Articles Archive - Page 87 of 114 -

Tech Without Technique is Nothing but Bits and Bytes

As originally published by David Sable on Linkedin.

Sadly, the DIGIBABBLE crowd is at it again. The one-note pundits, with nothing new to say, are predicting a world that will only be Tech or Digital. Solutions will be “Big Data” and AI-based only—and nothing else will matter.

Nothing could be further from the truth. And nothing will tank your business as quickly as listening to that endless and meaningless drivel.

Digital is Everything. Get over it. Just about all that we do is linked, in some way, to a digital source/platform/system. And that, by the way, includes a printed newspaper, magazine or book (if you still read any—and it seems that many more are), the TV shows you watch, and the coffee you once bought from the food cart that you paid for through Square or Venmo.

But not Everything is Digital. Many are lost without their live sports, meals in restaurants, Broadway shows, concerts, school…and yes, all of these non-digital experiences are linked to some digital enablement or other. KNEE JERK ALERT.

Digital is Everything…But not Everything is Digital—so I have been writing and speaking about for years, but never has the phrase been truer—and never has the distinction been more important to our future.

To begin with, right now many of the most important people in the world are the people we have tended to ignore. They are the nameless people delivering our food, packing the boxes we order from Amazon, working the fields, and in other ways, keeping us and our economy going.

Sadly, we have allowed an elite, digital-world lexicon, the Gig Economy, to denote the status of people who have no social safety net, no ability to save, and who must to work endless hours just to have a second and often third gig.

Any number of Sci-Fi Apocalyptic-themed movies feature the underground/ behind-the-scenes/rarely seen community of people who keep it all going for the ones on top. The Utopians. In fact, Kara Swisher wrote about this in her latest New York Times column.

Obviously, the incredible healthcare workers who man the front lines daily…with limited supplies, conflicting information, no rest and often little reward, are the Superheroes of our time. The doctors, nurses, aides, technicians, and maintenance crews…sometimes working double shifts…wearing masks that have been washed and recycled, garbage bags over their clothes when proper gear runs out…improvising and rigging and concocting because all the tech if it isn’t there for the people to use.

Another subset of heroes: Parents, at home, sometimes single, working (or not), lacking the devices to share across the family for school, work and just plain sanity…who are creating games, cooking and baking, building all kinds of fantastic projects for their children to partake, maintaining stability in an unstable time.

And, of course, the alone and lonely—the former…those that have, too late, discovered that all the likes, digital social connections and followed influencers amount to nothing. And the latter…those elderly people who are without anything at all. Both the alone and lonely, share the need for common human warmth, a virtual, but no less real hug…both missing human company, someone to bring them their medicine, or a home baked cookie. These folks are our most vulnerable—they are the largest segment of the stricken population to die…and they die alone.

And there is so much more to delve into about the ways our lives have changed in recent months. Funerals and visitations by ZOOM (I use the term generically); great, yet simple acts of kindness everywhere; sharing a drink with a friend remotely and on and on.

I have written about the danger of returning to any kind of normal…new or otherwise…Technology Meeting Faith…and Ingenuity vs. Innovation. Yet, what struck me as I pondered those awaiting the Tech Messiah was the notion of Tech and Technique….and the primal truth that one without the other is doomed.

As I began, “Digital Is Everything…But Not Everything Is Digital.”

All Tech, since the beginnings of humankind, has progressed because of Technique…because we learned how to use the Tech, mold it, evolve it, pivot it…make it transparent, and then, most importantly shared it, and then repeated the process…Technique.

From fashioning spear tips to evolving how we share stories (think cave walls to TikTok), from the first wheel to space exploration, tech advanced because of people and their uses and adaptations of it—not because of the Tech itself.

More importantly when the Tech fails, and it always does in some way or another, or when its limitations become apparent, it is human ingenuity, moxie, perseverance that gets us through. And while I like to reference apocalyptic-themed movies where this is usually the overarching theme, you need look no further than your own locked-down home to see the proof.

How lucky we are to have ZOOM, how blessed we are to have digital connectivity that allows us to really connect. And how fortunate we are that we have not lost our humanity…our primal spirit, because when all else is gone, that is our core. Listen:

“Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit”—Ansel Adams

And there you have it.

If nothing else, let’s emerge from The Plague of 2020 with an optimism based on our humanity and indomitable spirit. If we discount ourselves or throw it away, thinking salvation will come from elsewhere, we have already lost.

See you on ZOOM!!! Stay safe and Stay well.

4 Takeaways on COVID-19’s Impact on Industry & Consumer Behavior

COVID-19 has transformed our day-to-day lives in the here and now, but there’s reason to believe that a number of these lifestyle changes won’t fade away once the storm is behind us. In today’s deep-dive, we’re exploring 4 trends that we believe will have a lasting effect on the future of industry: eCommerce taking over Grocery, the rise of alternative social outlets, telehealth as a dominant force in healthcare, and the yearning for human connection amidst uncertainty.

eCommerce plays a key role in the future of Grocery.

Amid all the panic and uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, nobody wants to line-up outside a grocery store behind a dozen other shoppers wearing face masks, ultimately to find out that the last box of pasta is gluten free. A trip to the store is more like an unpredictable journey — there’s the anxiety of being exposed to the virus, the lack of options can be frustrating, and between all the lines and obsessive hand washing, it’s a long-winded and tedious way to get your groceries.

That’s why online grocery shopping has shown tremendous growth amid COVID-19, with the model seeing a 74% increase in shoppers since March 13th. What’s interesting about this dramatic shift is that 26% of these shoppers are online grocery shopping for the first-time ever, and there’s reason to believe that this shift will have lasting effects once COVID-19 is behind us. Business Insider Intelligence has projected that 49% of U.S. consumers will have used online grocery services by the end of the year, and grocery chains are pressed to adopt digital transformation at a rate much faster than they had ever anticipated. Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon pointed out that hand sanitizer and toilet paper were crucial products in the first wave of panic buying, and this was followed by nonperishable foods and puzzle games. Now that we’re in the midst of the third wave, nearly 2 months into lockdown, McMillon has noticed an influx of customers purchasing personal care products. He noted on the Today show that “People are starting to need a haircut. You see more beard trimmers and hair color, and things like that.” COVID-19 has caused ecommerce to take over all product categories in all aspects of our lives, with consumer demands’ evolving the longer we remain in lockdown.

Alternative Social Outlets are Seeing Record-Breaking Engagement.

At this point, I think we all know somebody that’s boasting about their bread making skills in the midst of quarantine. DIY has become a hot trend in recent weeks, which has prompted record traffic on Pinterest, which is seeing a 26% increase in saves, a 55% increase in searches and triple the amount of video views since 4/6. Trends related to productivity, future planning, and self-care are seeing a strong uptick in activity, with search terms like “exercise routine at home” seeing a 195% increase in traffic.

Gen Z and Millennials are also flocking to TikTok, a more recently emerged social media outlet centered upon sharing and creating 15-second videos, with lip-syncing and dance clips being core content on the outlet. Music Business Worldwide reported an 18% increase in downloads (2,000,000 total) between March 16-22, and the first 23 days of March saw a 27% increase in downloads in comparison to February’s 6.2 million downloads. Most recently, TikTok users have dabbled into home cooking, with a DIY whipped coffee drink originating from Korea, also known as “Dalgona coffee”, sparking viral attention on the social channel,with the #dalgonacoffee tag amassing over 290 million views at the time of writing.

With self isolation being so heavily encouraged, gamers couldn’t ask for a better excuse to pick up the controller. Amazon’s video game streaming website Twitch has surpassed over 3 billion hours watched in Q1 for the first time ever (that’s 17% more than the hours watched from last quarter). This quarter also saw a 33% increase in unique channels, and accounted for 65% of total streaming hours watched this quarter, leading the charge ahead of competitors Youtube, Facebook & Mixer.

Telehealth is here to stay.

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that the US healthcare system is fragile and rife with life-threatening vulnerabilities. This January, only 24% of US healthcare organizations had a virtual care program in place, and I’m willing to bet money that this figure will change dramatically in the coming months, especially given President Trump’s deregulatory healthcare agenda. This implemented Medicare & HSA coverage for telehealth offerings & allowed patients/providers to connect over video platforms such as Skype, Zoom, and FaceTime.

However, the issue still remains for small businesses. Many small physician practices aren’t equipped with a telehealth alternative, and with non-urgent issues falling by the wayside amidst national lockdown, these practices are struggling to stay afloat. Telehealth vendor Amwell is offering a new solution to help these smaller care providers pivot in the midst of COVID-19. They’ve recently launched a telehealth program for small physician practices with less than 100 clinicians, and it provides customizable clinical workflows, e-Prescribing, online physician enrollment, staff training and payment-collection capabilities. Investing in this technology will prove to be crucial in ongoing treatment of patients with non-life threatening ailments, especially amid murmurs that this fall’s flu season will become all the more challenging amid a potential 2nd wave of COVID-19.

Large networks with telehealth offerings have seen a massive uptick in usage, with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts reporting over half a million telehealth visits with patients in the past 6-weeks. Prior to the virus, they averaged only 5,000 visits in that timeframe. Arielle Trzcinski, Senior analyst at Forrester adds,“While the pandemic will prove the value of virtual care in a crisis, it will also demonstrate the effectiveness for ongoing chronic care management. This moment will have a lasting effect on the adoption of virtual care and accelerate the shift from in-person care to virtual first engagement for multiple conditions and use cases.”

People crave human connection, and Zoom leaves us empty-handed.

The word “unprecedented” has become an exhausted cliche, but it’s so difficult to put into words how poignantly the world has been changed. The battle against this virus has resulted in millions of people being separated from their families and loved ones. At the time of this writing, COVID-19 has claimed the lives of 65,000 Americans and 30 million people have filed unemployment claims since mid-March in the U.S. During this vulnerable time, people crave human connection. Video conferencing allows us to augment the face-to-face interaction we long for, but studies have shown that it’s taxing the brain, and there’s proven science behind the “Zoom Fatigue” we’re all experiencing. Non-verbal cues are fundamental in how we process communication, and our ability to read these cues via Zoom is nearly impossible. It’s like our brain is trying to put together a puzzle with the wrong pieces, and it leaves us exhausted, drained, and even feeling ostracized from one another. Multi-person Zoom calls exacerbate these effects since users are decoding communication with multiple people at once, and the 1.2 second delay causes users to perceive the responder as less interested or friendly.

Manyu Jiang from BBC claims that the external stressors we’re all subject to can have a massive impact on our ability to truly connect. The self complexity theory suggests that individuals have compartmentalized different aspects in their lives. For instance, the “self” we are with our family, friends, significant others, or work peers are all different. Typically, these connections are carried out in separate spaces, but with people being confined to their homes, all these “separate selves” are boiled down to one. Gianpiero Petriglieri, a professor at Insead tells BBC, “Imagine if you go to a bar, and in the same bar you talk with your professors, meet your parents or date someone, isn’t it weird? That’s what we’re doing now… We are confined in our own space, in the context of a very anxiety-provoking crisis, and our only space for interaction is a computer window.”

Jiang suggests that going the “old-fashioned” route may serve as a comfort to those struggling with video communications. Writing a letter or talking over the phone surely don’t replicate the 1:1 human experience, but it can take out the pressure and anxiety many are feeling while deciphering communication over Zoom. With the market becoming saturated with virtual webinars, and remote workers becoming increasingly overwhelmed with Zoom meetings, it’s safe to say that face-to-face activities and networking will be valued like never before once this generation-defining crisis is behind us.

Drastic WFH Shifts Now Need to Put Security First: Five Steps to Making that Shift

As originally published by Ratinder Ahuja on ShieldX’s blog.

Many enterprises were faced with making a hairpin turn towards a new work from home (WFH) strategy. Corporations scrambled to beef up their remote access infrastructure to mitigate productivity downtime. For network and security teams, this means a dramatic and overnight shift in network topology as the number of VPN connections increased. Network accessibility was and remains the top priority but with it comes increased potential for security risks.  Given the new environment, what are the key infrastructure concerns for security and infrastructure?

Recall, last year’s spike in attacks targeting VPN servers—notably spear headed by nation-state actors–against Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Pulse Secure, and Citrix:

Palo Alto Network Security Advisory PAN-SA-2019-0020, in relation to CVE-2019-1579;
FortiGuard Security Advisories FG-IR-18-389, in relation to CVE-2018-13382; FG-IR-18-388 in relation to CVE-2018-13383; FG-IR-18-384, in relation to CVE-2018-13379;
Pulse Secure Security Advisory SA44101, in relation to CVE-2019-11510, CVE-2019-11508, CVE-2019-11540, CVE-2019-11543, CVE-2019-11541, CVE-2019-11542, CVE-2019-11539, CVE-2019-11538, CVE-2019-11509, https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2019-11507CVE-2019-11507.
Citrix Security Advisory CTX267027, in relation to CVE-2019-19781.

These lead to new ways of bypassing perimeter security controls as attackers get past the VPN and land inside your data center. Need further proof, look no further than aerospace giant Airbus, who was hit by a series of attacks targeting VPNs used by airline suppliers to steal sensitive company data. 

This is further exacerbated by enabling employees to work from home without the right planning cycles to prepare for such a move. Each of these systems should have been patched last year when the vulnerabilities were disclosed, and the first attacks began hitting organizations. However, with more and more companies needing VPN capabilities to allow workers to log into private corporate systems and perform their responsibilities, IT staff responded by putting up more VPN servers to deal with the surging traffic. Here are five recommendations you should follow:

Fast work and complexity lead to misconfigurations and other basic mistakes. Be mindful of the fact when setting up new infrastructure overnight, its possible typical security processes become bypassed in order to just “get it done”. IT staff now needs to reexamine security best practices and pay close attention to the new VPN servers they deployed. Make sure these systems have been patched for vulnerabilities like those listed above, as they are likely to become the most targeted today.
Avoid shared machines or split tunneling to reduce system infiltration. Inspect the configuration of the VPN’s as often times “split tunnels” are established, where traffic from the remote network destined to the data centers and to other destinations on the internet are running on the same machine. Such concurrent tunnels interconnect the world to your data center with a single hop that is outside your network and sometimes even outside the infrastructure teams’ control. 
Prevent perimeter bypassing requires East/West visibility. Interconnectivity of home networks to data centers leads to the risk of bypassing the perimeter. Once this happens, visibility of ongoing progressive penetration deeper into the data center core networks is limited to non-existent. To counter these effects and remain vigilant against attack activities and their progression, utilize segmentation to isolate the systems in your environment where you previously depended on enhanced security controls and hardened perimeters.
Ensure VPN access aligns with policies. Working from home shouldn’t allow for greater access to internal systems. Increase logging and review SOC threat hunting techniques and procedures. Identify abnormalities in connections, pinpointing large data transfers, failed logins, and monitor for disabled accounts especially when reducing the work force.
Review security best practices with everyone. Now would also be a good time to remind employees and third parties who have access to your network about security best practices. Working from home likely means employees are working on unsecured wireless networks, using personal laptops not monitored or secured, and potentially running out-of-date or unpatched software. Many employees may be downloading new applications, zoom backgrounds, and reviewing compromised websites hosting COVID-19 updates. Something as simple as a newsletter related to proper configuration of their wireless routers and the use of WPA or WPA2, the need to ensure anti-malware software remains up-to-date, systems patched routinely and using caution when visiting websites can help.

Digital Diary’s Quarterly eMagazine is Here!

Today, thought leadership and continued education are more important than ever before. We’re thrilled to share our latest Digital Diary Magazine with you, and this quarter we’re rising to the challenge of organizational disruption, something that has become increasingly important amid COVID-19’s impact across all industries.

Take a deep-dive into how telehealth will play an integral role in the future of healthcare, navigate the “new normal” with David Sable from WPP, get tips on how to cut wasted spend and increase profitability amid COVID-19 and explore the imminent future of AI in a Q/A segment with our Advisory Board members. We also cover all the latest trends and changes we’ve seen in 2020’s Q1 across the Healthcare, Marketing, Technology & Cybersecurity industries.

Click here to download your free copy!

Shifts in Podcasting Amid COVID-19, featuring Cynthia Johnson from Bell + Ivy

Digital transformation is largely the reason why there are so many unique enclaves and communities today. Just a brief time ago, audiences were limited to just 20 channels on cable and now we’re living in a world where audiences have well over 900,000 podcasts to choose from. Whether you’re a fan of true crime, Tiger King, or knitting, there’s a podcast for you. And prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, podcast advertising was seeing a huge come-up, with listenership increasing by 16% (104 million listeners) in 2019. This surge in listeners came with an uptick in advertisers utilizing the channel in their marketing efforts — IAB found that 75% of media buyers last year made podcast ad buys, up from 63% in 2018.

It’s clear why brands and agencies love the medium. Demographic research shows that 45% of podcast listeners have an HHI of $75,000+ and 85% have attended college, a highly sought-after audience segment that can oftentimes be difficult to reach. And, developing creativity is a quick and simple process requiring very little or no production — in most cases, it’s as simple as writing a script.

Marketers can get extremely granular in their messaging when tailoring the script to fit the podcast, and Spotify has paved the way for targeting capabilities. Their newest offering, Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI), allows for advertisers to target listeners based on their age, gender, location and listening history. This comes along with improved tracking capabilities with metrics including reach, frequency, impressions, and various audience insights.

This calls to question: can podcasting mirror the success of radio prior to digital disruption? Our Advisory Board member, Cynthia Johnson from Bell + Ivy weighs in. “I think that data is only as useful as the people who read it. If brands focus on reaching people where they are and consider their mindset, then yes. Radio had the luxury of knowing that at 8am most people are in their cars heading to work. They could speak to their audience. Brands trying this with Spotify will have to look at various data sets to understand the consumer’s behavior at any given time, as well as their location. If that can be done, then yes, it will be very disruptive.”

With advertising budgets shrinking and consumer behavior evolving, podcasting is also being disrupted amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. To start, audiences’ interests have changed. True crime, a growing genre in the podcast world, has seen a 30% drop whereas podcasts related to health, like “This Week in Virology” is seeing upwards of a 900% increase in listenership.

In the “new normal”, what was once on the fringe has now become the mainstream.

Podtrac recently reported that downloads have fallen 10% since the beginning of March, while unique listeners fell by 20%. This shift doesn’t come as a surprise as work commutes have come to a full stop, and with a dramatic increase in people being home-bound, media channels like cable saw an unprecedented uplift in ratings amid COVID-19 news coverage.

When we asked Cynthia for her thoughts on where podcasting will be going in the future, she answered, “Podcasts will become more diverse in its purpose and use. Companies will create internal content teams that create internal podcasts and content for employees (we are already seeing this), and marketers will have to start looking at the many places they can find voices to support these podcasts. Influencers on podcasts only do well when the host is known to the audience.”

Podcasts for internal communications is definitely something we can expect to see more of. Many companies have developed podcasts exclusively to share with their internal teams, like Matt Zelesko, the Chief Technology Officer of Comcast Cable. On the podcast Z Time, Matt talks industry predictions, interviews thought leaders and shares career insights as exclusive content for his team members.

In times like this, it’s so easy for employees to feel disconnected from the workplace, and in many cases, company vision and strategy has become foggy. Creating a format where companies’ leaders can metaphorically sit down and have an informal conversation with their employees is invaluable during this time, and we can expect others to follow suit.

Fun Fact: Cynthia’s favorite podcast right now is Xander Schultz’ “What We Don’t Know”

Need a second opinion on digital marketing, personal branding, or PR strategy? Go here to check out what Bell + Ivy is doing.

Ingenuity vs. Innovation: Creativity in a Time of Crisis

As originally published by David Sable on Linkedin.

In a discussion today about what shape the world takes when the lockdown ends, it occurred to me that we in the Developed World…the Very Developed World can learn a lot from the Developing one.

In fact, we might be (unconsciously) doing so already.

I have written before about the innovation of even our biggest “Tech Giants” (my readers know I hate that term) in helping problem-solve in countries where Internet coverage is spotty, device ownership even more so, and the level of device sophistication often begins and ends with an SMS enabled phone.

In these places, search requests are not the ubiquitous, Google Search bar, banking is non-existent, and payment sums to be transferred online can be micro. Information sharing has never seen an e-mail, let alone Slack, and ZOOM is still just a noise made by little kids playing.

I used the word “innovation” earlier, but it is actually the wrong term. You see, “innovation,” as a concept in our society, has evolved to mean big technical solutions—so called “disruptions” in software, devices, data and banking. But what I have in mind is much simpler—it’s called, “Ingenuity”—and it was once a calling card of American thinking throughout its history…that is, until now.

“Ingenuity” differs from “Innovation” in that it’s still about being cleverly inventive and resourceful.

Why is that different?

It’s different because it focuses on the problem at hand, not on grandiose exits; not on declaring disruption; not on transformation. In short, it’s not focused on buzzwords and hot concepts. You don’t need billions of dollars or obscure specialists to practice ingenuity.

Ingenuity is focused on solving, not creating, and in solving by using the most efficient and effective resources at hand (because those are often the only resources at hand).

Ingenuity isn’t always the prettiest, delivered to us tied up in a neat bow, but it gets the job done—and quickly.

Here is where I ask for your honest reflection and/or sharing.

I am ready to bet that most of you have discovered your latent ingenuity over the past weeks during this lockdown. And those of you with children, have probably also witnessed it in spades.

We have figured out how to use technology as resource and not an end game, as we continued to search for every opportunity to connect in a human way. My daughter’s exercise bootcamps, and the way she has moved her clients to screen time, have left me in awe…and it’s not virtual, it’s real. We need a new definition here…

We have made do with fewer supplies and found ingenious workarounds to fill in where we were previously lacking. And best of all, we have shared those fixes with each other proudly and openly.

Our kids don’t just sit on their iPads all day. They create movie theaters with tickets and snacks (like my grandsons did). Empty cardboard boxes (once thoroughly Lysol-ed, of course) become castles and houses and cars and trucks (a granddaughter’s project), reminiscent of the days of the Sears Wish Book, when the wood from the shipping crates made fences and outhouses…

And the sheer number of new recipes with new ingredients and mixed drinks is staggering, as our ingenuity impacts our meals and down time.

Ingenuity might be a lasting outcome of The Plague of 2020…maybe, just maybe we will regain our MOJO in newly creative ways that celebrate our humanity and our very human ability to make do in the worst of circumstances. Listen:

“Anywhere the struggle is great, the level of ingenuity and inventiveness is high”— Eleni Zaude Gabre-Madhin

First of all look her up…you will be inspired. And make sure to read The Splendid and The Vile by Erik Larsen for more inspiration…

Bottom line, in our lifetimes, in most of the Developed World, we have not been faced with this kind of struggle…the kind that’s as existential as it is physical. These are the struggles that bring out our ingenuity, these are the kind that force us to solve problems with the few resources we have at our fingertips, reminding ourselves of our awesome ability to change the world, even if it’s just our own, small immediate one.

We are all asking, “What’s next? What did we learn from this?” Let’s not forget that we’ve learned ingenuity. Share your stories and pictures of ingenuity. Let’s emerge from this period with our flame of creativity rekindled and our commitment to ingenuity renewed.

Brand Opportunities in a Crisis

As originally published by Denise Lee Yohn on SmartBrief.

As you work to stabilize your business in this time of crisis, you might not naturally think about your brand, but you should.

Your brand can be used to align and motivate your employees, put focus on relationships with key customers and ensure you’re ready to compete in a recessionary economy. In this video, I explain three brand-related actions to take now, including increasing the differentiation and perceived value of your brand.

Hi, it’s Denise Lee Yohn, and before I jump into this month’s topic, I want to acknowledge what a challenging time we’re in these days and I hope you, your family and loved ones, and your businesses are safe, healthy and well.

I’m also guessing that you are feeling more pressure than ever, since expectations for leadership during a crisis are so elevated. So I want to be of service you to today by offering three brand-related actions that you can take to give you and your people a sense of stability and security now and in the months to come.

No. 1: Use your brand to engage and motivate your employees. Your brand can be a powerful connector at a time when employees feel anxious, are isolated, and face increased pressures.

Because your brand should embody and express your company’s overarching purpose, it can connect employees to that mission and help them derive meaning from their work. Your brand can also connect employees to customers. By orienting employees around the value and customer experience you promise to deliver to customers, your brand can help keep customers top of mind. And your brand can connect employees to each other if you enable employees to share stories and encourage each other as they work through these tough times — so they can see how everyone is doing their part to interpret and reinforce your brand.

So use your brand to remind employees of why they’re doing what they do, who they’re doing it for, and who they’re doing it with.

No. 2: Double down on your core customers. Focus your efforts on deepening relationships with your most profitable customers and those who are likely to stay the most loyal to you despite business interruptions and general uncertainty.

You probably have already reached out to your customers, so now you should identify what your core customers really need and want and how you can help them get through these difficult times. Consider delivering experiences that are personalized to their specific needs, offering extended service hours and terms, or providing added value services at no charge. Strong relationships with valuable customers can not only help stabilize your business but also give you an advantage in partner negotiations, boost your financial valuation, and make your marketing spend more efficient.

And finally, increase the perceived value of your brand. It’s pretty clear we’re in a recession now — and even after businesses re-open and people go back to normal routines, it will take a while for the economy to rebound. In recessions, people become more price-sensitive, so you want to try to offset the price comparisons they make between you and your competitors.

You should communicate your brand differentiation clearly and, as much as possible, increase your differentiation through new features, new offerings — even new visuals and packaging can help your brand stand out. You will have to devote some dollars to differentiate your brand, but it’s a much safer spend than having to resort to price decreases or promotions.

In this time of crisis, you need to align and motivate your people, shore up your relationships with key customers and ensure you’re ready to compete under growing market pressures. In other words, use and build your brand.

Join the Webinar with Keyavi Data

Date: Thursday, April, 16^th 2020

Webinar time: 1:00pm-1:30 EST / 10:00-10:30 am PST

Time: 30 minutes

The unprecedented paradigm shift to a remote workforce is forcing organizations worldwide to adapt quickly to this new normal. Technology leaders are tasked with defining the remedies for success: strategically adjusting to a remote workforce, facilitating productivity and maintaining data security – all while effectively demonstrating progress to the executive team and board of directors. In this webinar, we arm CISOs, CIOs, and Data and Privacy leaders with the critical tactics to validate if your remote workforce plan is effective and operational, to assess what resources are needed for optimal remote operational effectiveness, and to demonstrate and communicate these requirements to your c-suite.

Three takeaways of this webinar:

How to frame this new normal to stakeholders
The critical questions you will need to answer for your board
A template for communicating your effective response

Register to Attend Today

Could the Coronavirus Force Positive Change in Higher Education?

As originally published by Dawn Lerman & Falguni Sen on Times Higher Education.

There is nothing like a good crisis to shake up an industry.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 transformed the energy sector and the financial crisis of 2008 had a huge impact on banking. The coronavirus is now doing the same for higher education.

After years of debate on college campuses about whether universities would make a major move into online education, nearly all of them in the US have stopped talking and done just that.

So how did this happen so suddenly?

Organizational structures are often among the biggest impediments to meaningful change. That is certainly the case in academia. Here we find the kind of functional silos that exist in any organization (such as between marketing and IT), but also silos between schools, between departments within schools, and between faculty and administration. These lead to the hoarding of key resources and limited skills sharing. They also inhibit the creation of necessary synergies.

One way to get beyond such structural impediments is for all stakeholders within an organization to rally around a clear and unified goal. During the current crisis, one such goal was soon established within universities: to help prevent the spread of coronavirus while providing continuity of learning. Units responded by mobilizing their resources to provide a wide range of holistic solutions to the challenge of online teaching. And they did so practically overnight.

Doing this at an institution where only a handful of faculty previously taught online is no small task. Academics are notoriously slow to change. We teach the same courses year after year and, while many of us update our materials quite regularly, it is a far different matter to change our mode of delivery. Converting a course for online delivery is time-consuming work. Some faculty may also feel threatened, fearing that they will be replaced, or that online teaching fails to capture the elements that make them such successful teachers.

Yet faculty could typically easily accept the requirement that they teach online since this was perceived as a temporary change that did not threaten their core teaching philosophy, while other initial options, such as extending the one-week spring break and making up the lost time in the summer, were widely seen as just postponing the inevitable.

At our university, there were dozens of faculty members in each webinar on online teaching that we attended. Those who had experience with online teaching and tools were proactive in helping colleagues adapt their courses. While some are no doubt concerned about being able to achieve their intended learning outcomes, they are also excited about the technical barriers they have overcome and all that they have learned. And they want to learn more. Having taught a few online classes and discovered that they can make creative use of the technology, many faculty will be changed forever. We expect that even those who go back to teaching in a traditional classroom will incorporate some of the online tools that they are now learning to use.

Universities should embrace this staff engagement and seize the opportunity to transform pedagogy to meet the needs of the next generation of students. Incoming undergraduate and graduate students will have elevated expectations about the use of technology on campuses. In fact, they may already be accustomed to technology-enabled pedagogy, since schools in an increasing number of districts are light years ahead of higher education in this regard.

Once we get beyond the current crisis, universities should shift the focus from basic training on tools to more advanced training incorporating course design and assessment of learning. Faculty enthusiasm may well be less than we are seeing now, but if we can get the messaging to resonate with faculty, they may just start participating in droves. That messaging should celebrate their current achievements with online tools while also recognizing their pain points, and offer the training as an opportunity to build on that success and solve their technology-related teaching challenges.

This message will resonate with teaching staff even more if it is presented within the context of a clear and unified goal. And these need not be reserved for times of crisis. For example, a university that values universal access to education as its top priority might view online learning as a key element in its mission.

Finally, we should preserve the culture of change that has swept across universities over the course of just a few weeks. We should institutionalize that culture to respond to the demands of the digital era. Because if not now, then when?

ShieldX Solution Approach to Accelerate Security at the Speed of DevOps

DevOps is a business-driven approach to deliver solutions using agile methods, collaboration and automation. While the main goal of DevOps is to automate and deliver things faster and implement a higher level of integration between teams in an organization, implementing proper security controls can be challenging and therefore security can become an after thought in the evolution of operational paradigm shift to DevOps. Let’s take a look at some of the challenges that DevOps pose to security.

CHALLENGE 1: SECURITY TEAM IS UNAWARE OF NEW APPLICATIONS THAT ARE DEPLOYED BY DEVOPS

Consider an organization just started the journey of micro-segmentation and has to implement simple policies and nothing complex in terms of blocking new applications when are deployed. Microsegmentation policies are not fully developed or rather loosely in place, DevOps team might spin up new workloads and applications. After all, DevOps is meant to automate things at a faster pace, deploy things often. When DevOps brings up a new application, in this case, the applications might just work finne and connects to all the required services and tiers without issues.

While the security team wants to know about the application to apply policies, there might be some collaborative gaps between both the teams and security team might be blinded in some cases in this scenario and not be fully aware of New Applications and its tiers to properly secure them.

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