric framework. In other words, thinking about your technology with the end-purpose of improving customer experience in mind.

Selecting the right technology is another key roadblock to network automation. The capabilities of cognitive automation go much further than basic functions, like administration and cost

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reduction. It’s important to invest in the technology that is most suited to your individual business needs and provides solutions to your core business goal.

For example, a recent case study of a leading CSP shows the impact of zero touch networks, a type of automation technology, and how it was able to help the company through remote enablement in order to keep to customer commitments. The company was able to deploy intelligent bots in just three days to successfully carry out over 500,000 new orders during the pandemic. This helped the company save over 70 hours of employee time and deliver on customer deadlines.

Often, when businesses are looking to cut back or put themselves on a safer footing, investment in new technology can be the first to go. We believe that we should really be doing the opposite - tough times are when the benefits of these technologies are most felt, enabling businesses to identify new revenue opportunities and be more reactive to unpredictable events.

Ultimately, automating networks using AI and machine learning is the best way to future-proof networks and improve resilience against future risk. Companies must build in automation as a central pillar to business plans, in order to maximise their potential and stay competitive.

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“ Work to be done on automation misconceptions�

Roger Bennett, Practice Director, CloudStratex

We are living in an age where technology is the foundation of economic success, devices and connections are growing faster than populations, and information is a resource. In this highly competitive, 24/7, switched on world, businesses are having to turn to automation to keep up. In fact, for many companies, it is key to ensuring the agility of their network, and ultimately the digital transformation of their businesses.

DEBATE

When automating a network, its design, setting up and testing, coupled with the management of change needed to ensure uptake, without causing disruption, are serious challenges that require deep skills and planning. These are essentially hygiene issues that you will have in any technical implementation.

Key to this is ensuring you get the right integration of management tools and operational practices to ensure you are getting the most benefit from your new technology. We call this operational integration and it is a key enable of success.

Unfortunately, many companies still see automation as an additional expense rather than a long-term cost saver. They are also hampered by a lack of expertise when it comes

to the actual implementation, which requires logical planning and detailed step-by-step processes. However, their biggest challenge is not getting to grips with technology, but rather people and culture. Many employees feel that the introduction of automation will result in the loss of their jobs.

It is vital that the benefits of automation are explained to senior management in terms of wealth generation and resource allocation. Conversely employees need to understand that it will improve the quality of their working day by reducing monotonous tasks and allowing them to focus their expertise on making a real difference to the organisation they work for.

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It is vital that the benefits of automation are explained to senior management in terms of wealth generation and resource allocation�

critical to their professional development.

In terms of the implementation, recruiting top IT talent to oversee the process is obviously the way forward. The reality is that qualified people are few and far between and the recruitment process can take valuable time. Also increasing headcounts during an economic downturn may not be viable for many businesses. Another option may be to hire consultants to implement and 56

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monitor the necessary changes, as well as staff training to ensure your company’s future IT resilience and autonomy.

The danger is that what often is meant to be a short-term solution, too often becomes a long-term, expensive problem, with businesses becoming reliant on external contractors to manage their networks. Therefore such contracts should be viewed as strictly short-term affairs only.

DEBATE

“ Technological and culture issues endure” Simon Pamplin, Technical Director, Silver Peak

Automation of the network is the inevitable and unavoidable next step for enterprise networks. As other technology disciplines such as cloud and IoT accelerate at lightning speeds, it’s incumbent on network managers to rearchitect the network to keep pace with these changes. The only sure fire means of doing so is transforming the network to address the needs of a modern cloud-first enterprise.

The ultimate objective of WAN transformation is to have a network that automatically detects and corrects performance issues, ensuring that users can always connect to applications without the manual intervention of IT. Automation spans intelligent local internet breakout, applying unique security policies to applications and automatically directing them to the appropriate security services and, of course, the ability to deliver sub-second failover should an underlying link experience congestion or a brownout/blackout.

However, a lasting reliance on legacy WAN architectures is stifling many businesses’ attempts at automation and achieving the full promise of the cloud. These legacy WAN architectures were never designed with the cloud in mind and, therefore, a major transformation of WAN architecture toward software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) is needed to enable automation. The level of automation needed for modern use cases was never possible in the realm of manually configured routers and firewalls deployed at each location, making changes both an arduous and time-consuming task.

While router-centric architectures have always been a major barrier to automation of the network, a recent Enterprise Management Associates report also found that cultural resistance was a major barrier to network automation, with the implication that network teams believe a traditional approach is superior.

If this is indeed the case, it may point to the crux of cultural resistance to automation actually stemming from a network automation skills gap. Rather than reveal their fear of the unknown, networking teams are potentially clinging to their tried and true approach and missing the opportunity to transform the network into a business enabler.

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A lasting reliance on legacy WAN architectures is stifling many businesses’ attempts at automation and achieving the full promise of the cloud” Countering such cultural resistance means attacking it at its root – fear of the unknown. IT leadership needs to be a champion for automation and offer training programmes that not only demonstrate the inherent value of automation but furnishes the team with understanding of the automation processes and tools used by other groups in the IT team, and how networking automation fits into the larger whole.

Only when the networking team is equipped with automation skills can a business shift the mindset away from manual configuration and troubleshooting.

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DEBATE

“ Emerging tech brings us a step closer�

Chris Bower, Technical Consultant, UK Connect

Network automation has received considerable attention over the last few years and has acquired an almost mythical status in the digital community. However, although it continues to elude us, I believe we are nearing a time where the network is self-sufficient. Of course, there are a few barriers to overcome, and chief among these are bandwidth and latency.

It all starts with the computational power in the cloud, such as the ability

to access systems like AWS. I will use image recognition systems as an example. In the case of my own industry, construction communications, this might be a PPE detection platform which can identify when personnel are not wearing the correct protective gear.

To achieve this, you need loads of bandwidth, sending real-time images over the internet, requiring response feedback immediately. Essentially, you need enough capacity to achieve this, whilst simultaneously reducing latency to within a fraction of a second.

At present, on construction sites we have a need for a faster network to meet such requirements not just on a small scale, but also nationally.

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The advent of 5G and Wi-Fi 6 offer a powerful proposal to closing the gap on edge computing. It will mean devices can operate on a mesh network”

Currently, society circumvents the challenge of network automation through standalone technology. Tesla cars are a good example. Although fitted with pre-programmed AI, the data is already outdated by the time the car launches.

Staying with the car analogy, let’s say you’re driving along and a deer crosses the road. The car is programmed to identify, stop or avoid three types of deer shape, but this one’s a fourth, unidentified species. The car ploughs on into 60

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the deer, causing an accident unless manually overridden by the driver.

This raises another important roadblock, the limitations of current AI capabilities. At this stage, we’re still pre-programming instructions into our technology, opposed to it being able to learn, self-sufficiently and improve itself independently.

The advent of 5G and Wi-Fi 6 offer a powerful proposal to closing the gap on edge computing. It will mean devices

DEBATE

can operate on a mesh network. This will give devices the ability to hop networks, moving throughout an area yet not losing your connection, where devices all talk to each other. Thus creating a holistic, independent network in which all devices can connect.

Physically, we also need to reappraise our mobile infrastructure and its reliability. Currently, if there’s a mast issue, an engineer will have to fix the problem.

However, I can foresee a future in

which masts could repair themselves or alternate between separately operating cells, should one experience an outage.

It allows the infrastructure to operate continuously even when part of it fails.

My advice to companies interested in network automation is to continue investing in the latest digital communications and wireless technology, readying themselves to embrace a new age of AI driven networks.

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VR/XR

THE FUTURE IS NOW

In the world of VR/XR, Varjo is a small company making a big impact. Fresh off a $54 million funding round, its CEO, Timo Toikkanen, speaks about blurring the line between moving seamlessly between the real and virtual world, working with some of industry’s leading companies and why the future belongs to distributed compute power

AUTHOR: James Henderson

T

here are some technologies that seem so futuristic, they seem scarcely credible, as if lifted straight out of Christopher Nolan’s latest movie.

Headsets that are able to match human eye resolution, blurring the line between real world and virtual reality, fit right into this category.

But Varjo, a company based in Finland, has created just that, with a long line of the world’s best-known companies utlising its VR/XR hardware to further a number of futuristic and forward-think62

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ing projects. In the virtual and mixed reality world, Varjo is working right at the bleeding edge and in its own words is “pushing the limits of what has ever been possible”.

A few examples to illustrate the point: Varjo works with Boeing to give Starliner astronauts a way to train for spaceflight in virtual reality. Varjo’s human-eye resolution allows astronauts to prepare for all phases of the crewed mission, from launch to docking to the ISS, in a crystal-clear VR environment. And in a world where

VARJO

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everything is having to be done remotely, astronauts can train from anywhere.

The company also works with the likes of Saab and Flight Safety to train pilots in a realistic and immersive environment, which can reduce training hours by up to 40% compared with physical equipment, with use cases in engineering and heavy machinery rounding off its training applications.

Elsewhere Varjo’s technology is being leveraged by Audi to bolster its effort to design its ‘car of the future’. Its VR/ XR enables Audi’s designers to see, test and understand every detail of their designs at the very earliest stages in the process, saving weeks from the design cycle, and make design updates in realtime and scale.

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“For some time, designing cars, buildings or large objects has been done in the same way, which is working on a design and then building a mock-up,” Varjo CEO Timo Toikkanen tells Digital Bulletin during a video call from the company’s Helsinki HQ. “In the case of a car, you typically build a real-size clay model of the car and have it appraised by specialist evaluators. It often goes through multiple cycles, which can take ages. The time and money spent on that can be compressed and you can save significant amounts of process time and be more creative by using synthetic models that have real-life accuracy.

“That is something nobody has been able to do before and we have been able

VARJO

to take the technology to the market. We are used and loved by these companies because we are allowing them to be more creative and be more profitable.”

By Toikknen’s own admission, Varjo has worked only with businesses straight out of the top echelon of industry in the four years since it was established. But the company now has designs on expanding its reach, and taking its VR/XR product to a far wider audience. To that end, Varjo announced the completion of a $54 million Series C funding round in August, taking its total funding to date to $85.1 million.

Tesi, NordicNinja, and Swisscanto Invest by Zürcher Kantonalbank were among the new investors contributing to the round, in addition to follow-on investment participation from existing investors including Lifeline Ventures, Atomico, EQT Ventures and Volvo Cars Tech Fund.

In Toikkanen’s own words, the funding round was “sizeable” and he notes the importance of Japanese backing - Japan is Varjo’s second largest market after the U.S. - and investment from Switzerland, which has strong links to Germany and its myriad industries that Varjo will be looking at as a serious opportunity.

“We’re very happy with the round and it gives us a long runaway on our current business plans; we are in a good place for years to come from a funding perspective.

In the case of a car, you typically build a realsize clay model of the car and have it appraised by specialist evaluators.

It often goes through multiple cycles, which can take ages” Timo Toikkanen

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We’re very happy with the round and it gives us a long runaway on our current business plans, we are in a good place for years to come from a funding perspective” We have expended the investor base, so it is not just the money, but the kind of investors we were able to attract and bring to the Varjo family,” he says “The round itself was the fifth largest venture capital round in the Nordics this year and the second largest in the VR/ XR space, according to Crunchbase.

That makes us very happy, and will enable us to scale and take our offering towards a broader customer base.

“We have focussed on the most advanced enterprises in the world but the needs and benefits across the enterprise are the same when it comes to immersive and spatial computing, expediting processes and saving money. The next chapter is very much about expanding in that direction.”

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announcement, Toikkanen’s position in the business changed from COO to CEO, although he is keen to stress that not too much importance should be attached to his job swap.

“We are pragmatic about job titles and we see leading the company as a team effort of the group that has been here since the beginning. My background is a bit more commercial than the other guys, I was EVP for Nokia’s mobile phone business and had a business acquired by Microsoft during the Steve Ballmer era,” he says.

“I have a bit more of a commercial background and we concluded that, as we have funding to scale and the first incarnation of the tech is in place, the next step is about taking it from just the largest enterprise customers to

VARJO

companies of all sizes. That is a scaling exercise and is probably something I’ve done a bit more of.”

When asked which industries he believes could benefit from VR/XR, the Finn is bullish, saying “it would be easier to list industries that would not benefit”.

But one area of real focus is within the healthcare sector, specifically medical imaging, where there is “huge promise”.

“Think of all the machinery and equipment in a hospital,” says Toikkanen.

“The end product that comes from them is a print out, so that’s what a doctor is looking at if he or she wants to understand the condition of an organ or part of the body. Hospitals are full of these stacks of paper that doctors are looking at and having to consider whether they are of good enough quality.

“Medical printing is a huge business and immersive computing will disrupt medical printing and replace it with virtual medical printing. By using VR/XR, a doctor is able to look at a virtual image of a patient’s organs and not only see it in photorealistic detail, but also as a virtual model that you can manipulate and turn around and see real time reflections of; you can even look inside.

“So it gets much more with the data because it is enriched, it’s a huge opportunity and an important task for the good of mankind. We want to make professionals in healthcare more capable and help them do what they do best.”

Given the global situation, there also promises to be huge potential in the collaboration space, and in May, Varjo announced a partnership with MeetinVR

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to deliver photorealistic collaboration The tie-up, says Varjo, marks “the beginning of virtual and mixed reality immersive collaboration for the most demanding enterprise applications in training, simulation, and engineering.”

Toikkanen is clearly positive about the potential of collaboration technology, but tempers any enthusiasm with genuine regret about growth that is being driven as a direct result of a worldwide pandemic.

“The fact that people need to do everything remotely is blatantly obvious, it is now an urgent and immediate need for all companies, and one of the reasons we created a mixed

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reality solution with MeetinVR and we are collaborating with other companies in the space,” he says.

“It is a development that is strange because how can you be happy about something that has been brought about because of tragic circumstances? This is not a happy time for us, but from a business perspective and industry evolution perspective it has sped up development in the area of collaboration.”

With our time coming to an end, Toikkanen reflects on the rapidly changing face of technology that is enabling the likes of Varjo to develop technologies

VARJO

that wouldn’t have seemed possible just a decade ago.

“The next few years will belong to distributed computing, with resources distributed across a number of instances. Not all the compute will be in headset, the cloud or on-premise servers,” he concludes.

“The winning solutions will be those that have the ability to run in multiple instances and optimises the experience for the client. Distributed computing is the future, and cloud plays a key role but it’s not cloud alone, 5G alone or headset alone, it is the continuum between all of them.

“I believe 5G will play a big part of this

distributed compute bearer world, but it won’t happen right away. Establishing these huge networks takes time. But we are keen on 5G and are cooperating with mobile operators and looking at how the networks will be used. Low latency and high resolution use cases and applications like Varjo’s are exactly the thing they are interested in.”

With that, Toikkanen bids Digital Bulletin goodbye, but not before extending an invitation to visit Finland and get hands-on with Varjo’s technology when things eventually return more closely to normal. It’s an offer we can’t wait to take up.

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A LIFE IN TECH

A LIFE IN TECH

Gavin Ray is a man who has worked in technology for the best part of three decades, spending time working with big corporate beats to fledging startups. He is currently Chief Product Officer for Landmark Information Group. Here, speaking exclusively to Digital Bulletin, he opens up on his influences, what makes a business investable and how technologists rank themselves

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GAVIN RAY

M

y interest in technology came from the BBC show Tomorrow’s World, which would show glimpses of high tech being used around the world. It fascinated me and really got me looking more into technology.

I begged to work in a local electronics factory over a summer holiday and got hooked on all the techie equipment.

I began working with AT&T and sometimes in Bell Labs in the U.S. and it was there that I was hit by the ambition, sheer scale and potential of the biggest new technologies.

Colin Sanders who founded SSL, the most famous recording studio mixing desk company in the world, really influenced me. As an intern I got to see how a founder of a very successful business ran his relationships with the team and the market, yet originally did half the jobs.

Derek Jennings, my boss at Cisco, taught me how to become a top consultant in Europe, leading the edge of the telecoms evolution and the dawn of the internet but never stopped telling me and the team “just go for it”. We were encouraged to push technology’s boundaries – and so that is what we did.

I’ve been through so many technology evolutions, from trials up to large-scale volume and I love the journey of new roles and challenges. It’s always fun to see the potential, try to avoid the common pitfalls and see things growing, sometimes failing, but when they do take off it’s such fun.

It’s so important to know the limits of technology; no amount of founder energy can overcome certain limits of technology capability or the sheer cost of over-ambition. Equally, grinding down problems is the only way to get true innovation, so you need to push hard.

Talent, insight, market and timing are the factors that make startups investable. Investors need to see people with the right talent and experience that drive insight into solving a problem the market will pay for.

There’s nothing worse than start-ups surprised by finding out what they didn’t know when selling a solution to a problem that doesn’t really matter.

You need the market to be emergent, commercial and capable of growing.

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enough that you have a fair chance at any point in time.

I have oscillated between working with enterprises and startups, and both have their attractions and risks. I’ve been lucky enough to have the chance to do both multiple times: major enterprises when they are working well have power and authority to drive their market and do what you know is the right thing – yet they can become moribund and lose agility.

Start-ups have freedoms and pace that are exhilarating and nothing can compare to changing the world or ‘putting a dent in the universe’ as Steve Jobs once said, but we all know start-ups depend on finding enough talent in technology, delivery and sales.

They need like-minded customers prepared to set aside their fears of new things and the risk of unproven solutions to get the unique benefits promised.

So often I see founders talk as though they are the only voice of truth about a market and its future; a lack of humility and fractional 360-degree view can hurt them because perspective is everything.

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a market well can be amazing and foretell the future, getting there first. Yet so often, they are not aware of what they don’t know; founders are at risk of seeing too little of the real world and not knowing enough of where the market will provide them real cash for the things they proffer.

When it comes to the most important tech of the next 10 years, AI will be up there, although perhaps not as important as virus vaccines and genomic healthcare.

To my mind AI represents the next level of optimisation, which is a never ending arms race of algorithms and methods to improve the way we spend money versus make it. Boiling down to the essence, it’s all about efficiency of markets, improving allocations of capital to value and crushing waste from processes.

The property industry that I’m working in now is ripe for change and AI is clearly going to play an important role in bringing speed, risk control and confidence to a very complex transactional market.

My advice to aspiring technologists would be to learn to simplify complex things: in the beginning we see so many technologists relish complexity, their deep understanding and passion

GAVIN RAY

drives ever more depth and complexity.

Yet their ability to communicate value to audiences like investors, buyers, internal teams and partners around them diminishes.

I switch off with music and hiking; one to fill my mind with something different and the other to get me out the house and experience something completely different to a flat screen.

An expert is clearly someone who knows more and more about less and less. The ultimate technology prowess comes from returning complexity to simplicity. This is hard because it requires great skill to know how to break down complexity to its core organising principles, which means you need to really understand how things work from top to bottom.

Is it just me, but when you hear founders and technologists talk, do you ever wonder how they rank themselves? It seems quite easy to declare oneself an expert or even allow expertise in one area to give the illusion of expertise in others – irrespective of experience or knowledge.

What would happen if life were like online games? Where everyone can see your ranking, your weapons cache and your experience points? Now, wouldn’t that be interesting…

I’ve worked in both start-ups and major corporates where large numbers of staff are in other countries and often travelling or at home: being in the office is a weak contributor to personal output and success.

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EVENTS

DIGITAL

EVENTS Industry conferences and exhibitions are off the table for now, but there are still many digital events worth making time in your diary for...

THE INFORMATION’S 2020 WTF SUMMIT SEPTEMBER 09–10, 2020 The Information’s WTF is an intimate summit and ongoing membership community of women from the tech, media and finance industries. We host the event with a singular focus: empower women to become the next business leaders of tomorrow. Through hosting thought provoking discussion and fostering lasting connections among attendees, we aim to advance the careers of participants and help them excel in an ever changing business world. Join high-powered female 74

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executives and leaders as they share what it takes to lead billion dollar companies, and drive global innovation and social change during unprecedented times. We will also host networking sessions, giving attendees from both coasts the opportunity to connect and learn from fellow business leaders.

INTELLIGENT HEALTH 2020 SEPTEMBER 10–11, 2020 Intelligent Health is the only large-scale, global summit series focused purely on AI in healthcare! Our CPD accred-

SEPTEMBER – OCTOBER

ited summits bring the global AI and health community together to advance discussions on how to apply AI and drive technological collaboration in healthcare. Participants are invited to join industry-leading speakers for an in-depth look at AI within the health market, how it can be used to prevent and solve some of the world’s greatest healthcare problems, improve the health of the human race and set the AI agenda in healthcare for 2020 and beyond. Networking including 1:2:1 chat roulette, live video meetings, CPD accredited content (live and available on demand post show), so that you can plan around the clock in any time zone and play sessions at a time that suits you.

where you can hear independent experts on what matters most now and how to prepare for the new normal. You’ll learn how to create agile security and IT risk management plans to manage the risk inherent in digital business and be better prepared for the next global shock.

GARTNER SECURITY & RISK MANAGEMENT SUMMIT SEPTEMBER 14–17, 2020 In today’s risk reality, you have to anticipate new cybersecurity threats, understand the ongoing implications of COVID-19, deal with disruptive technologies and build resilience in a world where nothing is certain. The virtual Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit 2020 is the one conference ISSUE 20

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MICROSOFT IGNITE MICROSOFT 22–24, 2020 Microsoft Ignite will be launched as a complimentary digital event experience this September. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn innovative ways to build solutions, migrate and manage your infrastructure, and connect with Microsoft experts and other technology professionals from around the globe. Find new ways to migrate legacy workloads, dive deep into the latest cloud technologies, explore innovative client development techniques, discover new ways to manage your infrastructure, and more.

VMWORLD SEPTEMBER 28–OCTOBER 01, 2020 As a digital event, VMworld 2020 will enable remote participation and collaboration from anywhere in the world.

VMware is committed to ensuring that the digital event reflects the VMworld experience that so many in the industry have come to know and love. In this new format, attendees can still hear about innovative new technology solutions, perspectives from VMware executives, dive into educational and 76

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technical content, and engage with experts across the industry ecosystem.

WORLD SUMMIT AI OCTOBER 14, 2020 The world’s leading and largest AI summit gathers the global AI ecosystem of Enterprise, BigTech, Startups, Investors and Science, the brightest brains in AI as speakers every year to tackle head-on the most burning AI issues and set the global AI agenda. From CEOs to CTOs, FTSE 500 corporates to heads of AI, scientists, technologists, academics, startups and investors from every corner of the globe, you will be in great company. The event is brimming with opportunities for partnerships and engaging conversations.

Attendees will find a networking area to connect, featuring an automated 1-2-1 chat roulette, matchmaking with like-minded professionals and live video meetings to facilitate connections between all attendees.

SEPTEMBER – OCTOBER

GARTNER IT SYMPOSIUM/XPO OCTOBER 19–22, 2020 Recent global events have reset the CIO’s relationship with the enterprise and executive team. Now is the time to embrace new approaches to leadership and strategic decision making to lead in a dynamic world. Join Gartner virtually this October at its flagship conference,

Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo. Explore how to shape technology to respond to adversity and discover digital business strategic planning tools and techniques to achieve business continuity. Connect with trusted Gartner experts, accomplished IT leaders and top technology vendors to hone your leadership skills, refine your strategies and walk away with the insights, advice and tools needed for now and the future.

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THE CLOSING BULLETIN

THE CLOSING BULLETIN

In a column exclusive to Digital Bulletin, John Gilbert, General Manager UK&I, Yubico, tackles the ever-growing authentication challenge of digital transformation

F

or most organisations, digital transformation is a long-term strategy with plans delivered in phases.

Over time, routine, repetitive tasks are automated and manual processes are digitised with a targeted end-result of cost savings, maximised efficiencies, and increased business insight.

Then, 2020 happened.

The events of this year shifted priorities onto business continuity, so that companies could navigate workplace disruption and economic fragility.

When the time comes, businesses will assess their 2020 success through the lens of how well-equipped they were 78

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to support remote working and serve customers through digital channels. It’s likely they’ll find areas for improvement, particularly around cybersecurity.

While remote working has been on the rise in recent years, a relatively small percentage of the UK population worked predominantly from home prior to COVID-19 – around 5% in 2019. Now, companies are supporting home working at scale and indications are that some of these changed habits will stick, long after workers return.

One survey commissioned by YouGov and carried out by Skillcast found that more than two-thirds -

JOHN GILBERT

68% - of new home workers would like to carry on working remotely.

Employer research revealed an expectation that double the number who worked from home before the pandemic will do so in the future.

Businesses will need to scale-up their use of technology to support a larger base of home workers. What’s more, the transition they made to digital methods of working this year may encourage them to accelerate the transformation plans they had to serve customers through digital channels. Both scenarios place demands on authentication practices.

Identifying security risks Digital transformation brings new ways of working, the adoption of new infrastructures and applications, and the deployment of new services. With this,

comes the responsibility to secure data and safeguard access through effective authentication practices.

As rising numbers of employees and stakeholders - including third-party partners and vendors - come to depend on digital tools, the control over who accesses them and when, will naturally diminish. In turn, this is exacerbated by the increased home working population.

Employees are now accessing corporate applications and company data from previously unknown WiFi networks, and from personal computers and mobile devices. This broadens the attack surface for potential hackers at a time when employees may have reduced access to IT support. This unfortunate combination of factors leads to an inevitable increase in security risks.

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As organisations grapple with their future digital transformation plans and take steps to shore up security with decentralised workforces, strong authentication must sit at the heart of secure access�

Securing remote working and ensuring all stakeholders can interact with the business in a safe and trusted way has to be a high priority for enterprises. Security must be rigorously reviewed as part of business continuity assessments post-lockdown and should be baked-in to ongoing digital transformation plans.

Strong authentication to secure assets and protect data A good starting point is to challenge organisational practices around passwords. Despite inherent weaknesses, they still form the backbone of digital security. Nearly every service and application requires a username 80

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and password to log in, as a baseline.

Unfortunately, people still tend to rely on a limited number of passwords and don’t necessarily protect them in the way they should. Recent Ponemon Institute research in the UK revealed that more than a third (39%) of surveyed employees re-use passwords across workplace accounts and over half (51%) sometimes or frequently share passwords with colleagues.

Not surprisingly, Gartner predicted last year that 60% of large and global enterprises, and 90% midsize companies, would implement passwordless methods in more than half of use cases by 2022. Now, given the sudden shift to remote working this year, there is

JOHN GILBERT

the real possibility of an acceleration of passwordless authentication.

Regardless, enterprises can no longer afford to eschew the responsibility of implementing strong authentication, and doing so for the entire organisation. Without the luxury of a company firewall and network monitoring for remote workers, plus an influx of sophisticated phishing scams and man-in-the-middle attacks, it’s critical to bolster user verifications when and where possible.

Bringing employees on board There are additional considerations to weigh up, of course. While authentication practices need to be absolutely

secure, they must also be user-friendly.

Nearly a quarter (23%) of employees surveyed by Ponemon Institute believe SMS/mobile authentication app 2FA (two factor authentication) methods are very inconvenient, while 56% say they will only adopt new technologies that are easy to use and significantly improve account security.

Inevitably, employees will find workarounds if they’re asked to follow security protocols that they don’t understand or that slows them down.

For this reason, chosen authentication practices must bring employees on board by being simple to set up and use. As organisations contemplate higher numbers of people working outside the office this becomes even more important, as does the ability to roll out new solutions remotely and across a wide geographic area.

As organisations grapple with their future digital transformation plans and take steps to shore up security with decentralised workforces, strong authentication must sit at the heart of secure access. Enterprises must evaluate authentication options that secure assets, protect company and customer data, and enable the smooth continuation of business, while mitigating the reputational risk of a breach or data loss.

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