Announcing @Conference_Guru Named “Media Sponsor” of @CloudExpo NY | #IoT #M2M #Cloud

SYS-CON Events announced today that Conference Guru has been named “Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 6–8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
A valuable conference experience generates new contacts, sales leads, potential strategic partners and potential investors; helps gather competitive intelligence and even provides inspiration for new products and services. Conference Guru works with conference organizers to pass great deals to great conferences, helping you discover new conferences and increase your return on investment.

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Eseye on embracing cloud, Amazon Web Services, and the IoT

(c)iStock.com/DrAfter123

“We changed our business model to align with cloud,” explains Nick McNamara, VP sales Europe at connectivity provider Eseye.

The company has doubled down on both the Internet of Things (IoT) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) strategically, as McNamara, speaking at the IoT Tech Expo event last week, explains. “All connectivity providers, whether you’re an MNO, an MVNO, or like us a smart MNO, sell megabytes per month,” he says. “We no longer sell megabytes per month, we sell messages per month.

“The guy who’s building, or has built, his web application inside Amazon, will know how many messages per month his application consumes,” he adds. “We ask him that, he gives us an answer, and he buys enough messages which gives him global security connectivity within that price – it’s very easy to budget with.”

Among the deals Eseye has forged with AWS include achieving AWS IoT competency status, as well as a new product which the company describes as a ‘breakthrough’ in IoT security, called AnyNet.

Here’s how it works; once the factory is connected to the AWS Cloud Console, which triggers the creation of a certificate and policy, AWS sends a unique certificate and request to provision the SIM to Eseye, Eseye sends the certificate to the AnyNet Secure SIM, and the device is provisioned, certified and secured by the manufacturer. Thus secured, it can go out into the field.

Makes sense? It does to Eseye, who spoke with Amazon last year and found many things in common. “We saw blockage in the high volume deployment of our customers’ projects – we saw blockage in their rollouts,” says McNamara. “In trying to speak to [customers], what they were trying to do to deal with those problems, much of it was to do with security, and some of it was to do with global scale and shape inside their organisations scaling.

“[Amazon] expressed exactly the same pain that we saw inside our customer base, which was ‘we have to get security right somehow’. We can’t provide a silver bullet because everybody’s interpretation of risk is different, everybody’s interpretation of security is different, but we can apply a layer of an onion that looks to help.”

Of the various industry areas in which Eseye plays, two stand out; healthcare and consumer. They are both separate, but they of course both overlap. One customer is Everon Biosciences, which produces a wrist-worn device for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. “In terms of how you build one or either of those, it’s very similar, and in particular the greater majority of healthcare programs – non-invasive, so it’s really about assisted living, or support for the elderly, or assisted mobility – is really a consumer product, but it’s positioned inside healthcare,” says McNamara.

Both of those markets are key to the company’s future, but with Europe as his primary focus, McNamara adds that data sovereignty is key, especially in an IoT universe.

“When we hear stories of chief security officers saying [about] 90% of [their] enterprise scale IoT applications ‘we’ll never allow it to happen, because I don’t have the tools, the infrastructure, the people and processes in place to protect the data’, we understand that entirely,” he says.

“Of course, it’s not like the growth of laptops and the enterprise scale they achieved today, where they bought disk encryption to protect themselves when MPs got drunk on trains, or they had mobile device management when people started to do BYOD in enterprise computing.

“None of those commonalities can be crafted because the greater majority of IoT programs are singularly unique.”

Eseye on embracing cloud, Amazon Web Services, and the IoT

(c)iStock.com/DrAfter123

“We changed our business model to align with cloud,” explains Nick McNamara, VP sales Europe at connectivity provider Eseye.

The company has doubled down on both the Internet of Things (IoT) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) strategically, as McNamara, speaking at the IoT Tech Expo event last week, explains. “All connectivity providers, whether you’re an MNO, an MVNO, or like us a smart MNO, sell megabytes per month,” he says. “We no longer sell megabytes per month, we sell messages per month.

“The guy who’s building, or has built, his web application inside Amazon, will know how many messages per month his application consumes,” he adds. “We ask him that, he gives us an answer, and he buys enough messages which gives him global security connectivity within that price – it’s very easy to budget with.”

Among the deals Eseye has forged with AWS include achieving AWS IoT competency status, as well as a new product which the company describes as a ‘breakthrough’ in IoT security, called AnyNet.

Here’s how it works; once the factory is connected to the AWS Cloud Console, which triggers the creation of a certificate and policy, AWS sends a unique certificate and request to provision the SIM to Eseye, Eseye sends the certificate to the AnyNet Secure SIM, and the device is provisioned, certified and secured by the manufacturer. Thus secured, it can go out into the field.

Makes sense? It does to Eseye, who spoke with Amazon last year and found many things in common. “We saw blockage in the high volume deployment of our customers’ projects – we saw blockage in their rollouts,” says McNamara. “In trying to speak to [customers], what they were trying to do to deal with those problems, much of it was to do with security, and some of it was to do with global scale and shape inside their organisations scaling.

“[Amazon] expressed exactly the same pain that we saw inside our customer base, which was ‘we have to get security right somehow’. We can’t provide a silver bullet because everybody’s interpretation of risk is different, everybody’s interpretation of security is different, but we can apply a layer of an onion that looks to help.”

Of the various industry areas in which Eseye plays, two stand out; healthcare and consumer. They are both separate, but they of course both overlap. One customer is Everon Biosciences, which produces a wrist-worn device for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. “In terms of how you build one or either of those, it’s very similar, and in particular the greater majority of healthcare programs – non-invasive, so it’s really about assisted living, or support for the elderly, or assisted mobility – is really a consumer product, but it’s positioned inside healthcare,” says McNamara.

Both of those markets are key to the company’s future, but with Europe as his primary focus, McNamara adds that data sovereignty is key, especially in an IoT universe.

“When we hear stories of chief security officers saying [about] 90% of [their] enterprise scale IoT applications ‘we’ll never allow it to happen, because I don’t have the tools, the infrastructure, the people and processes in place to protect the data’, we understand that entirely,” he says.

“Of course, it’s not like the growth of laptops and the enterprise scale they achieved today, where they bought disk encryption to protect themselves when MPs got drunk on trains, or they had mobile device management when people started to do BYOD in enterprise computing.

“None of those commonalities can be crafted because the greater majority of IoT programs are singularly unique.”

Gaming Giant Razer Buys Cloud Startup Nextbit

It’s an acquisition season, and the latest comes from Razer, a gaming company that has bought a cloud-based startup called Nextbit for an undisclosed amount.

Nextbit has been having a dream run since its inception. The founders had a vision to build a smartphone around the cloud, so it can allow the seamless use of apps and content. Such an idea would give you the flexibility to access anything you want, without worrying too much about the phone’s storage size or its platform. The founders believed that such a product would greatly enhance the experience of users.

To achieve their vision, they started a fundraising campaign in Kickstarter with a financial goal of $500,000. The campaign was started on 1st September 2015, and within 12 hours, they reached their goal of $500,000. They raised $1.3 million in two weeks, and this surpassed their expectations, as they had aimed to raise $500,000 only over a month. Buoyed by the success of their campaign, Nextbit got down to creating their product, that was touted as the first cloud-based smartphone and the smarter of smartphones.

Within a year, the first cloud smartphone called Robin was shipped to Kickstarter backers and general customers. This device uses cloud storage to store files that have not been used for some time, so users can enjoy more space in their phone for frequently used apps and files. Due to this innovative idea and its huge popularity, Razer acquired Nextbit for an undisclosed sum, though it is speculated that the founders got a sizeable equity in the deal.

As per the terms of the deal, Nextbit will continue with their innovation, but will be a part of a bigger company. According to a blog post by Tom Moss, one of the co-founders, published in Nextbit’s community forum, Nextbit will operate as an independent unit within Razer, and will be focused on providing unique mobile design and experience.

This deal was in the pipeline for some time, and this is why Nextbit stopped selling its Robin smartphones and their accessories. However, the company promised that it will offer warranties for another six months, and will provide software updates and security patches until February 2018.

For Razer, this acquisition is another attempt to diversify its portfolio, so it can better withstand the shocks from any single market. In fact, if you look back, this strategy is in tune with the company’s policies over the last few years. Though it began with selling mouse for PC gamers, it expanded into other areas such as keyboards and headsets, which was the most logical expansion to widen its products. Next, it acquired a company called Nabu to make a foray into wearable technology and Leviathan Mini to add portable speakers to its product portfolio.

This acquisition of Nextbit is a little different from its previous ones, as it is entering an unchartered territory, even by its own standards. It’ll be interesting to see how this acquisition plays out for the company, and also for Nextbit’s customers.

The post Gaming Giant Razer Buys Cloud Startup Nextbit appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Election #DataScience and the Death of Truth | @CloudExpo #BigData #Analytics

The U.S. Presidential election is finally over. The protests are winding down, they’ve stopped burning cars in Oakland (for now), and the talks of California succession are waning. But I am struggling to return to “normal” because in this election, truth got hammered. Many candidates treated opinions as “truth” and a large portion of the American public grabbed a hold of these “truths” as gospel. It may have been a good time to be in the “fact checking” business, but I’m not sure how effective even the fact checkers could be given the spontaneous nature of “opinions as facts” being thrown around, not to mention the people who create fake news intentionally.

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Building the blockchain of success: How cloud is at the heart of it

(c)iStock.com/bestdesigns

Blockchain is the new buzzword on the block; and while many business leaders, managers, developers and IT departments are Googling it and left scratching their heads, others are wising up to it, are realising how brilliant it is, and are recognising the opportunity it’s going to bring and the potential impact it will have.

If we put aside the tech behind it and focus on what it can do, it’s actually capable of disrupting many industries and bringing new innovations not only into finance, but also property, automotive, music, trading and healthcare.

To make it easier to understand what blockchain can bring to businesses, think about how a Google Doc enables people to access and make updates in real time. No need to save over and send new files to all and sundry, as the next time someone opens the doc it will be the most up to date as the file automatically keeps a record of who made which changes and when, as that digital address is native to the cloud, not the local hard drive. Google Docs is to Microsoft Word what blockchain is to a traditional ledger system.

Google Docs is to Microsoft Word what blockchain is to a traditional ledger system

Startups and large corporations are working together to figure out how this ‘shared ledger’ concept can benefit their businesses. And this concept of data retention is at the heart of cloud-based technology.

Cloud technologies are the forerunners to blockchain and developers and designers who are creating new innovations in this space, should keep an eye on blockchain opportunities too. Private blockchain networks can run in secure cloud environments and we have witnessed test collaborations between Google’s cloud services, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon and if successful, these cloud services could play a role in blockchain deployments.

Applying blockchain to business

Let’s take a look at some use cases and how blockchain can be implemented in different industry sectors to speed up processes, guarantee security, trust and transparency and keep accurate records that can be accessed by stakeholders, no matter where they are in the world.

Property: You’re buying a house and want to know when the last repairs and updates were carried out, which companies provided them and when. Blockchain could help homeowners and estate agents keep a record of information relating to a property, which would be centrally located for anyone in the house buying and selling process to access – reducing hours of paper pushing and phone calls and create transparent information on the status and maintenance of the house before putting in an offer.

Automotive: In a similar way to housing, tracking the value of second hand vehicles through blockchain would make purchases a lot easier for buyers and traders. Information on the car’s mileage, services, and driving history would be accurate, and if the car was ever written off the information could be accessed digitally to salvage the new gearbox that was installed only two months ago.

Music: There has already been massive disruption in the music industry but in the age of streaming services, blockchain could show musicians, creators, fans, marketers and labels the data and dialogue involved in listening to their songs and albums. Artists would be much closer to their fans and over time they could influence and reward them. A truly democratic and commercially viable way of promoting music. Thanks to blockchain.

Banking: Most big banks have a headline piece highlighting how they are working with blockchain especially within security. The technology promotes security and trust and allows all parties to work with one single reference point, which can cut manpower and middlemen costs.

As with any new technology, there are stumbling blocks. Commercial banks may not want all that information to be managed by developers so private blockchains may need to be created. It’s important to take a collaborative approach so banking organisations can pool their resources, identify and share hurdles and resolutions.

Trading stocks and shares: Nasdaq has successfully completed a blockchain test in Estonia to run proxy voting on its exchange and is now assessing whether to implement the new system as it has streamlined a process that was highly manual and time consuming. Nasdaq is one of the early adopters and a supporter of the technology in the exchange industry and already uses it to power its market for share of private companies It is also launching a marketplace powered by blockchain for pre-IPO private securities exchange in the USA.

Blockchain as a service is the most viable way for the technology to scale

Healthcare: Within healthcare, blockchain promises to address security and data integrity issues relating to patient information within healthcare providers, hospitals, insurance companies and clinical trials. IBM Watson teamed up with the US FDA to trial a data sharing initiative to keep track of patients involved in a particular trial and they are going on to explore how a blockchain framework could potentially provide benefits to public health.

Blockchain as a service: Blockchain as a service is the most viable way for the technology to scale. Start-ups like Chain.com are making blockchain applications much more accessible to big corporations. It is probably the most recognised ‘blockchain as a service’ platform startup as it lets enterprises use blockchain technology in a variety of network infrastructures.

Where to next

To put into perspective how big it could become, the World Economic Forum predicts that by about 2027 about 10% of the global GDP would be stored on blockchains so companies looking to get their piece of the action should start investigating now.

Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen cites blockchain as “one of the most fundamental inventions in the history of computer science” and we’d agree. 2017 is going to be the year it is tested, trialled and iterated to suit individual market and business requirements.

All that without even mentioning Bitcoin – we’ll save that for another day.

Read more: Blockchain beyond Bitcoin: Assessing the enterprise use cases

Building the blockchain of success: How cloud is at the heart of it

(c)iStock.com/bestdesigns

Blockchain is the new buzzword on the block; and while many business leaders, managers, developers and IT departments are Googling it and left scratching their heads, others are wising up to it, are realising how brilliant it is, and are recognising the opportunity it’s going to bring and the potential impact it will have.

If we put aside the tech behind it and focus on what it can do, it’s actually capable of disrupting many industries and bringing new innovations not only into finance, but also property, automotive, music, trading and healthcare.

To make it easier to understand what blockchain can bring to businesses, think about how a Google Doc enables people to access and make updates in real time. No need to save over and send new files to all and sundry, as the next time someone opens the doc it will be the most up to date as the file automatically keeps a record of who made which changes and when, as that digital address is native to the cloud, not the local hard drive. Google Docs is to Microsoft Word what blockchain is to a traditional ledger system.

Google Docs is to Microsoft Word what blockchain is to a traditional ledger system

Startups and large corporations are working together to figure out how this ‘shared ledger’ concept can benefit their businesses. And this concept of data retention is at the heart of cloud-based technology.

Cloud technologies are the forerunners to blockchain and developers and designers who are creating new innovations in this space, should keep an eye on blockchain opportunities too. Private blockchain networks can run in secure cloud environments and we have witnessed test collaborations between Google’s cloud services, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon and if successful, these cloud services could play a role in blockchain deployments.

Applying blockchain to business

Let’s take a look at some use cases and how blockchain can be implement in different industry sectors to speed up processes, guarantee security, trust and transparency and keep accurate records that can be accessed by stakeholders, no matter where they are in the world.

Property: You’re buying a house and want to know when the last repairs and updates were carried out, which companies provided them and when. Blockchain could help homeowners and estate agents keep a record of information relating to a property, which would be centrally located for anyone in the house buying and selling process to access – reducing hours of paper pushing and phone calls and create transparent information on the status and maintenance of the house before putting in an offer.

Automotive: In a similar way to housing, tracking the value of second hand vehicles through blockchain would make purchases a lot easier for buyers and traders. Information on the car’s mileage, services, and driving history would be accurate, and if the car was ever written off the information could be accessed digitally to salvage the new gearbox that was installed only two months ago.

Music: There has already been massive disruption in the music industry but in the age of streaming services, blockchain could show musicians, creators, fans, marketers and labels the data and dialogue involved in listening to their songs and albums. Artists would be much closer to their fans and over time they could influence and reward them. A truly democratic and commercially viable way of promoting music. Thanks to blockchain.

Banking: Most big banks have a headline piece highlighting how they are working with blockchain especially within security. The technology promotes security and trust and allows all parties to work with one single reference point, which can cut manpower and middlemen costs.

As with any new technology, there are stumbling blocks. Commercial banks may not want all that information to be managed by developers so private blockchains may need to be created. It’s important to take a collaborative approach so banking organisations can pool their resources, identify and share hurdles and resolutions.

Trading stocks and shares: Nasdaq has successfully completed a blockchain test in Estonia to run proxy voting on its exchange and is now assessing whether to implement the new system as it has streamlined a process that was highly manual and time consuming. Nasdaq is one of the early adopters and a supporter of the technology in the exchange industry and already uses it to power its market for share of private companies It is also launching a marketplace powered by blockchain for pre-IPO private securities exchange in the USA.

Blockchain as a service is the most viable way for the technology to scale

Healthcare: Within healthcare, blockchain promises to address security and data integrity issues relating to patient information within healthcare providers, hospitals, insurance companies and clinical trials. IBM Watson teamed up with the US FDA to trial a data sharing initiative to keep track of patients involved in a particular trial and they are going on to explore how a blockchain framework could potentially provide benefits to public health.

Blockchain as a service: Blockchain as a service is the most viable way for the technology to scale. Start-ups like Chain.com are making blockchain applications much more accessible to big corporations. It is probably the most recognised ‘blockchain as a service’ platform startup as it lets enterprises use blockchain technology in a variety of network infrastructures.

Where to next

To put into perspective how big it could become, the World Economic Forum predicts that by about 2027 about 10% of the global GDP would be stored on blockchains so companies looking to get their piece of the action should start investigating now.

Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen cites blockchain as “one of the most fundamental inventions in the history of computer science” and we’d agree. 2017 is going to be the year it is tested, trialled and iterated to suit individual market and business requirements.

All that without even mentioning Bitcoin – we’ll save that for another day.

Read more: Blockchain beyond Bitcoin: Assessing the enterprise use cases

Why you need to understand GDPR now – and what you need to do from here

(c)iStock.com/FrankRamspott

If you’ve not yet heard the term GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), you certainly well. As we approach May 25 2018, when this becomes law, the noise around it will grow.

Don’t stop reading now if the acronym seems boring and not relevant to you – it is, on both counts. What’s happening is a new law will come into play across Europe; Brexit or no Brexit, it will apply.

Yet this is not another year 2000-type hype where there was no impact or pain. The impact is already happening and the pain is going to get greater. If you’re not sure what the GDPR is or how it will affect your business, now’s the time to start paying attention. This is all about companies’ legal liability to protect data they hold on staff, customers, and in fact anywhere personal details are stored, and the impact – in other words, fines – that are going to ensue if you don’t.

This encompasses cloud, on premise, IoT and mobile. No matter where you store data, if it meets the criteria of personally identifiable and relevant information, then you need to comply. Ignorance will not be an excuse and will in fact put you in a far worse position; better you can demonstrate your diligence of action and how you have tried to mitigate any risk as a defence. It is good practice to be able to demonstrate that you have attended training, acted on the process recommended from it and tried to do the right thing; you have a far better chance of being treated leniently and worked with rather than against it should the worst happen.

There is a wealth of information and articles on GDPR available – yet many mostly quickly defer to complex detailed information and do not give clear and plain guidance as to what it means and what needs to be done. So let’s make this clear and simple in three buckets; why it is, what it is, and what you need to do.

Data is important and you have a legal responsibility to do certain things

Data breaches hit an all-time record high in 2016, with an increase of 40% over 2015. You may have already heard about some of the high profile names who had such breaches recently, from Three Mobile in the UK, French naval defence contractor DCNS, Vodafone in Germany, the Czech Ministry of Education, the Irish Department of Social and Family Affairs… we could go on, and it’s a certainty there will be more of these stories coming.

Data protection laws are long due an overhaul. For example, most Data Protection Acts have not been revisited since the late 90s at best, since when the world has changed radically through the internet, cloud and mobile changing the volume of interactions and data exchanges taking place.

What GDPR is

GDPR is the new law that requires from May 2018, any business that operates in the EU or handles the personal data of people that reside in the EU must implement a strong data protection policy to protect this client data. It is the EU’s way of giving customers more power over their data and less power to the organisations that collect and use such data for monetary gain. Businesses that fail to meet the new standard will face fines of up to 4% of global turnover or €20 million (£17.2m), whichever is larger, and businesses that suffer from a data breach without having adequate measures in place will suffer the same.

In other words, this is a law – something mandatory you need to take action on as a director of a firm with director liabilities and something that your customers care about. See this not as a threat but as an opportunity to get your ship in shape and proudly state to customers you have been on GDPR training and are taking action with processes to be a good, caring supplier. Consider putting a GDPR and ‘how we care for your data’ section on your website.

What action you need to take – and don’t panic!

You need to be prepared as a business to take action now and to mitigate the risks you face. Do not assume you are immune from a security leak of data and that you can deal with it afterwards. By taking action now you can help reduce the risk of it happening and by taking demonstrable action will provide you with a defensive protection should the worst happen.

The May 2018 deadline may seem a long way off at the moment, but businesses must act today in order to understand what it will take for them to achieve compliance, to have time to do it, and to do it without panic and fitting it in alongside your day to day running of the business. You need to get the ball rolling and have a plan of actions for your journey to GDPR, so that come 2018 you have no panic, no worries, and can assure your customers of your compliance.

There is much talk, for example, that every organisation will need to appoint a data protection officer, and that failure to do so will expose you to possible huge financial sanctions. In some cases this may be required, but you need to understand this now and the work out the most effective plan you can take to ensure you are compliant in the most effective manner for your business.

The last Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) survey found that 75% of adults don’t trust businesses with their personal data; so as well as being legally compliant you can also utilise this in a positive way to assure your clients are assured in dealing with you.

You will find many offering three day courses and/or complex expensive consultancy, and whilst for some this may be appropriate, for most allocating someone in your business to own the process as a special project ownership, and then sending them on a day’s awareness and process training workshop now, will get you on the way with plenty of time to work it out well for your business.

Editor’s note: If you wish to know more and find out what sort of training options are available, check out gdpr.direct.

Why you need to understand GDPR now – and what you need to do from here

(c)iStock.com/FrankRamspott

If you’ve not yet heard the term GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), you certainly well. As we approach May 25 2018, when this becomes law, the noise around it will grow.

Don’t stop reading now if the acronym seems boring and not relevant to you – it is, on both counts. What’s happening is a new law will come into play across Europe; Brexit or no Brexit, it will apply.

Yet this is not another year 2000-type hype where there was no impact or pain. The impact is already happening and the pain is going to get greater. If you’re not sure what the GDPR is or how it will affect your business, now’s the time to start paying attention. This is all about companies’ legal liability to protect data they hold on staff, customers, and in fact anywhere personal details are stored, and the impact – in other words, fines – that are going to ensue if you don’t.

This encompasses cloud, on premise, IoT and mobile. No matter where you store data, if it meets the criteria of personally identifiable and relevant information, then you need to comply. Ignorance will not be an excuse and will in fact put you in a far worse position; better you can demonstrate your diligence of action and how you have tried to mitigate any risk as a defence. It is good practice to be able to demonstrate that you have attended training, acted on the process recommended from it and tried to do the right thing; you have a far better chance of being treated leniently and worked with rather than against it should the worst happen.

There is a wealth of information and articles on GDPR available – yet many mostly quickly defer to complex detailed information and do not give clear and plain guidance as to what it means and what needs to be done. So let’s make this clear and simple in three buckets; why it is, what it is, and what you need to do.

Data is important and you have a legal responsibility to do certain things

Data breaches hit an all-time record high in 2016, with an increase of 40% over 2015. You may have already heard about some of the high profile names who had such breaches recently, from Three Mobile in the UK, French naval defence contractor DCNS, Vodafone in Germany, the Czech Ministry of Education, the Irish Department of Social and Family Affairs… we could go on, and it’s a certainty there will be more of these stories coming.

Data protection laws are long due an overhaul. For example, most Data Protection Acts have not been revisited since the late 90s at best, since when the world has changed radically through the internet, cloud and mobile changing the volume of interactions and data exchanges taking place.

What GDPR is

GDPR is the new law that requires from May 2018, any business that operates in the EU or handles the personal data of people that reside in the EU must implement a strong data protection policy to protect this client data. It is the EU’s way of giving customers more power over their data and less power to the organisations that collect and use such data for monetary gain. Businesses that fail to meet the new standard will face fines of up to 4% of global turnover or €20 million (£17.2m), whichever is larger, and businesses that suffer from a data breach without having adequate measures in place will suffer the same.

In other words, this is a law – something mandatory you need to take action on as a director of a firm with director liabilities and something that your customers care about. See this not as a threat but as an opportunity to get your ship in shape and proudly state to customers you have been on GDPR training and are taking action with processes to be a good, caring supplier. Consider putting a GDPR and ‘how we care for your data’ section on your website.

What action you need to take – and don’t panic!

You need to be prepared as a business to take action now and to mitigate the risks you face. Do not assume you are immune from a security leak of data and that you can deal with it afterwards. By taking action now you can help reduce the risk of it happening and by taking demonstrable action will provide you with a defensive protection should the worst happen.

The May 2018 deadline may seem a long way off at the moment, but businesses must act today in order to understand what it will take for them to achieve compliance, to have time to do it, and to do it without panic and fitting it in alongside your day to day running of the business. You need to get the ball rolling and have a plan of actions for your journey to GDPR, so that come 2018 you have no panic, no worries, and can assure your customers of your compliance.

There is much talk, for example, that every organisation will need to appoint a data protection officer, and that failure to do so will expose you to possible huge financial sanctions. In some cases this may be required, but you need to understand this now and the work out the most effective plan you can take to ensure you are compliant in the most effective manner for your business.

The last Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) survey found that 75% of adults don’t trust businesses with their personal data; so as well as being legally compliant you can also utilise this in a positive way to assure your clients are assured in dealing with you.

You will find many offering three day courses and/or complex expensive consultancy, and whilst for some this may be appropriate, for most allocating someone in your business to own the process as a special project ownership, and then sending them on a day’s awareness and process training workshop now, will get you on the way with plenty of time to work it out well for your business.

Editor’s note: If you wish to know more and find out what sort of training options are available, check out gdpr.direct.

Data Lake Plumbers | @BigDataExpo @Schmarzo #BigData #IoT #AI #ML #DL

Many of my blogs promote the business benefits of the data lake, both from a “save me more money” as well as the “make me more money” perspectives. But I fear that I’m making this thing called the data lake sound like a “silver bullet[1]” – just drop the data into the data lake and everything magically works. But much like in the world of data warehousing, there is significant work that needs to be done under the covers – in areas such as metadata management, data governance and security – to ensure that the data lake will perform for a business in a production environment. Many of the processes and techniques we learned in the data warehouse will benefit us here, though there are many new tools to be aware of that can help us in the operationalization task.

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