Discover what experts have to say about the security concerns that DevOps is currently facing.

Cloud Tech Adoption

As enterprises increasingly adopt cloud technologies, with Gartner predicting that over 50% will be using the cloud by 2028, security can no longer be an afterthought. Instead, it must be seamlessly embedded into the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), commonly referred to as DevSecOps. This integration is so crucial that the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) Foundation has developed maturity models to guide organizations at various stages of DevSecOps implementation.

As DevSecOps gains traction, organizations will adopt a shift-left approach, introducing security measures early in the development process. This includes integrating tools like Static Application Security Testing (SAST), open-source vulnerability scanners, and credential scanners into the build pipeline, as well as conducting threat modeling before development begins. Once deployed to production, automated tests to validate security features, along with scanning container images for vulnerabilities, will become integral to developing secure products. – Siri Varma Vegiraju, Tech Lead at Microsoft.

The Open-Source Elephant in The Room

For a long time, developers and security teams’ came to the agreement that ‘shifting left’ was the best way to prevent software supply chain compromises. Shifting left meant security evaluations were conducted earlier in the development process — often before any code is actually written.

The problem is that developers are not writing as much of their own code anymore. Software now consists of up to 90% of open-source and third-party components. As a result, many developers cannot answer the question, ‘What’s in your software?’ This leaves security teams unknowingly dealing with potential faulty software that doesn’t come to light until a breach occurs.

The open-source elephant in the room has led to security concerns that are shaping the way organizations approach DevOps. Today, more organizations are incorporating a paradigm shift in approaching security in the development process to combat today’s software supply chain attacks, called, ‘Shifting left of shift left.’ While shift left primarily focuses on early testing and quality assurance, shifting left of shift left extends this concept further by incorporating enhanced collaboration, automation and continuous improvement throughout the entire software development lifecycle. Specific steps to do so include:

•  Understanding Risks Beyond Vulnerabilities – Ensuring that developers and security professionals understand the risks that lay hidden within the software is the first step and recognizing that vulnerabilities are only one dimension of risks. Inherent risks deep in the software supply chain can have serious consequences. Having the tools to identify inherent risks is critical.
• Select Foundational Tools – Shifting left of shift left begins with choosing the right foundational tools to assess open-source software components. Approximately 95% of open-source vulnerabilities are found in open-source code packages that are not selected by software developers and are indirectly pulled into projects.
• Prioritize Security in Development Tools – I encourage developers to opt for secure programming languages, frameworks, and libraries to ensure that security is integrated from the ground up.
  Implement Real-Time Solutions – To shift left of shift left, developers need more than just a testing mechanism; they need a real-time security solution consistently assessing code.
• Developer Training – Developers need to understand pain points, signs of issues, and implications of their decisions on the overall security posture can help alleviate tensions with security team members’ and create secure code from the start.
• Continuous Security Assessments – Security doesn’t end when the software goes live. Following development, organizations should have tools in place to conduct ongoing evaluations of code to help in the timely identification and remediation of vulnerabilities. – Nick Mistry, SVP, CISO at Lineaje.

Security is now at the forefront of DevOps, leading to the rise of DevSecOps, where security is integrated throughout the development lifecycle rather than being treated as an afterthought. Organizations are embedding security practices into their CI/CD pipelines, automating vulnerability scanning, and ensuring compliance checks are part of every stage of development.

This shift is changing the way DevOps teams operate. Developers are being trained in secure coding practices, and security teams are collaborating more closely with DevOps engineers to create secure, automated environments. The focus is now on proactive security—identifying and addressing potential threats early, before they become critical issues. As a result, DevOps has become more security-focused, with an emphasis on continuous monitoring, automated testing, and real-time threat detection.

Ultimately, security is no longer a separate function; it’s a fundamental component of DevOps, driving new processes, tools, and team structures. – Maksym Lushpenko, Founder & CEO at Brokee

Increased Security Breaches & Automated Security Testing

In an increasingly interconnected and digital world, it is no surprise that there has been a steady rise in the number and cost of security breaches over the last few years. As such, addressing security concerns is a top priority for any company, with the issue leading to a paradigm shift in the way organizations approach DevOps. Forward-looking companies are embracing DevSecOps approaches. These favor more holistic “Security by Design” practices that can enhance cyber resilience while removing conventional silos between DevOps and cybersecurity experts. In effect, DevSecOps integrates security as a shared responsibility throughout the entire DevOps process, starting from the early development stages, rather than relying on conventional security testing at the end of the DevOps lifecycle. – Andrew Pielage, Senior Software Engineer at Payara Services

One of the key enablers of this transition is certainly automation, already a pillar of DevOps. It supports automated security testing in the software development pipeline, flagging anomalies and untested code as a high-priority risk. As a result, developers can benefit from a continuous monitoring and improvement tool to identify and fix vulnerabilities earlier and deliver more secure software faster. – Abdul Rahim, Release Automation Engineer at Payara Services. 

Ultimately, thanks to DevSecOps, companies can shift from purely reactive security strategies, whereby threats and other issues are resolved, to more proactive approaches that can resolve vulnerabilities before they are exploited. This means that applications, companies developing these solutions and end users are more robust and resilient. 

The use of DevSecOps practices at Payara is playing a key role in helping the entire engineering team deliver high-quality code during rapid development cycles. Through a quality-centric, collaborative environment that leverages automation, the company successfully releases monthly software updates for its multiple platform versions to its enterprise customers. – James Hillyard, Infrastructure Engineer for IT Operations and DevOps at Payara Services

Complexity

Organizations must factor in compliance across numerous regulations and internal policies while at the same time anticipating new cyberattack techniques and challenges. Teams should work closely with compliance officers and security teams to ensure their applications meet their expectations before release.

Complexity has created a greater need for automation, but it’s also made building automation more difficult, especially if it’s an afterthought. There are now so many activities tied to DevOps automation. For example, there’s test automation, build automation and security automation. All these categories must be addressed when working to tame complexity. – Prashanth Nanjundappa, VP of Product Management at Progress

Securing Identities Across Different Systems

Securing identities across different systems has become a top priority for organizations, especially as credential stuffing attacks rise and leaked passwords flood the dark web.

As DevOps teams manage increasingly complex environments, it’s become critical to prioritize authentication methods like passkeys and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to prevent unauthorized access. This shift is driving the adoption of advanced security solutions that protect both the development pipeline and ensure resilient identity management against modern threats. –  Rishi Bhargava, co-founder at Descope

The post Security Concerns Shaping the Way Organizations Approach DevOps appeared first on Digital IT News.

Below, security professionals have shared which technologies have influenced summer security trends and how.

Generative AI 

The ongoing proliferation of generative AI technologies is deeply influencing cybersecurity technologies. Existing security products on the market are proving to be highly vulnerable to deepfakes, which are being used to trick unprepared identity verification systems and fool unsuspecting employees. We’ve seen an AI arms race for detecting deepfakes, yet cyberattacks only escalate, with bad actors social engineering employees using voice, video and image deepfakes. Following a winter and spring of crippling deepfake attacks, businesses are looking to adopt stronger AI-powered cyber defenses by implementing identity verification solutions that focus not on passive detection, but on active prevention of digital injection attacks and the use of AI deepfakes. – Aaron Painter CEO at Nametag. 

Balancing Cybersecurity Strategy with Risk Tolerance

Relying on just one security component barely leads to actual protection. A museum can have the most advanced surveillance system in the world — but without physical measures in place, security personnel can only observe a theft, not prevent it. Along the same lines, even if businesses invest in monitoring tools, they won’t be able to actually respond to threats without an effective incident response plan and the right team to execute it.

A balanced cybersecurity strategy supports tools with people and processes, which play a crucial role in protecting infrastructure without much financial investment. For example, establishing a process that requires business users to annually review their data repository permissions can minimize your attack surface by eliminating superfluous permissions. This process-based approach that emphasizes least privilege security can be particularly helpful for SMBs, as it provides a solid foundation that can be scaled up as the business expands. – Illia Sotnikov,  Security Strategist & Vice President of User Experience at Netwrix

Zero-Trust, EDR and IAM  

Typically, summer months lead to an increase in cybersecurity risks and threats due to employees traveling on vacation and having more relaxed “work from home” policies. It’s crucial that organizations have a heightened alert when it comes to gaining visibility into employee usage and access to corporate devices to pinpoint unusual behavior. Technologies such as Identity and Access Management (IAM), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), and Zero-Trust Architecture are being adopted by businesses to secure their organizations and employees.

The concept of Zero-Trust is being adopted by enforcing strict controls over every individual or machine, inside or outside the network, looking to gain access to the environment. “Never trust, always verify”.

EDR platforms are being adopted by organizations to gain visibility into assets, whether that be in the cloud or on-premises devices, to detect abnormal behaviors and allow for quick automated remediation.

Lastly, IAM solutions are being adopted to authorize and authenticate users, including multi-factor authentication, to mitigate unwarranted and suspicious activity. – Jeremy Ventura, Field CISO at Myriad360

Moving Target Defense (MTD)

Moving Target Defense (MTD). This is a technology that can tear down and rebuild a compute environment in seconds, making it nearly impossible for a hacker to gain persistence in the environment. MTD requires the use of containers and specific application conditions, so it demands a lot of implementation effort. However, once in place, an environment becomes extremely difficult to attack. Examples of this technology are Morphisec and Phoenix. – Andrew Plato, author of The Founder’s User Manual and Founder of Zenaciti

Security News

The post Summer Security Trends: Influencing Technologies appeared first on Digital IT News.

Manufacturing Companies Are Slowly Integrating AI

AI is being investigated by many participants in the manufacturing sector, both large and small companies. However, only large companies like Siemens, FANUC, some major robotics companies, and larger automotive and aerospace firms, as well as pharmaceutical companies, can afford to implement AI meaningfully.

AI is still too early in its development cycle to have numerous ready-made applications, making it difficult to implement. AI applications need to be built on a case-by-case basis since there are no off-the-shelf manufacturing applications that use AI natively. As a result, only large companies are currently taking advantage of AI.

Despite this, there is widespread excitement about AI, with many companies starting to use it at the ChatGPT level, such as writing better marketing copy, which is an excellent use case. The challenge, however, is that AI applications are slow to develop because they require a lot of data to be effective. Manufacturing is a great industry for AI as it generates a lot of measurable data and hard facts. But most manufacturing companies are under-digitized, so medium-sized and smaller companies are rapidly trying to digitize their data and create AI-ready repositories. They know they will benefit greatly from AI once they accomplish this, but it is a big and expensive task. Consequently, adoption will be slow, except at the highest levels. – Rhonda Dibachi, CEO at HeyScottie

Hackathons Hit the Wall

2023 and early 2024 saw a raft of internal projects leveraging public AI-as-a-Service vendors for prototyping. However, the gap between prototype and productionisation will lead most of these projects to hit a wall and require working with specialized vendors who can amortize deeper R&D across many customers. – Dev Nag, CEO/Founder at QueryPal

An Influx of Point Solution Companies Implementing AI

The market is still really strong and bullish on GenAI solutions that can create new industries and categories or disrupt existing ones.

Sectors such as medicine, healthcare and financial services are seeing a massive influx of companies creating point solutions that deploy AI in new ways that create value.

For example, tons of companies in the healthcare space are using AI to create new drugs and treatments that would not exist without the massive compute and processing power available to them via the AI boom. – Matt Biringer,CEO at North

Reimaging Computing Experiences and Infrastructure

AI-assisted Linguistic Services in Healthcare

In healthcare, applying AI technology to language and interpreting services has yet to become standard practice when assisting patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) – but that is about to change. It is common knowledge that providers are bound by law to provide linguistics services support to patients in their language of choice. That means that live interpreters typically can be found in hospitals, particularly the emergency room (ER). Beyond the ER, however, most LEP patients are on their own, trying to decipher a hospital menu to order a meal or when simply asking for help. AI can and should be considered to fill patient touchpoint gaps, especially in non-emergent medical situations. Another reason to consider AI application: America is home to 46.2 million immigrants, with over three-quarters holding legal status, marking the highest population in U.S. history as of 2022. Investment in AI-assisted language solutions can help healthcare leaders successfully address three top motives to better serve their non-English-speaking patient population: Cost, efficiency, and quality and engagement. Moreover, AI-assisted enhancements help to level up the quality of the interpreting experience and vastly improve patient compliance and outcomes. – Dipak Patel, CEO at GLOBO Language Solutions

Using AI to Automate Sales

I think one area where we are starting to see the applied use of AI is in the AdTech/MarTech vertical, which is applicable to all businesses and not just travel. Those of us who live and breathe marketing [my entire career has been in technology-based marketing]have now spent the past few years dabbling with generative AI in content creation and workflows. But now, we marketers are looking at how we can automate sales and not just marketing. We have experimented with conversational agents and chat/telephony ourselves, and have seen others experiment here too, with the corporate direction to improve conversion rates and sales success. – John Lyotier, CEO and Founder at TravelAI

Hybrid Switches

As AI continues to advance, hybrid switches that support both PCIe 5.0 and CXL 2.0 will become indispensable in the next generation of AI infrastructure. These hybrid solutions will be the key to overcoming the increasingly complex demands of AI workloads, offering the flexibility to handle both high-speed data transfer and efficient memory sharing. I predict that the adoption of hybrid switches will accelerate, becoming a standard in AI systems, enabling seamless scalability, and future-proofing AI infrastructure across industries. This shift will drive significant innovation, allowing AI applications to reach new heights in performance and efficiency. – Gerry Fan, CEO at XConn Technologies

Enhance Strategic Decision Making With AI Cost Estimation

In the rapidly evolving landscape of IT and digital engineering, we’re seeing a growing demand for cost management technology that allows businesses to streamline projects with AI-driven insights and analysis. The integration of generative AI enables users to leverage sophisticated predictive analytics and machine learning enhancements, so businesses can deliver projects on time, within budget, and with optimal resource utilization. By analyzing extensive historical data, AI models can make highly accurate predictions, learning from past projects to reduce the likelihood of cost overruns.

Its ability to learn and evolve is one of AI’s most compelling features within cost estimation. With each completed project, AI systems refine their algorithms, leading to more accurate estimates in future projects. This continuous improvement is crucial for industries where precision in cost estimation is paramount. Also, AI can continuously update estimates as projects progress and conditions change, such as supply chain disruptions or labor shortages. This approach ensures that estimates remain relevant and accurate throughout the project’s lifespan.

AI has the ability to automate routine and repetitive tasks in cost estimation, which frees up human experts to focus on the more complex and strategic aspects, enhancing overall efficiency. AI also excels in taking into account the unique requirements of each project, including local labor and material costs, to tailor estimates accordingly, ensuring estimates are accurate and relevant to the specifics of each project.

While AI offers a range of advantages in cost estimation, it’s crucial to approach its adoption with a balanced perspective, acknowledging its potential benefits and limitations. Integrating AI in cost estimation is not just about adopting new technology; it’s about enhancing the strategic decision-making process in project management. – Charles Orlando, Chief Marketing Officer at Galorath Incorporated

Federated Learning

Federated Learning is an innovation that is very interesting. Instead of taking all data to one main place for processing, this method lets different devices or servers work together without sharing the raw data directly. It’s a big win for privacy and security, and businesses are loving it.

Federated Learning smartly fixes privacy concerns about data. It allows businesses to use AI capabilities while protecting personal information securely. – Erik Severinghaus, Founder and CEO at Bloomfilter

Edge AI: Smarter Devices Without the Wait

So, you know when you ask your phone how to go somewhere, and it takes a long time to answer? Edge AI is making this better by putting the smart thinking directly on your device. This means quicker replies, less information stored in the cloud, and improved privacy. Shops are using it to guess what you might wish to purchase before you even realize it yourself, making shopping easier and more tailored for each person. It feel like your phone or favorite shop know you more than you know yourself! – Ghazenfer Monsoor, Founder and CEO at Technology Rivers

Organizational Use of AI Forensics and AI Visibility

The technology to secure the generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) organizations are now leveraging has only been around since the first half of 2024. While GenAI’s adoption has become widespread and organizations are seeing its potential for business value, we’re also still learning about the negative impacts of GenAI, how to avoid them along with security risks, and how to ethically harness GenAI’s power.

As we get further into 2024, organizations are going to need to take more proactive approaches to their GenAI applications and strategies to see the full benefits. One example is ensuring both AI forensics and AI visibility capabilities are available across all internal networks. This would look like auditing capabilities of all AI prompts and applications, including traceability, transparency, compliance, and risk management.

Should the worst happen, AI forensics could be a game-changer for organizations by giving them clear visibility into potential risks, tools being used, and who used them, as well as the prompts ingested by the AI models.

Organizations are finding out they cannot manage what they can’t see, making AI forensics and AI visibility a top priority for those looking to ensure even approved GenAI applications don’t pose a potential threat to security posture. –  Arti Raman, CEO and founder at Portal26

Utilizing AI to Improved User Experience

We are now in the phase where the rubber hits the road, lots of customers are realising the promises of AI changing the way they operate was more hype than Truth. The only businesses that have benefited from the huge hype of LLM/Chat GPT etc are the ones that were selling “Shovels in the gold rush” which are Microsoft azure, AWS, Databricks, etc.

But, that said we will see some revolutionary products that are based on improving user experience become even bigger and capturing more market. To take an example perplexity.ai, it is a serious challenger to google. Perplexity with its unique combination of blending search with the power of Large Language models is an awesome win for a new age company battling the behemoths. – Shubh Chatterjee, Founding Scientist at ALgoxlab LLC

 Continued Progress in Quantum AI

I would like to highlight Quantum AI – it’s bound to be a true game-changer in computing. Although still theoretical, combining the principles of quantum mechanics with AI will allow us to process information at speeds and efficiency far beyond traditional computers. This opens the possibility of AI on the proverbial steroids. This is because quantum computers use qubits, which can exist in multiple states at once, such as one and zero, resulting in exponential computing power enabling them to solve complex problems much faster. This capability will enhance AI’s ability to analyze and predict outcomes. It might be the road that takes us to the much-discussed GAI or General Artificial Intelligence – the kind we’ve only seen in sci-fi movies not actual product demos.

The progress of quantum computing has been slow due to the specific conditions required to develop and operate qubits. However, this year has been a banner year for quantum computing, with exciting breakthroughs happening just this summer. Researchers have made significant progress in overcoming a major hurdle: creating stable qubits. One approach utilizes femtosecond lasers for precise manipulation. 

Another breakthrough involves manipulating defects in a silicon crystal lattice, using lasers to create high-quality qubits in silicon by introducing hydrogen atoms into defects. This technique allows for not only creation but also erasure of qubits – key for a more controlled and reliable system.

While it’s still challenging to get qubits to “talk” to each other, for example, these advancements represent significant progress in building a functional quantum computer.

To give you a business case of quantum AI and computing, it could revolutionize pharmaceutical R&D. Traditionally, drug discovery has been painfully slow and expensive. This is because it involves analyzing massive datasets and simulating countless molecular interactions in different scenarios. Quantum AI could accelerate this process severalfold by performing these simulations more efficiently and accurately. Basically, this would allow us to identify promising (and potentially – much more efficient) drug candidates much faster and at a lower cost, which could revolutionize how we develop new medications leading us to genetically personalized medicine etc.- Ilia Badeev, Head of Data Science at Trevolution Group

Data Architectures

In the burgeoning era of data dominance, businesses are keenly pursuing AI integration as a competitive lever, recognizing the necessity of modernizing data architectures to harness the full potential of Generative AI (GenAI) and advanced analytics. This imperative drives a demand for vendors who can deliver foundational technologies—such as robust data management, rapid data transfer, and reliable disaster recovery. As concerns over GenAI misuse persist, the need for secure, recoverable AI data becomes paramount, necessitating advanced data migration technologies and real-time cloud replication to support near-zero recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). Companies like Microsoft Azure and AWS are pivotal in demystifying AI and crafting tailored AI strategies for businesses, ensuring a seamless blend of AI into their strategic and technological frameworks. Over the next five years, as firms increasingly focus on monetizing AI-driven applications, those vendors that prioritize customer monetization outcomes and can efficiently move, protect, and recover large data sets will likely emerge as leaders. This shift emphasizes not only the technical integration of AI but also strategic alignment with business goals to optimize investment and maximize returns from GenAI initiatives. – Paul Scott-Murphy, Chief Technology Officer at Cirata

Open-source Decentralized AI 

The current trends are 100% around developing an open-source decentralized AI model. The fact that large companies can skew the input models is leading to a full-court press to build out a totally open-source product. Many Depin platforms are a natural fit to deploy this robust decentralized AI model. The future of the people depends on unadulterated input models to ensure rock-solid output models. – Daniel Keller, CEO & Co-founder at InFlux

AI News

The post Technologies Influencing AI Trends This Summer appeared first on Digital IT News.

Emerging Technology Influencing Cloud Storage Trends This Summer 

Artificial Intelligence 

The rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across industries is influencing the cloud storage trends this summer. Technologies like Machine Learning (ML) and Generative AI (GenAI) depend on the ability to access and manipulate large datasets in the cloud, requiring large capacity, storage flexibility and great throughput. Cloud Storage solutions are therefore evolving rapidly driven by the need for better performance, security and cost-efficiency. Cloud-native and the increasing use of serverless computing in event-driven applications and microservices are also shaping the storage technology landscape. Many Businesses are adopting a hybrid and multi-cloud setups are developing strategies that offer flexibility and improve resilience, while avoiding a vendor lock-in by the large public cloud providers. – Efrain Ruh, AIOps Expert and CTO at Digitate

AI/ML is a primary driver for moving data to the cloud from its initial location, which might initially reside on-premises or another cloud resource. After moving the data, the next step is to transform it into a format that can be consumed for a particular workload. Often, the initial transformation is followed by a second or third transformation to meet security or compliance requirements.

Transformation is a euphemism for using compute resources. Generally, compute is the most expensive resource in the cloud, but that must be calculations regarding the data life cycle. For instance, it may be cheaper to retransform data again, rather than pay storage fees. It is entirely situationally dependent.

Each transformation will require an appropriate data life cycle policy to be applied to it to minimize costs. A common requirement is that the data be moved from colder to warmer storage (and back again) based on the needs of the AI/ML workload so it can be used for future training activities or additional transformations. – David Christian, Global Migration Lead at DataArt

Cloud-first Policy Adoption

Leading into the summer season, ‘cloud-first’ has become a widely-adopted rule for companies that want to compete in the data-driven economy. With data only increasing in volume, the massive cost savings afforded by the cloud make it impossible for many organizations to opt for on-premises data centers. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. Still, today, cloud providers offer the security, flexibility, and often even the data residency requirements needed for any company’s unique circumstances.

In today’s collaborative data environment, where data is shared between departments, team members, and even satellite organizations, an on-premises solution can’t match the scalability and efficiency of the cloud. Disparate data was once a major stumbling block. Still, the ability for data platforms to do away with siloed and connected data from wherever it is has been addressed effectively by the cloud in a way that on-premises solutions can’t. – Sharad Varshney, CEO at OvalEdge

Software-defined Storage

One technology that’s not necessarily new but is becoming increasingly important is software-defined storage. Think of it this way: You’ve got lots of data in storage—a video archive, for example—that you don’t access often. There’s always an access pattern that emerges around this kind of data. But sometimes, those patterns change depending on what type of content people need at the moment. Traditionally, archivists notice that change and manually move some of the archival data into hotter storage so people can access it faster and cheaper. Software-defined storage builds frameworks to automate that process through scripting or AI to optimize for cost and performance.  – Majed Alhajry, technology, business process, and software development leader at MASV

Security Concerns Shaping Organization Approach to Cloud Storage 

Client Misconfigurations

A significant proportion of cloud security breaches are due to client misconfigurations, which are often driven by a lack of cloud expertise. That’s why some cloud providers have moved to the shared responsibility model. This model stakes out a middle ground between cloud providers dictating everything you can and cannot do, on one hand, and leaving customers to fend for themselves on the other. Shared responsibility means cloud providers implement sensible defaults—such as strong password enforcement or ensuring new storage buckets aren’t made public by default—while allowing customers the flexibility to configure their storage to suit specific use cases. – Majed Alhajry, technology, business process, and software development leader at MASV

Cloud Governance

Cloud governance is always an important element in any enterprise cloud implementation. Using cloud-native tools, Config or SecurityHub in AWS, Defender for Cloud in Azure, and Security Command Center in GCP allows you to see the security state of all storage repositories. It reports on questions like: Is the repository encrypted? Is the repository encrypted in a cost-efficient way? Does the repository have a life-cycle policy assigned to it? Does the repository restrict access from the Internet or internally? Are the policies that allow access to the repository the least privileged? Are permanent access keypairs disallowed or severely restricted?

Finding a repository that is out of compliance will mean scheduling it for a change to meet compliance needs. Creating new, out-of-compliance repositories is generally prohibited by policy. – David Christian, Global Migration Lead at DataArt

The Role Environmental and Sustainability Plays in Cloud Storage Trends 

Optimizing Resource Use

Environmental and sustainability considerations in cloud storage often focus on optimizing resource use. Cloud providers therefore allow users to select the best type of storage and deliver technological solutions that allow them to move data to more cost-effective platforms with ease, reducing not only their carbon footprint but also costs. – Efrain Ruh, CTO / Cloud Management Professional at Digitate

Centralization of Cloud Storage

There’s a lot of greenwashing in the cloud storage space, but there is merit to some of it. For example, the centralization of cloud storage is one of its most important sustainability features: If everyone in the cloud decided to build their own data centers, the amount of space and other resources required would far exceed what they’re using in the cloud. The capacity of the cloud is also higher due to economies of scale, which means you can store more gigabytes per cubic foot, which means less need for cooling, silicon, and other resources. Some public clouds have even started using underwater data centers, which use ocean water as a cooling method and require far less power. – Majed Alhajry, technology, business process, and software development leader at MASV

Efficient Allocation of Resources

According to reports, 60% of all corporate data is currently stored in a public cloud. Cloud providers have economies of scale within their data centers that simply cannot be matched by corporate data centers. In a data center, the tendency is to leave the compute resources, bare metal, and virtual machines on 7×24 in case they might be needed to process data. In the cloud, from a customer’s point of view, when the data needs to be processed in some way, the compute is enabled, the data is processed, and the compute is turned off. From the cloud provider point-of-view, what is actually happening is the compute is reallocated to other customers, but the overall carbon footprint is reduced globally due to a more efficient allocation of resources. – David Christian, Global Migration Lead at DataArt

The Influence of Remote Work and Hybrid Work on Cloud Storage Trends

Flexible and Scaleable Storage

The shift towards remote and hybrid work models has pushed for more flexible and scalable cloud storage solutions. As teams continue to work remotely, there is a higher reliance on collaborations tools like MS Teams, Slack, Google Workplace, etc, requiring a robust cloud storage solution. Remote work often introduces security vulnerabilities, making data protection a top-level concern. Having confidential organization data being accessed from multiple locations and devices increases the risk of an attack or a breach. Effective backup and recovery capabilities are also crucial to minimize risks on a hybrid work model. –  Efrain Ruh, CTO / Cloud Management Professional at Digitate

 Expanded Geographic of Workforce

Hybrid and remote work makes cloud storage a necessity, especially if you have a geographically spread-out workforce. That geographic spread can create significant expenses for on-prem organizations that need employees to access storage from anywhere with low latency. You also can’t provision on demand with on-prem storage—you have to provision for the worst-case scenario, just in case—so companies constantly overpay for capacity they don’t usually need. The economies of scale built into cloud storage suit hybrid work models because they allow organizations to scale up and down quickly without requiring significant CapEx. – Majed Alhajry, technology, business process, and software development leader at MASV

Recent Unexpected Uses for Cloud Storage

Storage as a Service

Several use cases for cloud storage have emerged beyond traditional data storage. One example is Storage as a Service (STaaS), a solution that organizations are starting to adopt to reduce complexity and increase efficiency through a consumption-based as-a-service model with increased levels of automation. – Efrain Ruh, CTO / Cloud Management Professional at Digitate

AI Payloads and Training Data

The cloud is very well suited for AI payloads and hosting AI training data use cases, which require rapid access to data and large amounts of sequential reads. Cloud storage is well-suited, efficient, and cheap for these use cases. It gets very expensive to have a training data corpus stored on prem—those drives must be spinning all the time to provide on-demand access, even though you’re not training your model at all times. With hot storage in the cloud, you get that access on demand, and access to that data is usually free, so you’re only paying for the storage element. This applies across most industries. – Majed Alhajry, technology, business process, and software development leader at MASV

Consolidating Compute Resources

We’ve been seeing organizations that initially took a multi-cloud approach, begin to reconsider and consolidate into a single cloud. Overcoming data gravity is real, egressing data between clouds or even regions within a cloud is more expensive than originally calculated. Putting all compute resources in local proximity to data repositories has been a trend recently because it is more efficient. –  David Christian, Global Migration Lead at DataArt

Cloud News

The post Cloud Storage Trends to Stay on Top Of   appeared first on Digital IT News.

The marketing leaders survey found that while businesses are showing a strong rebound from two challenging years, they are very mindful of how privacy can and will affect their future digital marketing success. The good news is most leaders recognize the importance of investing in aligning each marketing discipline, shoring up solid data practices, and bolstering their arsenal of branded content and communications channels.

2021 Proved Most Businesses Have Recovered Economically
Businesses, for the most part, are bouncing back to pre-COVID levels, but marketing leaders are more mindful of where dollars are spent. Last year, only 42% of leaders were optimistic that economic recovery was within reach. Now, 63% report their budgets and priorities reflect pre-COVID levels. Priorities are shifting in that advertising and wide-net marketing efforts like social media marketing are too much of a gamble for organizations. Instead, they are investing in building out content and branding, which points to organizations knowing the value of investing in themselves.

• 91% of leaders say their team has been successful this year, signaling changes brought on by the pandemic have allowed marketing teams to prioritize budget and energy to their benefit.
• Consistently positive performance is good news for business: 71% of businesses have grown their marketing teams in the last year, reflective of a strong industry landscape, prioritization of marketing to the business, and appetite for good talent.
• 70% report business performance as better overall compared to last year. In 2020, only 42% of leaders said their businesses were performing better than the previous year.
• Comparatively, in 2020, 32% of leaders said business performance was worse. Fast forward one year, and that figure shrunk to 15%.

Budgetary spend has shifted in the last year, with 2021 ranked budget priorities: 1) Branding, 2) Content Marketing, 3) CRM and Email Marketing, 4) Digital Advertising, 5) Social Media Marketing, 6) Demand Gen, 7) Website. In 2020, the top three areas of spend were (in order): Digital Advertising, Content Marketing, and Social Media Marketing.

Email Marketing Continues to Perform as a Trusted Channel, Delivering Against the Bottom Line
In years past, email marketers have been viewed as siloed parts of the marketing organization, but the tide is turning in a major way. Alignment across all marketing channels has skyrocketed in importance to marketing leaders in the last year, with 95% of leaders noting email marketing specifically is more tightly aligned with the marketing ecosystem compared to last year.

• The effort is paying off, with 76% of leaders saying their email marketing program has made a positive impact on the business in 2021, compared to 58% in 2020.
• 52% of marketing leaders deem their teams as “highly efficient,” due in large part to bringing the email campaign production and management work in-house.
  • Globally, 63% of leaders say everything is done in-house. This is mostly true in North America, where 76% of leaders have taken the work completely in-house.
• With returning budgets alongside bigger objectives and goals, workload is also on the rise – 69% of leaders say their teams are “busier than ever” (compared to 48% in 2020); 77% of North America leaders say there is a significant workload increase.

Privacy-Related Changes and Challenges Continue to Worry Marketers
The overall fragility of privacy – regulations, consumer behavioral shifts, and big changes coming from the likes of Apple and Google – are having both short- and long-term implications on business. Changes in privacy regulations and a shift in consumer perception of personal data are a big factor in marketing leaders’ commitment to invest in earned and owned marketing channels.

Email continues to grow in importance for CMOs, as many audiences have leaned on it for information and connection throughout the pandemic. The boom of email in the early stages of the pandemic shows no signs of slowing in 2021 and beyond. As such, marketing teams are prepping now for changes that are expected to come, with an overall approach of proactively respecting customer privacy.

• 82% of leaders are actively preparing for privacy changes.
• 67% of practitioners say they’re concerned with how privacy changes will affect their ability to perform.
• 59% of leaders report their organization’s email engagement data has “taken a hit.”

Specific changes that are keeping leaders up at night: Apple’s iOS 15 changes are of most concern (81% rank it medium to high concern), followed by Google’s third-party cookie tracking (77%), government regulations (72%), and deprecation of app tracking data (72%).

Future of Work Success and Employee Happiness Hinge on Improved Collaboration and Communication
Globally, nearly half (49%) of companies are still fully remote; 41% are hybrid. When asked if they love it, hate it, or are indifferent to working remotely, 85% of marketing leaders say they love it; 90% of practitioners agree. Despite significant workload increases, it’s clear most companies have rebounded financially, and the increased investments in hiring and collaboration tools is allowing workers to succeed, mitigating frustrations, bottlenecks in work, and redundancy. For those fully remote:

• 98% actually say their collaboration is either the same (16%) or better (82%) compared to being in-office.
• 96% say communication is the same or better.
• 95% say productivity is the same or better.
• When gauging how changing work situations have impacted happiness: 95% of fully remote workers say it’s the same or better, compared to 89% of hybrid workers and 89% of those in the office full-time.

Work situations related to on-site, hybrid, and remote work still vary, yet it’s clear that workers are happiest (and most productive) when they have the flexibility to determine their own ideal work-from-home/office routine. For the 41% of companies that have a hybrid work set-up:

• 71% of marketing leaders say they love it; 45% of practitioners agree.
• 94% say collaboration is the same or better compared to being in-office.
• 93% say communication is the same or better.
• 90% say productivity is the same or better.

Download the SparkPost report “Email in 2022: The trends, behaviors, and benchmarks driving email forward”

Image licensed by unsplash.com

Related News:

Want to Learn about Digital Marketing? Talk to a Cybercriminal.

Be Aware of These Six Cybersecurity Trends in 2022

The post Impending Privacy Changes Have Marketing Leaders Concerned appeared first on Digital IT News.

Trend 1 Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

In the healthcare industry, machine learning is extremely helpful for the development of new pharmaceuticals and the efficiency of diagnosis processes. AI is helping analyze CT scans to detect pneumonia. Mentioning Mental health, MIT and Harvard University researchers have utilized machine learning to track trends and mental health in correlation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trend 2 Telemedicine

Telehealth is expected to grow to $185.6 billion by 2026. If you need a dedicated telemedicine app, one of the most important technologies that will be needed is WebRTC, an open-source API-based system.

Trend 3 Extended Reality

One of the most popular and useful forms of this technology is the use of mixed reality headsets like Microsoft Hololens 2 by surgeons. The headset can provide heads up information to the surgeon while allowing them to use both of their hands during the procedure.

Trend 4 IoT

The global IoT medical devices market is projected to reach USD 94.2 billion by 2026 from USD 26.5 billion in 2021. With the healthcare industry becoming increasingly more connected through these technologies, IoT cannot be ignored.

Trend 5 Privacy and Security

Ensuring your organization is HIPAA compliant is an essential first step toward avoiding costly data breaches. If you are serving patients internationally, it may be a good idea to consider the regulations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union.

Trend 6 Organ Care and Bioprinting

With the world’s transplantation market size predicted to reach $26.5 billion by 2028, organ transplants are certainly an important part of the healthcare industry. The Organ Care System developed by Transmedics is a great example. Bioprinting has been done in the past but has not yet hit the mainstream.

More detailed information about Healthcare Technology Trends in 2022

Image licensed by unsplash.com

Related News:

Bad Data Challenges in the Healthcare System is Costly

HealthWorksAI Unveils the First xAI-Powered Healthcare Data Platform

The post Healthcare Technology Trends in 2022 According to MobiDev appeared first on Digital IT News.

With cyberattacks — especially ransomware — on the rise, IT teams and security professionals must be on the alert as never before. Here are six specific predictions from Ilia Sotnikov, cybersecurity expert and VP of User Experience & Security Strategist at Netwrix:

1. Legislation will increase as security incidents at private companies affect national security. The impact of ransomware and other cyberattacks is no longer limited to just the victim company anymore; attacks are now affecting entire regions. For instance, attacks on companies that supply food or fuel have led to empty shelves in supermarkets and long queues at gas stations. Therefore, we can expect that security requirements for private organizations in critical sectors to become tougher. In particular, notification rules will be affected, as governments need more visibility into the specifics of cyberattacks in order to improve legislation. In some cases, governments may opt to use proverbial carrots as well as sticks, such as tax breaks that reward organizations for investing in cyber defenses.
2. Cyber insurance costs will increase and policies will mandate higher security standards. With insurance payouts becoming both more frequent and more costly, the cost of cyber insurance has already skyrocketed: Prices rose 96% in the US and 73% in the UK for the third quarter of 2021 compared to the same quarter last year. We expect continued increases in 2022. Moreover, insurance policies will require implementation of critical controls that reduce the risk of cybersecurity incidents. With attacks becoming increasingly common, insurance companies will pay in exceptional cases only.
3. More attacks will target MSPs as a path to infiltrate large enterprises or government agencies. Attackers have seized upon a very effective strategy for getting access to large organizations — through the relatively weaker IT infrastructures of SMBs that provide them with services. Accordingly, managed service providers (MSPs) will need to increase both the breadth and depth of their security measures, since many SMBs rely upon them on their security.
4. Quantum computing will begin to disrupt encryption. Most cryptographic algorithms today rely on the premise that there’s no processor sufficiently powerful to crack them in a reasonable timeframe — but quantum computing will allow such a processor to exist. While this technology is still far from any practical application, concern is growing. For example, the U.S. has announced export controls on eight Chinese quantum computing companies because of worries about China’s ability to break encryption. As the technology matures, we can expect more widespread adoption of post-quantum encryption standards.
5. Companies will need to address challenges in machine learning. Well over half (59%) of large enterprises today are already using data science (DS) and machine learning (ML). However, these techniques bring risks as well as benefits. ML algorithms are especially vulnerable in the learning phase because bad actors can poison the input in order to subvert the results, which can break critical processes and even put lives in danger in cases such as healthcare or traffic lights in a smart city. Organizations using ML must understand these threats and redouble their efforts to defend against them.
6. Attackers will use residential home networks as their infrastructure. A home network is much easier to infect with malicious software than a professionally secured enterprise IT environment. With processing power and bandwidth connectivity in residences increasing, home networks will become more attractive to bad actors. For example, by infecting many devices, they will be able to change IP addresses or even domain names dynamically during malware campaigns, thwarting common defenses like IP blocking and DNS filtering. IT teams should keep this new threat vector in mind when reviewing their security strategies and incident response plans. Moreover, the IT industry should seek to increase user awareness and best practices adoption to reduce the number of easy victims.

“Prioritization is the only way for organizations to manage the risk of cyberattacks in this new era of advanced technologies that can be used for both good and evil,” says Ilia Sotnikov, VP of User Experience & Security Strategist at Netwrix. “Simply put, organizations need to focus on securing their most important and valuable assets from the most likely incidents, and update their policies regularly. It is increasingly obvious that cyber insurance is not a lifebuoy. Risk assessment is first and foremost our own responsibility.”

Related News:

Netwrix SbPAM Continues to Minimize Privileged Access Security Risks

Cybersecurity Predictions for 2022 Unveiled by Query.AI

The post Be Aware of These Six Cybersecurity Trends in 2022 appeared first on Digital IT News.

The post Tech Salary Trends in the Hyper Competitive Market appeared first on Digital IT News.

The post Mobile Trends from 300,000,000 Seconds of Customer Engagement appeared first on Digital IT News.

“The economic, organizational and societal impact of the pandemic will continue to serve as a catalyst for digital innovation and adoption of cloud services,” said Henrique Cecci, senior research director at Gartner. “This is especially true for use cases such as collaboration, remote work and new digital services to support a hybrid workforce.”

Cloud Ubiquity

Today, the cloud underpins most new technological disruptions, including composable business, and has proven itself during times of uncertainty with its resiliency, scalability, flexibility and speed. Hybrid, multicloud and edge environments are growing and setting the stage for new distributed cloud models. In addition, new wireless communications advances, such as 5G R16 and R17, will push cloud adoption to a new level of broader, deeper and ubiquitous usage. Use cases such as enhanced mobile banking experiences and healthcare transformation will also emerge.

As a result, global cloud adoption will continue to expand rapidly. Gartner forecasts end-user spending on public cloud services to reach $396 billion in 2021 and grow 21.7% to reach $482 billion in 2022 (see Table 1). Additionally, by 2026, Gartner predicts public cloud spending will exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending, up from less than 17% in 2021.

Table 1. Worldwide Public Cloud Services End-User Spending Forecast (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

BPaaS = business process as a service; IaaS = infrastructure as a service; PaaS = platform as a service; SaaS = software as a service
Note: Totals may not add up due to rounding.

Source: Gartner (August 2021)

“Organizations are advancing their timelines on digital business initiatives and moving rapidly to the cloud in an effort to modernize environments, improve system reliability, support hybrid work models and address other new realities compelled by the pandemic,” said Brandon Medford, senior principal analyst at Gartner.

Regional Cloud Ecosystems

Growing geopolitical regulatory fragmentation, protectionism and industry compliance are driving the creation of new regional and vertical cloud ecosystems and data services. Companies in the financial and public sectors are looking to reduce critical lock-in and single points of failure with their cloud providers outside of their country.

Regions not able to create or sustain their own platform ecosystems will have no choice but to leverage the platforms created in other regions and resort to legislation and regulation to maintain some level of control and sovereignty. Concerns among politicians, academia and tech providers in these regions are increasing, leading to initiatives such as GAIA-X in European countries.

Sustainability and “Carbon-Intelligent” Cloud

Nearly half of the respondents in the 2021 Gartner CEO Survey believe climate change mitigation will have a significant impact on their business. Cloud providers are responding to this growing focus on sustainability by instituting more aggressive carbon-neutral corporate goals, which creates new challenges for infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders.

“New sustainability requirements will be mandated over the next few years and the choice of cloud services providers may hinge on the provider’s ‘green’ initiatives,” said Cecci.

CIPS Providers’ Automated Programmable Infrastructure

Gartner expects the broad adoption of fully managed and artificial intelligence (AI)-/machine-learning (ML)-enabled cloud services from hyperscale CIPS providers. This will rapidly eliminate the operational burden of traditional I&O roles in the public cloud.

“Infrastructure is becoming programmable, and its operation is subsequently becoming automated,” said Cecci. “Modern IT infrastructure, whether deployed in the data center or consumed in the public cloud, requires less manual intervention and routine administration than its legacy equivalents.”

Gartner clients can read more in the reports “Top Four Trends Are Shaping the Future of Public Cloud” and “Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2019-2025, 2Q21 Update.”

Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conferences

Gartner analysts will provide additional analysis on cloud strategies and infrastructure and operations trends at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conferences taking place November 22-23 in London, December 1-2 in Tokyo, and December 6-8 in Las Vegas. Follow news and updates from these conferences on Twitter using #GartnerIO.

The post Gartner Says Four Trends Are Shaping the Future of Public Cloud appeared first on Digital IT News.