GAVS enGAge - June 2023

"Success is not in what you have, but who you are."

- Bo Bennett

Tim Perry

FEATURING

Seema Kumar Executive Consultant, AgFirst Farm Credit Bank and Co-Founder, Healthcare Too

CEO, Cure and Founder, SEEMA Magazine

Editor’s Note

While companies and investors worldwide brace for a potential slowdown, chip manufacturer Nvidia is basking in the glory of its success. Nvidia's recent achievement of temporarily becoming a $1 trillion company underscores its exceptional growth trajectory. This milestone sets it apart as the first chip manufacturer to enter this exclusive club. The company's market capitalization skyrocketed by nearly $200 billion in a single day! This surge alone accounted for almost double the market cap of Intel, which was the most dominant chipmaker globally until a few years ago.

Nvidia’s chips is a key component for companies trying to build something with AI. Over the past decade, Nvidia has developed AI-focused chips that is superior at parallel processing. It is the leader in supplying chips for server GPUs (graphic processing units), specifically designed to handle complex mathematical and graphical computations, which solidifies its position as a key supplier for companies engaged in AI development. The unprecedented growth in the company’s valuation is fueled by the growing demand for accelerated computing and generative AI. As the AI race between the tech giants intensifies, the need for Nvidia's chips grows multifold.

Nvidia's recent Computex 2023 keynote further underscored its commitment to AI advancements. While most tech giants are taking the cost-cutting route, they also appear to be investing in AI. Infact, AI as a share of big-tech’s capex and investments is surging at the expense of others.

Stakeholders across various industries must take note of this significant shift. The pace of AI's impact appears to be accelerating, surpassing initial expectations. However, the question lingers: Is the upturn in AI stocks a sustainable boom or a potential bubble? Only time will reveal the true trajectory of AI's influence and the impact across industries.

In this edition, we spoke to Tim Perry, Executive Consultant, AgFirst Farm Credit Bank and Co-Founder, Healthcare Too, about the healthcare industry, how technology should enable healthcare and some interesting trends in the industry.

The team also spoke to Seema Kumar, CEO, Cure and Founder, SEEMA magazine. She shared some insights about her growing up years and how that shaped her, her journey at Cure and the evolution of her magazine. We also have some insightful articles in this edition.

Bargunan Somasundaram has written, Anomaly Detection for Predictive Maintenance

Sundaramoorthy S has written, Can Underwater Data Centers reduce Environmental Impact?

Mrinal Srivastava has written, Secure Your Remote Workforce with Robust Identity & Access Management

Mandar Gadre has written, Digital Product Engineering - Designing your Future

Happy Reading!

What’s New in Tech

Robotic proxy brings remote users to life in real time

Cornell University researchers have developed a robot, called ReMotion, that occupies physical space on a remote user's behalf, automatically mirroring the user's movements in real time and conveying key body language that is lost in standard virtual environments.

Deep neural network detects disease biomarkers in real-time

Researchers have developed a deep neural network that improves the accuracy of their unique devices for detecting pathogen biomarkers. A smaller version of the neural network model can run on portable devices. The entire system is designed to be used completely locally, the data processing can happen without internet access, unlike other systems that rely on cloud computing.

Robots with ‘artificial memory’ to help find lost items

Engineers at the University of Waterloo have discovered a new way to program robots to help people with dementia locate medicine, phones and other objects they need but have lost. Engineers believed a companion robot with an episodic memory of its own could be a game-changer and they succeeded in using artificial intelligence to create a new kind of artificial memory

AI used to identify similar materials in images

MIT and Adobe Research have developed a technique that can identify all pixels in an image representing a given material. his machine-learning method could assist with robotic scene understanding, image editing, or online recommendation systems.

In Conversation with Tim Perry, Executive Consultant, AgFirst Farm Credit Bank and Co-Founder, Healthcare Too

How did you discover your passion for technology?

I enrolled in my first computer science class as a college freshman to avoid taking math. I liked the structure that I learned; I liked the way of thinking. But I never really touched computer systems again until Graduate School. I began to see information systems, not just programming or networks or storage, I just began to see the system as a powerful mechanism to augment what people were doing. It was a way to manage information as a resource. I began to see the power of the systems. So, I never really loved any one part of technology. I love the results that we get from systems.

Can you tell us something about the company you founded HealthCare Too?

I spent most of my corporate career as an IT executive, primarily in what we call healthcaremedical devices, diagnostics, pharmaceuticals. I decided I wanted to do something different that was more innovative and unbounded by corporate

bureaucracy. Additionally, I had developed an expanded appreciation of what healthcare is.

In my personal journey, I found tremendous benefit in the practice of Tai Chi (taijiquan). That then prompted me to enroll for a master's degree in Traditional Oriental Medicine. Unfortunately, I left the East Coast before I had a chance to finish, but it really helped me understand a more holistic way of looking at health -- not just treating the symptoms with pills and procedures and devices, but rather getting to the root cause. As humans, we need a more holistic approach - looking at nutrition, social relationships, spirituality, and lifestyle. Health was not merely the absence of disease but a fulfilling life.

This experience inspired the logo for Healthcare Too, a three-legged stool. It’s about the body, mind, and spirit. A holistic approach to healthcare that embraces the whole person. Like any startup, we went through a couple of different phases in Healthcare Too. First, we provided cloud hosting for HIPAA compliance for all healthcare providers, conventional and complementary. The market opportunity was not what we expected so we

pivoted to helping consumers directly by providing information and products that would aid an expanded understanding of health.

That was the original journey for Healthcare Too. I continue to work on that but less now that I'm working at the Bank. But part of what makes Healthcare Too important to me is why I'm at the Bank… producing funds for agriculture so that people can get real food. I found this phrase recently, “Pay the Farmer now, or pay the Pharma later.” I'm very happy in what we do at Healthcare Too and I'm able to channel that same passion through my work at AgFirst.

Healthcare professionals aren’t trained or paid to appreciate what people have to do in order to prepare that food. Too many people do not know how to prepare food properly, or how to share food with others in their neighborhood and build bonds and relationships. The current US sick care model will never fix that.

How would you describe an ideal technology partner to a healthcare provider?

Let’s take diet as an example. Poor nutrition leads to so many chronic diseases (e.g., Type II Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease, etc.) These are chronic… not cured by pills.

Telling someone to eat better is almost useless. Telling someone to eat fewer calories is less than useless. Telling someone that they need to eat more whole foods is a little better.

Understanding why a person eats the way they do is valuable. Understanding why a person has been challenged to change is critical. Showing a person or enabling a person to make that change is trans- formative. Inspiring someone to continue a healthy and nutritious diet is healthcare.

How would you envision an ideal healthcare ecosystem?

Very simply, a good technology partner would start to look at this journey. What can we do to put a slow cooker in someone's house, get them an Amazon drop of some food, show them some videos so that they can cook it well. Don't just give them an app“yeah, I answered my questions for the day” and nothing else happens. Make it part of their day. The right technology company would be able to see all those opportunities, and then present it in an easy-to-use, very cost-effective manner to people. The market opportunities are boundless with a holistic definition of health. The ideal technology partner is someone who looks at what we in the West are now starting to call Social Determinants of Health. What I find amazing is that your zip code has more bearing on your health than your genes! The ideal technology partner should be one who will appreciate the whole person. Health is about daily activities. Health is lifestyle. Food is medicine.

Staying with the diet example, the ideal healthcare stem would take what we have today and expand it. For example, you can get a medication in the US easily, either at the local pharmacy, or you can have them delivered to you and so on. But we don't do that same thing with food. Why can't a physician who's looking at you, and knows you should be eating less processed food, write you a prescription for the type of food you should be eating.

A prescription for food from a local farmer’s market or food delivery service. We have many channels to supply medicine. However, the channels have been built so that you can only get a pill or procedure even if it's cheaper and far more effective to give you a prescription for food.

This is not just about food. The same model can be expanded to help with other Social Determinants of Health: a script for a visit to a local park or art museum along with (or instead of) anxiety medication, a procedure for learning mindfulness techniques that someone can incorporate into

a lifelong journey instead of a surgical procedure, and so many others.

Can you share some interesting healthcare technology trends with us?

The one that really has my eye right now, like everybody else on the planet, is Artificial Intelligence - Generative AI. We've been playing with it at Healthcare Too. ChatGPT, for example, is a great technology, has a lot of potential. But I'm seeing other “feeder” applications. Recently, I was introduced to Agent GPT. The agent converts your prompt into a series of structured prompts and relays them to ChatGPT for you. You're able to get a very complete answer based on a series of prompts after asking only the initial prompt. It has a much more complete answer than I would have done on my own.

If AI is limited to doing the same things in sick care but more quickly / cheaply, we get more sick care more quickly. This is not something we need or want. We need to explore AI as an enabler for real health-care for the whole person.

How has the healthcare industry changed in the past few years, post covid?

I haven't seen much change. What I have seen is even more of the same: Oh, you've gotten overweight, especially from sitting around the house during COVID? Here, we have a whole bunch of pills you can take! Instead of, “Here's the proper way that you should be eating. Here's ways to do it. Here's a way that you can get moderate exercise without trying to run a marathon.”

It would make more sense for true healthcare to pay $1000 for someone to get an elliptical machine that they can use in their house or apart- ment to stay healthy than to pay $10,000 for proce- dures and pills for diabetes. Why not pay $100 for an

hour massage that helps a person relax instead of $100,000 for a heart attack? Unfortunately, what we call healthcare, especially in the US, is not healthcare-- it's sick care. You can't even use it if you're healthy. It is time that we look at other cultures and other practices that serve and elevate the whole person. I'm very proud of the work I did in pharmaceuticals and medical devices and such. There is a place and time for their use and always will be. However, we also need to look at Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, basic nutrition, regular exercise, mindfulness practices, stress reduction techniques, methods to manage finances, channels to meet people and share virtual experience (like making and enjoying dinner, not posting more selfies). There are a number of things we could be doing, but we're not. So no, healthcare hasn't changed.

What are your thoughts on telemedicine and the potential of VR and AI in healthcare/sick-care industry?

I think telemedicine offers so much. As the US population gets older, it gets more difficult for them to make a trip to the doctor’s office. Also, since we have a sick-care system, doctors’ offices are littered with germs which isn’t great for the elderly. There are challenges if someone needs to check the vitals of the patients, but telemedicine holds so much potential. This is especially true if we move to that more holistic, real healthcare approach.

As for AR and VR, if it's the sick care industry it'll be it'll be another channel for more of the same. In some of my past companies, they would use it to help physicians understand what a mental health patient experiences during a visit or bus ride. It's good as a training tool, not just for physicians but also maybe patients. But it can be more when seen in a larger holistic healthcare picture.

Five years ago, there was a Pokémon game with augmented reality. Well, everyone was out walking

more. For that one summer it was amazing how many people were going out and sharing with others where to find the best Pokémon. I think that there are many opportunities for augmented reality and virtual reality if we’re looking at health holistically.

What are your thoughts on the challenges of interoperability between healthcare systems and EHRs?

The FHIR standard has been around forever. In my honest opinion, I don't think the right people in sick care want to interoperate. I can make a micro transaction today that shows up my credit card within two minutes. I order something online and as soon as it hits my credit card, I get an alert on my phone. Are you trying to tell me that with that $4.3 trillion that the US spends on healthcare (plus billions more out-of-pocket and complementary medicine) that kind of industry can't find a way to interoperate? No, that's not the problem. The major EHRs don't want to play together. The major systems don't want to play together. They want that fragmentation.

About the Author

Tim Perry, MPA, MS, CPHIMS, CISSP is the Co-Founder & Chief Information Officer of Consum- er Health platform HealthCare Too.

Over the past 3 decades, Tim has worked in Fortune 50 executive leadership roles as well as startups and has devel- oped a deep passion for transforming healthcare.

He is blessed with a wonderful wife and two inspir- ing children. Tim has practiced Tai Chi (Taiji Chuan) for over 20 years and enjoys cooking wholesome (and easy) meals.

Tim Perry

Introducing Seema Kumar, CEO, Cure

Tell us something about your childhood. What values had been instilled in you that helped you excel later in your life?

I am an only child to parents who challenged the status quo. My father was a progressive scientist, before his time and my mother was a natural born leader who brought joy and calm wherever she arrived. My father spoke eight languages and could write in several of them. He would not participate in the custom of a dowry and raised me to be an independent woman from childhood. In the fifth grade, I had my own bank account and he showed me the value of financial acumen and independence by pushing me to manage my finances and make deposits into my account. In high school, while many of my friends would go to typing/stenography class and I wanted to join them, he held the belief that my education would take me much further than typing/stenography, and that one day someone would be typing on my behalf, so instead, my parents engaged a music teacher to teach me

music. She was a widow, and per the dreadful custom in those days, she had to wear unflattering widow’s garb, and made a living by teaching music. She took two buses to get to my home, and my parents urged me to think about the effort it took her taught me to appreciate, support and practice kindness toward the marginalized. Plus, I learned and earned the gift of music from her.

My mother was an eternal optimist with a can-do attitude, and when she walked into a situation with disarray or difficulties, she had an innate ability to restore order and harmony, instilling a sense of calm in thorny situations. She filled gave rise to the positivity and confidence in my upbringing.

Growing up with the combination of my father’s values of embracing knowledge, being independent and challenging the status quo along with my mother’s positivity, confidence and can-do attitude laid the foundation for my career, family, work, and leadership.

When did you discover your passion for technology/communication?

With a father who was progressive and ahead of his time, I was surrounded by innovation and technology from childhood. He had a passion for technology and was an innovator himself. He had a hobby of building vacuum tube radios and playing around with frequencies to listen to stations like BBC. I remember one year during Diwali we were watching fireworks and I noticed a curious phenomenon: you could see the fireworks going off in the sky and the sound of the explosion would follow a second or two later—and I wondered why? My father explained to me that light travels faster than sound, and that’s when my fascination with science of technology and began.

He worked for the overseas communications services of the Indian government, which was conducting research on using underwater cables and radio waves for international telecommunications. Sometimes we would take a trip to his office on the top floor of his building, and we would make calls to someone outside of India and to hear someone so far away on a different content was the coolest thing! Even relatives from out of town would want to experience it and asked to visit every time they came to see us.

What made you join Cure as CEO?

I have always been drawn to organizations that have a noble purpose, audacious goals, and impossible dreams. I also love building things from the ground up, bringing together individuals, teams and communities and uniting them around a higher purpose focused on making a positive impact on the world. Cure is all of those things. Our goal is to advance healthcare, and we aspire to cure. Period. We want to do this not by acting alone but by bringing together industry leaders and innovators across private and public sectors to

collaborate across disciplines in a free exchange of ideas and building a robust and thriving community and ecosystem that aspires to cure and ultimately prevent disease.

It began when I was a young girl in India, when I received my first paycheck from a publisher for an article I had written. I saw my name in the magazine and thought how my words and my voice can have reach and be used to effect positive change. At the time, the change that I wanted to make was to uplift people of India and especially women whose status in the male-dominated society was at times dissatisfying and at times appalling. When I came to the U.S., about 20 years ago, I thought about the concept of a magazine for South Asian women as there wasn’t anything like it at the time. I pitched the idea to publishers in NYC, but no one took interest, so I thought – I’ll do it myself. Today, I’m proud that we showcase amazing women of South Asian origin who are in leadership positions and doing amazing things to make the world a better place in multiple disciplines. Normally you wouldn’t read about these types of women or watch interviews with them in mainstream media here in the US, and I’m proud that I’ve created a platform that brings those stories and awareness to others. I have met some brilliant women, both famous leaders but also unsung heroes who are doing extraordinary things. Other topics include self-care, recipes, music, and dancing cultural connections.

Please tell us about the journey and evolution of your magazine – SEEMA.

Don’t be in a rush. I was eager to start doing things and to get working. It’s ok to take another year or two to learn and grow. You have a long runway. Savor every moment.

How can more women shatter the glass ceiling in their careers?

Don’t focus on limits. Think about the possibilities. Focus on your noble purpose or the impact you want to create, instead of an artificial finish line or a glass ceiling. When your purpose is powerful, your vision audacious, your passion fierce, your focus laser-like, and your momentum unstoppable, the glass ceiling will melt away like a mirage. Don’t focus on the finish line—there is none. Focus your eyes beyond the line, on your purpose. Run towards that purpose as if you were running toward your child or a loved one. Imagine a mother and child 5 miles apart. When she starts running towards her child, she only thinks about reaching her child and not reaching the finish line, really nothing else. So, when you’re reaching for something that has a higher purpose, you end up running toward it as fast as you can rather than aiming on going past the finish line or on breaking the glass ceiling. When your eyes are focused on the end prize like finding a cure for cancer or developing a vaccine or creating an ecosystem that advances healthcare for all, or empowering all women to use their voice, finish lines don’t matter, and glass ceilings melt away.

About the Author

Seema Kumar joined Cure Experience in 2022 as the Chief Executive Officer. Prior to Cure, Ms. Kumar spent nearly 20 years at Johnson & Johnson in senior leadership roles, including most recently as the Global Head, Office of Innovation, Global Health and Scientific Engagement, and served on J&J’s Innovation Strategy, Public health leadership and the COVID-19 vaccine steering committee, where she led the company’s external affairs efforts and public education program on COVID and vaccine literacy. Before her tenure at J&J, Ms. Kumar played a leadership role in the Human Genome Project, at the Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Genome Research. She also has held leadership positions at the U.S. National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Institutes of Health, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Looking back on your journey and knowing what you know now, what is the one piece of advice you would have given yourself along the way?

Seema Kumar

Anomaly Detection for Predictive Maintenance

Industry 4.0, also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, represents the integration of advanced technologies like IoT, IIoT, cloud computing, cyber-physical systems (CPS), big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning etc. into the manufacturing and industrial sectors. One of the key areas of focus within Industry 4.0 is predictive maintenance, which aims to optimize equipment and machinery performance by detecting and addressing anomalies before they lead to costly breakdowns or failures.

In recent years, the field of anomaly detection has experienced significant growth, driven by advancements in data collection, storage, and analysis techniques, as well as the increasing importance of identifying and addressing anomalies in complex systems in IT infrastructure.

System Monitoring

Anomaly detection can be applied to monitor system metrics such as CPU usage, memory utilization, disk I/O, or network latency. It helps identify unusual performance patterns, resource bottlenecks, or hardware failures, allowing proactive troubleshooting and maintenance.

Predictive Maintenance

Anomaly detection techniques can be used to identify deviations from normal operating conditions in industrial machinery, equipment, or infrastructure. By monitoring sensor data, vibration patterns, temperature fluctuations, or other relevant metrics, anomalies can be detected early, indicating potential equipment failures or maintenance needs. This helps prevent unexpected downtime and optimizes maintenance schedules.

Following are some key areas for industry growth in anomaly detection

Customer Behavior Analysis

Anomaly detection can be applied to analyze customer behavior and identify unusual patterns in user interactions, purchasing habits, or online activities. This helps detect potential fraud, identify customer preferences, personalize user experiences, or improve marketing strategies, etc.

What is Anomaly Detection?

Anomaly detection in a broader term, describes any observation that deviates from the norm or in the context of technology, refers to the process of identifying unusual or unexpected patterns, behaviors, or events in a system or dataset. Anomalies can be both positive and negative, indicating unusual occurrences in either direction. It involves using various statistical and machine learning techniques or domain-specific rules to differentiate normal or expected behavior from anomalous behavior.

Outlier

An outlier is a specific type of anomaly that represents extreme values or observations that are far from the other data points. Outliers are typically isolated and distinct, lying at the tail ends of the data distribution. Statistically, Outliers are significantly outside a distribution’s mean or median. They can be caused by measurement errors, experimental artifacts, or genuinely unusual phenomena.

Anomaly Detection Machine Learning Techniques/Methods

The process of anomaly detection typically involves the following steps:

Data preprocessing

The first step is to prepare and preprocess the data. This includes tasks such as data cleaning, normalization, handling missing values, and feature extraction to convert and transform the data into a suitable format for analysis.

Feature selection

In this step, relevant features or variables are selected from the dataset. Choosing the right features is crucial to ensure that the anomaly detection algorithm can effectively capture anomalies. These features could include metrics such as CPU usage, memory utilization, network traffic patterns, error rates, response times, and other system-specific measurements.

Model training

Anomaly detection algorithms are trained on a labeled dataset that contains both normal and anomalous instances. There are various approaches to anomaly detection, including statistical methods, machine learning techniques, and unsupervised learning algorithms.

Statistical methods

Statistical approaches assume that normal data points follow a certain statistical distribution. They use statistical techniques such as Gaussian distributions, clustering, or regression to identify anomalies based on deviations from expected patterns.

Machine learning techniques

Machine learning-based approaches utilize algorithms like support vector machines (SVM), decision trees, or random forests. These algorithms

are trained on labeled data and learn to classify instances as normal or anomalous based on the learned patterns.

Unsupervised learning algorithms

Unsupervised methods are used when labeled anomalous data is scarce or unavailable. They learn the underlying structure of the data and identify anomalies as data points that do not fit the learned model. Examples include clustering algorithms (e.g., k-means) or density estimation methods (e.g., Gaussian mixture models).

Anomaly detection

Once the model is trained, it is applied to new, unseen data to detect anomalies. The model compares each data point to the learned patterns and assigns an anomaly score or probability. Thresholds can be set to determine the cutoff point for classifying a data point as an anomaly.

Evaluation and refinement

The performance of the anomaly detection algorithm is assessed by comparing its predictions with the known anomalies in the labeled dataset. Metrics such as precision, recall, or the F1 score can be used to evaluate the algorithm's effectiveness. If necessary, the model can be refined and retrained using additional data or different techniques

AI/ML Algorithms for Anomaly Detection

Following are some of the Anomaly Detection

Algorithms based on the approaches and type of the problem solved

Nearest-neighbor based algorithms:

k-NN

• Local Outlier Factor (LOF)

• Connectivity-based Outlier Factor (COF)

Local Outlier Probability (LoOP)

Influenced Outlierness (INFLO)

• Local Correlation Integral (LOCI)

Projection based methods

• Isolation Forest

Clustering based algorithms:

• Cluster based Local Outlier Factor (CBLOF)

• Local Density Cluster based Outlier Factor (LDCOF)

Statistics based techniques:

• Parametric techniques

Non-parametric techniques

Statistics based techniques:

• Decision Tree

• Neural Networks

Bayesian Networks

Anomaly

Overall, the goal of anomaly detection in IT infrastructures using AI/ML techniques is to predict and identify potential issues before they become critical problems, allowing IT teams to take proactive measures to mitigate risks and maintain system stability.

About the Author

Bargunan is a Big Data Engineer and a programming, AI & ML enthusiast. His passion is to share his knowledge by writing his experiences about them. He believes, “Gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom and sharing it is the first step to humanity.”

Bargunan Somasundaram

Can Underwater Data Centers reduce Environmental Impact?

Climate change is an issue that is on the priority list of most countries around the world. While a lot is being done across all levels to mitigate this issue, let us explore how underwater data centers can help alleviate it.

Why place data centers under water?

The concept of underwater data center was initiated by Microsoft with a project called Natick, in the Pacific Ocean. Phase 1 was a vessel carrying one rack, containing 24 servers. Following Microsoft’s initial proof-of-concept, Phase 2 of the Natick

project was tested in the ocean with a shipping container-sized data center carrying 12 racks, containing 864 servers. Furthermore, underwater data centers were tested in Los Angeles. As this testing has triggered speculations, cloud giants like AWS, Google and other leading cloud service providers could also be interested in investing in this testing.

Data centers are placed underwater to utilize the benefits of sea temperature, sustainability, low latency, quick provisioning, and utilization of natural energy sources.

Temperature

The key benefit of placing data centers underwater is the low temperature. The ocean bed is always cool which helps in nullifying the heat produced by the servers. All the cooling is naturally produced by sea at zero cost. While in on-premise data centers, cooling the servers is a significant component in the standard operating procedure and it involves certain cost. Therefore, if underwater

Fig 1. Data Centers and Server underwater

data centers can reduce cooling costs, then they are able to hold an operating cost advantage over land-based data centers.

Efficiency

Since more than 50% of the world population lives within 200 kilometer of the coastal areas, underwater data centers can solve the low latency issue by tuning the time it takes to reach the destination from the source. Underwater data centers can deliver low-latency connectivity to coastal populations.

Time to Market

In general, underwater data centers are configured as prefabricated and standardized modules which expedites the construction and delivery schedules. The deployment time frame for the underwater data center is nearly 3 months from the factory to go live, the primary goal of these data centers is to deploy the facilities in rapid mode when compared to the on-premise data centers. The policies and procedures required for underwater data centers are moderate when compared to on-premise data centers.

Reliability

As the data centers are built with prefabricated modules and precise specifications in a controlled factory environment, they are highly reliable, and the performance is seamless. The data centers could be re-furbished after every five years and redeployed too and the process continues for 4 cycles.

How underwater data centers can help the environment

Underwater data centers consume renewable es that produce no greenhouse gas. For example, renewable energy sources for underwater data centers include offshore wind, solar, tidal, and wave power.

No water is required for cooling or any other operational purpose.

These facilities do not utilize the fresh water which are used for the domestic purposes.

When compared with on-premise facilities, underwater data centers operate with a “perfect” water usage effectiveness (WUE) of exactly zero.

On monitoring, the consumption of power, temperature, internal humidity levels, fan speed, sound, and speed of the current, smoke and other energy sources are less when compared to on-premise data centers.

Oxygen-free environment under water allows servers to last much longer by avoiding the corrosion.

While the underwater datacenters and servers are in multiple phases of testing, the results may be favoring the entities in POC or testing mode. However, when mass number of servers and data centers are operated underwater in production mode, it might be possible that the results are unexpected. As the oceans are already polluted with many types of wastes, the marine life is threatened, and results are reflected in the coastal areas. While data centers and servers are being planned to migrate to underwater, safety of the water bodies should also be ensured which directly impacts humans too.

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About the Author

Sundar has more than 13 years of experience in IT, IT security, IDAM, PAM and MDM project and products. He is interested in developing innovative mobile applications which saves time and money. He is also a travel enthusiast.

Sundaramoorthy S

"Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."

- Viktor Frankl

Secure Your Remote Workforce with Robust Identity and Access Management

Work-from-home and hybrid work arrangements are here to stay. Hence, remote workforce management that includes Identity and Access Management (IAM) plays a critical role. Prioritizing IAM can strengthen the security posture of your remote workforce by controlling and managing user access to company resources. It can safeguard your organization’s valuable data and assets by reducing the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches. IAM tools also enable centralized user management and simplified administration for quick provisioning and deprovisioning of user accounts.

This blog captures some key discussion points from a webinar conducted by GS Lab | GAVS titled Enable Your Remote Workforce with Secured Identity and Access Management. The panelists Mr. Suhail Ismail - APAC Director from OneLogin, responsible for leading OneLogin’s operations across Asia Pacific and Japan; and Mr. Mrinal Srivastava – Director Cybersecurity at GS Lab | GAVS, shared their insights.

Despite the many advantages of a work-from-home setup, remote workforce management poses

challenges such as maintaining effective communication, ensuring productivity and accountability, providing adequate technical support, and fostering team collaboration. Nonetheless, the biggest challenge is data security. Security remains an issue in remote workforce management due to the decentralized nature of remote work, reliance on personal networks and devices, increased exposure to cyber threats and potential data breaches.

Challenges in the Post-Perimeter World

The post-perimeter world presents organizations with numerous cybersecurity and data protection challenges. Securing remote access becomes crucial with the rise of remote work and cloud-based services. Some common security concerns include unauthorized access to cloud apps or hackers targeting weak or breached passwords. Organizations must navigate the complexities of managing user identities, ensuring proper authentication and authorization,

and protecting sensitive data across diverse devices and networks.

Privacy concerns are amplified as personal and corporate information traverse multiple endpoints and platforms in an increasingly interconnected and boundary-less environment. Staying compliant with evolving regulations, such as data privacy laws, adds layers of complexity. As the boundaries of the traditional network perimeter blur, organizations must adopt robust security measures, implement strong access controls, and leverage advanced technologies to mitigate these challenges and safeguard their digital assets.

There are also compliance challenges concerning data privacy and security. With data dispersed across multiple devices and networks, ensuring compliance with regulations such as GDPR or CCPA becomes complex. Meeting requirements for data protection, consent management, and breach notification necessitates robust policies, processes, and technologies to mitigate compliance risks. Since workers are dispersed, no audit trail of all login behavior exists, and companies have no simple way to enforce standard controls.

Measures to Secure the Remote Workforce

There are several measures to secure the remote workforce. Here are the most recommended methods:

Provide remote users easy access to on-premise and cloud applications by eliminating passwords using Single Sign On (SSO) - SSO is a valuable approach in the post-perimeter world. SSO enables users to authenticate once and gain seamless access to multiple applications, reducing the need for multiple passwords. By integrating SSO with identity providers, organizations can enhance

security, streamline user access management, and improve user experience. This increases productivity, reduces the risk of password-related vulnerabilities, and simplifies the authentication process for remote users.

Implement a smart Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) solution for an added layer of security – In the post-perimeter world, an MFA solution provides an additional layer of security. By combining multiple factors like passwords, biometrics, or token-based verification, MFA verifies the identity of users accessing sensitive systems or data. This mitigates the risks of password-related attacks and unauthorized access. MFA enhances security by adding an extra barrier that hackers must overcome, reducing the likelihood of successful breaches, and protecting critical assets from unauthorized access.

Enable quick onboarding and disabling users to their machines and applications - Streamlining user provisioning and de-provisioning processes ensures efficient access management, reducing the risk of unauthorized access. Automated user lifecycle management tools and robust IAM systems enable organizations to provision and revoke user access within minutes. This enhances security by promptly granting appropriate access to authorized users and revoking access for terminated employees or individuals no longer requiring access, safeguarding sensitive data and systems from potential breaches.

Another important mechanism is to secure applications typically accessed from the internal network - Network segmentation helps isolate critical applications. In conclusion, start by implementing strong access controls, including role-based user authentication and authorization mechanisms. Employ encryption protocols to protect data in transit and at rest. Regularly update

and patch applications to address vulnerabilities. Utilize intrusion detection and prevention systems to detect and mitigate potential threats. Conduct security assessments and penetration testing to identify weaknesses and strengthen defenses. Lastly, educate employees on security best practices to foster a security-conscious culture within the organization.

This blog is a gist of the webinar. You can watch the entire discussion here.

Complex IT landscapes and the increasing sophistication of threats have mandated the inclusion of identity and access management into strategic IT planning. GS Lab | GAVS helps customers craft a compelling roadmap and strategy for the deployment of a robust IAM solution - across the IT ecosystem including the cloud and IoT, in complete alignment with your business imperatives. You can find more information on our IAM offerings here.

About the Author

Mrinal serves as the Director - Cyber Security for GS Lab | GAVS. He started as developer in IAM space and grew to Solutions Architect. He brings deep expertise in analyzing customer environments, design solutions to solve complex cyber security use-cases and build robust solutions. Mrinal has helped numerous organizations to plan their roadmap for digitization using market leading security products and solutions and rolled out those in cost optimized and time effective manner.

Mrinal Srivastava

World Environment Day

June

Digital Product EngineeringDesigning your Future

Business agility is key and constant innovation is critical to succeeding in the new digital business. Staying relevant demands quick yet meaningful option of emerging technologies and modern products that are high performing and deliver compelling user experiences. To keep up with this digital hypergrowth, software development has morphed into digital product engineering to enable the rapid delivery of innovative products and features at scale.

GS Lab | GAVS conducted a very insightful webinar on digital product engineering. This blog captures some key discussion points and takeaways from the webinar titled ‘Digital Product EngineeringDesigning your Future.’ The link to the entire webinar is available at the end of the blog.

Mr. Balaji Uppili, Chief Customer Success Officer at GS Lab | GAVS, moderated the session. He has over 23 years of experience in the IT industry. The panelists were: Mr. Chinmay Deodhar, an experienced entrepreneur in the healthcare technology domain and co-founder of Croleon

Innovation Labs; and Mr. Mandar Gadre, Director of Engineering (IoT), GS Lab | GAVS, providing end-to-end solutions to healthcare and manufacturing verticals.

Digital Product Engineering and Healthcare

Digital product engineering in healthcare is about leveraging the latest technologies to help patients. Simply put, it is a marriage between current clinical needs and the available technologies to fulfill it. To successfully create a healthcare medical device for example, the company must focus on taking it from a concept level through the product engineering journey. This involves creating a proof of concept, building a prototype, and arriving at a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to be given to the first set of users for testing.

Simply put, the zero-to-one journey is the defining factor of digital product engineering. While embarking on the journey, it is essential to consider mobility, user experience, agility, and scalability.

The journey starts with a clear definition of the problem statement for the user. Once that is defined, the next step is to have a minimum set of features to develop to prove that these features can start to solve that problem. Then come the architectural considerations and the technology choices while focusing on user-centricity. In the case of healthcare, compliance needs have to be taken into consideration from the beginning.

Difference between Digital Product Engineering and Digital Transformation

Digital product engineering is a subset of the digital transformation journey. To achieve digital transformation in totality, one may have to do multiple digital product engineering initiatives. There is a big difference between software and hardware products’ needs when implementing new technology.

For instance, when it is software, the manufacturer can quickly learn from the users by making a few edits, performing A/B testing, carrying out limited launches, and learning from that before the final launch. With the hardware element, there is an additional manufacturing cycle in the whole implementation journey, along with the regulatory requirement in the healthcare industry.

On the other hand, there could be cases where certain products developed on legacy tech stack or frameworks needs to be modernized. While this is not entirely zero to one, bringing in the digital transformation thought process is still necessary as it needs a modernization journey.

Key Tenets of a Digital Product Engineering Journey

From a healthcare standpoint, patient benefit should be the primary focus of product engineering. A business looking to enter a digital

product engineering journey, whether for a product or service, must focus primarily on five critical parameters - how to improve patient care, lower the cost of patient care, reduce hospital time, reduce the pain points in the current process, and enhance the quality of therapy offered.

Some of the secondary focus points when it comes to product engineering are the utility of the device itself – if it is going to be battery powered, the size of the battery, the size of the device, and the type of communication technology to be used.

To give an example, startups venturing into medical device manufacturing always look to showcase new technology to differentiate from their competitors. They are eager to show their USP and prove their novelty in the market. But in the healthcare industry, that is a double-edged sword. To get regulatory approval and get to the market soon, it is imperative to show that you are doing exactly what everyone else is doing to prove that the product does not put the patient’s life at risk. The biggest challenge here will be to balance innovation and technology when creating a new product from the ground up. This is to get patients to use the product and to have regulatory bodies approve the product.

While there are some challenges, the main journey is driven by what patients need and how the product can benefit the patient in the long term. Usability and security are two determining factors for getting the product approved. And of course, in healthcarea critical point to consider is compliance.

Finally, medical device manufacturers must also consider the feedback cycle in the digital product engineering journey. Hearing from real users and making modifications to the product is quintessential to the success and long-term use of the product.

This blog offers only a high-level gist of the webinar. Here, you can watch the entire discussion, including the poll questions and the experts’ take on audience questions.

GS Lab | GAVS periodically organizes insightful webinars with tech leaders, the leadership team, and industry thought leaders to explore current and emerging trends.

To watch all our webinar recordings, please visit https://www.gavstech.com/videos/

About the Author

Mandar has research and industry experience of over 16 years, spanning domains like manufacturing, IoT, medical devices, and innovative product development. He holds a B. Tech from IIT Bombay and Ph. D. from Arizona State University.

Mandar Gadre

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt