(c)iStock.com/samxmeg

A series of large scale cyberattacks have been in the headlines this year and, according to McAfee, the situation will only worsen as hackers use more advanced techniques to infiltrate networks.

Despite this, there are still a large portion of companies that remain vulnerable, mainly due to the lack of executive interest in preparing for worst-case scenarios. The same report states that 79 percent of C-level US and UK executives surveyed say executive level involvement is necessary to achieving an effective incident response to a data breach and 70 percent believe board level oversight is critical.

It is therefore vital that IT leaders effectively communicate the latent threats to the ‘C-suite’ – the top executives at that organisation – to successfully address the weaknesses that may exist and be fully prepared to respond when they happen. Because they do and will happen.

For example, data centres experience total shutdowns an average of more than twice every two years, localised shutdowns nearly six times every two years, and limited outages more than 10 times per year. Therefore organisations must prepare themselves for when this happens. Because disasters create a crisis environment, they increase the need for the immediate return to operation and the ability to test and view the solution. Therefore, DRaaS (Disaster-Recovery- as-a-Service) is not merely an add-on to a cloud service provider’s offerings but it must be a focused discipline with appropriate infrastructure and staffing expertise.

So many of our customers tell us that their path to making the decision to adopt Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service was not as smooth or as fast as they would have liked. And, one of the common reasons for this is around the difficulties faced in convincing high-level decision makers, often those in the ‘C-Suite’ to prioritise a DR strategy. It’s not that these C-level executives don’t understand the need to protect IT systems from a potential disaster, but that the prospect of such a disaster is sometimes not immediate enough to be the catalyst for a fast decision.

So, if you are looking to address the topic with your executives, below are some of the key aspects to consider depending on their job title:

• CEO/COO – Components of a DRaaS offering that would appeal most to CEO/COOs are the time to business resumption (e.g. near-zero RTO), the ability to pay as-you-go without a large capital investment, the ability to prioritise data and workloads for restoration and the flexibility to test to ensure proper operation in case a disaster is declared.
• CIO – CIOs have a tough balancing act; they must balance costs with the need to limit exposure. They may have to meet compliance requirements imposed by regulation or standards bodies. CIOs need to satisfy the needs of different stakeholders and business imperatives with DR – and this is a huge challenge.
• CFO – As their primary responsibility is financial, they must be approached from a fiscal angle. They look for an unbiased, independent perspective. Often perceived as being risk averse, they will invest in sound decisions, especially when they see a value proposition backed by financials and metrics.
• CMO- While traditionally associated with branding, advertising, and public relations, more often the CMO has key objectives tied to customer loyalty as well. An obvious concern of CMOs is how the negative press around disasters affects brand image and customer loyalty.  The CMO will not be interested in the details of the services chosen but can be a strong supporter on the need for DR to protect brand image as well as maintain excellent customer support.

It is important to build each individual case based on the key elements of your company’s DR requirements, and focus on the aspects that the target executive needs the most and that will be highly impacted by unplanned outages. These will be the biggest factors that can positively influence the C-suite towards prioritising DRaaS come budget time.

Read more: Selling Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) to the C-suite

(c)iStock.com/Jannoon028

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued a report arguing there is “no fundamental reason” why financial organisations cannot move to cloud-based models so long as the guidelines the body issues are adhered to.

“Our aim is to avoid imposing inappropriate barriers to firms’ ability to outsource to innovative and developing areas, while ensuring that risks are appropriately identified and managed,” the FCA argues. “We see no fundamental reason why cloud services (including public cloud services) cannot be implemented, with appropriate consideration, in a manner that complies with our rules.”

The FCA is at pains to stress the guidance it offers is not exhaustive, nor should it be read in isolation, but argues its approach is “risk-based and proportionate”.

First on the list are legal and regulatory considerations for financial firms. A company should have a “clear and documented business case or rationale” to support the decision to outsource to the cloud, do its due diligence – including ensuring the outsourcing agreement does not impair the firm’s operational risk – as well as identifying all service providers in the supply chain and ensure the firm’s requirements are adhered to throughout.

Risk management is also a necessary concern, by noting current industry good practice in terms of data and information security management. International standards, such as the ISO 27000 series, also need to be considered, as well as carrying out a data security risk assessment.

The relationship between service providers is also considered, as well as change management and continuity and business planning. Firms should “consider that disruptions could be caused by intentional cyber attacks, and that these may negate controls focused on delivering system availability”, the report notes.

Back in July, a report from CipherCloud argued the financial industry has an increased confidence in cloud technologies, with 100% of respondents saying they put certain personally identifiable information (PII) in the cloud. This report appears to further give the green light, but with a few provisos.

The FCA is asking its membership to give feedback for the coming three months, with the closing date for comments being February 12. You can read the report here.

There are over 120 breakout sessions in all, with Keynotes, General Sessions, and Power Panels adding to three days of incredibly rich presentations and content. Join @ThingsExpo conference chair Roger Strukhoff (@IoT2040), June 7-9, 2016 in New York City, for three days of intense ‘Internet of Things’ discussion and focus, including Big Data’s indespensable role in IoT, Smart Grids and Industrial Internet of Things, Wearables and Consumer IoT, as well as (new) IoT’s use in Vertical Markets.

read more

(c)iStock.com/Bastar

A well-established – and unsettling – metric we anecdotally hear from organisations is that analysts spend 70% or more of their time hunting and gathering data and less than 30% of its time deriving insights.

The promise of big data is to reverse this 70/30 ratio. Organisations striving to build a data lake and use data for competitive advantage are seduced by the opportunity to discover new insights to better target customers, improve operations, lower costs, and discover new scientific breakthroughs.

“Big data” is no longer on the horizon; it’s here. According to Gartner, 40% of organisations have already deployed big data.  But a closer look reveals that only 13% of organisations have put their big data solution into a production environment.

Why are organisations struggling to implement big data?  We’ve spoken with customers across industries from around the world, and the barriers to deploying big data in a production environment tend to fall into three categories: findability of data; simplifying data access and making the data more consumable for users; and protecting data privacy and security.

Findability

Big data systems let organisations ingest any type of data such as social media, clickstream, wearable devices, images, emails, documents, and data from relational databases.  This ability to break down silos and gather a wide variety of data at speed is a key enabler of Hadoop. 

Our research, however, suggests that organisations are struggling with how to convert raw, unstructured, and semi-structured information into linkable, consistently defined, analytics-ready digital assets. For example, how does a hospital link a particular gene variant with a patient population or a manufacturer find Tier 1 customers who are dissatisfied with their product? 

To solve this problem, a big data solution needs to be able to automatically decorate data with rich and extensible metadata including data definitions, data quality metrics, retention policies, digital rights, and provenance.  Moreover, a big data system needs to build powerful indexes to let users interactively explore vast and diverse data, generating results with sub-second performance.

Simplifying data access and consumability

The secondary use of data has traditionally been the role of data scientists and analysts who produce business intelligence reports and analytics. But as organisations strive to become more agile and data-driven, analysts are increasingly being pushed to the limit. 

Organisations we speak with are looking to empower knowledge workers with selfservice access to information. Intuitive visualisation and analytics tools like Tableau and QlikView are an important part of the solution.  But for self-serve data to be truly consumable, information-based workers need a catalog of curated datasets they can draw from with a simple point-and-click user interface, eliminating the requirement for advanced SQL and complex schema expertise.

Protecting privacy and security

Ironically, one of the most common concerns we come across in discussions with large organisations – and also perhaps the biggest barrier to deploying big data in a production environment – is the concern that “If I can easily consolidate my organisation’s data for secondary use, what prevents anyone from seeing everything?”

Big data systems are notoriously weak in managing information privacy and security. Following an extensive review of industry best practices, we believe that the globally ratified Privacy by Design framework presents a powerful seven-point model to scalable system design. 

A big data system should be able to control who is allowed to see and do what with the data.  For example, a CEO may be allowed to view but not download top secret data; the Accounts Receivable department can view a fully identified dataset but download only de-identified data; and a researcher may be able to view a de-identified dataset and collaborate with an external partner who can only see a subset of the de-identified data.  More advanced systems can also enforce who can see and do what on mobile devices or from outside the corporate firewall.

A scalable and secure system should be able to de-identify information on the fly, and control who is allowed to see and do what, depending on user authorisations. A robust security model that reduces the risk of a data breach should be able to set universally and consistent policy enforcement rules. 

Start at the data lake – but don’t stop there

So by all means, start your big data strategy and implement your data lake. Just don’t stop there. Look for a solution that has a flexible, comprehensive metadata infrastructure out-of-the-box that lets you quickly find and link the right information; gives your end-users self-service access to data without becoming experts in SQL and complex database schema; and universally and consistently enforces fine-grained privacy and security.

Does this sound hard? It doesn’t have to be. You can certainly grow your internal development team to build your data lake from a commercial Hadoop distribution, but there are also players who understand the problem and are building a supported best-of-breed solution. Whichever way you go, it’s time to become more data-driven. So go ahead and enjoy the lake. The water’s fine.

Today, CEOs in all industries and geographies recognize that in 2016 they’ll have an important choice to make, regarding the development of a cohesive digital business transformation agenda — either be empowered by superior cloud-enabled innovations, or risk being disrupted by more progressive market leaders.
The savvy business technology application leaders are already moving from proof-of-concept cloud computing environments to trusting these platforms with their mission-critical workloads. According to the latest worldwide market study by Cisco Systems, this pervasive trend continues to accelerate as demand for cloud resources increase exponentially.

read more