IT Business Edge

How DeFi is Reshaping the Future of Finance

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 23:28:30 +0000

What do you think about when you hear the words “the future of finance?” For most people, images of mobile payments, online banking, and other cutting-edge technologies come to mind. But what about decentralization?

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, decentralized finance (DeFi) is a subset of blockchain technology that focuses on financial applications powered by distributed ledgers. In essence, DeFi represents the next generation of financial services, where individual users have more control and transparency over their finances.

Over the years, DeFi has changed the way we think about money, and with some of the key benefits of using DeFi, there are many possibilities this technology holds for the future.

Also read: Potential Use Cases of Blockchain Technology for Cybersecurity

What is DeFi?

DeFi is a term used for Ethereum and other blockchain applications that allow for a peer-to-peer transaction without needing an intermediary such as a bank, central bank, or other financial institution. Because there is no central authority, all transactions are visible to everyone involved, providing more transparency and accountability.

In addition, DeFi applications tend to be more flexible and faster than traditional centralized systems, which can often be bogged down by bureaucracy. Moreover, users have direct control over their own funds in a DeFi system, meaning they can decide how to use their money without going through a third party.

While DeFi still has some associated risks, the potential benefits make it an appealing option for those looking for alternatives to traditional financial systems.

Current State and Potential of DeFi

In 2021, some outlets reported that DeFi’s growth on the Ethereum blockchain was 780% year-over-year. By the first quarter of 2022, the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols was over $172 billion.

The current state of DeFi is characterized by four key trends: composability, yield farming, DeFi insurance, and governance.

Composability

Composability refers to the ability of different components to work together to achieve the desired outcome. In the context of DeFi, composability refers to the ability of different protocols and platforms to interoperate to create new financial applications and products.

This interoperability is made possible by using open standards and APIs (application programming interfaces), allowing developers to build on existing infrastructure rather than starting from scratch.

This isn’t to say that composability hasn’t existed in traditional finance. For example, when you use PayPal to buy something on Amazon or pay for an Uber, you use two different platforms that can work together. However, DeFi takes composability to the next level by making it possible to create a trustless system.

Every transaction and activity is verifiable on the blockchain. Ethereum is the neutral settlement layer, and no single entity wields power. In addition, the permissionless nature of DeFi means anyone can create new financial products and applications that wouldn’t be possible with traditional infrastructure.

As more protocols and platforms begin to interoperate with each other, we can expect an exponential increase in the number and variety of available DeFi applications and products.

Yield Farming

Yield farming is the practice of staking cryptocurrencies to earn rewards. This can be done by providing liquidity to various exchanges or participating in staking pools.

Yield farmers typically use multiple protocols to maximize their rewards. Due to the high risk involved in yield farming, many farmers diversify their portfolios across multiple projects.

Yield farming generally offers higher rewards than traditional staking, but it is also a more volatile practice. Therefore, yield farmers must carefully monitor the price of the tokens they are staking to avoid losses. Additionally, they must be aware of rug pulls, smart contract hacks, and other risks associated with yield farming.

Yield farming has become a popular way to earn cryptocurrency rewards despite the risks. However, it remains to be seen whether this practice is sustainable in the long term.

DeFi insurance

DeFi insurance is the missing piece to bring DeFi to par with traditional finance.

DeFi insurance has arisen out of necessity, as evidenced by the estimated $10 billion lost in the DeFi industry to fraud in 2021. Insurance protects against adverse events in the space, such as exchange hacks, smart contract failures, and stablecoin price crashes. Anyone can provide DeFi insurance by joining a pool.

In addition to the aforementioned coverage, other possibilities for DeFi insurance include DvP (delivery versus payment) protocols and flash loans. However, despite the advantages offered by DeFi insurance, the claims process is still uncertain. Consequently, more research is needed to assess the effectiveness of this new tool.

See Blockchain Hackers Cost Crypto Ecosystems More Than $1B in Q1 2022

Governance

Several DeFi platforms are resoundingly reaffirming the blockchain community’s dedication to decentralization by making governance tokens available to users.

A governance token grants users a certain amount of power over the platform’s protocol, products, and future features. Governance tokens are frequently created using decentralized protocols that encourage community-driven development and self-sustainability.

Decentralized networking projects require governance techniques to make critical decisions about protocol modifications, recruitment, and even governance framework adjustments.

For example, a borrowing and lending platform may utilize its governing procedure to calculate the required amount. In other words, the decisions made by a project’s stakeholders through its governing system can directly impact its success or failure.

With the right approach, governance initiatives have the potential to usher in a new era of decentralized development and cooperation.

Also read: Top 5 Benefits of AI in Banking and Finance

Challenges of DeFi

As the DeFi sector has grown, one key challenge is ensuring the playing field is level for all market participants, regardless of their size or location. Another is the need for stronger global regulatory coordination to prevent DeFi protocols from being used for illicit purposes. Finally, as DeFi protocols continue to evolve and mature, there is a need to develop more robust governance mechanisms to ensure they can adapt and respond to changing conditions.

While the challenges facing DeFi are significant, so too are the rewards. With its ability to empower individuals and communities worldwide with greater access to financial services, DeFi represents a vital step forward in achieving financial inclusion for all.

Future of DeFi

The DeFi space is still in its early stages, and it remains to be seen what the future holds. However, with its ability to reduce barriers to entry, increase access to financial services, and enable more democratic governance structures, DeFi has the potential to reshape the future of finance for the better.

Near instant and secure transactions is a critical area to watch. With traditional finance, transactions can take days or even weeks to clear. This is not the case with DeFi. Due to the decentralized nature of the sector, transactions are settled almost instantly, making it ideal for activities such as trading or lending, where time is of the essence.

Easier borrowing and lending are inevitable with DeFi. In the traditional financial system, it can be challenging to get access to loans because banks and other financial institutions are often reluctant to lend to individuals with no collateral. However, in the DeFi space, you can use your crypto assets as collateral for a loan. This opens up access to credit for many people who would otherwise be financially excluded.

Cross-communication and the ability to exchange assets are other areas of interest. In traditional finance, there are often silos between different asset classes. For example, you might have a bank account for your savings, a brokerage account for your stocks and shares, and a pension for your retirement savings. However, new DeFi applications allow users to easily trade between different asset classes without going through a centralized exchange. This increases efficiency and reduces costs.

Honesty and trust are two values that are important in any financial system. Unfortunately, they are often lacking in traditional finance. For example, banks have been known to mis-sell products to customers or charge hidden fees. However, in the DeFi space, everything is out in the open and transparent. This helps to build trust between users and developers and creates a more open financial system overall.

All in all, there are many reasons why DeFi could reshape the future of finance for the better.

The post How DeFi is Reshaping the Future of Finance appeared first on IT Business Edge.

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Enterprise Software Startups: What It Takes To Get VC Funding

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 22:45:29 +0000

While financial markets have rallied in recent weeks, there are still many enterprise software companies that are trading at depressed levels. It’s common for there to be losses of 50%+ for the past year. Just a few include Okta, Twilio, and DocuSign.

This has also put tremendous pressure on funding for startups. During the second quarter, venture capitalists (VCs) struck 24% fewer deals on a quarter-over-quarter basis, according to PitchBook. And the IPO market is having its worst year in a decade, further hurting startup funding.

“VCs are definitely getting more selective,” said Muddu Sudhakar, the CEO and founder of Aisera. “The bar is much higher now.”

As for his own firm, Sudhakar was able to raise $90 million in a Series D round. The lead was Goldman Sachs and other investors included True Ventures, Zoom, and Khosla Ventures.

It helped that Aisera has a unique platform that leverages predictive AI for managing customer service, IT and sales. The technology has shown to be effective in lowering operating costs.

Also read: 5 Top VCs For Data Startups

Getting Funded in a Down Market

So what are some other enterprise software startups that have been able to buck today’s tough environment? What are the factors for success in current markets?

Let’s take a look at a few success stories.

CleverTap: AI-based User Engagement

“The best way to attract investors is to build a growing and sustainable business,” said Sunil Thomas, co-founder and executive chairman of CleverTap. “Focus on unit economics, growth, cash efficiency, and profitability.”

The strategy has worked out quite well for him. In August, CleverTap announced a Series D funding for $105 million. The lead on the deal was CDPQ, which wrote a check for $75 million. Other investors were Tiger Global and Sequoia India.

CleverTap software leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to engage and retain users. Since the launch six years ago, the company has amassed a customer base of 1,200 brands.

“The overall funding environment has gone back to basics,” said Thomas. “Funding is definitely available for great ideas — at the early stages — and sustainable businesses at the growth stage.”

See the Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software for 2022

airSlate: Document Automation

airSlate raised $51.5 million in June. The lead investors were G Squared and UiPath. The valuation of the round came to $1.25 billion.

Founded in 2008, airSlate has created an automation platform that allows for e-signatures, PDF editing, document management and workflow solutions. There are over 100 million users.

“So what attracts investors?” said Borya Shakhnovich, CEO of airSlate. “Put simply, financials that speak for themselves. This means breaking even early on in the company’s journey, procuring impressive revenue figures, and demonstrating growth of the customer base.

“Touting solid financials for venture capital interest might sound painstakingly intuitive, but it’s not always that simple,” Shakhnovich added. “I often liken investors to shoes — there’s a lot of them to choose from, and some will fit better than others. A lot of founders feel like their purpose is to win every investor, but that’s not always possible. Many investors demand brand recognition and a firm customer base over financial stability. The best approach is to stand by your organization’s strength and identify like-minded investors.”

Also read: Top RPA Tools 2022: Robotic Process Automation Software

Tropic: Procurement Analytics

Earlier in the year, Tropic raised $40 million in a Series A round that Insight Partners led. The company’s software allows for better procurement. Keep in mind that the average company overpays by 30% for software.

Some of the customers are Vimeo, Zapier and Qualtrics. The company manages over $300 million in spend.

“At Tropic, we have a unique vantage point in that we can see how businesses are truly performing based on the purchasing behaviors of hundreds of companies,” said Dave Campbell, CEO and co-founder of Tropic. “We power these purchases, which gives us line of sight into who is performing well, who is churning, and who is struggling to get traction.”

Campbell points out the following learnings for those companies getting funding:

They offer something that thrives in a downturn like cost-cutting and efficiency-improving approaches.
They emphasize retention over growth. Companies raising now are in the 120% NRR (Net Revenue Retention) range, even if they are only growing 50% year-over-year. 300% growth with 50% NRR won’t attract investors.
They have strong efficiency. Sales efficiency of over 1 and CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) payback of less than 12 months.
They power a mission-critical service. Nice-to-haves are out.
They are willing to discount their valuation.

Lightning AI

In June, Lightning AI announced a Series B funding of $40 million. The lead was Coatue and other investors included Index, Bain, First Minute Capital, and the Chainsmokers’ Mantis VC.

The company has an open source platform to build AI models. It has been downloaded more than 22 million times since 2019 and used by 10,000 organizations across the globe.

“These latest changes in the funding environment have made it more important than ever for businesses to make it explicitly clear how they create value for their users and customers,” said William Falcon, CEO and co-founder of Lightning AI. “We expect to see an increasing amount of focus placed on the ability to synthesize what a business does into clear and well-articulated value propositions and a larger focus on efficient growth backed by strong unit economics.”

Falcon stresses that founders need to find investors that align with the vision of the company. True, in a rough funding environment, it can be difficult to say “no” to an offer of millions of dollars. But for the long-term prospects, this may be the right choice.

“While there’s no shortage of MLOps products today, it was important to us from the beginning that we found investors who understood that Lightning AI is not building simply another machine learning platform, we are building the foundational platform that will unite the machine learning space,” said Falcon.

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Top RPA Tools 2022: Robotic Process Automation Software

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 19:30:00 +0000

Automation is the way of the future with 68 percent of global employees believing that automation will help them be more productive at work. But figuring out how to add automation to workflows can be a challenge for many organizations. Robotic process automation (RPA) software uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to learn and improve manual processes to reduce the workloads of human employees.

Choosing RPA software for your business

What Is RPA software?
What Are the Benefits of RPA?
Best RPA Tools
- UiPath
- Blue Prism
- Automation Anywhere
- Kofax
- Pega
- Microsoft
- NICE
- Rocketbot
Other RPA tools to Consider
RPA Product Comparison
RPA Buying Considerations

What is RPA Software?

Robotic process automation (RPA) is a type of software that allows companies to automate business processes and allow employees to focus on higher value tasks. Using the software, organizations can build and implement software “robots” that mimic human actions. These robots can identify and process information on a screen, extract data, and perform the right actions to navigate through systems.

RPA software has many applications and can automate tasks as simple as processing online transactions and as complicated as performing routine security audits. By automating repetitive processes, organizations can lower their operating costs and turn their attention to improving business operations.

Also read: Top Automation Software 2022: Managing Your IT Processes

What are the Benefits of RPA?

RPA software offers companies a variety of benefits, including better productivity, faster digital transformation, higher employee engagement, and more accuracy.

Improved productivity

With RPA, employees don’t have to perform the repetitive tasks that can monopolize their day. This leaves them with more time to focus on high-value work, and it offers them the opportunity to innovate their processes. This not only leads to higher productivity in their day-to-day work, but it can also allow them to improve productivity for the company as a whole. And that productivity isn’t just limited to individual contributors. Even 20 percent of a CEO’s workload could be automated with RPA. Focusing employees on higher-value tasks results in much greater value per employee for the organization too.

Faster digital transformations

RPA software also enables businesses to speed up their digital transformations. The software robots can perform automated tasks faster and more accurately than humans, and they don’t need breaks. This means that automation can run in the background or overnight while employees spend their in-office time performing more complicated activities. According to a survey by McKinsey, 83 percent of decision-makers in IT say that automation is a critical part of digital transformation.

Also read: The Growing Relevance of Hyperautomation in ITOps

Higher employee engagement

When employees don’t have to spend their days performing repetitive tasks, they’re more likely to be engaged with their work. Automating the duller work gives employees the ability to focus on more interesting and rewarding work, leaving them with a larger sense of accomplishment. A recent Forrester study found that 57% of companies saw higher employee engagement with RPA software. Improving employee engagement reduces turnover and keeps businesses running smoothly.

Fewer errors

Machines tend to produce fewer errors than human employees, even while working faster. By giving repetitive work to RPA software, organizations don’t have to worry about their employees “zoning out” during boring but important work and accidentally inputting the wrong information. Instead, RPA handles these mundane processes and ensures the necessary accuracy. In fact, the same study by Forrester also found that 57 percent of organizations say that RPA solutions reduce manual errors in their work.

Also read: Finding Value in Robotic Data Automation

Best RPA Tools

The following vendors provide some of the best RPA solutions on the market, based on the features they offer and their user reviews.

UiPath

UiPath is an impressive and user-friendly RPA tool that efficiently and quickly allows users to automate their manual processes, created with the purpose to simplify, speed up, and optimize digital transformation for enterprises.

UiPath uses AI to automatically scan a business’s processes and determine the best ones to automate. It not only automates monotonous activities like data entry, email marketing, and web scraping but also routine duties like notifications, documentation, and scheduled follow-ups. In addition to automation that’s easy to set up, UiPath has capabilities such as encryption and role-based access control as well as the ability to handle processes regardless of their count or complexity.

The solution also includes a submission hub where employees can submit requests for processes they’d like to have automated. It includes options for no-code, low-code, and full-code, enabling users of any expertise to apply automation to their department. UiPath also offers a Task Capture feature, so businesses can automatically document their processes and ensure every employee is performing them the same way. It also includes both attended and unattended automation, giving companies control when they need it and a hands-off approach when they don’t.

Key Differentiators

Workflow Drag and Drop: UiPath offers users the ability to build visual path processes through its drag-and-drop functionality upon the graphical interface and convert these processes into visual workflows.
Advanced Screen and Data Scraping Options: UiPath’s Screen Scraping scrapes or extracts structured data from applications or web pages. Through data scraping, users can scrape data from tabular content, search queries, and other repetitive structures.
Image and Textual Automation: Where UI automation is unfeasible in virtual machine contexts or where usual approaches are not enough to find selectors, image and textual automation steps in through UiPath’s tools that support it.

Cautions: It can be costly to coordinate and scale multiple robots, and the solution can be resource-intensive.

Blue Prism

As a global leader in enterprise RPA and intelligent automation, Blue Prism is transforming how its users work in over 170 countries and 70 industry verticals by eliminating inefficiencies and enabling its customers to focus valuable hours of work on their businesses.

The low-code automation platform combines RPA with artificial intelligence (AI) and expanded cognitive abilities to give customers an AI-equipped digital workforce.

Key Differentiators

Intelligent Automation Platform (IAP): Blue Prism uses a combination of the power of AI and machine learning to provide digital labor that takes over mundane and repetitive tasks that plague human workers, which allows these workers to focus on initiatives that drive value for their organizations.
Design Studio: Blue Prism’s Design Studio offers users a drag-and-drop approach to process automation building and allows users to reuse events and actions that create processes across the organization.
Digital Workforce: The digital workforce offered by Blue Prism enables customers to automate their enterprises through autonomous software robots and clever technologies that imitate and learn business processes akin to humans.

Cautions: Blue Prism lacks a multi-tenanted cloud version, and the user interface (UI) feels slightly dated.

Also read: Blue Prism vs UiPath: RPA Tool Comparison

Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere uses intelligent software bots that carry out repetitive, tedious, and manual tasks to yield drastic productivity gains, improved employee engagement, and optimized customer experience. It analyzes a company’s processes and highlights the ones that would see the highest ROI from automation, allowing the organization to prioritize its transformation efforts.

The platform empowers customers to automate their end-to-end business processes by offering a cloud-native and web-based automation platform that combines RPA, AI, machine learning, and analytics. The extensibility of the platform, Automation 360, ensures it is easily integrable with enterprise technologies offered by Automation Anywhere’s technology partners.

Key Differentiators

Bot Store: Automation Anywhere turbocharges customers’ automation journey through Bot Store, the largest RPA marketplace. The vast selection of prebuilt intelligent automation solutions helps users shorten their time to value.
RPA Workspace: Automation Anywhere automates all repetitive digital tasks and processes through the automation engine at the core of Automation 360. It bridges technology islands and transforms disconnected processes into automated and unified operations.
IQ Bot: IQ Bot automatically classifies, extracts, and validates information from business documents and emails through a combination of AI technologies like machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and fuzzy logic.

Cautions: Some modules lack the flexibility of similar products. Conceptualizing and debugging Automation Anywhere has a steep learning curve.

Also read: UiPath vs Automation Anywhere: RPA Tool Comparison

Kofax

Kofax provides intelligent automation solutions to empower customers to transform their information-intensive business workflows to improve employee efficiency and smoother customer experience. Kofax delivers automation in two products: Kofax RPA and Kofax TotalAgility.

Kofax RPA enables end-to-end automation, so employees can focus on higher-value work. Kofax TotalAgility provides an integrated platform for the automation of content-intensive workflows, combining low-code process design, AI-driven document processing, and more. It is also integrable with Kofax RPA for task automation.

Key Differentiators

Low-Code Design Environment: Kofax RPA provides a modern robot design studio for professional and citizen developers to design robots that visually recognize objects, applications, and screen areas in real time.
Analytics and Process Intelligence: Kofax TotalAgility enables users to enhance decision making, reporting, and workflow optimization through comprehensive analytics across workflows. Kofax RPA has out-of-the-box dashboards to provide insights into robot operations and system performance.
Intelligent Screen Automation: Kofax RPA’s intelligent screen automation empowers robots to capture screen images and locate and identify user interface elements like buttons, labels, and text boxes within application environments such as Citrix.

Cautions: The user interface is dated.

Pega RPA

Pega RPA combines artificial intelligence, customer engagement, and intelligent automation capabilities to enable digital transformation. It empowers employees to make the most out of their time and focus on the customer by letting bots automate repetitive work.

The tool also bridges the gaps between different systems, as the time taken to navigate multiple applications is eliminated. Pega RPA removes silos and integrates its users’ legacy systems. It also speeds up processes, eradicates errors, and gets work done efficiently.

Key Differentiators

Attended RPA: Pega RPA enables humans and bots to work side-by-side, as its Attended RPA gives employees the ability to provide the outcomes that customers require faster and with greater accuracy.
Unattended RPA: Pega’s unattended RPA bots provide optimization and alignment toward digital transformation, as they break through the barriers of legacy systems and old user interfaces.
Auto-Balancing: To make the most of digital workforces, Pega RPA Auto-Balancing enables users to automatically optimize their robot resources. It ensures users derive value from their process automation investments.

Cautions: The tool is not as intuitive to use as some competitors.

Microsoft Power Automate

Microsoft Power Automate enables its users to create automated processes using flows, drag-and-drop tools, and prebuilt connectors in the hundreds to automate repetitive and monotonous tasks easily.

Power Automate provides Process Advisor to record and visualize end-to-end processes and provide recommendations on automation opportunities. Microsoft Power Automate’s RPA capabilities empower customers to connect legacy and new systems and use UI-based automation with desktop flows to lessen repetitive tasks.

Key Differentiators

Attended and Unattended RPA: With Microsoft Power Automate, users can execute desktop flows or respond to prompts on their Windows devices as well as execute desktop flows autonomously on virtual machines or Windows devices.
Auto-Scaling With Hosted RPA Bots in Preview: Power Automate enables the preview of hosted RPA bots. Users can use basic parameters to create a group of bots and use it to automatically scale virtual machines for their unattended RPA scenarios.
Ready-to-Use RPA Examples: Microsoft Power Automate for desktop provides users with an ever-growing library of ready-to-use desktop flows to increase the momentum of adoption and innovation. Users can launch examples and explore their logic and customize them as their own.

Cautions: Microsoft Power Automate comes with a steep learning curve, as some of its aspects require the users to have coding ability.

NICE

NICE RPA unlocks employees’ potential to deliver outstanding customer experiences by bringing people and robots together to enable intelligent process optimization. Through a single platform, NICE manages and develops its RPA portfolio.

NICE also holds some of the largest scale automation projects and drives enterprise-wide digital transformation. NICE’s RPA bots work consistently and effectively as workforce multipliers, since they increase throughput capacity and empower organizations to hit their return on investment (ROI) goals faster.

Key Differentiators

NEVA: NICE Employee Virtual Attendant (NEVA) brings together people and robots to help employees satisfy their key performance indicators (KPIs) and their service operations business goals. Employees can use NEVA attended bots for attended RPA.
Automation Finder: Automation Finder, NICE’s attended automation solution, is a task mining solution that uses unsupervised machine learning algorithms and accurate scientific approaches to assist enterprises in determining automation candidates.
Automation Studio: NICE offers a cloud-based environment for the development of robust attended and unattended process automations known as Automation Studio.

Cautions: The UI may come off as unintuitive. Additionally, users may have to write more code than expected for a tool serving no-code developers.

Rocketbot

Rocketbot is an impressive RPA platform that not only democratizes access to process automation but also delivers ROI optimization. Regardless of the size of its users’ organizations, Rocketbot is designed to be flexible and compatible with all its users’ environments.

Rocketbot’s RPA solution is an agile tool and can simultaneously execute multiple different processes in parallel in the same environment. Rocketbot RPA is also scalable to enable employees and other users within an organization to build robots by themselves.

Key Differentiators

Rocketbot Studio: Rocketbot Studio provides users with the ability to robustly and reliably build robots. It offers a drag-and-drop editor for users to intuitively design robots.
Rocketbot Orquestador: Rocketbot Orquestador is Rocketbot’s orchestrator that provides users with everything they need to manage and control their robots at any time. This orchestrator enables users to run processes, workflows and more.
Rocketbot Telescope: Rocketbot Telescope teaches robots to read documents. As a result, users can extract text from images and documents. It is also easily integrable with Rocketbot Studio.

Cautions: Drag-and-drop can be unintuitive.

Other RPA Tools to Consider

We’ve highlighted the RPA solutions that we think are the market leaders, but there are many others out there that may be a good fit for your needs or use cases. Those vendors include:

WorkFusion
SAP
Salesforce MuleSoft
Appian
Cyclone
Nintex
IBM
Laiye

Comparing the Top RPA Tools

Tool	Attended and Unattended Automation	Code-Free Development	Machine Learning and NLP	OCR	Users	Best For	Deployment
UiPath	✔	✔	✔	✔	RPA developers and software engineers	Medium to large enterprises	Cloud and on-premises
Blue Prism	✔	✔	✔	✔	RPA developers and software engineers	Medium to large enterprises	Cloud and on-premises
Automation Anywhere	✔	✔	✔	✔	RPA developers and software engineers	Medium to large enterprises	Cloud, hybrid, and on-premises
Kofax	✔	✔	✔	✔	RPA developers and software engineers	Medium to large enterprises	Cloud and on-premises
Pega RPA	✔	✔	✔	⨯	Senior software engineers, consultants, and business automation support developers	Small to large enterprises	Fully-managed or client-managed cloud and on-premises
Microsoft Power Automate	✔	✔	✔	✔	RPA developers	Small to large enterprises	Cloud and on-premises
NICE	✔	✔	✔	✔	RPA developers	Small to large enterprises	Cloud and on-premises
Rocketbot	✔	✔	✔	✔	RPA developers	Small to medium enterprises	Cloud, hybrid, and on-premises

Choosing RPA Tools

When evaluating RPA tools, there are some questions to keep in mind to ensure you select the best tool for your use case.

First, how does the prospective tool discover and define process steps and rules? Do the manual steps, if any, have an impact on the overall efficiency of your use case?

Several RPA vendors market their tools under the promise of the simplicity of creating bots. But how easy is it to create bots using the tools under consideration? Are the low-code or no-code platforms truly low-code or no-code?

You should also evaluate how well the prospective solution does bot deployment, management, and maintenance. And of course, always remember to ensure the tool in consideration is aligned to your use case and business goals.

Article published July 20, 2021 and revised Aug. 24, 2022 by Collins Ayuya

The post Top RPA Tools 2022: Robotic Process Automation Software appeared first on IT Business Edge.

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Top Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Solutions

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 20:17:57 +0000

The enterprise landscape is changing, and along with it cybersecurity needs. Employees are increasingly remote, applications are moving to the cloud, and IT infrastructure is becoming more complex, with IoT and mobile devices and branch offices among the many connection points outside of traditional firewalls. To keep up with all these changes, enterprises need a new approach to security.

That’s where secure access service edge (SASE) technology comes in. SASE can create a perimeter between an organization’s private network and public networks like the internet, which could otherwise be exposed to potential attackers.

Just as on-premises security has been consolidating under broad extended detection and response (XDR) solutions, security outside the firewall is increasingly getting combined into SASE solutions.

What is Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)?

Secure access service edge is a term coined by Gartner that refers to the convergence of network and security services into a single platform delivered as a service. SASE – pronounced “sassy” – consolidates and offers security services from a large-scale cloud network, including cloud access security brokers (CASB), secure web gateways, and firewalls as a service (FWaaS).

This shift is being driven by the need for organizations to provide better security and performance for their remote users. At the same time, they are looking for ways to reduce costs and increase flexibility in managing access to cloud-based applications. SASE provides end-to-end access control across wired, wireless, and mobile networks.

Also read: Deploying SASE: What You Should Know to Secure Your Network

How Does SASE Work?

SASE is a cloud-based security solution that offers a comprehensive set of security tools and services. SASE consolidates these tools and services into a single, easy-to-use platform, making it an ideal solution for businesses of all sizes. It provides the industry’s most advanced authentication, encryption, identity management, and access control features in one unified interface.

With robust reporting capabilities as well as multiple levels of granularity when configuring settings, organizations can make informed decisions on how they want their network secured while also meeting regulatory compliance requirements.

Organizations can quickly define who has access to what data without compromising performance. In addition, SASE helps mitigate insider threats by enabling federated identification to help ensure employees can only see data they have been granted access to.

Components of SASE

SASE includes a suite of enterprise-grade applications and software components that offer an integrated solution for securing remote access. The key components of SASE include:

Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN)

SD-WAN provides secure, high-performance IP connectivity to branch offices, data centers, and other networks across public or private cloud infrastructure. SD-WAN simplifies the design and operation of wide area networks (WAN) by automatically routing traffic based on application type, performance needs, security requirements, cost constraints, quality of service (QoS), and network topology changes — without any manual configuration or changes to applications or the underlying transport network.

SD-WAN enables enterprises to securely extend their existing network to the cloud, public internet, or third-party networks without needing expensive VPN hardware. It is often more cost-effective than MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) over time.

Firewall as a service

A firewall as a service enables enterprises to centrally manage their organization’s firewall policies and protections regardless of where those endpoints are located in the organization — centralized, distributed or mobile. FWaaS provides a complete firewall service with robust data security and user privacy protection capabilities by leveraging next-generation firewall (NGFW) technology.

Zero-trust network access (ZTNA)

ZTNA is a robust access control framework that eliminates traditional barriers between internal resources and users who wish to connect outside the network. With ZTNA, IT administrators maintain complete visibility into all connections made through the network with granular detail about who is accessing what resources at what time while eliminating complexity and costly upfront investments. ZTNA ensures only approved devices can connect to corporate resources across all applications to protect against rogue devices and other threats.

See the Top Zero Trust Security Solutions & Software

Cloud access security broker (CASB)

CASB can help organizations meet compliance obligations related to information protection through authentication, authorization, monitoring, and reporting. CASBs also provide identity and access management capabilities, single sign-on (SSO) services, regulatory oversight, GDPR, fraud detection tools, SaaS app control, and more.

Data loss prevention (DLP)

DLP helps protect critical business assets such as intellectual property and sensitive customer data from unauthorized use by detecting when they leave your company’s network perimeter — intentionally or unintentionally. DLP protects against insider threats, too, by identifying inappropriate behaviors such as downloading confidential documents to removable media devices. DLP functionality includes encryption, classification, policy creation, and key management.

See the Top DLP Tools

Secure web gateway (SWG)

SWG features multilayered protections to provide customers maximum flexibility in balancing web security concerns with the organizational need for web accessibility. SWG offers multiple web filter profiles for enabling organizations to configure their ideal balance of content restrictions and website accessibility.

Unified management

SASE delivers unified, cross-platform device management that extends the capabilities of SASE for a seamless user experience that scales up or down according to the number of employees, devices, or locations. It allows IT admins to monitor the health and performance of SASE from anywhere on any device.

XDR vs. SASE

XDR (extended detection and response) is a security platform that takes data from multiple sources and uses it to detect, investigate, and respond to network threats. SASE, on the other hand, is a cloud-based security platform that provides users with secure access to applications and data from any location.

You’ll want an XDR solution if you’re trying to detect, investigate, and respond to cybersecurity threats, and you’ll want a SASE solution if you need secure access services or want user mobile or remote access capability. Both platforms offer robust protection against hacking and malware attacks.

XDR covers all aspects of on-premises security, from endpoint protection to network security, while SASE focuses on the edge, cloud security, and mobile device security. If you have most of your company’s resources stored in the office and rely heavily on IT infrastructure in the building, then XDR is probably better for you.

SASE would be better suited for your needs if you want to be more flexible with where work happens and is ideal for companies that wish to have remote access without giving up corporate data. You also get increased visibility into your devices by utilizing geolocation services.

Also see the Best Cloud Security Solutions

How to Choose a SASE Provider

The right SASE provider will have a global presence and can offer exceptional performance and security. They are also known for being flexible and customizable to the needs of their customers.

Plus, they must always be backed by the latest technologies to provide excellent service. When looking for a SASE provider, ensure you find one with all of these qualities, so you don’t run into any issues later on. There is no such thing as too much research regarding choosing your SASE provider.

Before settling for a provider, read user reviews, assess the provider’s product features, understand your enterprise needs, and evaluate their SLA (service-level agreement) commitments. Once you’ve found the perfect provider, ask about pricing plans and contracts. Make sure you get what you’re paying for because your IT infrastructure is very important at the end of the day.

The post Top Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Solutions appeared first on IT Business Edge.

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Best Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Tools

Fri, 19 Aug 2022 18:47:05 +0000

In a world where data breaches are becoming increasingly common, it’s essential to take steps to protect enterprise information. That’s where data loss prevention tools come in. These tools can help companies protect their data from hackers, accidental deletion, insider threats and more.

Businesses need to ensure the tools they use are practical and effective enough for the level of protection they need. Good data handling and security best practices are a good start, but the volume of information in an enterprise requires automated monitoring, and that’s where DLP tools come in.

Also read: Implementing Best Practices for Data Loss Prevention

What is Data Loss Prevention?

Data loss prevention is the proactive process of identifying, monitoring, and protecting data in use, in transit, and at rest. By doing so, organizations can prevent data breaches and protect sensitive information from being lost or stolen.

Organizations are responsible for this, as they must adhere to specific regulations, including HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act), and SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act).

For example, HIPAA requires covered entities to take reasonable safeguards to protect electronic health information from misuse or inappropriate access by an unauthorized person.

By classifying data and identifying anomalous behavior, DLP tools give enterprises the visibility and reporting needed to protect data and satisfy compliance reporting requirements.

Also see the Top Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Tools

Common Features of DLP Tools

Data loss prevention tools help organizations protect their data from unauthorized access and accidental or intentional deletion. Here are the must-have features of a good DLP solution.

Cloud support

If you use cloud services, looking for a provider that integrates with them seamlessly is essential. You want the system to automatically back up all of your data and notify you if there is any potential breach of privacy.

Alerts

A critical feature in any DLP tool is receiving alerts when suspicious activity occurs. It’s not enough to just know that an incident happened; it needs to give real-time notifications, so you can stop a problem before it becomes irreversible.

Alerts need to include details about the situation, including how much data was lost, who may have stolen the data, and how soon you need to act to recover the lost data. It should also provide recommendations on how best to deal with the situation without sacrificing compliance measures such as perimeters or encryption keys.

Advanced analytics

Advanced analytics can automate tasks like detecting anomalies in an employee’s behavior pattern, sending alerts when someone is about to exceed their usage limits, or determining whether sensitive information has been leaked outside the organization using keywords. Some companies even offer predictive analysis to know which employees are most likely to leak sensitive information ahead of time.

Audit and search

Audits and searches provide the ability to see who accessed what, when they accessed it, where they were accessing it from, and what types of files were accessed as well as the capability to search for sensitive information across all kinds of files, including email, files stored on remote drives, social media, mobile devices, and cloud storage services.

User account control

User account control prevents users from accessing anything on a system unless they have specific permissions. It ensures that only those people with permission can access documents and folders and prevents workers from copying sensitive documents outside the office by blocking printing, downloading or sending out emails with attachments containing sensitive information without permission.

Secure transport methods

Secure transport methods encrypt data over any network connection and implement encryption standards to maintain the confidentiality of all company data at rest, during transmission and while being processed. They also integrate with other security solutions, such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems, to ensure a complete level of protection.

Compliance with regulations

DLP tools must comply with various standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) 800-171, which mandate specific security measures for different data and environments and keeping logs. Hence, you know who is accessing what information.

Also see the Best Cloud Security Solutions

How to Choose the Best Data Loss Prevention Tools

Data loss prevention tools are essential for any business that wants to protect its data. But with so many options on the market, how do you choose the best one for your needs? Here are a few things to consider.

Data location

One of the first considerations when selecting a DLP tool is where your data is stored. Some DLP tools can only monitor and analyze cloud-based or local networks, while others have agents installed on physical devices like computers and servers. Make sure your software covers all your company’s data locations.

Monitoring level

You’ll also want to decide what level of monitoring you need from your DLP software. Do you want it to detect unauthorized access attempts and alert the team? Or do you need it to identify sensitive information and mitigate risks before they happen? There are some fundamental distinctions between these two levels of monitoring, but they both come with their advantages and disadvantages. The most effective solution may be somewhere in between.

Reporting

It’s important to remember that different companies have different requirements for reports, too. If reports are essential to you, ensure the DLP software can generate them. But if not, this could be an area where you could save money.

Cost

Cost should always factor into your decision about which DLP software to purchase for your company. There are some free products out there, but if you’re looking for enterprise-level capabilities, you might be better off with a premium product.

No matter what product you choose, don’t forget to compare the costs against your budget. Your specific needs will dictate which features you prioritize, but it’s always wise to set aside some time for research before making any decisions.

Top 11 Data Loss Prevention Tools

Many data loss prevention tools are available on the market, but not all are created equal. After reviewing various DLP solutions, here are our top 11 picks for organizations looking to prevent data leakage.

Symantec DLP

Symantec Data Loss Prevention is a software suite that helps organizations prevent data breaches by identifying, monitoring, and protecting sensitive data. It can also monitor and log data access and activity.

In addition, Symantec DLP can look for patterns in data usage and detect anomalies in user behavior. The suite includes a web gateway, email gateway, endpoint agent, and management console. Symantec DLP can also detect and block confidential information leakage through various channels, including emails, FTP sites, and cloud storage services.

Features

Critical data protection
Visibility and control
Unified policy framework
Regulatory compliance
Data management
Incident logs
Reporting
Encryption
Endpoint intelligence
Activity monitoring
Breach detection

Pros

Offers real-time blocking, quarantining, and alerts to prevent end users from leaking data
Compliance with data protection regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR
Enhance incident response through behavioral analytics
Sensitive data storage locations can be automatically mapped by automated scanning

Cons

Steep learning curve

Cost

Contact the Symantec team for quotes tailored to your enterprise needs.

Digital guardian DLP

Digital Guardian’s Data Loss Prevention platform is a comprehensive solution that helps organizations prevent the loss of sensitive and confidential data. The platform uses technology, people, and processes to identify, monitor, and protect data across the enterprise.

Digital Guardian DLP automatically identifies risky files based on predefined policies. These policies can be specific or broad in scope. This tool also includes endpoint detection and response (EDR) and user entity behavior analytics (UEBA) features to protect against external and internal threats from the same agent. In addition, it can be deployed on-premises or as a SaaS solution.

Features

Data visibility
Compliance
Analytics and reporting
Data classification
Data discovery
Management console
Cloud data protection
Managed detection and response

Pros

Real-time endpoint monitoring and behavioral insight
Total visibility and flexible control across all operating systems
Automatic monitoring and logging of all endpoint activities
Intuitive user interface (UI)

Cons

Initial setup can be complex
Some users consider this product pricey

Cost

Digital Guardian pricing isn’t available on its website. However, you can contact the sales team to schedule a demo and request quotes.

SecureTrust

SecureTrust is a comprehensive data loss prevention tool that helps organizations of all sizes identify and protect sensitive information from unauthorized disclosure. The system is autonomous and will block malicious attempts independently.

It can be used for cloud-based and on-premises storage, providing access to any data type. DLP policies can be created to block or alert specific types of content. A company can also choose the kind of enforcement to use when the policy is violated — either blocking or notifying the user they are attempting to violate a policy.

Features

Risk assessment
PCI compliance service
Investigation management
Advanced content control
Automatic encryption, blocking, and quarantine
Real-time identity match
Automatically block HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP traffic that violates compliance policies

Pros

Offers 360-degree risk mitigation
Has over 70 predefined policy and risk settings
Provides a configurable dashboard to monitor sensitive data and manage protective settings

Cons

Initial setup can take some time.

Cost

Contact SecureTrust to request quotes.

CrowdStrike Falcon Device Control

CrowdStrike Falcon Device Control is a security software that helps businesses prevent data loss. It works by blocking unauthorized devices from accessing sensitive data and monitoring and logging all device activity.

It provides the visibility and granular controls to protect against malicious insiders and outside attackers, including attacks via removable media or over Wi-Fi. This tool provides detailed reports about device activity on your network and stores those records in an industry-standard format for easy sharing.

Features

Automatic visibility across USB device usage
Behavioral analytics
Variable security set by policies
Proactive alerts
Malware detection
Intelligence reports

Pros

Centralized management dashboard
User-friendly dashboard
Less false positives

Cons

Expensive for a small-scale enterprise
Documentation can be improved

Cost

Pricing isn’t available on the CrowdStrike website. However, you can contact the sales team to request quotes.

Check Point

Check Point DLP is an enterprise-grade solution that offers content filtering, email protection, antivirus and anti-spam, application control, and many other features. The best thing about this software is how it can be customized to fit any organization’s needs.

With modules like Email Protection, Web Protection, and Mail Gateway Protection, Check Point DLP ensures any data leakage from the network is stopped in its tracks. One of the more exciting features of Check Point DLP is that it’s based on artificial intelligence and machine learning which means that as time goes on, its ability to detect data leaks increases.

Features

Web filtering
Firewall
Policy management
Logging and reporting
Load balancing
Continuous analysis
Data classification
Intrusion detection and prevention

Pros

Prevent spam emails and other spam from entering the network
Whitelist a specific URL to bypass the scanning process
Offers a virtualized network for client networks to mask identity, location, and other sensitive information
Choose from 60+ or 700+ predefined data content types for PII, PCI, HIPAA, and more

Cons

Application and URL filtering needs improvement
As a feature-rich tool, its learning curve can be steep

Cost

Pricing isn’t available on Check Point’s website. You can, however, request quotes from its sales team.

Code42

Code42 Incydr DLP software is one of the top tools for managing insider risk in the workplace. For instance, the software offers advanced web monitoring and alerts that help businesses comply with regulations such as GDPR. And it can manage user activities on corporate networks, apps, and devices from a single dashboard.

With the increased number of the remote workforce, Incydr provides an easy-to-use interface divided into two main categories: Detection and Investigation (Forensic Search). These categories include web filtering, employee usage monitoring, and network monitoring, and users can take advantage of its Incydr risk indicators to detect and investigate data breaches and theft incidents.

Features

Incydr risk dashboards
Exfiltration detectors
Incydr risk indicators
Watchlists
Forensic search
Incident management
Policy management

Pros

Ease of use
Provides visibility into employee’s activities
Proactively detect enterprise data exposure or theft
Identifies data security risks across PCs, the cloud, and email

Cons

Support could use some improvement

Cost

Code42 does not publish Incydr prices; thus, you must contact sales for pricing details.

Trend Micro IDLP

Trend Micro is an integrated DLP solution that can protect data across devices, networks, and the cloud. It provides a real-time view of your organization’s activity, allowing administrators to respond when threats are detected. With Trend Micro IDLP, you get in-depth visibility into what employees are doing on their computers and mobile devices, along with a prebuilt set of security templates for popular business applications.

Features

Lightweight plug-in
Data discovery and scanning
Employee education and remediation
Supports compliance
Automation

Pros

With a lightweight plug-in, you can gain visibility and management of critical data and avoid data loss through USB, email, SaaS apps, web, mobile devices, and cloud storage
Fully-integrated, centrally-managed solution
24/7 real-time network monitoring
Responds to policy violations automatically, with options to log, bypass, block, encrypt, alert, modify, quarantine, or delete data

Cons

As per user review, some users experience issues with installation
Not as feature-rich as other solutions in the same category

Cost

Prospective buyers can contact Trend Micro’s sales team for pricing details.

Forcepoint DLP

Forcepoint DLP delivers unified data and IP protection for hybrid and multicloud enterprises with a single platform that enforces consistent security policies across clouds, on-premises systems, and user devices.

With Forcepoint DLP, you can protect your data from accidental or malicious leaks, ensure compliance with regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA, and prevent intellectual property theft. The features are designed to simplify complex security tasks, automate the analysis of massive amounts of log data, and integrate with existing IT infrastructure.

Features

Policy management
Encryption
Advanced detection and controls
Data management
Incident logs
Access control
Data visibility
Endpoint intelligence
Data fingerprinting

Pros

Forcepoint DLP is easy to use and provides granular control over what data is protected and how it is protected
Offers native, behavioral analytics; risk-adaptive protection; and risk-based policy enforcement
Integrate with third-party data classification tools to automate data labeling and classification

Cons

Complex multiple server deployments
Predefined policies can be improved
Data discovery can be improved
Steep learning curve

Cost

Pricing for the product is not available on the provider’s page. However, you can request pricing and get quotes tailored to your needs.

Fidelis Network DLP

Fidelis Network is a DLP tool that offers a full range of data security services, including system-wide compliance, end-to-end encryption, anomaly detection, and integration with other tools among other features.

Additionally, Fidelis provides granular control over what data is allowed to leave your network, so you can be sure that only the most sensitive information is protected. For example, Fidelis uses patented Deep Session Inspection technology to extract metadata and monitor 300+ different attributes. If the system detects a potential risk, it can flag it or take more specific action depending on your preferences.

Features

Deep visibility and threat control
Dashboard
Analytics and reporting
Automated detection and response

Pros

Prevent data theft or unauthorized sharing
Fidelis’s policy system can be easily customized to fit your needs
Increase security efficiency by analyzing network threats at up to 20 Gbps with a single sensor

Cons

Some users consider this tool pricey for small business
Support can be improved

Cost

Contact the Fidelis sales team for personalized quotes.

Sophos

Sophos DLP is a comprehensive data loss prevention solution that provides visibility into sensitive information and detects any unusual activity. It includes content scanning, email monitoring, risk assessment, in-depth analysis of files and metadata, and more. All this makes it easy for IT admins to stop threats before they happen.

Features

Data access control
PII encryption
User behavior assessment
Regulatory compliance
Security automation

Pros

Easy point-and-click policy configuration
Allows users to define the data control policies by endpoint, groups, email, and sender
Log, alert, block, or encrypt sensitive data that triggers a DLP policy rule
It doesn’t require additional software client installation

Cons

The amount of false positives needs improvement
As per user review, Sophos can be resource-intensive
Support could use some improvement

Cost

Prospective solution buyers should contact Sophos for personalized quotes.

Trellix DLP Discover

Trellix – the product of the merger of McAfee Enterprise and FireEye – works closely with its former cloud business, Skyhigh Security, in the area of DLP to address both on-premises and cloud DLP issues. Trellix Data Loss Prevention Discover offers real-time visibility and security of data, dynamic access adjustment, intelligent threat identification, and automated response.

Features

Shared intelligence and automated workflows
Centralized incident management
Compliance enforcement
Device to cloud
Data management
Incident logs
Reporting
Access control
Compliance
Data visibility
Encryption
Endpoint intelligence
Activity monitoring

Pros

Monitors and performs real-time scanning and analysis of the network traffic
Use fingerprinting, file tagging, and classification to protect sensitive data
This tool is feature-rich
The data classification feature is robust

Cons

Steep learning curve, especially with configuration
Support can be improved
The UI can be improved

The post Best Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Tools appeared first on IT Business Edge.

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Data Lake Governance & Security Issues

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 19:30:07 +0000

Analysis of data fed into data lakes promises to provide enormous insights for data scientists, business managers, and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. However, governance and security managers must also ensure that the data lake conforms to the same data protection and monitoring requirements as any other part of the enterprise.

To enable data protection, data security teams must ensure only the right people can access the right data and only for the right purpose. To help the data security team with implementation, the data governance team must define what “right” is for each context. For an application with the size, complexity and importance of a data lake, getting data protection right is a critically important challenge.

See the Top Data Lake Solutions

From Policies to Processes

Before an enterprise can worry about data lake technology specifics, the governance and security teams need to review the current policies for the company. The various policies regarding overarching principles such as access, network security, and data storage will provide basic principles that executives will expect to be applied to every technology within the organization, including data lakes.

Some changes to existing policies may need to be proposed to accommodate the data lake technology, but the policy guardrails are there for a reason — to protect the organization against lawsuits, breaking laws, and risk. With the overarching requirements in hand, the teams can turn to the practical considerations regarding the implementation of those requirements.

Data Lake Visibility

The first requirement to tackle for security or governance is visibility. In order to develop any control or prove control is properly configured, the organization must clearly identify:

What is the data in the data lake?
Who is accessing the data lake?
What data is being accessed by who?
What is being done with the data once accessed?

Different data lakes provide these answers using different technologies, but the technology can generally be classified as data classification and activity monitoring/logging.

Data classification

Data classification determines the value and inherent risk of the data to an organization. The classification determines what access might be permitted, what security controls should be applied, and what levels of alerts may need to be implemented.

The desired categories will be based upon criteria established by data governance, such as:

Data Source: Internal data, partner data, public data, and others
Regulated Data: Privacy data, credit card information, health information, etc.
Department Data: Financial data, HR records, marketing data, etc.
Data Feed Source: Security camera videos, pump flow data, etc.

The visibility into these classifications depends entirely upon the ability to inspect and analyze the data. Some data lake tools offer built-in features or additional tools that can be licensed to enhance the classification capabilities such as:

Amazon Web Services (AWS): AWS offers Amazon Macie as a separately enabled tool to scan for sensitive data in a repository.
Azure: Customers use built-in features of the Azure SQL Database, Azure Managed Instance, and Azure Synapse Analytics to assign categories, and they can license Microsoft Purview to scan for sensitive data in the dataset such as European passport numbers, U.S. social security numbers, and more.
Databricks: Customers can use built-in features to search and modify data (compute fees may apply).
Snowflake: Customers use inherent features that include some data classification capabilities to locate sensitive data (compute fees may apply).

For sensitive data or internal designations not supported by features and add-on programs, the governance and security teams may need to work with the data scientists to develop searches. Once the data has been classified, the teams will then need to determine what should happen with that data.

For example, Databricks recommends deleting personal information from the European Union (EU) that falls under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This policy would avoid future expensive compliance issues with the EU’s “right to be forgotten” that would require a search and deletion of consumer data upon each request.

Other common examples for data treatment include:

Data accessible for registered partners (customers, vendors, etc.)
Data only accessible by internal teams (employees, consultants, etc.)
Data restricted to certain groups (finance, research, HR, etc.)
Regulated data available as read-only
Important archival data, with no write-access permitted

The sheer size of data in a data lake can complicate categorization. Initially, data may need to be categorized by input, and teams need to make best guesses about the content until the content can be analyzed by other tools.

In all cases, once data governance has determined how the data should be handled, a policy should be drafted that the security team can reference. The security team will develop controls that enforce the written policy and develop tests and reports that verify that those controls are properly implemented.

See the Top Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Tools

Activity monitoring and logging

The logs and reports provided by the data lake tools provide the visibility needed to test and report on data access within a data lake. This monitoring or logging of activity within the data lake provides the key components to verify effective data controls and ensure no inappropriate access is occuring.

As with data inspection, the tools will have various built-in features, but additional licenses or third-party tools may need to be purchased to monitor the necessary spectrum of access. For example:

AWS: AWS Cloudtrail provides a separately enabled tool to track user activity and events, and AWS CloudWatch collects logs, metrics, and events from AWS resources and applications for analysis.
Azure: Diagnostic logs can be enabled to monitor API (application programming interface) requests and API activity within the data lake. Logs can be stored within the account, sent to log analytics, or streamed to an event hub. And other activities can be tracked through other tools such as Azure Active Directory (access logs).
Google: Google Cloud DLP detects different international PII (personal identifiable information) schemes.
Databricks: Customers can enable logs and direct the logs to storage buckets.
Snowflake: Customers can execute queries to audit specific user activity.

Data governance and security managers must keep in mind that data lakes are huge and that the access reports associated with the data lakes will be correspondingly immense. Storing the records for all API requests and all activity within the cloud may be burdensome and expensive.

To detect unauthorized usage will require granular controls, so inappropriate access attempts can generate meaningful alerts, actionable information, and limited information. The definitions of meaningful, actionable, and limited will vary based upon the capabilities of the team or the software used to analyze the logs and must be honestly assessed by the security and data governance teams.

Data Lake Controls

Useful data lakes will become huge repositories for data accessed by many users and applications. Good security will begin with strong, granular controls for authorization, data transfers, and data storage.

Where possible, automated security processes should be enabled to permit rapid response and consistent controls applied to the entire data lake.

Authorization

Authorization in data lakes works similar to any other IT infrastructure. IT or security managers assign users to groups, groups can be assigned to projects or companies, and each of these users, groups, projects, or companies can be assigned to resources.

In fact, many of these tools will link to existing user control databases such as Active Directory, so existing security profiles may be extended to the data link. Data governance and data security teams will need to create an association between various categorized resources within the data lake with specific groups such as:

Raw research data associated with the research user group
Basic financial data and budgeting resources associated with the company’s internal users
Marketing research, product test data, and initial customer feedback data associated with the specific new product project group

Most tools will also offer additional security controls such as security assertion markup language (SAML) or multi-factor authentication (MFA). The more valuable the data, the more important it will be for security teams to require the use of these features to access the data lake data.

In addition to the classic authorization processes, the data managers of a data lake also need to determine the appropriate authorization to provide to API connections with data lakehouse software and data analysis software and for various other third-party applications connected to the data lake.

Each data lake will have their own way to manage the APIs and authentication processes. Data governance and data security managers need to clearly outline the high-level rules and allow the data security teams to implement them.

As a best practice, many data lake vendors recommend setting up the data to deny access by default to force data governance managers to specifically grant access. Additionally, the implemented rules should be verified through testing and monitoring through the records.

Data transfers

A giant repository of valuable data only becomes useful when it can be tapped for information and insight. To do so, the data or query responses must be pulled from the data lake and sent to the data lakehouse, third-party tool, or other resource.

These data transfers must be secure and controlled by the security team. The most basic security measure requires all traffic to be encrypted by default, but some tools will allow for additional network controls such as:

Limit connection access to specific IP addresses, IP ranges, or subnets
Private endpoints
Specific networks
API gateways
Specified network routing and virtual network integration
Designated tools (Lakehouse application, etc.)

Data storage

IT security teams often use the best practices for cloud storage as a starting point for storing data in data lakes. This makes perfect sense since the data lake will likely also be stored within the basic cloud storage on cloud platforms.

When setting up data lakes, vendors recommend setting the data lakes to be private and anonymous to prevent casual discovery. The data will also typically be encrypted at rest by default.

Some cloud vendors will offer additional options such as classified storage or immutable storage that provides additional security for stored data. When and how to use these and other cloud strategies will depend upon the needs of the organization.

See the Top Big Data Storage Tools

Developing Secure and Accessible Data Storage

Data lakes provide enormous value by providing a single repository for all enterprise data. Of course, this also paints an enormous target on the data lake for attackers that might want access to that data!

Basic data governance and security principles should be implemented first as written policies that can be approved and verified by the non-technical teams in the organization (legal, executives, etc.). Then, it will be up to data governance to define the rules and data security teams to implement the controls to enforce those rules.

Next, each security control will need to be continuously tested and verified to confirm that the control is working. This is a cyclical, and sometimes even a continuous, process that needs to be updated and optimized regularly.

While it’s certainly important to want the data to be safe, businesses also need to make sure the data remains accessible, so they don’t lose the utility of the data lake. By following these high-level processes, security and data lake experts can help ensure the details align with the principles.

The post Data Lake Governance & Security Issues appeared first on IT Business Edge.

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Metaverse’s Biggest Potential Is In Enterprises

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 14:12:02 +0000

Last year, Match Group – which operates online platforms like Tinder, Match.com and Hinge – shelled out $1.725 billion to acquire Hyperconnect. This was a play on the metaverse.

Unfortunately, Match had challenges in making the strategy work. In the latest shareholder letter, Match CEO Bernard Kim noted: “I’ve instructed the Hyperconnect team to iterate but not invest heavily in metaverse at this time. We’ll continue to evaluate this space carefully, and we will consider moving forward at the appropriate time when we have more clarity on the overall opportunity and feel we have a service that is well-positioned to succeed.”

This is not a one-off. Even the giant Meta has had its own problems. This is despite the company’s enormous resources and global user base. During the past year, the stock price has plunged from $378 to $178.

The metaverse clearly faces some challenges.

First-mover Opportunities in the Enterprise?

The metaverse’s early challenges should come as no surprise. It’s never easy to launch new technologies.

But for the metaverse, the first-mover opportunities may actually not be in the consumer space. Surprise: They may emerge in the enterprise.

“Businesses today are already leveraging the metaverse to drive new interactions,” said Matt Barrington, Principal of Digital & Emerging Technologies, EY. “These experiences are driven by both existing technology stacks and Web 3.0 technology stacks, bringing in new business models and ways to create, store, and exchange value. We are seeing mass experimentation across the market as companies explore business-relevant use cases and assess the impact of the metaverse on their business and customers.”

So let’s take a deeper look at the enterprise opportunities in the new virtual world of the metaverse.

Metaverse Applications

When it comes to the consumer metaverse, the types of use cases are limited. It’s really about gaming-type experiences. In terms of monetization, there is the purchase of digital items, subscriptions, and sponsorships. Interestingly enough, there are various brands that have purchased virtual real estate on the metaverse.

But as for the enterprise, there are seemingly endless applications. In fact, each industry can have its own set of metaverses.

“Consistent with the findings of our recent Metaverse surveys, using metaverse environments for purposes of delivering new experiences to the workforce for training, onboarding or recruiting are immediate use cases,” said Emmanuelle Rivet, Vice Chair, U.S. TMT and Global Technology Leader, PwC. “In addition, metaverse environments provide a place for connecting and engaging with a dispersed workforce including front line workers who may feel detached from the ‘center’ or ‘corporate.’ This is interesting but it also provides the opportunity for employees to be exposed to the metaverse, get familiar with it and effectively be up-skilled by experimentation, providing a platform for innovation and development of more use cases for companies.”

There are also interesting use cases with digital twins of physical environments that can be made hyper realistic and physically accurate.

“The physical environment to be replicated may be natural, or it may be something that was constructed, such as a building or other type of structure, an industrial operation, or a transportation network,” said Andrew Blau, Managing Director, U.S. Leader, Eminence & Insights, Deloitte Consulting. “Humans, robots, and AI agents can work together inside these digital twins to plan, design, and test—accelerating innovation and planning cycles for a variety of business needs.”

Also read: The Metaverse: Catching the Next Internet-Like Wave

Metaverse Strategies

The playbook for the metaverse is still in the early stages. Mistakes will be inevitable. But there are some guidelines that will help.

“Employees and customers are both looking for new experiences in the metaverse – and that means ensuring that virtual avatars, augmented reality and other forms of interaction are user-friendly enough to make collaboration and training simpler than it is in real life,” said Adrian McDermott, CTO of Zendesk. “You need to prioritize immersion.”

And yes, there will need to be much due diligence of the tech stacks. They can be expensive and complicated.

“Firms need trusted technology partners that build, or vet and collaborate with, the best-in-class technology, as well as the means to plan, deploy and manage the technology so solutions that accelerate business today don’t become a roadblock tomorrow,” said Vishal Shah, General Manager of XR and Metaverse, Lenovo. “This also requires an open solution to always make the best hardware and software components for the use cases. … The fact is ‘Open’ always wins and will again in this new world.”

Another part of the strategy – which can easily be overlooked – is finance transformation. Without this, the chances of success decline precipitously.

“Organizations will need to develop completely different approaches to finance, accounting, risk and compliance processes to sustain all of the major innovations coming with the metaverse, including monetization and metaverse economy innovations such as crypto currency and NFTs,” said Brajesh Jha, SVP & Global Head of Media, Publishing and Entertainment, Genpact.

Don’t Get Left Behind

The temptation for enterprises, though, is to take a wait-and-see approach with the metaverse. But this could mean falling behind competitors. And it may be extremely tough to catch up.

“The metaverse presents a significant opportunity for business,” said Mike Storiale, VP, Innovation Development, Synchrony. “This is potentially a new dimension of commerce that we haven’t seen since the late 1990s with e-commerce.”

The post Metaverse’s Biggest Potential Is In Enterprises appeared first on IT Business Edge.

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Top Managed Service Providers (MSPs) 2022

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 12:48:47 +0000

Keeping up with the ever-changing IT needs of a growing business can be a logistical nightmare. That’s why so many organizations have outsourced IT management to managed service providers (MSPs).

Managed services continue to grow at a steady pace, boosted by remote work and the challenges of staffing an IT team with talent in high demand.

This increasing need for MSPs has created a sizable market. Grand View Research reports that the global MSP market was valued at $239.71 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to $267.35 billion this year.

With thousands of MSPs out there, it can be difficult for an organization to find the right MSP to suit their needs. Here we’ll narrow the market to some of the very best managed service providers in the IT space, explain their pros and cons, and give you the tools you need to make the best decision for your business. There are many more good ones out there, however, so consider this list a starting point to help define your needs.

Key MSP Traits to Look for
Top IT MSPs 2022
- Burwood Group
- Right! Systems
- Dataprise
- NexusTek
- Electric
- All Covered
- CyberDuo
- 1Path
Choosing the Right MSP for Your Organization

Key MSP Traits to Look for

As when shopping for any product, there are a few traits to look for when choosing the right MSP. These are just a sampling of the factors that may play into a prospective MSP buyers’ decision-making process.

Good Customer Reviews

The first thing to look for is good customer reviews — this includes tapping your peer network too. Online reviews won’t be scientific, of course, and vendors will certainly want to solicit reviews from happy reference customers, but reviews can provide excellent insight into what is and isn’t working in a product. It’s especially good for finding the issues in a product or service, as repeated reports of the same issue by multiple customers makes it likely that the same issue could trouble the prospective buyer as well. If you can’t find any publicly-available customer reviews, we recommend that you ask the MSP for customer references or consult your personal network of contacts for anyone who might have used the MSP in the past. Look for use cases similar to yours of course — the more closely aligned the source is with your needs, the more relevant the feedback will be.

Service Bundles

While enterprise-level businesses might be able to afford to hire specialist MSPs for their specific needs, small-to-midsize businesses will probably want to consider MSPs that offer multiple services or service bundles. This allows them to get similar services at an overall lower price and means they only have to manage one point of contact.

Certifications

Depending on your IT needs, it can be important to check to make sure the MSP is certified in the sort of things you’re looking for. Depending on the service being provided, you might look for ISO, WWWC, 3GPP. IEEE, ECMA, and others. For specific individuals in a company, Microsoft, Cisco, and CompTIA certifications are also worth looking for. If a service provider’s staff have the right certifications for your needs, they might be one of the best-available MSPs on the market.

Service-Level Agreements

Service-level agreements (SLAs) lay out all the responsibilities you retain and what responsibilities the MSP takes over. SLAs may also offer guarantees for things like response times for open tickets or the amount of uptime for services. For example, a managed security service provider (MSSP) might guarantee a 5-minute response time to all alerts and alarms and will reimburse you for every minute its employees are late. Network downtime might be another issue you’d want an SLA for.

Top IT MSPs 2022

Burwood Group

Headquartered in Chicago, the Burwood Group offers digital support for clients nationwide, both virtually and in-person. In 2021, the firm was named a Google Public Sector Partner of the Year for U.S. Education for the second year in a row.

With its 25 years of experience, Burwood provides excellent IT consulting services. Additionally, it can furnish interested customers with 24/7 network management that can support on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.

Burwood also provides monitoring and event management services for ticket handling, issue tracking, and uptime monitoring. This allows clients to free up any in-house IT staff to work on other essential tasks.

Overall, the Burwood Group is great for organizations looking to deploy new technologies or who need an experienced partner to upgrade their digital strategy.

Right! Systems

With offices in Washington state, Oregon, and Idaho, Right! Systems provides IT managed services both in the Pacific Northwest in-person and across the nation virtually. Managed services on-offer include cloud services, data center management, security, and project management.

Alongside managed solutions, the firm supplies clients with 24/7 emergency IT and support services.

When a client starts with Right!Systems, they are given a customized technology strategy designed to synergize with their business plans. This allows the client to figure out which products, solutions, and services are right for their organization.

Right! Systems is an excellent choice for groups in the Pacific Northwest looking for hands-on IT management and project management services with options for cloud and data centers as well.

Dataprise

Though headquartered in Maryland, Dataprise has offices around the nation, including in Virginia, Tennessee, California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C.

With this wide-ranging number of offices, Dataprise furnishes clients with fully-managed IT services and solutions, as well as managed services for cybersecurity; disaster recovery; detection and response; and infrastructure.

Dataprise also offers both on-site support and a 24/7 help desk based on what its clients need in the moment to keep their organization operating efficiently. Interested customers can pick between individual and bundled services based on their organization’s specific requirements.

Dataprise is recommended for small businesses looking to outsource a variety of managed IT services to save on cost without losing much of the care and attention that in-house IT staff can provide.

NexusTek

As more businesses transition to allowing hybrid and remote work models, service providers like NexusTek are seizing the momentum through Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS), Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS), cloud hosting, and other online services to help transitioning businesses make the changes necessary to facilitate large-scale remote and hybrid work scenarios.

NexusTek provides full management of their cloud hosting services to make sure client companies’ data is efficiently managed and protected. With nearly 20 years of experience as an MSP, NexusTek also provides a number of Microsoft Online services if interested companies are in need of support in that area.

Though based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, NexusTek’s cloud and IT services can be fully managed virtually across the country, much like the remote work these services help make happen.

Overall, NexusTek is recommended to organizations looking to grow their hybrid and remote work options and want an MSP who offers many of the services needed to make that expansion go smoothly.

Electric

Also known as Electric AI, Electric focuses on offering excellent IT services to small businesses to ensure small business employees are better able to do the job they are paid to do.

Notable services and support on-offer include IT infrastructure development, IT process standardization, and real-time IT support. The company claims this real-time support is deliverable within 10 minutes or less.

On top of its managed services, Electric provides an IT management platform which allows clients to streamline processes like employee onboarding.

While based in New York City, Electric’s network of specialists hit most major American cities including Seattle, Boston, Dallas, Cincinnati, Denver, and Los Angeles. Their services are also provided virtually.

Electric is recommended for small businesses looking to free up company resources by outsourcing IT services.

All Covered

With locations across the US, Mexico, the Caribbean, and more, All Covered offers a diverse suite of managed IT services and solutions. These services include IT helpdesk, application development, IT strategy, cybersecurity, cloud services, infrastructure management, and server backup.

When they sign up, organizations get a service plan customized for their specific needs which allows them to supplement existing IT staff for either long-term use or on specific projects.

The firm supplies customers with 24/7 phone and live chat support and an easy-to-use client portal through which clients can check the status of support tickets or schedule maintenance visits.

Part of Konica Minolta, All Covered’s solutions are recommended for businesses of any size looking for top-flight bundled services with which to outsource their IT support, software, and hardware duties.

CyberDuo

CyberDuo offers a myriad of managed IT, cloud, and security solutions to businesses around the world. It offers 24/7 support helpdesk for clients in any time zone and, according to their website, guarantees a server request response time of 5 minutes. From its two California offices and one Boston office, CyberDuo offers virtual managed services and solutions all over the country.

CyberDuo’s managed cloud services work especially well for teams looking to transition to Microsoft’s suite of products like Azure, Teams, and Microsoft 365. Managed security services include EDR, endpoint protection, security awareness training, cloud security, and email security.

Overall, CyberDuo is recommended for organizations looking for a technically-skilled MSP who can help them migrate their data to the cloud safely and efficiently.

Read More At: Strategies for Successful Data Migration

1Path

Despite the name, 1Path has two headquarters in the Eastern United States, one in Kennesaw, GA and one in North Andover, MA. From these hubs, the firm provides IT services virtually across the nation. Thanks to its 20 years of experience, 1Path customers can find a whole suite of end-to-end managed solutions custom-fitted to their goals and expectations.

Interested businesses with limited or no IT staff will find a host of fully managed and co-managed solutions able to support them. Key features include process automation, disaster recovery, application development, cloud services, and procurement services.

1Path is recommended for small businesses looking for co-managed or fully managed IT support that can synergize with their current and future goals.

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Choosing the Right MSP for Your Organization

When looking for the MSP that’s best for your organization, the best advice we can offer is “research, research, research.” Make sure you understand both what services and use cases your business needs and what services and use cases an MSP is best at providing.

We recommend checking for MSPs in your area first. On top of both you and your MSP operating in the same time zone, local MSPs can provide in-person support and services that can be difficult to provide otherwise.

That said, many MSPs offer quality virtual services as well, and it might even be cheaper than an in-person solution. Regardless, it’s best to read customer reviews and insights to see how people with hands-on experience with these MSPs are describing their services.

If you have other business owners within your network, it can also be good to connect with them to learn about any MSPs they might have used.

At the end of the day however, managed service providers are still service providers, and there’s no replacement for scheduling a meeting with an MSP and seeing if you’re both comfortable working together for the foreseeable future. If you’ve managed to narrow down your list to a few MSPs, be sure to schedule an initial consultation with each to see if they’re the right fit for your organization.

The post Top Managed Service Providers (MSPs) 2022 appeared first on IT Business Edge.

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The Value of the Metaverse for Small Businesses

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 14:22:23 +0000

The metaverse can be an intimidating term conjuring up visions of some futuristic virtual world, but it’s perhaps best viewed as virtual experiences brought to the internet, something akin to an interactive video game.

There are huge obstacles to creating a larger world that spans individual virtual platforms, so for now it’s perhaps best to view the metaverse as a challenge for businesses to create more virtual, interactive customer experiences.

The metaverse potentially offers small businesses a way to reach new markets and customers that they wouldn’t be able to reach in the physical world. Small businesses can create their own virtual spaces and use them to promote their products and services. They can also use avatars (virtual representations of themselves) to interact with potential customers in a way that is not possible in the physical world.

Training and customer service are other potential applications for the metaverse, areas many companies come up short in now.

Also read: How Revolutionary Are Meta’s AI Efforts?

Metaverse Benefits

For now, the metaverse’s benefits for small businesses are largely theoretical, but they could be significant:

Increased visibility: Small businesses can use the metaverse to increase their visibility and reach a wider audience.
Improved customer engagement: The metaverse provides an immersive and interactive environment that can help small businesses improve customer engagement.
Lower costs: The metaverse can help small businesses lower their costs by reducing the need for physical infrastructure.
Greater flexibility: The metaverse offers greater flexibility for small businesses, allowing them to experiment with new business models and strategies. The metaverse presents a unique opportunity for small businesses to gain a competitive edge. By leveraging the advantages of the metaverse, they could potentially level the playing field with larger businesses and compete on a global scale.

Metaverse Use Cases

The metaverse has a number of potential use cases for small businesses. Here are three examples:

Marketing and advertising: Small businesses can use the metaverse to create immersive, 3D marketing experiences that grab attention and engage potential customers in new ways – ways customers are ready to embrace.
Training and education: The metaverse can be used to create training simulations that allow employees to learn new skills in a safe and realistic environment.
Collaboration and networking: The metaverse provides a unique platform for small businesses to collaborate, as well as network with potential partners and customers.

One example of the metaverse in action is Hyundai’s campaign for the Roblox platform. A bit of experience programming games can go a long way in the metaverse.

See the Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software

How Businesses Reach Customers in the Metaverse

So how do businesses actually reach customers in the metaverse? There are as many ways.

Hosting events, conferences, meetings, and meetups in virtual spaces
Connecting with potential customers through social media, discussion forums, and blogs
Leveraging virtual reality (VR) to create interactive, immersive and engaging marketing campaigns
Creating digital versions of familiar physical products that can be consumed in virtual worlds
Creating virtual locations and marketplaces for products and services
Prioritizing customer feedback and rewarding customer engagement with virtual coupons and promotions

Businesses should choose the type of metaverse they integrate with based on what it was created and intended for, its use cases. As an example, a metaverse created for retail may not work well for an outdoor fitness niche business.

Preparing for the Metaverse

There are a few things companies should be doing to prepare for the opportunities the metaverse will bring. First, they should start thinking about how they can use the

metaverse to improve their customer experience. Second, they should begin to experiment with creating metaverse applications. And third, they should think about how the metaverse can be used to create new business models and revenue streams.

The good news is that metaverse opportunities should work their way down market quickly, as often happens with technology.

One example of IT vendors coming together to make this happen is last week’s announcement from Capgemini and Unity to create “use cases where the digital customer or employee experiences will benefit most.”

The companies cited a number of industries where they’ll be focusing their efforts: consumer goods & retail, manufacturing, life sciences, telecommunications, media & technology, energy & utilities, financial services, and public services.

“Metaverse and immersive experiences open a whole universe of possibilities for our clients across industries, from enabling more emotional connections with consumers, and reinventing employee experience and collaboration, to optimizing engineering, manufacturing and operations using digital twins,” stated Pascal Brier, Chief Innovation Officer at Capgemini. “Shaping sector-specific use cases and developing them at scale will require expert technical and operational capabilities. We are thrilled to partner with Unity, one of the major engines of the metaverse, to enable our clients to realize its real business value.”

“Unity’s real-time 3D solutions will bring many new companies into the next generation of the internet, or metaverse, helping them achieve greater engagement with their customers,” said Marc Whitten, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Unity Create Solutions.

Opportunities for Service Providers

For service providers like Capgemini, there’s a big opportunity to help clients navigate the metaverse and get ready for this new way of doing business. Some of the ways they can help include:

Helping companies create avatars and 3D representations of their products and services
Training employees on how to use the metaverse and its various features
Creating custom applications and solutions that help businesses take advantage of the metaverse
Providing support and maintenance for companies using the metaverse
Helping customers navigate the many platforms and options for creating metaverse experiences

Metaverse Cautions

When exploring the business value of the metaverse, businesses should be mindful that the metaverse is still in its early stages of development, so there is a lot of potential for change and uncertainty. There is a learning curve associated with the metaverse, so businesses will need to dedicate time and resources to learn how to use it effectively.

Despite the uncertainties, the potential benefits of the metaverse for small businesses are significant. In addition to providing a new way to interact with customers and employees, the metaverse can also be used to create immersive experiences that can promote your brand and drive sales, so time spent understanding the metaverse and developing applications may turn out to be a great investment.

The post The Value of the Metaverse for Small Businesses appeared first on IT Business Edge.

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How Revolutionary Are Meta’s AI Efforts?

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 18:45:59 +0000

Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook’s rebranding to Meta at the company’s annual Connect event last year to reposition the company for the “new internet,” the metaverse.

The metaverse has been around for some time as a kind of urban legend, perhaps aptly described in the 2011 science fantasy book Ready Player One. That was until some of the biggest names in tech started investing heavily in related technologies, including virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI).

Today AI is one of the most exciting technology fields to work on. Zuckerberg said the metaverse is something he’s wanted to work on since even before the conception of Facebook. And the company’s Meta AI research lab is on the cutting edge of both AI and the metaverse.

The new direction was met with some trepidation. The social media site Facebook, which retains its name, is already infamous for its black-box algorithms, which are going to grow more and more complex under the Meta AI efforts.

While this news is undoubtedly exciting for enthusiasts and futurists, what are the practical real-world implications beyond the metaverse hype?

See the Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software

How Far Along is Meta AI?

Despite the initial excitement, Meta AI is years away from reaching its ultimate goal of having a fully operational metaverse. Meta AI is Meta’s longest scheduled project, perhaps as big in development time as it is in ambition. But that doesn’t mean it can be ignored, as it has many partially developed applications.

Meta is presently leading the AI race, with many of its applications in direct competition with giants across different categories. Meta is working on a voice interface like Apple’s Siri or Google Voice Assistant. Meta is also competing with VR gaming consoles such as Hololens with the acquisition of Oculus.

Additionally, some of Meta’s projects include an AI-based image tagging and image search algorithm that was shown to beat the FBI’s image recognition ability at the IEEE Computer Vision Conference. Meta AI can also generate text predictions in messages like Google assistant through DeepText.

Meta AI Controversies

Facebook has been guilty of a number of ethical failings over the years and has been called out for prioritizing profit over safety by Frances Haugen, a former product manager at the company. On more than one occasion, it has been reported that this prioritization has led to the spread of misinformation and hate speech, which tends to engage more people, and the company has been accused of ignoring the negative effects of social media on teens and other groups.

A huge chunk of Meta revenue comes from Facebook ads. However, the ads are only valuable if the content you find on the site is engaging. Reports suggest that Facebook algorithms unilaterally favor engagement and, as a result, might promote misinformation and hate speech.

In response to these claims, Meta announced several changes in June 2022, including:

The Responsible AI organization is set to join the Social Impact team.
The AI for Product teams working to protect users on any of the Meta-owned platforms will move to the product engineering team and focus on improving recommendations and making content more relevant, including ads and commerce services.
The Meta AI research team, FAIR, will join the Reality Labs Research to serve as foundation and support, with a mission to drive breakthroughs in AI through “research excellence, open science, and broad collaboration.”

The Latest Developments in Meta AI

Meta has made the news multiple times since its rechristening, and not all of it has been troublesome. Just this May, Meta announced that it has created a massive new language model that will be freely available to researchers around the globe.

In a move that is not typical of a for-profit organization, Meta surprised its followers, saying that the idea was “democratizing access to large-scale language models, to maintain the integrity and prevent misuse.”

This will be the first time a fully trained language model of this size and scope will be accessible to researchers. The move has been well-received by critics of privately owned and funded research on AI models.

Meta has been full of surprises this year, releasing its AI Research SuperCluster (RSC), the world’s fastest AI supercomputers, earlier this year. The supercomputer will accelerate AI research and help Meta build the metaverse. New announcements from the AI effort come frequently, the latest an AI chatbot.

Also read: Python for Machine Learning: A Tutorial

What Areas Will Meta AI Influence?

What influence might Meta AI have on the evolving virtual world of the metaverse?

Marketing

Your meta life could involve digital clothing and world-building, and marketers would have to consider it while strategizing on sales through the metaverse. Game developers and marketers are no strangers to in-game marketing and have displayed custom skins, virtual locations, in-game advertisements, and promotional items. The metaverse would be no different.

Culture

The metaverse brings together an alternate online subculture pushed forward by gamers, buyers, and the brands serving them.

In December 2019, GTA V allowed players to dress up as protesters in Hong Kong. Gamers put on black clothes, with yellow hard hats and gas masks to start a riot in-game. Chinese players reciprocated by dressing up as the police and fighting back.

The GTA incident was a unique phenomenon, showing unexpected ways people might use the metaverse. People from different cultures can unite as groups driven by a shared sentiment, creating a unique cultural phenomenon.

Economy

The metaverse is the advent of a shared, virtual economy. People might behave differently in the metaverse than in real life, creating alternate spending patterns.

Whenever the metaverse rolls towards global adoption, people from different economies will be on a shared platform. The metaverse might facilitate in-game trade. Brands might turn into pseudo-super-powers. Only time will tell how a metaverse might affect what we know about economics.

Why We Need to Take Meta AI Seriously

If it is not Meta AI, it could be any other AI project, but the virtual world platform race is on. What makes Meta unique is its application-oriented approach. Meta has the benefit of being the parent company to the world’s most prominent content churning machine, which allows Meta to leverage user-generated data to build its AI.

However, there don’t seem to be any signs of significant disruption, and growth appears to be moving slowly and steadily. So when someone says Meta AI is a big deal, it is so in scope but perhaps more evolutionary than revolutionary. Only time will tell how world-changing it will be as we wait for more updates from the social media – and now AI – giant.

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