Mark Zuckerberg has questioned the cost of cloud computing and storage during a discussion about bio sequencing.

The Facebook founder specifically referenced AWS, joking «let’s call up Jeff and talk about this».

Zuckerberg and his wife Pricilla Chan set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) in 2015 to find ways of using technology to advance health, social and scientific research.

In a chat between the research centre’s co-presidents Dr Joseph DeRisi and Dr Stephen Quake, moderated by Zuckerberg live on YouTube, the group argued that progress in initiatives is often blocked by the exorbitant cost of cloud subscriptions.

«In our bio board meetings, one of the things we talk about is the cost of the compute, and our AWS bill, for example, is one of the specific points,» Zuckerberg said. «Let’s call up Jeff and talk about this.»

«It’s interesting, the bottleneck for progress, in medical research at this point, a lot of the cost for it, is on compute and the data side and not strictly on the wet labs or how long it takes to turn around experiments.»

The CZI is part-funded by billions of dollars from Facebook and also investment from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

However, Dr Quake noted that most other organisations and research labs around the world are unable to secure this level of funding, and are therefore hamstrung by the price of cloud.

«This is no more apparent than in the developing world or low-income resource settings,» He said. «The cost of the sequencing and the lab work has gotten to the point where you can do this almost anywhere in the world. It’s gotten that cheap.»

«The compute to be able to analyse that data is unfortunately not available to the vast majority of the people that do that. It’s very often the case that you’ll go to one of these low-income resource settings, they’ll have a sequencer but its collecting dust because they can’t compute. Even if they can access the cloud, they can’t afford it.»

According to Synergy Research Group, the cloud market is heading for a world-wide revenue run rate of $100 billion per year. The big providers have capitalised on digital transformations and the need to store and analyse data with AWS consistently at the top of the market.

Companies like Microsoft, Google, IBM, Alibaba and Oracle are all competing for the rest of the market. This is no more apparent than in the race to provide the Pentagon with cloud computing services. Amazon’s cloud arm was set to be the winners of the $10 billion JEDI contract but after complaints made by Oracle and IBM, the decision has been put on hold.

Employees whose organisations deploy G Suite have been urged to stay mindful of keeping sensitive data on the productivity suite, following a report that suggests Google and IT admins have extensive access to private files.

Google itself, as well as administrators within a business, have vast access to the files stored within G Suite, and can monitor staff activity, according to a former Google employee. This data, which is not protected by end-to-end encryption unlike other Google services, can even be shared with law enforcement on request.

This level of intrusion is necessary to perform essential security functions for business users, such as monitoring accounts for attempted access, ex-staffer Martin Shelton claimed in his post, but, in turn, this demands enormous visibility on users’ accounts.

Organisations using G Suite Business or G Suite Enterprise have even offered administrators powerful tools to monitor and track employees’ activity, and retain this information in a Google Vault.

«In our ideal world, Google would provide end-to-end encrypted G Suite services, allowing media and civil society organisations to collaborate on their work in a secure and private environment whenever possible,» Shelton said.

«For now we should consider when to keep our most sensitive data off of G Suite in favour of an end-to-end encrypted alternative, local storage, or off of a computer altogether.»

Of particular concern is a sense of uncertainty over who within Google has access to user data kept on its servers. Shelton added that Google claims to have protections in place, but that it’s not known how many employees are able to clear the bars set by the company.

These protections include authorised key card access, approval from an employee’s manager as well as the data centre director, as well as logging and auditing of all instances of approved access.

G Suite administrators, meanwhile, can see a «remarkable level» of user data within an organisation in light of the powerful tools offered by Google. G Suite Enterprise offers the most amount of access into users’ activities, with G Suite Business allowing for slightly more restricted visibility.

These tools include being able to search through Gmail and Google Drive for content as well as metadata including the subject lines and recipients of emails. Administrators can even create rules for which data is logged and retained, depending on how they wish to configure their G Suite.

Audit logs, for example, lets IT admins see who has looked at and modified documents, while the use of apps like Calendar, Drive and Slides can be monitored on both desktops and mobile devices.

Shelton has recommended that employees audit their own use of G Suite and be mindful of any sensitive data that’s either kept in Drive or discussed with others via Gmail.

The former employee has also suggested users get details from their G Suite administrators pertaining to the level of visibility they have over employees within their organisation, including which rules they’ve enabled as part of Google Vault.

Concerns over privacy within G Suite have emerged in the past after accusations were made in 2018 that third-party developers were able to view users’ Gmail messages.

Google said, at the time, that such a practice was normal across the industry and users had already granted permission as and when this occurred.

«We’re 30,000 employees, we’re the size of a small village… there will be crime, or there will be people that do things that they shouldn’t do.»

Box CIO Paul Chapman recalls a conversation he once had with a company executive, who broke the mould somewhat by being more concerned by the actions of rogue employees than threats coming from the outside.

This was at a time when cyber security simply meant protecting against external threats. That doesn’t mean to say the executive wasn’t bothered with external attacks, only that he identified that plenty of development had already gone into creating robust outward-looking defences over the years, while little attention was paid to the workers.

In today’s environment, we are seeing time and again that the biggest threat to security is often a company’s own employees. According to Box, around 55% of breaches are due to negligence in the workplace.

«People often say, ‘what’s the thing that worries you the most?’ Actually it is what we would call ‘negligent users’,» Chapman explains. «People don’t wake up and say ‘hey, I think I’ll be a negligent user today’, they’re just doing their work and what happens is risk builds… part of what keeps me awake is users doing negligent things, without knowing they’re doing them.»

Safety net

Jeetu Patel, Box’s chief product officer, shared a few examples of what the company considers common negligent actions. The first was sharing content to personal email accounts. So, for instance, Rachel wants to invite John into an internal folder full of private company documents. She begins typing ‘Jo’ into the search bar and his email addresses pop up. She picks the first one which happens to be John’s personal Gmail account, sending company documents to a non-company account.

In a second example, John, who is working remotely, might decide to download company documents on a personal device. He doesn’t select the specific documents he needs and instead puts the whole folder onto his unsecured personal device. Without realising, John may have placed sensitive company info, such as financial details, on a device that sits outside the company’s firewall.

It’s this concern that led Box to develop its Shield platform, released in August this year. It aims to fix the many problems and risks that crop up when sharing and collaborating. While it is mainly marketed as an external-facing security product, Box Shield is actually just as useful for preventing these types of human errors filtering through – whether accidental or intentional.

Force preview, for example, gives users access to files in preview before they are given permission to download. So if somebody receives an email with a malicious attachment, it will be flagged by Box’s security system before it’s ever downloaded to a company’s network.

Although the employees should be aware of basic security practices, software needs to account for laziness, according to Box.

«We know it’s better to point to content, we know its better to use links to control content and chain of custody over content, but you still have in an organisation of 20,000 – 35,000 people and someone who goes ‘oh, I think it’s easier to send an attachment’, and off he goes,» Chapman says.

In-house phishing

Chapman and his team at Box accept that we can’t all be experts, particularly when it comes to digital security. And, as clever and intuitive as Box Shield is, it’s not going protect you from everything.

«To me, Box is a piece of the jigsaw puzzle, it’s not the jigsaw puzzle when it comes to how to think about security potential,» he says. «It’s partners, it’s integrations… you have to have people inside your organisation that are thinking through what the architecture is… you can’t just put it in Box and be done. It’s how you configure Shield, how you set it up, it’s a combination of things.»

The workforce at Box is subjected to regular tests from Chapman and his team. They are even tested using dummy internal phishing attacks as a way to train people on how to identify and deal with threats as they arrive. This is the same tactic we’ve seen deployed across other security-savvy organisations, only, as a security specialist, Box is able to take it one step further.

«There are different levels of sophistication, but it is surprisingly scary how easy it is to spoof people,» he says. «We’ve got a red team that will actually try to break everybody’s passwords at least once per month. We will do our own phishing attacks, we look at the results, share them with the company, we don’t do a wall of shame or anything, but we do have a security ‘hero’.»

We’re only human

These ‘heroes’ seem to be in short supply if the latest figures are anything to go by. According to Telstra’s 2019 Security Report, 89% of cyber security risks are now internal. Add to that, a recent Carbon Black report that suggests that hacking and data breaches are becoming the «new normal», with hackers now turning their attention to vulnerable end-users, rather than trying to break through company firewalls directly.

What’s more, it only takes one lapse in concentration, or one employee to not know the danger, for your business to be crippled by malware. Many towns and cities in the US have been plagued by ransomware attacks that have been specifically designed to target employees that are, for the most part, illiterate in cyber security. For example, Florida’s Riviera Beach lost control of its entire municipal network after a single police department employee opened a malicious email attachment.

In 2017, the average worker made 118 mistakes a year, according to a report from Identity Guard. Predictably, many of those errors revolved around technology and as more and more businesses adopt digital services, that trend is only going to continue. After all, we’re only human.

Facebook‘s business communication platform Workplace has grown by one million users since February, bringing its subscriber total up to three million, the company announced at its annual Workplace-focused Flow conference.

The company’s quickly-expanding user base reflects that Workplace is learning how to compete with other business collaboration software providers, including Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Workplace is also rolling out updates that better target frontline employees (those who are often in the field and without email addresses), gauge worker sentiment, and make video collaboration easier, proving that the company is learning to cater to and anticipate the needs of businesses.

Workplace has been segmented off from its corporate parent, so Facebook’s public relations, data, and regulatory challenges won’t necessarily transfer over. The platform also gives companies full control, doesn’t take corporate data, and ticks certification boxes for security and data management.

There are currently three different tiers of Workplace software available: a free subscription, an advanced subscription for $4 per person per month, and an enterprise plan for $8 per person per month. A $1.50 plan for frontline workers is forthcoming.

At Flow, the Workplace team detailed a handful of upgrades to its software, including a Workplace app for Facebook’s Portal smart video screen, through which Workplace users can make audio and video calls using Portal’s smart camera to make collaboration more natural.

Updates also include an AI and machine learning tool that will facilitate automatic captioning on Workplace videos and generate transcripts.

Workplace sets itself apart from other collaboration tools with its employee engagement and experience software, Insights, which can gauge sentiment through functions such as ‘like’ buttons and emojis, much like a social media platform. Based on this, Workplace can provide analytics on how workers feel and help improve employee engagement, which can boost productivity, lower rates of employee turnover, and improve customer service.

Frontline workers in particular stand to benefit from corporate collaboration via Workplace. These employees make up 80% of all staff, according to head of Americas at Workplace Christine Trodella, but are typically left out of company discourse due to their lack of an email address. Workplace, which is accessible even without email, opens a route for those employees to join the conversation and connect without training costs.

«The C suite needs to connect everyone, not just knowledge workers,» said Facebook vice president and head of Workplace, Karandeep Anand.

Anand sees augmented and virtual reality tools becoming a part of Workplace in the future, but the company’s immediate next steps are to expand its customer success teams and enterprise sales infrastructure. Workplace also aims to continue upgrading its video conferencing tools to provide the most accessible, connective services possible and solidify its place in the crowded landscape of business collaboration software.

It’s no secret that the workplace is evolving, with advancing technology and our changing expectations enabling new ways of working that were simply impossible before the advent of Wi-Fi, file sharing and online collaboration. As meetings form such a large part of many people’s jobs, it was inevitable that the way we organise and participate in them would transform, too.

Indeed, these shifting paradigms – particularly agile working – have placed new demands on meetings, as colleagues who no longer occupy the same building rely on them more and more as a way of catching up and sharing important updates. This means that, more than ever, it is vital to get the best out of our meetings, which – let’s face it – are vulnerable to disorganisation, and can easily be a waste of time rather than a productive exercise.

Let’s take a look at the best practices and tools that will ensure your meetings live up to their potential.

Planning and organisation

One key element of executing a productive meeting is the same as it ever was: organisation. Knowing why you’re having the meeting, what you need to cover and what the outcomes are will leave you in very good stead.

You undoubtedly know the basics, but just because they’re simple doesn’t mean they aren’t vital. Before you even begin the meeting, make sure you’ve set and shared an agenda to define your objectives and keep the meeting on track. Assign someone to take minutes as a record of what was discussed and what ideas and plans were generated. The minutes will also help inform action points which can be given out at the end of the meeting so that the relevant people can follow-up on anything discussed. Sticking to the allotted time will help keep people focused. These simple processes remain as important and effective as ever, and are the best place to start to boost productivity.

Your guest list should also be scrutinised. We’ve all attended meetings where we’ve found ourselves staring into space and wondering why we were invited at all. Limiting your invitations to people who have something relevant to input will avoid wasting your colleagues’ time as well as creating smaller and more focused meetings (Google, for instance, suggests avoiding any meetings of more than 10 people). Consider which colleagues will be better served by being updated on the meeting’s outcomes rather than attending.

On a related note, assure your colleagues that, if they genuinely believe that they have nothing to contribute, they can decline their invitation without penalty. That will make sure that everyone in the room is engaged and ready to contribute, rather than sitting in silence and wishing they were getting on with something else.

Environment

The advent of Wi-Fi and agile working practices has meant that meetings can technically be held anywhere – but that doesn’t mean they always should. Although it’s very useful to be able to call in from a cafe or park bench if you have to, optimised meeting spaces are still the best place to communicate with your team.

The setup of you conference room can have a major effect on productivity by creating a space free from distractions and – as conference calling and remote working become more prevalent – one in which you can communicate clearly with colleagues who are unable to attend in person. Consider soundproofing rooms in which ambient noise from air conditioning, passing traffic or noisy colleagues can be heard filtering in from outside. Bad acoustics can render audio communication incomprehensible, so take steps to limit reverberation with carpets, panelling and soft furnishings.

A quality audio-visual system is naturally vital for conference calls. It is worth employing the assistance of an AV expert in setting up microphones and speakers in the best way to minimise feedback and ensure that communication is as clear as possible. Think about the positioning of cameras and screens so that everyone can easily see each other. Weak and unreliable lines of communication can rapidly eat into your time and overshadow the matters that the meeting was called to discuss.

Meeting management tools can be used to perform data analysis that can also help you refine your meeting room usage and conference spaces, and plan better strategies in the future.

Technology

Advances in technology have enabled many of the changes to how we communicate and conduct meetings, and the proper use of the tools available can greatly boost productivity.

Selecting the right collaborative platform, such as the Intel Unite® solution, can help significantly streamline processes, keeping internal and remote team members on the same page, as well as serving as a tool to crunch the aforementioned meeting data. Intel Unite is an open platform that supports plugins for popular collaboration tools such as Skype for Business, Zoom and Cisco Webex, as well as in-room controls, whiteboarding and other systems, so that you can select and seamlessly combine the best tools for the job under one roof. The classic Intel Unite® solution requires a hub computer based on an Intel® Core™ vPro® processor in every meeting space, an on-premises PIN server and the Intel Unite app on users’ devices – there is also the new Intel Unite® Cloud Service that offers the option for you to access a cloud-hosted PIN service instead of requiring an on-premises server.

It’s vital to ensure that your employees are properly equipped with the most up-to-date hardware and software so that they can take full advantage of these systems and log into remote meetings with minimum fuss. High-spec cameras, microphones and speakers will allow them to see, hear and be heard, while new laptops with fresh batteries will prevent them from losing power and getting cut off halfway through your meeting.

With technology continuing to evolve at a rate of knots, it pays to keep abreast of the newest developments. Artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things are widely expected to further streamline meeting processes and offer new insights that will increase productivity in ways we are only beginning to understand. IoT promises increased connectivity to everything from projectors to climate control to make meeting management easier than ever. AI is projected to develop virtual assistants that can help with admin like managing calendars and scheduling meetings, as well as source relevant data to answer questions as they are raised and generate new ideas. By keeping up to speed on the latest cutting-edge tech developments, you’ll always be in a position to make informed decisions when it comes to adopting the best tools for the job.

Discover how the Intel Unite platform can help your business here

The world of work is changing. Businesses are becoming increasingly decentralised, with flexible and agile working practices on the rise and developments in technology revolutionising our jobs. Inevitably, this has had a huge impact on one key office ritual: the meeting.

So how do you make sure a modern-day meeting runs smoothly and efficiently? From technical difficulties to fears over security, there are plenty of collaboration challenges brought about by the evolution of the workplace. Ensuring your tech is helping, not hindering, discussions is essential to making the most of your time. And with technology now being specifically designed to make meetings more efficient and effective, you’re missing out by sticking to outdated, clunky systems.

The rise of agile working

One of the biggest business shifts in the last few years is the move towards more agile ways of working. Motivating employees with flexible working options has been proven to boost productivity while encouraging remote working has tangible financial benefits, from lower travel costs to reduced overheads.

Inevitably, the traditional meeting setup has moved with the times too. It’s no good allowing staff the flexibility to work from home if they have to physically come into the office for meetings. And busy employees are far more likely to be engaged and productive in a session if they don’t feel like their time is being wasted with mandatory office hours and pointless presenteeism.

It’s not just a case of adapting meeting arrangements to meet employee expectations, there are real business benefits too. Gone are the days where everyone has to be sitting in the same room to have a productive discussion. In fact, sometimes the most productive meetings bring together employees virtually from all over the world – some of whom may never have met in person. Once restricted to who you could physically get together, technology is making it far easier to get the right people together in one virtual space.

Getting the most out of the room

Bringing everyone together – remote and onsite – is a great step, but lack of productivity is a universal meeting gripe. When employees are taking an hour out of their busy days to meet, that time needs to be used efficiently to produce meaningful results. Basic tech tools have enabled more flexible meeting models, but for many businesses, the existing tech is more of a hindrance than an asset.

Slow, complicated equipment can take time to set up, different cables may be required to connect each attendee’s portable device and some devices may not be supported at all. Content sharing can also prove a challenge – when everyone’s using a different screen, time is easily wasted making sure everyone has access and is looking at the right part of the presentation or document. Plus there’s the chance that this flow of information inside and outside the office may not be secure – and with cybercrime on the rise and hefty fines for data breaches, this is a big worry for any business.

This is where businesses can benefit from making the most of the latest tech solutions. Designed specifically with collaboration in mind, tools like the Intel Unite® solution resolve common issues by using an open platform to bring applications, document sharing and presentations into one hub in each meeting room. From this hub, there are multiple means of joining the meeting and the option for up to four presenters to switch between their screens seamlessly.

The system is designed to work with the OS and applications organisations already have, supporting plugins for tools like Skype for Business and IoT equipment such as smart in-room control systems. It is also built to work seamlessly across all common devices, so there’s no need to invest in new uniform hardware. All you need are an Intel® Core™ vPro® processor, managed PIN service, and the app on whichever devices you choose to use.

To tackle the issue of security, the Intel Unite solution is encrypted with an SSL connection between the hub and client, ensuring content is only shared with approved participants. The Intel Unite hub is PIN protected and security codes are regularly refreshed.

With the mechanics of connecting easily and safely with your remote workers ironed out, you can turn your focus to the built-in features designed for enhanced collaboration, whether the meeting involves external participants or not. The system is touch-enabled so users can make the most of the latest touchscreen technologies and there is also an annotation feature, allowing the presenter to use their screen like a whiteboard. Unlike a whiteboard, this will be visible to anyone accessing the shared screen, allowing presenters to draw participants’ attention to precise areas of documents or add shared notes as they speak.

For businesses needing extra flexibility, Intel also offers the Intel Unite® Cloud Service. With this, you get all of the features of the original service, but with no need to manage an on-premise PIN server – everything is managed through an admin portal. As with the on-premise option, you’ll need an Intel Core vPro processor and the app on each device.

AI and the meeting room of the future

So where can this go next? Artificial Intelligence is evolving from an intriguing future technology into an office reality. While you’re not going to find a robot running your meeting any time soon, AI assistance technologies are on the rise in the workplace. In meetings, they can take out the monotonous admin tasks and free up time to focus on creative, meaningful discussion.

One ever-advancing AI technology is the voice assistant. Many of us are already kitted out with AI voice assistants in our personal lives, and the principle is largely the same when transferred to a meeting room environment. With voice control, you can run the meeting without the distraction of having to manually scroll through or share content on screen.

With the increasing sophistication of these applications, handy tools are becoming vital ‘co-workers’. AI technology is already able to perform basic admin tasks and offer voice control, and it is well on the way to being able to take minutes, distil action points, check schedules to set up follow up meetings and pull up data and information as participants speak.

With the right technology, you can not only solve your meeting headaches but get so much more out of your discussions. Plus, if you invest in the right flexible solutions, you’ll be poised to make the most of new cutting-edge technology as it’s released.

Discover how the Intel Unite platform can help your business here