September 08, 2024
Kannan Subbiah
FCA | CISA | CGEIT | CCISO | GRC Consulting | Independent Director | Enterprise & Solution Architecture | BU Soft Tech | itTrident | Former Sr. VP & CTO of MF Utilities
The software development engine within a company is like the power grid: it’s a given that it works, and there are no celebrations or accolades for keeping the lights on. When it fails or goes down, however, everyone’s upset and what’s left is assigning blame and determining culpability. Unfortunately, in many industries, the responsible application and development of software is not considered until there’s a problem. There is no “working well” for a developer in an ecosystem without insight and intuition as to how difficult the workload is for various projects or positions. The black and white reality is simply ”Working” or “Not working, what the hell is going on, do we need to fire them, why is everything so slow lately?” This can be incredibly frustrating for developers. In my own experience, the person in the worst position is the developer brought in to clean up another developer’s mess. It’s now your responsibility not only to convince management that they need to slow down to give you time to fix things (which will stall sales), but also to architect everything, orchestrate the rollout, and coordinate with sales goals and marketing.
Contemporary attackers carefully select high-value organizations and infrastructure to cripple until substantial ransoms are paid — frequently upwards of seven figures for large corporations, hospitals, pipelines, and municipalities. Present-day ransomware groups’ techniques reflect a chilling professionalization of tactics. They leverage military-grade encryption, identity-hiding cryptocurrencies, data-stealing side efforts, and penetration testing of victims before attacks to determine maximum tolerances. Hackers often gain initial entry by purchasing access to systems from underground brokers, then deploy multipart extortion schemes, including threatening distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, if demands aren’t promptly met. Ransomware perpetrators also tap advancements like artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate attacks through malicious code generation, underground dark web communities to coordinate schemes, and initial access markets to reduce overhead. ... Ransomware groups continue to innovate their attack methods. Supply chain attacks have become increasingly common. By compromising a single software supplier, attackers can access the networks of thousands of downstream customers.
“With zero-touch provisioning unlocking greater time efficiencies, these agencies can more optimally serve the public,” he says. “For example, research shows that shaving mere seconds off emergency response calls yields more lives saved.” Government agencies also can reach wider and broader audiences and increase constituent trust by delivering crucial food and mobile healthcare services faster. Even agencies with strong budgets can benefit from more efficient spending thanks to zero-trust networking, DePreta adds. “By eliminating the need for manual intervention, government agencies can optimize budgets to better serve their communities and become smarter in the way they deliver services. From public services such as mobile healthcare clinics to public safety activities such as emergency response and disaster relief, ZTP enables government agencies to do more with less,” he says. ... “You can take a couple of devices and ship them to a branch, and someone who is not necessarily a technical expert in that branch can unbox them and plug them in. You are then up and running right away,” DeBacker says.
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Leaders who focus on making work more meaningful and expressing their appreciation inspire and motivate employees. Previous McKinsey research shows that executives at organizations who invest time and effort in changing employee mindsets from the start are four times more likely than those who didn’t to say their change programs were successful. Indeed, employees notice when their bosses don’t change their own behaviors to adapt to the goals of transformation. ... he best ideas for how to implement transformation initiatives may come from frontline employees who are closest to the customer. Organizations that encourage employees to pursue innovation and continuous improvement see a higher share of employees that own initiatives or reach milestones during transformations. ... Once leaders have elevated a core group of employees to own initiatives or milestones, they should turn to empowering a broader group to serve as role models who can activate others. These change leaders—influencers, managers, and supervisors—play a visible role in shaping and amplifying the behaviors that enhance organizational performance while counteracting behaviors that get in the way of success.
An organization adopting digital twins needs to be well-networked. "The biggest roadblock to digital systems is connectivity, at the network and human levels," Thierry Klein, president of Nokia Bell Labs Solutions Research, told ZDNET. "Digital twins are most effective when multiple digital twins are integrated, but this requires collaboration among stakeholders, a robust digital network, and systems that can be connected to the digital twin." ... The ability to represent physical environments in real time also presents challenges to digital twin environments. "With digital twins, you're generally relying on your model to run parallel with some real-life physical system so you can understand certain effects that might be impacting the system," Naveen Rao, vice president of AI for Databricks, told ZDNET. ... "The lack of open, interoperable data standards presents another significant roadblock. "Antiquated technology, legacy proprietary data formats, and analog processes create silos of 'dark data' -- or data that's inaccessible to teams across the asset lifecycle," Shelly Nooner, vice president of innovation and platform for Trimble, told ZDNET.
The first step in preparing for safe and successful AI adoption is establishing the necessary C-Suite governance structures. This needs to be a point of urgency, as far more advanced and powerful AI capabilities, including Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), where AI may be able to perform human cognitive tasks better than the smartest human being, loom on the horizon. BCG published a leadership report earlier this year entitled “Every C-Suite Member Is Now a Chief AI Officer.” ... Corporate leadership and boards must determine how best to manage the risks and opportunities presented by AI to serve its customers and to protect its stakeholders. To begin with, they must identify where management responsibility should sit, and how these responsibilities should be structured. BCG’s report states that from the CEO on down, there needs to be at minimum, “a basic understanding of GenAI, particularly with respect to security and privacy risks,” adding that business leaders “must have confidence that all decisions strike the right balance between risk and business benefit.”