The next BriefingsDirect security market transformation discussion explores how airline Allegiant Air solved its payment card industry (PCI) problem — and got a whole lot better security culture to boot.
When Allegiant needed to quickly manage its compliance around the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, it embraced many technologies, including tokenization, but the company also adopted an improved position toward privacy methods in general.

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«When you think about the data center today, there’s constant evolution, The evolution of the data center and the needs of the consumer of technology change, and they change constantly,» stated Matt Kalmenson, VP of Sales, Service and Cloud Providers at Veeam Software, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 18th Cloud Expo, held June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.

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(c)iStock.com/sorbetto

A new report from big data analytics provider Mu Sigma argues that higher performing companies are four times more likely to use a consistent approach to big data analysis, while consensus is divided on whether the CIO or CFO should be in charge.

The findings come from a survey of 150 large enterprises which turn over at least $500 million (£377.2m) a year, and draw some interesting conclusions on how large firms prioritise their data crunching. 23% of those polled said the CIO was responsible for analytics, compared to 17% who cite the CFO. In contrast, only 4% of respondents said they have a chief data scientist in charge, compared to 9% for a chief data officer and 13% a chief analytics officer.

With this in mind, there is also a distinct lack of consensus on the models organisations adopt. The majority (44%) of respondents said they use a centralised model, whereby a central group oversees analytics development for the entire company, while 22% said they opt for an approach where individual business units govern themselves. 16% adopt a federated approach, which blends the two.

Almost two thirds (65%) of senior decision makers polled say they recognise the positive impact analytics can have on business growth. The issue, the report argues, is around harnessing it properly. “Changes in customer behaviours are leading to a scramble for new capabilities and offerings – which in turn fuels the need for analytics and insights,” said Tom Pohlmann, head of values and strategy at Mu Sigma. While many enterprises are taking the right approach to meeting those challenges, many are still not paying enough attention to creative problem solving and consequently falling short in analytics.

“Organisations need to understand the importance of decisions in order to gain truly valuable insights from their data – and sometimes you need to ‘think outside the box’ to get there,” Pohlmann added.

Seven out of 10 (70%) respondents said that they plan to make improvements to their big data analytics approach and have a clearer roadmap of what they want to address in the coming year.

IoT is rapidly changing the way enterprises are using data to improve business decision-making. In order to derive business value, organizations must unlock insights from the data gathered and then act on these.
In their session at @ThingsExpo, Eric Hoffman, Vice President at EastBanc Technologies, and Peter Shashkin, Head of Development Department at EastBanc Technologies, discussed how one organization leveraged IoT, cloud technology and data analysis to improve customer experiences and efficiencies. They shared the lessons learned, why they believe IoT works better with the cloud, and the four steps organizations should follow to ensure they are able to achieve big business intelligence with IoT.

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«Operations is sort of the maturation of cloud utilization and the move to the cloud,» explained Steve Anderson, Product Manager for BMC’s Cloud Lifecycle Management, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 18th Cloud Expo, held June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.

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(c)iStock.com/john shepherd

The only certainty about Brexit, the UK’s departure from the European Union, is that it is going to create uncertainty in terms of data sovereignty, particularly in the field of cloud computing. Data sovereignty refers to data being held in a country in adherence to the laws of that state. That is fine if your company is based in a single location and single market but it becomes trickier if you have diverse locations and lots of different laws with which you need to comply.

When the UK is part of the European Union it has the same data sovereignty laws as other countries in the EU but when the UK breaks away those laws could change. In time companies operating in Europe may have to manage one set of data laws for the UK and another for EU member countries. By voting to leave the European Union the UK fractured what was becoming a single digital market into potentially two or more jurisdictions for technology issues.

If the UK wants to participate in the free flow of data across European borders after leaving the EU, it will have to adopt the same data-protection standards as the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation. As the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has stated “international consistency around data protection laws and rights is crucial, both to businesses and organisations and to consumers and citizens”. Unless the UK follows the new EU rules foreign companies may lose the ability to process European consumer data in the UK. This has ramifications for companies that want to use data centres in the UK – even just as backups – if their data centres in other EU countries go down.

People are waking up and recognising that the cloud is about data centres built on land under national laws. Cloud and managed service providers may need to offer additional options for customers to host data across Europe and enterprise end users may need to reconsider where their data is stored and ask themselves “if I move my data to your cloud, where will it be stored and what sovereign laws will it be subject to?”. For UK and international companies moving data in and out of Europe this could become a minefield but it doesn’t have to be.

The fact is cloud computing companies are getting used to dealing with issues of data sovereignty. Gavin Jackson, Amazon Web Services (AWS) UK and Ireland managing director said, whilst speaking at the recent AWS Summit in London, that in spite of the referendum result, Amazon was still committed to opening a new data centre in the UK by the end of this year.  Whilst in the past restricting types of data that can be stored in specific locations hampered their flexibility to move data from one data centre to another, patented technology now solves that problem.

By opening a data centre in the UK Amazon can guarantee UK data will remain in the UK whilst other data can still be available to the rest of Europe to be shared and processed accordingly. How is this possible? In a shameless plug for my own company, WANdisco has patented “active transactional data replication” technology which led us to be one of Amazon’s partners (along with IBM, Microsoft and Google). The advantage of our WANdisco Fusion technology is that it doesn’t have to replicate all the data which allows data controllers to apply security controls to the data that is replicated. This means that cloud computing companies can quickly control where data is shared and ensure that data sovereignty requirements are met.

The hybrid cloud model can also help with issues of data sovereignty as companies keep sensitive data on site behind the firewall and only move certain data-processing activities to the cloud. Our technology means businesses can migrate data with no downtime thus potentially saving thousands in potentially loss revenue or capital outlay.

Ultimately Brexit doesn’t have to mean the balkanisation of a company’s data strategy but clarity is needed so the right measures can be put in place. 

Machine Learning helps make complex systems more efficient. By applying advanced Machine Learning techniques such as Cognitive Fingerprinting, wind project operators can utilize these tools to learn from collected data, detect regular patterns, and optimize their own operations.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Stuart Gillen, Director of Business Development at SparkCognition, discussed how research has demonstrated the value of Machine Learning in delivering next generation analytics to improve safety, performance, and reliability in today’s modern wind turbines.

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Mitigating downtime requires good workflows, human response and – most importantly – proper alarms to alert relevant individuals when things go wrong. Proper incident notification is crucial to effect management of IT downtime.
Proper IT management requires proper incident management. Otherwise, you court Murphy’s law at your peril. In the IT world, if a server can fail, a cache overload or traffic overload the network – it will. And the consequences are significant.

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Continuous testing helps bridge the gap between developing quickly and maintaining high quality products.
But to implement continuous testing, CTOs must take a strategic approach to building a testing infrastructure and toolset that empowers their team to move fast.
Download our guide to laying the groundwork for a scalable continuous testing strategy.

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FalconStor Software has announced that organizations using FreeStor® to seamlessly migrate, protect and recover data in the cloud are able to do so without being tied to specific hardware, networks or protocols, making it an ideal solution for businesses that are looking to cut costs and recovery time, as well as enabling Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to offer Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) or Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) offerings.

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