Teckedin - 2023 Curated Analysis, Opinions, Reports
  • 09 Jan 2024
  • 435 Minutes to read
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Teckedin - 2023 Curated Analysis, Opinions, Reports

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Thank you to Verge Technologies, Inc. for sponsoring this curation.

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Our curations get long so we break them up. To see our most recent 2024 curation, click here.

Title/LinkDescriptionCategory
Information Week - The Rise of Dual Ransomware Attacks
These dual attacks can compound the consequences for victims: data encryption and exfiltration and financial losses. The FBI also noted that ransomware groups have been upping the pressure on victims since early 2022, leveraging malware, wiper tools, and custom data theft as negotiation tactics.
Security
CIO Influence - CIOs Budget in Cybersecurity: Essentials and Insights
Data Privacy and Cloud Security: Expected to grow by over 24% year-over-year in 2024, reflecting heightened organizational concerns, especially in response to emerging regulations impacting personal data and AI usage. Predictions indicate coverage for 75% of the global population by modern privacy regulations by 2025.
Security
Network Computing - Ethernet Holds Its Own in Demanding AI Compute Environments
Even with such a major vendor offering solutions in the AI space, many enterprises still want to use Ethernet. Many found that InfiniBand costs more, brings complexity not found with Ethernet, often has interoperability problems working with existing infrastructure, and is only offered by a limited number of vendors. In many cases, enterprises do not have the staff and expertise to use and manage the technology
Network Management
Information Week - What the NYT Case Against OpenAI, Microsoft Could Mean for AI and Its Users
CIOs and other leaders have to consider their enterprises’ use cases for AI and the potential risks. Is there a process in place, or are employees using AI tools on their own initiative? Is an AI model spitting out content that violates copyright law? “If AI-generated content is put into otherwise protected content like a blog post … it threatens potentially the entire blog post,” Campbell explains. “It's high-risk in the sense that you may not be able to gain protection for whatever the output is.”
AI Ethics
Network Computing - The Future of IT Infrastructure: Embracing the Multi-cloud Revolution 
Increasingly, we're seeing customers demanding more customization to get the right results for their projects, and this often means mixing cloud service providers so they can tick off all the requirements they need. For example, some platforms will be better at handling big data, while others could have outstanding AI and machine learning capabilities, so having the option to deploy both together is hugely beneficial.
Cloud
InfoWorld - Why cloud architects are paid well
The trend driving this rise in salaries is the increased premium placed on IT architecture or on those who not only know how to configure a cloud solution but most of what IT is responsible for. Architecture needs to span all systems, and those who are knowledgeable only about cloud systems, sometimes just a single brand, provide a diminished benefit.
Tech Jobs
Forbes - The Role Of People In Cybersecurity: Balancing Best Practices And Trust
In the first half of 2023, it was found that compromised credentials were the root cause in 50% of attacks, which makes it clear that organizations need to go beyond the implementation of cybersecurity solutions and go a step further to keep their data safe.
Security
CIO Influence - Crucial Role of CIOs in Data Management
CIOs are pivotal in defining a data strategy, a blueprint aligning an organization’s business goals with its data assets. Positioned between the overarching business strategy and data governance, this plan leverages data for maximal business impact.
Data Management
Information Week - Align IT With the Business
IT must still overcome its back-office reputation. Although digitalization is on every CEO’s mind, IT still has a decades-old reputation as a back-office cost center to contend with. This makes it difficult for CIOs to reposition IT as a strategic, forward-looking function that can produce revenue and strategic results.
IT Management
Network World - Should AI initiatives change network planning?
If enterprises are looking for a kind of lightweight large-language-model approach to AI, that would mean that the number of specialized AI servers in their data center would be limited. Think in terms of a single AI cluster of GPU servers, and you have what enterprises are seeing. The dominant strategy for AI networking inside that cluster is InfiniBand, a superfast, low-latency, technology that's strongly supported by NVIDIA but not particularly popular (or even known) at the enterprise level.
AI/Network Management
sdxCentral - Why successful SASE implementations rely on consultants and professional services
Mackay said that after the market evaluation, organizations will then typically go down one of two routes: Either they will approach the vendors directly (with some form of RFI / RFP process) or they will turn to a consulting firm to give them direct advice. Mackay noted that what is common in all of these different ways of looking at the market landscape is that they will want to run a  detailed proof of concept process with a shortlist of vendors, primarily to prove that the marketing hype is matched by the technology reality.
Security
Network Computing - Encrypted Traffic: The Elephant in the Room for a Successful NDR Strategy
There has been ongoing dialogue among IT decision-makers on the increasing need for network-based visibility. However, with more than 95% of all Internet-based traffic being encrypted, there is a need for real-time decryption as a requirement for a successful Network Detection and Response (NDR) strategy, which is somewhat of the elephant in the room among IT professionals.

Network Management
VentureBeat - Forrester identifies biggest barriers to generative AI success
The leaders also emphasized that they already have use cases in the pipeline. More than half of the respondents said they have identified multiple potential applications of the technology, including enhancing customer experiences (64%), product development (59%), self-service data analytics (58%) and knowledge management (56%).
Artificial Intelligence
CIO Influence - Applying Cost Consciousness to AI Innovation
Companies without strong cloud data cost governance will continue to see their cloud data costs skyrocket, while the data leaders who are proactively thinking about (and addressing) governance of their cloud data costs will be the cloud data cost “winners.” This means implementing the proper guardrails to identify and correct bad code, configuration issues, data layout problems, and oversized resources in the development stage—before going into production.
AI/Cloud
VentureBeat - Microsoft Copilot app is a stealthy AI launch that you should pay attention to
But under the hood, Copilot is powered by some of the most advanced AI around — we’re talking GPT-3.5 and even the new beefed up GPT-4 in certain modes. This isn’t your grandpa’s chatbot. Copilot can understand context, follow complex conversations, and generate hyper-realistic text and images using tools like DALL-E 3.
Artificial Intelligence
The Hacker News - 5 Ways to Reduce SaaS Security Risks
As technology adoption has shifted to be employee-led, just in time, and from any location or device, IT and security teams have found themselves contending with an ever-sprawling SaaS attack surface, much of which is often unknown or unmanaged. This greatly increases the risk of identity-based threats, and according to a recent report from CrowdStrike, 80% of breaches today use compromised identities, including cloud and SaaS credentials.
Security
VentureBeat - Cybersecurity New Year’s resolutions every enterprise leader (and user) should make
Still, it’s just important to integrate MFA in a way that presents the least amount of friction, experts advise. For instance, implement it only when extra authentication will help protect sensitive data and critical systems. The use of pass-through authentication and single sign-on (SSO) tools will also reduce password fatigue.
Security
AiThority - Experts Discuss HR & Future Of Work Predictions For 2024
“Currently, companies deliver standardized training across their workforce or employee segments in like-roles because it’s not scalable to tailor it to individuals. Often, we see the same training applies to senior, long-tenured people-leaders as it does junior-level staffers who are still early in their careers. Generative AI capabilities will vastly reshape how organizations build training personalized to each employee. It will also help organizations automate coaching, making it more efficient to deliver individualized support based on the precise needs of each employee.
Automation & Productivity
Information Week - 10 IT Trends to Watch for This Year
“2024 won’t just be about integrating AI into business operations. On the contrary, it’ll be a race to build an IT-first workforce that can capture the most value from AI tools,” says Charles Chow, Head of Marketing at Lumen Technologies Asia Pacific.
Tech Trends
Network World - Is it time to change your backup system?
I can't tell you how many times I've fixed "slow backup software" with better configurations - cleaned up snapshots, reduced unneeded redundancy or scope, tweaked multiplexing or network settings. If you think shiny new products inherently perform faster, you might be surprised. External issues such as bad disk layouts, cluttered repositories, and overtaxed hardware will tank speed no matter what software you run.
Data Management
InfoWorld - Using generative AI to overhaul data integration? Start here
Whether or not IT departments are involved in activating every tool, they often end up supporting them in one way or another. Not to mention the work it takes to integrate all these systems together to standardize operations and reporting from a source of “data truth.” In fact, according to a survey report on how the economy has affected the typical IT workload, respondents indicated that 48% of their time is spent integrating new applications and platforms.
IT Management
InfoWorld - 4 key devsecops skills for the generative AI era
“Developers, testers, and business analysts should learn how to write prompts [and learn] where generative AI does well and where it falls down,” says David Brooks, SVP and lead evangelist at Copado. “Adopt a ‘trust but verify’ mentality where you actually read all of the generated content to determine if it makes sense.”
AI/DevOps
CIO Influence - How Security Culture Will Define Success in the Era of AI
Some cybercriminals are also seizing the chance to weaponize AI to develop more insidious scams and create AI-manipulated content, such as voice cloning. If organizations don’t have the proper guardrails and defenses in place, they’ll be left vulnerable and potentially allow bad actors to gain access to sensitive information. Furthermore, if left untrained, employees may unintentionally misuse the technology and fuel bias or insider risk.
AI/Security
InfoWorld - How to unlock C-suite support for application modernization initiatives
A recent independent study by EvolveWare on the State of Application Modernization found that 40% of IT team respondents said that boosting productivity is a top priority for modernization, alongside retiring mainframe infrastructure (37%), and reducing the dependency on legacy code (36%).
IT Management
SC Media - Four ways companies can respond and more effectively comply with the SEC’s new cybersecurity rules
CISOs are at an important crossroads. Because of the existing scope and scale of ransomware and the growth of cybercrime, this is no time to stop paying attention to incident detection and response (IDR). CISOs must examine IDR processes and adopt aggressive target metrics such as zero dwell time while they shift their mindset and approach from one of adversary-oriented to risk management and business-oriented.
Security
VentureBeat - The password identity crisis: Evolving authentication methods in 2024 and beyond
While the concept has been talked about for some time, it has yet to be fully realized because it is complex to incorporate, particularly when it comes to legacy systems that already have numerous security controls in place. But with the increased growth of AI built-from-scratch ‘greenfield’ systems, experts say that 2024 will be the year zero trust becomes real.
Security
ITPro Today - Gartner Breaks Down GenAI: Is It Overhyped or a Game-Changer?
Within IT, there are three key business functions for which GenAI is being adopted, according to Chandrasekaran. "The first and foremost is in software engineering, where GenAI models are helping developers write code faster and even complete code within their environments," he said.
Artificial Intelligence
CIO Influence - Comcast Study Emphasizes Cybersecurity’s Significance in Remote Work Longevity
Nearly all surveyed companies (99%) foresee a heightened need for managed cybersecurity services. These services provide a security overlay to extend data protection, with disaster recovery and business continuity being the top-rated services (43%). Guidance from experts (40%) and managed detection and response (36%) are also high on the priority list as organizations seek comprehensive security solutions in their expanded remote work capacity.
Security
VentureBeat - Why attackers love to target misconfigured clouds and phones
“Novel exploits (zero-days) or even new uses of existing exploits are expensive to research and discover. Why burn an expensive zero-day when you don’t need to? Most bad actors can find a way in through the “front door”– that is, using legitimate credentials (in unauthorized ways).”
Security
Network Computing - Why Secure SD-WAN is a Pillar of Enterprise Cybersecurity
Modern enterprises often use various cloud providers for different infrastructure and application needs. This multi-cloud approach lets them select the best offering for different areas of their business, lock in the best prices, and improve user experience. Despite the benefits, this type of environment is complex to manage and challenging to secure. SD-WAN has emerged as the solution of choice for multi-cloud organizations because it provides an application-aware network infrastructure with uniform policies while simplifying management and reducing costs.
Network Security
sdxCentral - How a global telecom company relies on AI and ML for network management
Human analysis is critical to the process, because “you can have a poorly performing circuit that’s consistent,” he said, and machine-based anomaly detection won’t necessarily pick up on that because it doesn’t have reasoning skills.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - Here are the major security threats and trends for 2024 – and how to deal with them 
Over the past year, there were many things written about gen AI, ranging from Chicken Little to miracle cancer cures. One noteworthy comment comes from Check Point Software Inc.’s blog: “Hackers will see cloud-based AI resources as a lucrative opportunity. They will focus their efforts on establishing GPU farms in the cloud to fund their own AI activities.”
Security
VentureBeat - 11 data predictions for AI-centric enterprise growth in 2024
SQL is a database language that lacks a standardized approach to procedural logic which, for most applications, is embedded within an application server connected to a SQL database using a stateful, persistent session. This design approach for SQL made sense 50 years ago, but it is a painful legacy for modern, connectionless cloud services
AI/Data Management
Information Week - CIOs Battle Growing IT Costs with Tools, Leadership
She adds CIOs can optimize IT spend by implementing more rigorous, strategy-aligned software approval processes aimed at avoiding duplicative spend and ensuring contracts are rightsized for the business needs.  
IT Management
DarkReading - Why CISOs Need to Make Cyber Insurers Their Partners
To mitigate the losses driven by macro-view-based policies, insurance applications have become significantly more complex and require detailed conversations, interviews, and site visits, with the goal of creating a tailored policy. Organizations often are required to meet specific threshold conditions, such as utilizing multifactor authentication and endpoint detection and response capabilities, and must pass an “outside-in” scan of their environment, which is done by a neutral third party.
Security
VentureBeat - 16 Cybersecurity leaders predict how gen AI will improve cybersecurity in 2024
“It could improve by the ability to pick up patterns (like attack patterns or an emerging CVE or just certain behaviors that indicate an attempted breach or even predicting that the L3 DDoS attack is a distraction for the credential stuffing they are missing). I also think that AI will make it more difficult, too. Detectors can’t tell the difference between a human-generated and AI-generated phishing attack, so they’ll get much better,” Silva said.
AI/Security
sdxCentral - 6 steps to help CIOs keep their IT team happy (spoiler alert: think SASE)
IT professionals are often caught in a cycle of mundane activities, leaving them feeling unchallenged. Instead of having IT teams fill the time with endless maintenance and monitoring, CIOs can focus their IT teams on work that achieves larger business objectives. SASE automates repetitive tasks, which frees up IT to focus on strategic business objectives. In addition, the repetitive tasks become less prone to manual errors.
IT Management
VentureBeat - AI moves from theory to practice, zero trust gets real, and other 2024 predictions from Dell CTO
Dell, for instance, has roughly 380 AI-related ideas in the pipeline, he noted. But even as a large enterprise, the company probably only can handle just a handful of those. As he put it, enterprises might rush to do the first four projects on their lists — ultimately outpricing the fifth, which could have been the truly transformative one.
Tech Trends
CIO Influence - CIO Influence Predictions Series: Importance of AI and Anticipated Increased Use Of Visual Technology
With AI, in 2024, we will be able to process these documents in real time and also get good intelligence from this dataset without having to code custom models. Until now, a software engineer was needed to write code to parse these documents, then write more code to extract out the keywords or the values, and then put it into a database and query to generate actionable insights. The cost savings to enterprises will be huge because thanks to real-time AI, companies won’t have to employ a lot of staff to get competitive value out of data.
AI/Data & Analytics
Computerworld - USB-C explained: How to get the most from it (and why it keeps on getting better)
In other words, the older rectangular USB Type-A plugs we are so used to are slowly going the way of the dinosaur. This evolution is happening faster in some arenas than others. For example, the latest Mac Pro desktop has no fewer than eight USB-C ports for anything from sending video to a display to charging a phone.
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - The rise of observability and why it matters to your business
Full-stack observability is the capability to discover the real-time status of each technology stack component in a distributed IT environment. It involves holistically viewing cloud-hosted applications, services, infrastructure, on-premises IT, K8s (there’s your O11Y hint) infrastructure and more. O11Y uses telemetry data such as metrics, logs, traces and other information from the entire IT environment to provide complete end-to-end visibility to understand the connection and dependencies among IT components.
IT Management
Information Week - 5 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for 2024’s Security Threats
There are not many things in IT that are entirely predictable, yet it’s a sure bet that network attackers will continue their nefarious activities throughout 2024. Fortunately, by being proactive, it’s possible to fortify your organization against cyberattacks. Here are six key insights, collected via email interviews, of the actions you can take right now to gain an upper hand on cybercriminals.
Security
Network Computing - 10 SD-WAN Providers & Solutions to Consider in 2024: An Overview
A software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) is a virtual WAN architecture that's service provider-agnostic. This allows enterprises to leverage any assortment of transport services to securely link to desired applications. The list of transport services includes broadband Internet, Multiprotocol Label Switching, and Long-Term Evolution (wireless).
Network Management
sdxCentral - Network management changes as observability spans multicloud
Security-related enhancements and cloud migrations lie behind much of the product activity in the area. Overall, the industry segment continues to address issues of cost, complexity and information volume that go hand in hand with log management’s wider use in the multicloud dominion.
Network Management
The Hacker News - Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023: Insights, Mitigators and Best Practices
According to Etay Maor, Senior Director of Security Strategy at Cato Networks, "We tend to talk a lot about security issues and solutions. This report puts a number behind threats and solutions and provides a lot of information to support claims of how a threat actor, a solution or a process impacts you financially."
Security
TechRepublic - Top 7 Cybersecurity Threats for 2024
Additionally, fileless attacks, where attackers use stolen credentials purchased on the Dark Web to gain access to systems without leaving behind traditional malware traces, are one of the biggest trends to look out for. And zero-day brokers — cybercrime groups selling zero-day exploits on the Dark Web to multiple buyers — are becoming increasingly prevalent.
Security
Network Computing - The Dawn of Universal Zero Trust Network Access
Universal ZTNA is a new concept. Given where the industry is going and the growing need to merge networking and security, with the emergence of the hybrid workforce, the idea will evolve and become a must-have technology soon. If you are on the frontline, a network leader, or an enterprise architect, now is the time to start researching and planning
Network Management
Information Week - Hot Jobs in AI/Data Science for 2024
“In 2024, we’ll also see the war for cyber and software development talent grow more contentious as a result of major privacy concerns and savings-driven budget reallocations born from the generative AI boom,” Hodjat says.
Tech Jobs
sdxCentral - How SASE tackles multicloud implementations, complexity
SASE is going to provide the “on-ramp into the different clouds a company might be using,” McGillicuddy said. As such, it can provide safe access to global points of presence (POPs), route traffic via SD-WANs, and apply services such as secure web gateways, cloud application security brokers,  firewall services and some things that you may not see on today’s hype cycles.
Cloud Security
CIO Influence - Understanding ISMS: A Comprehensive Overview
The crux of the ISMS framework centers on the meticulous evaluation and administration of risks. It operates as a structured methodology, delineating a balanced equilibrium between mitigating risks and the associated costs. Industries entrenched in rigorous regulatory landscapes like healthcare or finance often demand expansive security measures and robust strategies for mitigating risks. This necessitates a comprehensive scope of security activities within their ISMS framework.
Security
Network World - Cisco 2024: AI adoption will drive network modernization, data-center evolution
"GenAI will also be leveraged in B2B interactions with users demanding more contextualized, personalized, and integrated solutions," Centoni stated. "GenAI will offer APIs, interfaces, and services to access, analyze, and visualize data and insights, becoming pervasive across areas such as project management, software quality and testing, compliance assessments, and recruitment efforts. As a result, observability for AI will grow."
AI/Network Management
Government Executive - AI is a rising priority for federal chief data officers
“Advanced analytics, master data management, data integration, API strategies — all are going to help position those building blocks for really leveraging and driving ethical and explainable AI,” King said.
AI/Data Management
Computerworld - What leading Apple-in-the-enterprise execs expect in '24
"We first noticed the trend with mobile devices as frontline workers in industries like healthcare, aviation, and retail transitioned to iPhones and iPads as the primary computing device for some customer-facing roles. And on the Mac, we saw tremendous growth in the use of cloud identity services, indicating that the Mac is increasingly being used to access critical online services and data.
Automation & Productivity
Computerworld - Choosing a genAI partner: Trust, but verify
Logic and common sense have not always been the strengths of senior management when on a mission. That means the IT question will rarely be, “Should we do GenAI? Does it make sense for us?” It will be: “We have been ordered to do it. What is the most cost-effective and secure way to proceed?”
Artificial Intelligence
Network Computing - Signs That a Network Technology Has Outlived Its Usefulness
Frequent failures or incompatibility with newer systems are also key warning signs, he adds. "Most network managers are adept at spotting obsolete technologies, but challenges arise in balancing legacy systems with the need for innovation, often constrained by budgetary and operational considerations."
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - New report warns of a rise in AI-generated email fraud and phishing attacks
The report discusses several instances of AI-generated attacks detected by Abnormal, such as malware delivery attempts posing as insurance companies, Netflix impersonation for credential phishing, and invoice fraud by impersonating a cosmetics brand. The attacks use sophisticated language and lack the usual signs of phishing, such as grammatical errors, making them more convincing to potential victims.
Security
ITPro Today - Why FinOps Is a Pivotal Cloud Trend in 2023
Instead, it's cloud FinOps — a strategy that emphasizes cloud cost optimization. As of 2023, FinOps is exerting major influence on the way many organizations approach cloud computing. It has arguably become more important to cloud strategies than concepts like multicloud or hybrid cloud, key trends from years past.
Cloud
Forbes - Navigating The Cybersecurity Landscape In 2024: Anticipating Challenges And Opportunities
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will play an increasingly prominent role in cyberattacks in 2024. Expect cybercriminals to leverage AI and ML to automate and enhance their capabilities, making attacks more sophisticated and adaptive. Cybersecurity professionals must harness the power of AI themselves to stay one step ahead of these evolving threats.
Security
CIO Influence - Three Reasons an Organization’s CISO Should be Independent of its CIO
A key motivator for organizations to separate the CISO from the CIO is to provide that CISO with greater management responsibility and control over the cybersecurity program. This removes potential friction with the CIO over things such as budgetary constraints or security strategies. Further, an independent CISO ensures that cybersecurity remains an organization-wide priority, and security strategies align with broader business objectives – not just broader IT initiatives
Security
VentureBeat - How to protect unmanaged devices in today’s zero-trust world
When a contractor is onboarded, they often get access to shared productivity apps. As many organizations don’t have a process to delete a contractor’s access by cloud app or resource, credentials can live on for years – even decades – and lead to intrusion and breach attempts.  
Security
Information Week - How to Select the Right Industry Cloud for Your Business
“Strive to preserve flexibility and the ability to innovate,” he advises. The market is rapidly evolving, and monolithic implementations are giving way to user-friendly building blocks that are continuously improved. “These are proving to provide the greatest advantage,” Campbell observes.
Cloud
Network Computing - The Network’s Growing Strategic Role
“In our experience, companies that invest time and energy to understand their networks and collaborative relationships greatly improve their chances of making successful organizational changes,” said McKinsey. “Sophisticated approaches can map networks and identify the key points of connectivity where value is created or destroyed.”
Network Management
sdxCentral - Trellix CEO outlines how to educate employees on genAI risks
“I think the best way to do it is to have a policy and a regulated standard and then have some standardization,” Palma said. For instance, companies should procure enterprise licenses for approved genAI tools and allow IT teams to assess and ensure their security. This strategy is preferable than blocking these tools, as employees might seek unapproved alternatives, he added.
Artificial Intelligence
AiThority - Sonata AI & Cloud Rule 2024 IT Investments: Rackspace Survey
The survey also underscores the continued adoption of the cloud. When asked about the makeup of their organization’s IT infrastructure and how it will evolve over the next 12 months, edge computing, private cloud, and public cloud increased as a percentage of workloads, while data centers, colocation facilities, and mainframes declined.
IT Management
VentureBeat - The CISO risk calculus: Navigating the thin line between paranoia and vigilance
As the late Kevin Mitnick wrote, “as developers invent continually better security technologies, making it increasingly difficult to exploit technical vulnerabilities, attackers will turn more and more to exploiting the human element. Cracking the human firewall is often easy.”
Security
The Hacker News - Unmasking the Dark Side of Low-Code/No-Code Applications
While low-code/no-code (LCNC) apps and robotic process automations (RPA) drive efficiency and agility, their dark security side demands scrutiny. LCNC application security emerges as a relatively new frontier, and even seasoned security practitioners and security teams grapple with the dynamic nature and sheer volume of citizen-developed applications.
Security
Information Week - Clock Starts on SEC Cyberattack Rules: What CISOs Should Know
“Cybercriminals have shown that if they are willing to control the timeline, they are able to prompt people into action,” Pierson says. “If you tell people that we will expose your data within seven days unless you pay us -- that creates a time clock and a scenario where the power goes to the cybercriminal.”
Security
TechBullion - Big Data Analytics 101: Understanding the Basics and Benefits
It is the process of examining and uncovering patterns, trends, and insights from large and diverse datasets. Unlike traditional data analysis methods, Big Data Analytics deals with datasets that are too complex or massive to be processed by conventional data processing applications. This field leverages advanced analytics techniques, including machine learning, statistical analysis, and predictive modeling, to extract valuable information from vast pools of data.
Data & Analytics
CIO Influence - AI for Network Management Strategies in 2024
Customer patience is wearing thin and businesses are doing all they can to keep up with demands, most notably implementing AI more prominently in their workflows. In the networking space, AIOps, which is the use of AI to automate and streamline IT operations tasks, will be the biggest use case for AI in 2024.
AI/Network Management
Information Week - Data Leaders Say ‘AI Paralysis’ Stifling Adoption: Study
“I do think there’s a disconnect between the CIO and CDO and the chief executive. We should not, in the data and technology space, expect people to understand the layer of complexity that we have to deal with. What we should be doing is taking that complexity and creating a story and a narrative, so it makes sense to the other people in our organization and businesses we work with.”
AI/Data Management
sdxCentral - What is AI networking? Use cases, benefits and challenges
AI networking seeks to transform traditional IT operations and make networks more intelligent, self-adaptive, efficient and reliable. The technology uses machine learning (ML), deep learning, natural language processing (NLP), generative AI (genAI) and other methods to monitor, troubleshoot and secure networks.
AI/Network Management
Network World - How to lock down backup infrastructure
It’s the worst nightmare for those of us advocating backups as a ransomware recovery tool. If the last line of defense is taken out of the game, it defeats the whole reason we built the system in the first place. If hackers are able to delete or encrypt backups, or the backup server operating system itself, you will find yourself in an unenviable position.
Security
sdxCentral - Deloitte on Tech: Top cloud computing trends to expect in 2024
Much needs to be done to support this rise, though, including sizing systems for genAI. This means typically supporting training data with more database storage and keeping the storage of both structured and unstructured data. In many instances, enterprises will look to combine that data before it becomes training data, and that will likely work in the public clouds, given the ease of provisioning and scaling of cloud-based platforms.
Cloud
ITPro Today - State of Web Development Report Details Composable Architecture Benefits
Biilmann noted that developers are wary of a wide breadth of risks when it comes to AI implementation. Seventy percent are concerned about erroneous outcomes, and over half believe that leveraging AI can lead to new security issues and confidential data leaks. Fortunately, developers are already discovering best practices to help mitigate these risks, he noted.
DevOps



Blocks & Files - 2024 IT management trends: It’s generative AI and everything else
In 2024, GenAI will accelerate workload placement trends, with organizations reckoning with how and where to run large language models (LLMs) that fuel their GenAI applications. Some IT decision makers will choose public services.
IT Management
Information Week - 10 Ways to Run a Very Lean IT Operation
Use IT retirees. There are some excellent IT professionals who are retired and simply “sitting on the bench” and waiting to be called. One approach some small companies have used with some success is to advertise for IT help in particular tech areas, such as networks or systems. These companies often receive resumes from “old hand” IT retirees who have done these tasks for many years, don’t need much income, but are looking to stay active with IT. These retirees also can be excellent trainers of internal IT staff members.
IT Management
Computerworld - Making sense of genAI pricing in office apps
While it’s standard for software vendors to price similar services at different levels as they vie for market share and profitability, the relative novelty of generative AI brings some specific challenges. On one hand there’s the compute cost to process user queries and how quickly this cost might fall. Then there’s the question of what benefits these tools will actually provide to customers and, ultimately, how much organizations are willing to pay.
Automation & Productivity
Network Computing - Building Resilience in Uncertain Times: The Power Of Connected Networks
Connected networks are sophisticated peer-to-peer networks linking an organization with its stakeholders—suppliers, partners, customers, and competitors—across processes, systems, and geographies. They allow every stakeholder to see exactly how different parts of the ecosystem interact and impact the customer experience and business outcomes. This single-pane view creates opportunities for better decision-making for more economic leverage.
IT Management
CSO - AI dominates cybersecurity megatrends for 2024: Report
The top deck (first four) of the list included AI-related trends that SIA expects will make a substantial impact in the segment in the coming year. Topping the list was AI security, which refers to the cybersecurity practices for the protection of data, IP, and corporate integrity with the adoption of AI into businesses of all sizes.
AI/Security
Datanami - IDC Reports Robust Growth in Public Cloud Services with $315.5B Revenue in First Half of 2023
Software as a Service – Applications (SaaS – Applications) continued to be the largest source of public cloud services revenue, accounting for nearly 45% of the total in 1H23. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) was the second largest revenue category with 20.4% of the total while Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service – System Infrastructure Software (SaaS – SIS) delivered 18.0% and 16.9% of overall revenue respectively.
Cloud
VentureBeat - How ConductorOne’s Copilot Improves Identity Governance with AI
Managing user and machine identities in multi-cloud environments is among their teams’ most challenging tasks. The most challenging areas of managing identities in a multi-cloud environment include getting permissions right while eliminating orphan accounts, monitoring access privileges and reducing the risk of stolen privilege access credentials.
AI/Security
Network Computing - Why Simple Cloud Computing Architectures May Be Better
It's not hard to understand why the typical organization today is attracted to cloud architectures that are more complex than necessary. Continuous improvement and endless optimization have become key mantras of the IT industry. If you were to suggest that a simple cloud architecture meets your organization's requirements and that there's no need to invest in more complex cloud setups or services, you'd probably sound unimaginative at best, or lazy and out of touch at worst.
Cloud
CIO Influence - Major Market Trends and Disruptions CIOs Must Be Ready for in 2024
With the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, 2023 ushered in peak hype around AI. Vendors rapidly reacted to the stunning user adoption rates of ChatGPT by introducing their own versions of “generative AI” into their software, whether it involved real machine learning, LLMs, NLP, etc. – or if it was all smoke, mirrors, and buzzwords. There are some legitimate and very exciting uses of generative AI, but some marketers would lead you to believe its powers are far more ubiquitous than it really is – at least for the moment.
Tech Trends
Network Computing - The Transformational Impact of Continuous Network Assessments
As a result, it's common for organizations to only conduct network assessments every few years – often driven by compliance mandates – frequently spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on outside consultants who take weeks or months to conduct them. Even worse, the labor-intensive assessments being conducted today are typically based on representative sample data rather than comprehensive observation of the live network. What this means is today's assessments only provide a glimpse of the actual network as it was at some point in the past, not an accurate, up-to-date, detailed view.
Network Management
Datanami - Privacera Unveils AI and Data Security Governance Predictions for 2024
“In 2024, we expect a large influx of innovations by enterprises of every scale adopting and deploying generative AI, and using sensitive data to train the underlying AI and Large Language models,” says Balaji Ganesan, co-founder and CEO, Privacera. “This transformation can only be successful with a unified data security governance strategy in place, and requires data leaders to apply controls to both, sensitive data and AI, in a consistent and scalable manner.”
AI/Security
CIO Influence - Role of LLMs and Advanced AI in Cybersecurity: Predictions from HP Inc. Executives
AI-powered security solutions for risk analysis, predictive intelligence, and identity and access management assist cybersecurity teams with unmatched ability to safeguard their digital infrastructure. However, there’s no guarantee that AI alone can protect everything your organization owns or stores. CIOs still lack 100% visibility into what their cybersecurity postures look like and what kind of preparedness is required to thwart a sophisticated cyber attack led by ransomware and zero-day attack vectors.
Security
VentureBeat - Protecting against new Kubernetes threats in 2024 and beyond
A wave of new attacks targeted Kubernetes in 2023: Dero and Monero crypto miners, Scarleteel and RBAC-Buster. Finding an initial foothold with a web app vulnerability, then moving laterally is the hallmark of a Kubernetes attack. Understanding the reality of these attacks can help protect your organization from current and future attacks targeting Kubernetes.
Security
CSO - Almost 50% of organizations plan to reduce cybersecurity headcounts: Survey
The report revealed that smaller organizations are struggling on multiple levels to incorporate security observability as part of their security systems. They lack the resources to hire the right people to use the security tools. However, this also makes them prudent about spending, thus ensuring they avoid hype-driven adoption of the products. On the other hand, large organizations have access to a wide range of tools and products, but they struggle to integrate them for optimal performance.
Security
DarkReading - Municipalities Face a Constant Battle as Ransomware Snowballs
Sophos reported that more than a quarter of state and local government organizations (28%) in its survey admitted to making a payment of at least $1 million or more when it came to ransoms, a massive increase compared with the 5% that made that large of a payment in the 2022 data. Of the organizations whose data was encrypted in an attack, 99% got their information back, with 34% reporting that they paid a ransom and 75% relying on backups.
Security
CIO Dive - There will be a surplus of tech workers by 2026, executives project
As technology skills expand throughout the enterprise, nearly three-quarters of IT leaders say it’s more important for employees to have multiple skills than specialization. Creativity, emotion and critical thinking are the top contributions of the human workforce in a talent market shaped by AI.
Tech Jobs
Information Week - 10 Hot Technology Developments Right Now
In many ways the technology story of 2023 was all about artificial intelligence. In fact, in this list of hot technology trends, almost all relate in some way to AI. That begs the question of whether we’ll eventually stop calling out AI as a separate thing or if all technology will just incorporate AI in some way.
Tech Trends
Network World - Gartner: Just 12% of IT infrastructure pros outpace CIO expectations
Another key action incorporates enhanced analysis capabilities to measure the effectiveness of their programs and investments. While in uncertain economic times, I&O leaders must maximize the impact of technology. "According to the survey, 89% of leaders in highly effective I&O organizations formulate strategies for process transformation and optimization, and 82% identify opportunities to reduce technology costs through economies of scale or cross-enterprise synergies," Gartner says.
IT Management
Network Computing - Overspending on SaaS? 6 Ways to Cost Optimization
Before starting with cost optimization, you must first analyze where you’re overspending. Start with a thorough spend analysis using a spend management platform. Identify all your SaaS applications, licenses, associated costs, and the ROI they generate.
IT Management
Information Week - Massive Okta Breach: What CISOs Should Know
Okta recommends customers take several immediate steps to defend against potential attacks from the breach, including securing administrator access through multi-factor authentication (MFA), “admin session binding” that requires admins to reauthenticate in certain instances, “admin session timeout” set to a default of 12-hour session duration and 15-minute idle time, and phishing awareness.
Security
CIO Dive - Talent woes among top barriers to generative AI ambitions
Among the most in-demand positions for companies currently using the technology are AI programming and data analysis. AI talent leaving major tech providers isn’t enough to meet demand across industries, according to the firm.
Artificial Intelligence
CIO Influence - Building a Strong Data and Analytics (D&A) Strategy with a Culture Mindset
According to a McKinsey survey, 14% of C-level leaders spend 70 percent of their time making decisions. In most cases, these decisions are based on inefficient models. This inflates the cost of decision-making. Reliable data search and discovery tools improve the accuracy of the decision-making, with added layers of compliance and privacy guarded by a strong data governance framework.
Data & Analytics
Datanami - 10% of Organizations Surveyed Launched GenAI Solutions to Production in 2023
The survey highlights other challenges that might be causing a slow adoption of LLM technology in businesses, such as lack of knowledge, cost and compliance. Of the respondents, 84% admit that their skills need to improve due to increasing interest in LLM adoption, while only 19% say they have a strong understanding of the mechanisms of how LLMs generate responses.
AI/LLM
sdxCentral - Deloitte predicts genAI, specialized computing, industrial metaverse will top 2024 trends
Those technologies include generative AI; spatial computing and the industrial metaverse; moving beyond brute force compute to specialized compute; the evolution to DevEx; securing against innovative attack methods; and evolving from technical debt to technical wellness.
Tech Trends
CIO Influence - Cloud Optimization Strategies for Navigating Cloud Evolution in 2024
In this evolving landscape, the need for enhanced support from the ecosystem has become increasingly evident. Cloud providers rely heavily on various partners, including SIs, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), and Resellers. These partners bring a crucial capability to the table: the ability to implement and integrate cloud solutions with existing environments, addressing use cases that enterprises struggle to tackle independently.
Cloud
CIO Influence - Featured Story of the Week: 2024 Enterprise Storage Trends for CIOs
Combining resilience (the ability to instill defensive security measures to repel attacks), detection (the ability to know when data is corrupted and whether a known good copy of data is free of ransomware or malware), and recovery (the ability to bounce back) from cyberattacks is the key to hardening storage infrastructure.
Data Storage
sdxCentral - What’s Next: Soni Jiandani, CVP of networking at AMD talks AI, DPUs and finding needles in the haystack
AI is going to have a dramatic impact on networking technology. It is ultimately changing everything. Your success with AI will depend on whether your infrastructure is able to support such powerful applications and the demands it makes. And while the cloud is emerging as a major resource, many enterprises have to also rely on the on-premise environments to accommodate for things like big data storage. Do I have enough? Can it scale with my models and AI-generated data from a networking infrastructure point of view
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - Analysis: Cisco brings AI capabilities to its revamped security portfolio
My research shows that enterprise-class companies have, on average, 32 security vendors. This is the average, and I’ve seen some companies with many more than this. I did some work with one of the government agencies, which had more than 200 vendors. One of the engineers there confessed there is so much paranoia around security that they deploy almost every point product from every startup to be more secure. The problem is, with security, more isn’t better, as keeping policies up to date is impossible across dozens of vendors
Security
Information Week - Security Questions to Ask After the ZeroedIn Breach
He says organizations should ask to what extent they must work with third-party suppliers and understand the security risk that they take on by using those services, whether it is software, data, or services. “It’s not enough that third party says, ‘Oh yeah, I am certified,’” Maor says. “Certification does not equal security.”
Security
Network World - 5 ways to boost server efficiency
Older servers are less energy efficient than new ones, says Jay Dietrich, Uptime Institute’s research director of sustainability. For example, Intel servers’ efficiency improved by 34% between 2017 and 2019 for CPUs running at 50% utilization, according to a recent report he co-authored. And AMD-based servers saw a whopping 140% improvement, he says.
IT Management
Government Executive - USDA unveils its new data strategy
The new strategy contains five areas of focus: data governance and leadership, data and analytics workforce, common data and analytics, open data architecture, and purposeful analytics.
Data & Analytics
Computerworld - The arrival of genAI could cover critical skills gaps, reshape IT job market
More than a quarter of those surveyed, however, called genAI a fad, comparing it to Meta’s recently launched Threads app — an upstart competitor to X/Twitter. “These leaders stated that they believe Gen AI to be just another fad [that] challenges for dominance quickly and then dies off just as fast,” the Kaspersky study said.
Automation & Productivity
CIO Influence - Future of Data Integration: How AI is Changing the Blueprint for Businesses
By unearthing these hidden connections, organizations gain a competitive edge, fuelling innovation and driving transformative change. As generative integration continues to evolve, it’s clear that it’s not just about simplifying the integration process – it’s about paving the way for a future where data-driven decisions are made with unparalleled clarity and confidence.
Artificial Intelligence
Forbes - How Can Businesses Make Sure That Their Cybersecurity Operations Are Robust?
Primarily, my focus will be on addressing questions such as "What are the essential components of your cybersecurity checklist?" and "How can you identify potential vulnerabilities within your systems?" Consider this a go-to, threat-proof checklist that guards your business against potential risks with proactive security measures at any time.
Security
VentureBeat - Breaches happen: It’s time to stop playing the blame game and start learning together
Unfortunately, the overwhelming reaction to such an incident is to ostracize the victim. In fact, up to 83% of consumers admit that they pause or end their spending with an organization after an incident. While understandable, that reaction misses the opportunity the industry has to learn and grow together after details of an incident become available.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Three strategies to develop edge skills in your organization
A common pitfall I&O leaders run into is to assume that the entire organization needs the same level of skill sets and expertise for edge implementation and operations. Edge implementations require diverse and specific skills, which makes it harder for an organization to be at the same expertise level. As a result, even if they have clarity around the skills needed for implementing these technologies in their organization, I&O leaders are unable to ensure the skills are in place before starting an edge initiative
Edge Computing
Forbes - 19 Tech Experts Bust Common Cybersecurity Myths And Misconceptions
The myth is that cybersecurity training is going to help everyone get smarter about security. The truth is that security training videos with a quiz at the end do not mitigate risk; they just add to people’s never-ending to-do lists. What we really need are tools that connect cybersecurity risk to specific activities as a way to help people practice better security hygiene.
Security
Government Technology - Cybersecurity Trends Point to More Sophisticated Attacks Ahead
Ultimately, turning the tide against ransomware means getting attackers to see the crime as more trouble than it’s worth. Recent years saw some states consider whether banning cyber extortion payments could help get us there. Federal officials said this year they’d been mulling whether to enact a widespread payments ban, though some cyber experts say such a move could involve painful short-term side effects and administrative challenges.
Security
TechBullion - Why should businesses outsource cybersecurity
The technicians are essential introductions to the day-to-day development landscape of cyberspace and technical engineers and technicians in cybersure security roles are often the gateways to mssps of mssps. who gets the benefit of the processes and techniques Potential threats are identified before they escalate, reducing the impact of cyber incidents This proactive approach to cyber security is industry practices meet, and provides companies with a strong defense against emerging threats.
Security
CIO Influence - CIO’s Roadmap to Aligning AI with Organizational Culture and Operations
A few tasks can be entirely automated with AI; however, in most instances, AI will enhance these tasks. Its role in democratizing access to knowledge will render services offered by knowledge workers more economical, thereby fostering increased demand and job opportunities. Gartner predicts creating over half a billion new human jobs by 2033 by introducing AI solutions for task augmentation or autonomous task delivery.
Artificial Intelligence
AiThority - Scality’s 2024 Predictions: AI, Hybrid Cloud and Ransomware Detection Will Define the Data Storage Landscape, While Hard Disk Drives Live On
Some all-flash vendors prognosticate the end of spinning disk (HDD) media in the coming years. While flash media and solid state drives (SSDs) have clear benefits when it comes to latency, are making major strides in density, and the cost per GB is declining, we see HDDs holding a 3-5x density/cost advantage over high-density SSDs through 2028.
Data Storage
Information Week - New Secure AI Development Rules are Historic, But Do They Matter?
These new guidelines are primarily directed at AI systems providers, whether those systems are built from scratch or on top of services provided by others. But the document authors urge all stakeholders to read the guidelines to help them make informed decisions about how AI is used in their organizations.
Artificial Intelligence
eWeek - Persistent Systems CTO Pandurang Kamat on Generative AI in the Enterprise
“The other concern is around AI ‘hallucinations, as they’re known, where these models can start making up things not backed by facts – that becomes a big concern. But there are a slew of grounding tools that have emerged and continue to get better. Additionally, there are a number of techniques, a series of very scientifically-based techniques, that you can use to ground and control these hallucinations.
Artificial Intelligence
Forbes - Doing More With Less: Cybersecurity Tools And Budget Efficiency
In an industry like cybersecurity that’s full of confusing acronyms and new products that vendors promise will improve your organization’s security, it’s easy to get swayed into spending money on products you don’t actually need. Now more than ever, it’s critical that companies look inward to optimize the cybersecurity tools they already have, using a mathematical, fact-based approach.
Security
VentureBeat - Generative AI is reshaping knowledge work. Are you ready?
As an IT leader, your company’s velocity and nautical mileage for adopting new solutions will vary. Yet even if gen AI holds great promise there is a sizeable gap in the number of technology tools available and the capabilities of employees to put them to use.
Artificial Intelligence
InfoWorld - The evolution of multitenancy for cloud services
These days we are focused on new, faster processors and reduced power consumption. More gains can be obtained by better optimizing the systems that manage how the processors and storage systems are allocated to tenant processes. If I were the CTO of a cloud provider, I would start there and then move to the CPUs and I/O systems, which are more important.
Cloud
SiliconANGLE - Amazon CTO Werner Vogels architects a more frugal future for the enterprise cloud 
“There is new AI and old-fashioned AI,” Vogels noted. “You should keep in mind that not everything needs to be done with these large language models. AI makes predictions, professionals decide.”
AI/Cloud
Computerworld - Super apps: the next big thing for enterprise IT?
“Super apps are designed to sit on top of the library of mini apps that have specific functionalities that users can download and use,” Helmer said. “Users can pick and choose and personalize their experiences by enabling some mini apps, which all have a similar user interface, and removing the ones that they don’t really care about.”
Automation & Productivity
CIO Influence - Is Private Cloud the Game-Changer CIOs Have Been Seeking?
Previously seen as a legacy-heavy, poorly managed, and outdated system lacking modern cloud architecture, the private cloud carried a stigma of high costs and inefficiencies. However, recent advancements have transformed this perception. Present-day private cloud infrastructure matches its public counterpart’s sophistication and operational efficiency, excelling notably in specific scenarios.
Cloud
Forbes - Unpacking The New SEC Cybersecurity Rules: What Every CXO Needs To Know
Prior to the SEC ruling, cyber was already becoming a bigger priority in the boardroom, though this new development has certainly heightened its visibility. Now, board members and CXOs must not only be aware and knowledgeable on cyber, but they must be able to understand the potential business impacts of a cyber breach, all within the context of managing cyber risk.
Security
TechRepublic - Gartner: By 2028, 70% of Workloads Will Run in a Cloud Computing Environment
“If there’s one fundamental area for enterprises, it is that you need to go house-by-house or closet-by-closet to really look at your application portfolio and decide what is best to do with it, what can be replaced what needs to be replatformed and what needs to be refactored,” Smith said.
Cloud
The Hacker News - Discover Why Proactive Web Security Outsmarts Traditional Antivirus Solutions
To be clear, we're not denying that an antivirus-approach solution is ideal for detecting and responding to threats, but there's no escaping the fact that it's limited by design: it's reactive. A traditional antivirus-approach solution flags known malicious signatures once they're already in your environment, so it only acts when detections match the signatures in its database.
Security
Network Computing - How to Speed Cyberattack Discovery
When deploying human-based threat-hunting capabilities, it’s helpful to think about the parallels to physical security leading practices, Morris says. “For example, human security guards, tasked with protecting critical assets, constantly inspect physical infrastructures and maintain the integrity of their responsible spaces by actively patrolling and investigating,” he explains. “The less static, routine, and predictable a defensive team is, the harder it is for attackers to anticipate defenders’ actions.”
Security
AiThority - Kolide Survey Finds 89 Percent of Knowledge Workers Use AI, But Businesses Fail to Provide Governance or Education
68% of companies allow AI use: There is a significant gap between the percentage of employees allowed to use AI (68%) and those who actually use it (89%), indicating a lack of oversight and scrutiny on AI-generated work.
Artificial Intelligence
Network Computing - Understanding Cisco’s Generative Artificial Intelligence Strategy 
Cisco’s approach to AI is multifaceted and deeply integrated across its portfolio. A key element of Cisco’s evolution toward gen AI is the development of Silicon One, a chip designed to handle massive workloads. Silicon One supports Cisco customers and hyperscalers in building AI-based infrastructure, encompassing advanced technology, data center networking, and optics.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - Is anything useful happening in network management?
All 169 said they are interested in AI for network management, and 30 said that they have identified at least one option. Only 9 said that they have a budget for their identified option in 2024, and all of them reported a common problem with AI in network management--the problem of scope. Here, they mean two kinds of scope: the extent to which AI is specialized to their own network data, and the range of devices that AI can actually see.
Network Management
sdxCentral - Inside a new CISO’s first 90 days: How to start strong
Baer pointed out that many enterprises claim to be “flat” with complete lines of communication to leadership, “but the reality is all organizations have hierarchy,” as well as formalities and rituals, of sorts. It’s important to be clear on who makes decisions around business priorities, budgeting and hiring and firing.
IT Management
Automation.com - Five Cybersecurity Trends to Expect in 2024
Quantum computing is advancing rapidly, so forward-thinking cybercriminals will be stealing encrypted data that they cannot unlock with today’s technology but that they might soon be able to decrypt. The top targets will be organizations with large volumes of sensitive data, such as government and defense agencies, financial and legal firms, and large corporations with valuable intellectual property. To reduce risk, organizations should not treat encryption as a panacea but instead build a multi-layered strategy that includes data classification, risk assessment and mitigation, and incident detection and response.
Security
InfoWorld - Are we too focused on vendors? 
Are we too vendor-focused in the cloud computing market? A better question is, are vendors leading us down the wrong paths? Indeed, instead of tackling the core problems at hand, we’re distracted by the new features and the excellent new tools that are, if we’re honest, more fun to look at than solving actual problems.
Cloud
Datanami - New Dremio Report Highlights Surge in Data Lakehouse Adoption for Enhanced Cost Efficiency and Analytics
Amid the generative AI frenzy, a quieter revolution has been taking place: Open table formats—a foundational component of data lakehouses—are bringing full SQL functionality directly to the data lake. This enables organizations to move away from decades-old data warehouse architectures and their associated inefficiencies.
Data & Analytics
sdxCentral - Databricks CISO details how to shepherd a data and AI journey at scale
“They’ve heard the scary stories about AI can cause harm, and when their business wants to utilize AI, they don’t know if it’s in that tiny minority of AI that could likely cause harm, or if it’s in the majority that wouldn’t,” he said. “Security people tend to have a low tolerance for risk just instinctively. And so they’re likely to respond with ‘We shouldn’t do it’.”
AI/Security
VentureBeat - How generative AI will enhance cybersecurity in a zero-trust world
CISOs and CIOs continue to weigh the benefits of deploying generative AI as a continuous learning engine that constantly captures behavioral, telemetry, intrusion and breach data versus the risks it creates. The goal is to achieve a new “muscle memory” of threat intelligence to help predict and stop breaches while streamlining SecOps workflows.
AI/Security
CIO Influence - The Impact of AI on Security Issues
A manipulated data set changes the way the AI will respond to a query for anything related to the data. The input data drives the response and if the data is changed, then the response would change. So if someone wants to provide misinformation to an audience, they just need to change the input data with the misinformation
AI/Security
The Hacker News - Experts Uncover Passive Method to Extract Private RSA Keys from SSH Connections
In other words, a passive adversary can quietly keep track of legitimate connections without risking detection until they observe a faulty signature that exposes the private key. The bad actor can then masquerade as the compromised host to intercept sensitive data and stage adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks.
Security
DarkReading - Researchers Undermine 'Windows Hello' on Lenovo, Dell, Surface Pro PCs
By default, Windows Hello requires that fingerprint readers are "match-on-chip" (MoC), as opposed to "match-on-host" (MoH). MoC means that they have microprocessors and storage built in, eliminating the need to process and store sensitive biometric data on the host computer. That way privacy is maintained, even if the host is compromised.
Security
Information Week - How to Avoid Security Concerns While Implementing Automation
A recent survey reports that the majority of automation projects fail to take off due to their complexity. For those that do manage to reach the execution stage, there is a 50% chance of them failing. A vast majority of business leaders are not happy with their robotic process automation (RPA) implementation speed.
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - How to navigate the private network adoption market
This number of choices is good for those that need it, but can be daunting for a decision-maker who is tasked with picking a long-term private network path for a large-scale organization. This difficulty is further enhanced by the private network market’s lack of maturity, which means a decision made today could run into a support void tomorrow.
Network Management
Network Computing - Candy Alexander Explains Why Bandwidth and Security are Both in High Demand
"Again, it's data that has become more important than ever before. One of the biggest challenges of providing ubiquitous secure access is that users now need to be able to access data from anywhere, at any time, and on any device. This can be difficult to manage due to several factors, such as the ever-increasing volume of data and the velocity at which it is generated."
Network Management
sdxCentral - DNS at 40 keeps improving with better security
“RFC 9461 provides the mapping for the DNS service type, allowing DNS servers to offer alternative endpoints and transports, whereas RFCs 9462 (DDR) and 9463 (DNR) provide endpoints with the capability to discover encrypted resolvers,” Campling explained. “This means that endpoints are not reliant on software having resolver details hard-coded into them and should support much greater choice, ultimately benefiting users.”
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - How IT teams can empower every individual to drive their own productivity 
When so many business functions require implementation support, and there aren’t enough technical skills or IT people to address everyone’s needs, many companies are stuck in stop-and-go business patterns. As the demand for automation increases, IT leaders should take a new approach to scaling it across their functions — one that’s composable, accessible, and user-driven.
IT Management
sdxCentral - Gartner names 5 leading access management platforms
Gartner identifies the must-have capabilities including a directory or identity repository for users; identity administration for integrated applications basic life cycle management and profile management capabilities and the system for cross-domain identity management; SSO and session management, compatible with standard identity protocols and APIs for accessing standards-based and legacy apps; and user authentication including commodity MFA and authorization enforcement.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Managing in 2024: How generative AI will scale insight
In addition to this scaled human insight, gen AI may also scale itself, aggregating siloed information into an overall depiction of the business in all its complexities and dependencies, such as the production process, supply chains or external economic events. Insights from one part of the company, such as marketing or manufacturing, can be scaled to a new type of collective insight.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - How to apply natural language processing to cybersecurity
The overlap between NLP and cybersecurity lies in analysis and automation. Both fields require sifting through countless inputs to identify patterns or threats. It can quickly process shapeless data to a form an algorithm can work with — something traditional methods might struggle to do.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Cloud security continues to give IT managers headaches. Here’s why 
The reports show that despite reams of details on best security practices, organizations don’t do well with their implementation, follow-through or consistent application. For example, consider well-known practices such as the usage of complex and unique passwords, collection of access logs and avoidance of hard-coded credentials.
Security
VentureBeat - Generative AI is a toddler — don’t let it run your business
Cutting-edge technology and young kids may initially seem completely unrelated, but some AI systems and toddlers have more in common than you might think. Just like curious toddlers who poke into everything, AI learns through data-driven exploration of huge amounts of information. Letting a toddler run wild invites disaster, and as such, generative AI models aren’t ready to be left unattended either.
Artificial Intelligence
SC Media - Veterans are the key to the cybersecurity talent shortage
Industry-specific knowledge also becomes invaluable, particularly for IT organizations competing for business in the military or other government branches. Security clearances are often a prerequisite for doing business with government entities, and veterans transitioning to the private sector with these clearances in hand can give their new employers a competitive edge.
Tech Jobs
Network Computing - Is Your Infrastructure Ready? What You Need to Know Ahead of an AI Investment 
There are skills, technologies, and practices that need to be put in place to successfully see a return on your AI investment. The AI tech stack is still forming, but it is rapidly shaping up to include a broad range of technologies and capabilities that many organizations today do not possess.
Artificial Intelligence
CFO - CFOs Must Boost Their Cybersecurity Savvy, Former FBI Agent Says
Today’s executives need to change their mindset and take the time to become cyber savvy, said Cordero. So what does a CFO well-trained in cybersecurity look like? “I define [them] as an executive who understands the different facets of cybersecurity as an enterprise risk,” Cordero said.
Security
TechCrunch - 3 skills could make or break your cybersecurity career in the generative AI era
In addition to its benefits, generative AI introduces data security and privacy concerns that we can’t disregard. While candidates should know how to use this technology to their advantage, they must also understand how large language models (LLMs) can leverage and compromise organizations’ internal data. Unsurprisingly, nearly half of executives worry that the integration of generative AI will result in new attacks against their AI models, services, or data.
Security
CIO Influence - Evolving Cyber Threats: AI’s Role in Reshaping the Landscape
The importance of AI in cybersecurity cannot be overstated. It acts as a proactive shield, not merely reacting to known threats but actively anticipating and adapting to emerging risks. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, AI systems continuously refine their understanding of evolving attack vectors, enabling security teams to fortify their defenses preemptively.
Security
The Hacker News - How Multi-Stage Phishing Attacks Exploit QRs, CAPTCHAs, and Steganography
By concealing malicious links within QR codes, attackers can evade traditional spam filters, which are primarily geared towards identifying text-based phishing attempts. The inability of many security tools to decipher the content of QR codes further makes this method a go-to choice for cybercriminals.
Security
Dark Reading - Detection & Response That Scales: A 4-Pronged Approach
"When you operate completely silent and disjointed, it puts your teams completely out of touch with your organization and inhibits their ability to work side by side with partner teams," he says. "The detection capability doesn't scale. We need the rest of the organization to be in lockstep with us and working alongside us — that's what defines a modern detection and response approach."
Security
InfoWorld - A cloud professional’s cloud predictions for 2024
Second, generative AI is getting most of the attention in the cloud space. As I stated before, cloud conferences are now generative AI conferences as cloud providers see a huge windfall in cloud services to support net-new generative AI systems. Generative AI systems need an enormous number of resources compared to other stuff.
Cloud
Forbes - In Promoting Cybersecurity, Everyone Has A Role
 Nearly every day we learn about a cyber intrusion or creative way that either criminal organizations or state actors are exploiting vulnerabilities. Just last month, researchers discovered a cheap streaming device that came with secretly installed malware right out of the box, which then served as a node in an organized crime scheme.
Security
DarkReading - IT Pros Worry Generative AI Will Be a Major Driver of Cybersecurity Threats
Even with generative AI making the list of top three cybersecurity threats over the next 12 months, it was clear from the report that generative AI is viewed as both a positive and negative development. Respondents say generative AI would increase productivity (43%), ensure the business is more protected against cyber threats (42%), and ensure employees are trained in cybersecurity fundamentals (36%). On the negative side, there are fears that generative AI will open new avenues for attack (67%) and put businesses at greater risk of attacks (58%).
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - How standards will eliminate SASE and zero-trust confusion
Because SASE encompasses both networking and security, it can require a change in how organizations think about security when considering SASE’s integrated approach. The mixture of solutions from different vendors in different departments can lead to siloed thinking and mismatched skill sets between networking and security teams. It is important that a common language set is defined to create tight coupling among these teams. A fragmented vendor ecosystem and lack of common terminology underscores this need.
Security
Forbes - Three Questions To Ask Third-Party Vendors About Cybersecurity Risk
Search for providers that not only have well-defined security policies and procedures in place but are also transparent about these practices. This means the vendor provides public access to their security policies and procedures, and their policies address all aspects of cybersecurity, including incident response, data security and vulnerability management.
Security
Information Week - To AI Hell and Back: Finding Salvation Through Empathy
Dante needed guides to help him on his journey through Hell. In the modern AI landscape, Iannopollo said, business leaders will need their own guides. “Welcome to the nine circles of Hell,” she told the audience. “This is the place where AI hallucinates, where AI produces bias and discrimination … Hell is the place where IP abuse and privacy violations and security breaches happen.”
Artificial Intelligence
Network Computing - Spider-Man, the Multiverse, and IPv6
Many versions of Linux and Windows now prefer IPv6. Beyond that, embedded versions of Linux are common in IoT devices, and these devices have proliferated across environments. If you are not engaged with that plane when these IoT devices reach out to your network requesting an IPv6 address, you may not even know. It's not unusual for organizations to have a considerable number of these rogue devices that are generally unmanaged, which creates risk within the organization.
Network Management
Datanami - Redpanda Unveils State of Streaming Data Report on Industry Trends, Ecosystem Components and Challenges
The report shares what’s driving companies to migrate their systems from batch processing to real-time systems and the challenges they face. Based on a third-party survey of 300 engineering organizations familiar with streaming data, the report is the first comprehensive, independent study on the current state of the streaming data industry.
Data Management
Information Week - Top US Gov’t CISO Details Zero-Trust Strategy Race
"The things we’ve been talking about for the past decade and working about … it’s all happening to us right now. We needed to figure out how we’re going to galvanize and try to insert energy and focus into federal agencies to really drive forward on the things that we’d been working on for well over a decade. But we were struggling to make meaningful progress.”
Security
Datanami - HPE Research Highlights Rising Challenges in Meeting Enterprise Data Demands
For many organizations, AI will put their IT organizations at a crossroads. Capturing value from data to thrive in the era age of AI-enabled insight will require enterprises to rapidly mature their approach to hybrid cloud and how they store, manage and protect data across its lifecycle.
Data Management
CIO Influence - Shining a Spotlight on User Identity and Device Trust in Cybersecurity
While the rising volume of cyberattacks in financial services and across other industries could be due to increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals, this is largely a misconception. The truth is that hackers are using many of the same tactics they’ve been successfully employing for the last decade, the majority of which are aimed at exploiting user identities or compromising endpoint devices (PCs, laptops, phones, etc.). However, today’s cybercriminals have the advantage of a range of toolkits that open up hacking to “entry-level” threat actors with minimal technical skill
Security
Information Week - The IT Jobs AI Could Replace and the Ones It Could Create
Knowledge base managers and data scientists will be essential roles for enterprises as more and more data is fed into large language models (LLMs). “It's still a garbage in, garbage out problem, and if AI will now do more of our work, what we feed them is more important than ever,” says Katz.
Tech Jobs
CIO Influence - Unlocking the Code: Key Differences Between Networking and Cloud Computing
Cloud networking involves orchestrating and delivering network resources and services utilizing cloud infrastructure. Serving as a form of IT architecture, it empowers organizations to establish connections among users, applications, and data irrespective of their geographical locations. The versatility of cloud networking manifests in its ability to form private cloud networks—segregated from the public Internet—and public cloud networks, accessible to anyone with Internet connectivity
Network Management
Computerworld - The end of the standalone application
That said, in the world of Linux, we still have "our" software. I'm writing this on LibreOffice; when I need to work with images, I use GIMP; and instead of Outlook for e-mail, I use Evolution. Of all the major software vendors in the Windows world, only Microsoft has continued to offer standalone software.
Automation & Productivity
CIO Influence - Discover Business Intelligence’s Transformative Role in CIO Leadership
Business intelligence tools have revolutionized the way organizations access and analyze data, making it possible to harness a wealth of information that would have been impenetrable and indecipherable otherwise. In this context, the Chief Information Officer (CIO), who is responsible for managing all the organizational-level information, plays a pivotal role. By leveraging previously untapped data sources and employing advanced BI techniques, a CIO can drive transformation across multiple facets of the organization, fueling its journey toward a data-driven and future-ready future.
Data & Analytics
Information Week - Balancing Act: Knowing When AI’s Risk is Worth Reward
In the near term, GenAI will be very attractive for senior-level workers, Mellen said. “Ultimately, generative AI and security tools are going to be very useful for those folks who are experienced and more senior level because they have been itching for a tool that is going to help them validate what’s happening in the environment and respond faster.”
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - What’s Next: Lakshmi Sharma, Fastly chief product officer, talks cloud, privacy and security
"Because of the explosion of access to the internet post-COVID, and the resulting distribution of data and access to that data, questions of where you place data, data privacy and user privacy become really important. Where do I keep my data? What is my level of privacy? And every country started to take control of their users’ privacy and information because, during COVID, everyone just wanted to take care of people. And then the problem became, uh-oh, all our information is on the web."
Privacy & Security
VentureBeat - How generative AI is defining the future of identity access management
The majority (98%) of security professionals believe AI and machine learning (ML) will be beneficial in fighting identity-based breaches and view it as a pivotal technology in unifying their many identity frameworks. Well over half (63%), predict AI’s leading use case will be greater accuracy in identifying outlier behavior. Another 56% believe AI will help improve the accuracy of alerts, and 52% believe AI will help streamline administrative tasks
Security
Network World - Cloud management skills gap drives hybrid cloud adoption
The responses showed that a technical skills gap continues to concern many organizations deploying cloud. Some 62% of survey respondents said they viewed the lack of cloud management skills at their organization as a “major roadblock for growth.” According to the results, 33% of respondents pointed to a lack of in-house expertise when trying to get maximum value from their cloud investment. Another 15% survey cited a difficulty finding the appropriate talent.
Cloud
Datanami - Menlo Ventures Reveals New Data on Sentiment and Adoption Rates, Highlighting Opportunities for Startups
According to the report, enterprise investment in generative AI remains surprisingly small, totaling $2.5 billion this year–significantly less than the $70 billion invested in traditional AI and the $400 billion spent on cloud software. At the same time, the data shows that the number of enterprises using AI increased 7% in 2023, with AI spend growing by 8% and eating into total enterprise tech spend, which only grew by 5%.
Artificial Intelligence
Information Week - How CISOs Can Navigate Cybersecurity Regulations: Forrester Panel
“Regulations that come out are really the minimum standard of what you should have,” she said, adding that companies will have an easier time with compliance even as new regulations come out if they try to go beyond minimum regulatory requirements. “If we are doing the right things to begin with, then that’s not really a far jump.”
Security
Computerworld - Q&A: NY Life exec says AI will reboot hiring, training, change management
Last month, New York Life announced the hire of Don Vu, a veteran data and analytics executive, to lead a newly formed artificial intelligence (AI) and data team with responsibility for AI, data, and insights capabilities and aligning data architecture with business architecture in support of the company’s business strategy and objectives.
Artificial Intelligence
CIO Influence - Benefits of AI Authentication in Preventing Digital Threats
With AI-driven biometric authentication, organizations can confirm a user’s identity anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Since this form of authentication requires a selfie, fingerprint, voice recognition, or other biological characteristic captured at the moment, AI uses liveness detection to confirm the user is present when the transaction occurs – quickly identifying digital or artificially generated biometrics.
Artificial Intelligence
Information Week - 4 Ways AI Is Rocking This CISO’s World
On one hand, AI is augmenting cybercrime operations with potent new tools to accelerate the weaponization and exploitation of new exposures, streamline attacks at scale, and uplift credibility of social engineering attacks -- often in some scary ways, particularly using deep fakes to execute and “legitimize” targeted attacks.
Artificial Intelligence
ZDNet - These are technology leaders' biggest worries about using AI at work 
Seventy percent indicated they had introduced or were planning to introduce tools that used natural language processing in the coming year, up from 67% in the previous year's survey. Top use cases for AI in the coming year include real-time cybersecurity, increasing supply chain efficiency, aiding and accelerating software development, automating customer service, and speeding up screening of job applicants.
Artificial Intelligence
Information Week - How to Choose a Qualified AI Adviser
There are a lot of people who simply know how to make a model work and are more ML engineers rather than AI advisers, he explains. “You want to find an experienced technician who has delivered projects successfully,” Ries recommends. “You need to dig in with the adviser to make sure they’re not just repeating buzzwords.”
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - 7 key factors for cutting down on cloud waste
VMware’s survey found that, on average, about 40% of cloud spending goes to unused applications and storage each year. Due to sunk costs and the amount of resources consumed in the process, cloud waste — or shelfware — poses problems for everyday customers, investors and partners, and the planet.
Cloud
Network Computing - How Certified SASE Solutions Build Trust and Resilience
Adopting SASE’s integrated networking and security approach challenges traditional security paradigms and can necessitate a shift in an organization’s perspective. In addition, the mix of solutions from various vendors across different departments often leads to disjointed thinking and a mismatch of skills between teams. To overcome these challenges, tightly integrating network and security operations and establishing a common language that fosters strong collaboration between these teams is critical to SASE’s success.
Network Security
SC Media - Gone phishing: Hackers leverage automation to launch MFA attacks and SEO poisoning
We’ve seen cybercriminals turn to real-time MFA-bypassing solutions, like “in-the-middle” techniques, MFA fatigue, and OAuth consent phishing. In fact, these types of “in-the-middle” techniques are some of the most frequently-observed methods used to gain access to MFA-secured networks in 2023
Security
Network Computing - A Threat Actor’s Playground: Why Security Teams Must Decrypt HTTPS Traffic
Yet many security teams do not enable decryption at the firewall due to the potential complications it can present. Decrypting and then re-encrypting traffic passing through a gateway requires considerable compute resources, including next-gen firewalls (NGFW) or unified threat management (UTM) appliances, and can impact network performance.
Security
sdxCentral - Do answers to AI infrastructure challenges lie in networking, not GPUs?
“We are the network operating system that can straddle switching and routing; that can straddle cloud, telecom service providers and enterprise; that can bring efficiencies inside the core of a data center, between data center capacities and between GPU clusters; and then extend that into the edge of the network,” Ayyar said.
Network Management
Network Computing - The Bottom Line on Upcoming Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) Services
A year ago, the focus was on how much time it would take big-name players such as Iridium, SpaceX, OneWeb, AST, Viasat, Amazon (Project Kuiper), and others to launch enough LEOs into space to build constellations of birds to be considered viable for enterprise IT. Delays have slowed some players, such as Amazon, which recently launched its first two LEOs for its internet service into space recently. But by comparison, Musk's SpaceX has launched thousands and is offering services internationally.
Network Management
The Hacker News - The New 80/20 Rule for SecOps: Customize Where it Matters, Automate the Rest
As more vendors attempt to challenge the dominant players in the SIEM category, demand is increasing for solutions that offer automation, which can cover 80%, while also offering customization capabilities to cover bespoke use cases - the remaining 20%.
Security
Network Computing - QoS in the Era of Pervasive Video and Edge Apps
Among vendors in the end-to-end network QoS space are Fortinet, Solarwinds, ManageEngine, and others, as well as Opensource providers like OpenNMS. The focus is on providing a single network management framework that can address QoS while also reducing the number of different tools from assorted vendors that network analysts use. The tradeoff for sites using a single, overarching set of tools is that they might sacrifice some network management autonomy and risk vendor lock-in by going for an all-in-one solution.
Network Management
The Hacker News - When Email Security Meets SaaS Security: Uncovering Risky Auto-Forwarding Rules 
SaaS applications are part of the modern supply chain, and as such they should undergo proper vendor risk assessments and user access reviews prior to connecting them to company data. With Shadow IT, breached applications, non-compliant applications or malicious applications go unnoticed.
Security
Information Week - Considering a Career as an IT Hardware Engineer?
“There are free tools, such as KiCaD, that allow the hobbyist community to thrive alongside professionals. “Even at the high school level there are many associations and clubs, such as FirstRobotics, where students can learn through hands-on experience.”
Tech Jobs
sdxCentral - AT&T: Our network is the ‘next killer app’
“To date in the wireless industry, and surely in the telecom industry, the connectivity networks have really been closed boxes where partners would provide to us a system that worked great. It was all integrated hardware, software and applications in that system and if you needed help with it you generally had to call the partner: ‘hey, Cisco; hey, Nokia, Ericsson, can you help me with this?’ We’re really working on breaking that up into open disaggregated networks.”
Network Management
CIO Influence - As Companies Eye Generative AI to Improve Productivity, Two-thirds Admit to GenAI-related Security or Misuse Incidents
The newness of these programs is likely why. While the majority (84%) of respondents have invested or are planning to invest in GenAI, 71% of these GenAI operations were launched within the last two years, and nearly half (49%) were launched in just the last 12 months. Of those respondents whose businesses have adopted AI, 85% are concerned about its privacy and security risks.
Privacy & Security
sdxCentral - HPE program makes, not takes, cybersecurity talent
“With this mindset, the talent pool becomes an ocean,” Ford said. “In the two years that we have been doing this, I can say confidently that we have discovered people with unique and valuable experience who would most certainly have been overlooked had we employed conventional hiring methodologies.”
Tech Jobs
CIO Dive - 5 OpenAI, ChatGPT updates for CIOs to watch
Companies can create tailored versions of ChatGPT, called GPTs, within the tool’s app for a specific task without any coding knowledge. Once created, users can publish the GPTs for public use or share them only for a company’s internal use.
ChatGPT
eWeek - 20 Top Artificial Intelligence Certifications 2023
AI certifications demonstrate understanding and competence in various aspects of AI, such as machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, robotics, and AI software.
Training & Certs
sdxCentral - Why IPv6 matters for SD-WAN and why vendors are certifying their products
“While there is continued migration to IPv6, at times, it does require an upgrade or replacement of hardware and software,” Sheu said. “This includes upgrading routers, switches, and other network equipment as well as updating software.”
Network Management
Computerworld - Q&A: ServiceNow CIO sees an 'iPhone moment' for genAI
ServiceNow is now implementing genAI through an internal pilot program. Leveraging its own platform and third-party LLMs, the company has gone live with 15 genAI pilots across multiple departments, including customer service, IT, HR, and sales.
Artificial Intelligence
Information Week - Getting Aggressive with Cloud Cybersecurity
With cloud native infrastructures deployed across the enterprise, typical endpoint and intrusion detection tools are not sufficient to identify attacks or vulnerabilities in a non-VM infrastructure, cautions Accenture Federal Services’ cyber chief technical officer Dave Dalling via email. “Real-time automated responses can quickly shut off attacks and prevent lateral movement through credential stealing and role escalation.”
Security
Computerworld - It’s time to take your genAI skills to the next level
A new study found that employees with skills in artificial intelligence (AI) can earn salaries as much as 40% higher than peers without AI skills. But the real value, they found, was combining AI skills with a wide range of other skills. The secret to commanding higher salaries is something called “complementarity” — the ability to combine valuable non-AI skills with AI skills
Tech Jobs
Network World - 2024 network plans dogged by uncertainty, diverging strategies 
It seems that in 2023, all the certainties CIOs had identified in their network planning up to now are being called into question. That isn’t limited to networking, either. In fact, 82 of 83 said their cloud spending is under review, and 78 said that their data center and software plans are also in flux. In fact, CIOs said their network pressures are due more to new issues relating to the cloud, the data center, and software overall than to any network-specific challenges.
Network Management
Network Computing - Unlocking IT Success: Navigating Talent Shortages with Integrated Solutions
This predicament poses a potential roadblock to a company’s progress. The solution lies in integration. Rather than bringing together disparate, one-off solutions to address various technology needs, IT teams that opt for a unified approach by obtaining hardware, software, and services from a single, trusted partner are poised for greater success. This strategy not only enhances IT’s ability to serve customers but also eases the burden on their internal staff.
IT Management
Network World - Survey: Observability tools can create more resilient, secure networks
Digital resilience efforts are growing but inconsistent, according to the survey results. For instance, 40% of respondents have a formal approach to resilience that has been instituted organization-wide, while another 40% have a formal approach that has only been instituted in pockets. Some 16% have a formal approach to resilience that has yet to be instituted, and 4% do not have a formal approach to resilience.  
Network Management
sdxCentral - What is multifactor authentication (MFA)? How it works, why adopt it and its challenges
“Always, the first thing I say is: Use MFA for 100% of your users, 100% of the time. It is the first thing you should be doing for security posture that will help decrease your risk. We’ve done research that over 90% of breaches have some type of password element in them, whether it’s a brute-force attack or a phishing attack. So, we know that multifactor authentication can help reduce a customer’s exposure.”
Security
Network World - How to determine RTOs and RPOs for backup and recovery
When evaluating the design of your backup systems or developing a design of a new backup and recovery system, there are arguably only two metrics that matter: how fast you can recover, and how much data you will lose when you recover. If you build your design around the agreed-upon numbers for these two metrics, and then repeatedly test that you are able to meet those metrics in a recovery, you’ll be in good shape.
Data Management
Network Computing - Addressing Visibility Blind Spots in Co-los and the Public Cloud
To overcome this barrier, IT teams must look for ways to extend their visibility and utilize end-to-end monitoring that enables the accurate identification, triage, isolation, and collection of evidence of enterprise application problems. This article will delve into how enterprises can address common blind spots introduced during cloud and co-lo migrations, regain visibility of mission-critical applications, and troubleshoot potential performance problems faster.
Cloud
sdxCentral - What’s Next: Kevin Deierling, senior VP at Nvidia, on AI, networking platforms, frameworks and Morpheus
When asked what artificial intelligence (AI) means to your network, Deierling said, “The fuel for AI is data, and the starting point is getting that data into the system.” Networking, he said, is a critical part of getting data into the data center. Going further, calling the network the backbone of the data center, Deierling said networking was “the foundational element of these new generations of AI computing.”
Network Management
Forbes - Mastering The Art Of Building A Top-Tier Cybersecurity Team
Cybersecurity navigation is a roadmap, workflow or organized process that drives cyber protection. The teams must be organized, monitored, and exhibit a "top-tier attitude." The concept means every employee is cyber-focused, identified as a high-value asset and thinks holistically. Also, the teams are technically driven and operate as human firewalls. If practiced, a leader can master cybersecurity team development and protect their most vital resources.
Security
StateScoop - State leaders see generative AI’s potential to bring positive impacts on the mission
“A lot of folks are interested in accelerating outcomes, but one of their biggest challenges is the procurement process. So folks are looking for ways to be able to build more agility into the procurement process, so that it can support rapid innovation.”
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - Forrester’s 2024 Predictions Report warns of AI ‘shadow pandemic’ as employees adopt unauthorized tools
The 38-page report sees AI platform budgets tripling in 2024 as companies invest in scalable solutions to build, deploy, and monitor AI models. But Forrester cautions this won’t be enough to satisfy employee demand. The report predicts 60% of employees will use their own AI tools at work, introducing new regulatory and compliance challenges.
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - How NaaS may be the answer to enterprise private network needs
“Even if you have a fairly technical IT team, there’s a lot of things in running the day-to-day operations that are just mundane tasks, that just I’m not sure they need to do anymore,” Kerravala said. “My advice to IT pros is always if you’re doing things today that aren’t really core to your resume, stop doing them. Find a way to either automate them out of your job or move it to a managed service provider.”
Network Management
Network Computing - How a Focus on Security Blind Spots Can Force Shadow IT out of the Darkness
In a company where shadow IT proliferates, often several cloud services are in use, and these are frequently linked. There is an ease to setting up cloud environments, and coupled with the building and setting up of many environments – some automatically based on scripts – IT and security teams must rush to keep up with the growing attack surface this creates.
Security
sdxCentral - Why Juniper, HPE Aruba and VMware are losing SD-WAN ground to security vendors
The SDxCentral data reveals a fundamental shift in how our readers view SD-WAN. Traditional SD-WAN is no longer good enough due to increasing security threats that are driving demand for secure SD-WAN or SASE offerings where security is baked in from the design phase. We’re seeing a fundamental shift in reader engagement away from traditional SD-WAN leaders to secure SD-WAN and single-vendor SASE providers.
Security
Information Week - How IT Can Help Detect Corporate Espionage
The espionage threat isn’t limited to large enterprises. Businesses of all sizes are vulnerable, since they’re part of the supply chain. Smaller businesses often don’t see themselves as a target, but they store data and can also act as a gateway to the larger enterprises businesses they serve, Hural explains. “With smaller budgets and often lower priorities when it comes to cybersecurity, these businesses are generally less fortified, creating viable access points for threat actors.”
Security
sdxCentral - Cybersecurity workforce is growing fast, but still 4 million short
Of the nearly 15,000 cybersecurity practitioners and decision-makers surveyed by ISC2, a whopping 92% reported skills gaps at their organization, the top three being in cloud computing security, AI and machine learning (ML), and zero-trust implementation.
Security
VentureBeat - With U.S. tech salaries at a 5-year-low, here’s how to make more money
Though average tech salaries hover at the $158,000 mark (nearly double the average U.S. knowledge worker), the combined impact of layoffs in the tech sector, hiring freezes, inflation and the explosion of generative AI have resulted in salary stagnation across the board.
Tech Jobs
Datanami - The Five Biggest Threats to Data Democratization
Every time a user enters data into a prompt for ChatGPT, the information is ingested into the service’s Large Language Models (LLMs) used to train the next version of language processing algorithm. The information could be retrieved by unauthorized persons if proper data security isn’t in place.  Enterprises are scrambling to finds ways to leverage the power of the tool without increasing the risk of a data breach.
ChatGPT
SiliconANGLE - SlashNext report uncovers 1,265% increase in phishing emails in a year
On average, 31,000 phishing attacks are sent on a daily basis, with 68% of all phishing emails text-based business email compromise or BEC attacks — those that involve cybercriminals impersonating or hijacking business email accounts to deceive victims into making unauthorized transfers of funds or revealing sensitive information. Some 39% of all mobile-based attacks were also found to involve SMS phishing, also known as smishing.
Security
DarkReading - What Lurks in the Dark: Taking Aim at Shadow AI
There is a fundamental tension between IT teams, which want control over apps and access to sensitive data in order to protect the company, and employees, who will always seek out tools that help them get more work done faster. Despite countless solutions on the market taking aim at shadow IT by making it more difficult for workers to access unapproved tools and platforms, more than three in 10 employees reported using unauthorized communications and collaboration tools last year.
Security
Network Computing - Top Tips for a Strong Zero Trust Architecture
Defining your attack surface should be the first item on your zero trust implementation list. This requires you to zero in on the areas your organization needs to protect. Focus on your most valuable digital assets. Otherwise, you may find yourself overwhelmed with implementing policies and deploying tools across your entire enterprise network.
Security
SiliconANGLE - AWS IAM credentials at risk: EleKtra-Leak operation revealed by Unit 42 
EleKtra-Leak leverages automated tools that allow threat actors to clone public GitHub code repositories continuously, scanning for exposed AWS IAM credentials. Once those credentials are detected, they’re exploited to create multiple AWS Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2 instances.
Security
Network World - Network complexity, talent shortages drive shift in enterprise IT buying habits
“The old way of looking at networking and security teams was to approach them as siloes. An organization had a network team, a security team and an application team that worked separately,” Zagury said. As technology gets abstracted to platforms, and enterprises adopt a platform approach, the disciplines are coming together, she said.
IT Management
Network Computing - Business-Optimized Networks Usher In A New Era For Networking Infrastructure
Networking professionals have an “it’s just plumbing” attitude. Most professionals think of networking infrastructure as a commodity, believing it offers little value than just connecting laptops to servers and acting as the conduit for application traffic generated. Most of the traffic serves a generic set of applications, including customer relationship management (CRM), accounting, email, and voice-over IP (VoIP)
Network Management
VentureBeat - Okta’s breach shows why identities come first in a zero trust world
Security teams need to interview their IT teams to understand what data they commonly have to share to resolve support cases.” Spicer advises, “You should also inspect the output for automatically generated troubleshooting data from sensitive systems. You could find anything from certificates and credentials to PII in those data sets.”
Security
Information Week - How to Speed Cyberattack Discovery
“In particular, threat hunting, during which human defenders actively maneuver through their networks and systems to identify indicators of a network attack and preemptively counter these threats, can speed the discovery of cyberattacks.”
Security
Network World - Infrastructure teams need multi-cloud networking and security guardrails
Cloud operations and DevOps groups will never cede ground, but they will welcome self-service networking and security solutions that provide guardrails that protect them from disaster. Cooperation between traditional infrastructure teams and cloud teams is even more important as enterprises embrace multi-cloud architecture, where complexity and risk are increasing. In fact, my research has found that security risk, collaboration problems, and complexity are the top pain points associated with multi-cloud networking today.
Cloud
CIO Infuence - Cybercrime Busters: Top 5 Cybersecurity Insights for Enterprise Storage
The gap in many corporate cybersecurity strategies is the absence of cyber storage resilience and recovery. It’s imperative that enterprises shore up their cyber resilience and recovery in their data and storage infrastructure to be properly equipped to combat ransomware attacks. This insight was derived from the fact that the more resilience an enterprise storage infrastructure has, the more it can withstand an attack and bounce back with confidence.
Security
VentureBeat - Surviving a ransomware attack begins by acknowledging it’s inevitable
“Today, many security and IT teams struggle to identify the real-world risks that vulnerabilities pose, and therefore improperly prioritize vulnerabilities for remediation. For example, many only patch new vulnerabilities or those that have been disclosed in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). Others only use the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) to score and prioritize vulnerabilities.“
Security
sdxCentral - 4 questions to answer before you pick a WAN service: SD-WAN, SASE, 5G or something else?
Large enterprises that have already built out WAN infrastructure will be reluctant to walk away from those investments. Similarly, businesses that rely on MPLS to support mission-critical applications may still require SLAs guaranteeing reliable bandwidth, low data loss and low latency. Since SD-WAN vendors do not control the underlying connectivity, they are not able to match those SLAs.
Network Management
DarkReading - Meet Rhysida, a New Ransomware Strain That Deletes Itself
"It stands out for its unique self-deletion mechanism and compatibility with pre-Windows 10 versions of Microsoft. Written in C++ and compiled with MinGW and shared libraries, Rhysida showcases sophistication in its design," Kaspersky said in its findings about the group. "While relatively new, Rhysida faced initial configuration challenges with its onion server, revealing a group's rapid adaptation and learning curve."
Security
CIO Influence - Minimizing IT Challenges for Employees in Remote and Hybrid Settings
IT teams may no longer own all the assets utilized daily by employees, but they remain responsible for these operations. Despite not being able to directly exert control over employees’ home networks, they can have visibility over these environments with network monitoring tools. Implementing network visibility software helps IT professionals overcome these new obstacles by providing the ability to maintain visibility and control amid changing work circumstances.
Automation & Productivity
NetworkComputing - 7 Strategic Network Automation Steps to Continuously Improve Network Security
While data backups receive significant attention, operational tasks that keep networks secure, such as device backups, OS upgrades, and configuration grooming, often go undone. It's incredible that even today, the majority of these changes are made by hand, which makes them error-prone. Even the simplest misstep can have a ripple effect that brings down a network and/or disrupts a supposedly fault-tolerant business service. No one is immune – not even tech giants like Microsoft and Google.
Network Management
Information Week - Firms Arm US Against AI Cyberattacks
Adversarial AI uses algorithmic and mathematical approaches to deceive, manipulate and attack AI systems. While published reports of AI attacks are scant, companies, organizations and governments are getting ready for increased attacks as open-source language models proliferate. Gauging the severity of the immediate AI threat is tough, experts say, as companies may not be reporting incidents.
Artificial Intelligence
NetworkComputing - Cisco Flaw Highlights Dynamic Nature of Vulnerability Management
Hackers quickly exploited the newly discovered critical zero-day bug to hijack thousands of Cisco switches and routers. Sunday, Cisco released free software updates that address the vulnerabilities causing these problems. In addition to the software update, Cisco strongly recommends that enterprises disable the HTTP Server feature on all internet-facing systems.
Security
Network World - Can enterprises trust the internet?
It’s no wonder that enterprise CFOs often have a hard time accepting network prices. One senior network planner at a healthcare conglomerate told me that he got major pushback on a 500 Mbps MPLS VPN connection cost of more than $4,000 per month when the CFO had 1 Gbps home broadband at just over $100 a month. But the deal was approved, because the CFO accepted a simple justification: “You can’t trust the internet.”
Network Management
NetworkComputing - The Evolving Threat Landscape: What’s Next for Security? 
Through more than a decade of use, there have been many high-profile, public-cloud-related breaches. But digging into the details of those breaches, we find a common theme, and it is not public cloud infrastructure or shared compute. The point of entry for attackers has almost always been a misconfiguration that opened a security hole attackers could drive a truck through. Misconfigured S3 buckets, open administrative access to Kubernetes' consoles, and standard API/app vulnerabilities that could have been blocked with a traditional web application firewall. 
Security
Computerworld - As M365 Copilot launch looms, businesses likely to move cautiously
But while Microsoft has moved quickly to incorporate genAI into tools such as Word, Excel, and Teams, many Microsoft 365 customers are expected to take a cautious approach to deploying Copilot within their organizations. This means a focus on internal trials to identify use cases, and bolstering data security practices to mitigate the risks of connecting large language models to corporate systems.
Automation & Productivity
Forbes - Three Positive Ways To Protect Against Zero-Day Attacks
Before Labor Day 2023, insiders detected 57 zero-day vulnerabilities, a higher total than all of 2022, and the scope of the attacks has gotten broader. Rather than target vulnerabilities in security or communications programs, now all sorts of software are dealing with zero-day attacks, from email servers to printer software.
Security
Blocks & Files - What is the best choice of storage in the container era?
According to the user survey report released by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in 2020, 78 percent of users have deployed or are about to deploy stateful applications in containers in application scenarios like databases, message queues, logs, and data analysis. The report also showed that storage has become a major factor that affects the commercial deployment of containers.
Data Storage
Security Magazine - Report: CISOs’ big worry in new role is inaccurate data on security posture
The issue of data quality was of greater concern to respondents than the lack of security budget (44%) and being scapegoated for a breach (44%).
Security
Information Week - 3 Reasons Why Cloud Migration Fails in Large Enterprises
Failing to involve key stakeholders, such as IT teams, business units, and compliance experts, can result in misalignment with organizational goals. Rushing into migration without thorough planning can lead to data loss, system downtime, and increased costs. Overlooking regulatory requirements and security measures can expose an organization to legal issues and data breaches.
Cloud
DarkReading - Change From Within: 3 Cybersecurity Transformation Traps for CISOs to Avoid
CISOs will thrive within this change by focusing on input, empathy, and alignment. This will enable lasting success for the shift by allowing CISOs to fully identify and understand information asymmetries throughout the organization and then remove them to clear the path to optimal communications and awareness.
Security
sdxCentral - Why enterprises need to apply NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0
“The overall message of CSF 2.0 is that risk management needs to be elevated to an enterprise-level, with key leadership involvement,” Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Katell Thielemann told SDxCentral. “Instead of focusing on security controls, security teams need to understand what role security plays in the overall lifecycle of risk management, to include ecosystems like supply chains.”
Security
The Hacker News - Who's Experimenting with AI Tools in Your Organization?
With Nudge Security, you can get an immediate inventory of all the AI tools your employees are using, and set up alerts to notify you whenever a new AI tool is introduced. Nudge Security automatically discovers AI tools and other SaaS applications in your environment, and categorizes them by type for easy filtering, including the free, paid, and trial accounts that you might not be able to discover by relying on procurement processes or combing through expense reports.
Security
Blocks & Files - HPE and Dell diverge on AI strategy
Both rate AI as the biggest driver of IT infrastructure revenue growth in the next few years and both have a strategy that extends across edge sites and hybrid cloud datacenters. Both see x86 servers doing AI inferencing, but Dell’s strategy extends its AI inferencing down to PCs, which it makes and sells but HPE does not. HPE’s strategy extends upwards into supercomputers, which it makes and sells but Dell does not.
Artificial Intelligence
NetworkComputing - DigiCert Study Finds That Quantum Interest is High, But Security Concerns Exist 
This urgency hasn’t translated into actionable measures for many. A mere 30 percent of organizations have set aside a budget for quantum readiness. Roughly half of the surveyed IT experts expressed uncertainty about the ramifications of quantum computing, and many reported that their leadership is either only somewhat aware or entirely uninformed about the imminent security implications.
Quantum Computing
sdxCentral - Okta reveals surging investment in zero-trust security
Okta’s report also revealed trends across regions and industries. North America is leading the zero-trust charge with 73% of organizations having a defined strategy and Japan and Australia were least likely to have one at 47%. In terms of industries, the financial services sector narrowly edges out the software industry with 71% adoption compared to 69%.
Security
VentureBeat - Gartner: Generative AI will be everywhere, so strategize now
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of CIOs polled by Gartner said their enterprise will increase funding for AI/ML in 2024. Similarly, 80% said their organizations are planning on full gen AI adoption within the next three years.
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - Teaching AI to behave is the fastest-growing career skill
“It’s critical. Prompt engineering is a very important part of what’s coming, not just for OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, but also for all the open-source models,” Brethenoux said. “They’re going to go into the workforce, and they need to master that technology one way or another.”
Tech Jobs
Network World - Gartner: IT spending to climb 8% to $5.1 trillion in 2024
Organizations are continuing to invest in AI and automation to increase operational efficiency and bridge IT talent gaps, Lovelock stated. “The hype around GenAI is supporting this trend, as CIOs recognize that today’s AI projects will be instrumental in developing an AI strategy and story before GenAI becomes part of their IT budgets starting in 2025.”
IT Management
VentureBeat - 5 Ways to Rein in Data Center Consumption in 2024
Yet, at the same time, a July 2023 survey from Hitachi Vantara found that tackling data center sustainability is no easy task. It found that two-thirds of IT leaders currently measure their data center’s energy consumption; however, one-third of respondents acknowledged that their data infrastructure uses too much energy and nearly half (46%) admitted their sustainability policies don’t address the impact of storing unused data.
Sustainability
Google Cloud - From turnkey to custom: Tailor your AI risk governance to help build confidence
Google Cloud customers can use our Responsible AI approach to mitigate risks from unintended or unforeseen outputs that models can produce. Vertex’s Explainable AI makes it easier to know how an AI model makes a decision. And, we are currently offering a Model Fairness tool in preview. Finally, features such as Model Evaluation, Model Monitoring, and Model Registry can all help to support data and model governance.
Artificial Intelligence
CIO Influence - How Backing Up Data Could Endanger Your Organization — and What to Do About It
Even the best of intentions can have unintended consequences. Unfortunately, common cloud backup methods can lead to the growth of shadow data — organizational data that is copied, backed up, or housed in a data store not under the same security structure or governed by security or IT. Because this data is left “in the dark,” it’s a hot target for today’s threat actors — and organizations have taken note. A majority of data security and governance professionals (68%) have named shadow data as the No.1 concern of protecting cloud data.
Data Management
NetworkComputing - SD-WAN vs MPLS: What's The Difference & Which Is Better?
To understand which option better meets your network needs today and tomorrow, it's crucial you understand the key difference between the solutions. SD-WANs are service-provider agnostic. In contrast, MPLS requires enterprises to use the same service provider at all locations.
Network Management
Government Technology - How Does Tech Debt Impact Government Service Delivery?
Tech debt, sometimes called innovation debt, refers to the cost of not improving systems, of relying on aging technologies that either are no longer the best tools for the job of serving residents or are so old that the staff who supported them have retired from government work.
IT Management
DarkReading - The Most Popular IT Admin Password Is Totally Depressing
"While our top 20 findings are limited to known and predictable passwords, the fact that they were associated with admin portals also tells us that bad actors are well equipped to target privileged users," the Outpost24 team explained.
Security
Network World - Generative AI pervades Gartner’s 2024 predictions for cybersecurity roles, application modernization and more
By 2027, GenAI tools will be used to explain legacy business applications and create appropriate replacements, reducing modernization costs by 70%.
Tech Trends
Datanami - NetApp’s 2023 Data Complexity Report Reveals Urgent Need for Unified Data Storage
 The report found that 98% of organizations are in the middle of their cloud journey, with three out of four reporting workloads stored on-premises, highlighting the need for a unified approach to hybrid multi-cloud architectures and continued innovation in both on-premises all-flash storage and public cloud storage to enable AI adoption at scal
Data Storage
CIO Influence - Are You Covered? Large Language Models and AI Security in the Enterprise
Observability is rapidly emerging as a critical issue in the LLM security ecosystem. With so many people in an organization using multiple models for myriad uses on all manner of devices, tracking and auditing usage is critical. Typically, administrators do not have the ability to view users’ prompt histories, which means they can only know in the most general terms who is using the model and how often.
Artificial Intelligence
Datanami - Dremio’s New Research Demonstrates Data Lakehouse Value with Math-Style Proof and Technical Clarity
The paper decomposes commonly used but overloaded terms like data warehouse, data warehousing, and data lakehouse into discrete components (such as query engine, table format, etc.), then offers clear terms and definitions based on these components to bring clarity to communication that uses these common terms.
Data & Analytics
CIO Influence - Risk and Compliance Management: Take a Risk-Centric Approach to Manage Security
Compliance and risk are often thought of as separate considerations, and for larger companies, they can serve distinct functions. In reality, risk and compliance share a symbiotic relationship with compliance affecting risk, and risk affecting compliance. Therefore, what you do within your compliance program will directly impact your level of risk.
Risk Management
Network World - Gartner: Enterprises need to focus on AI priorities and readiness
To that end, Gartner predicts that by 2025, GenAI will be a workforce partner for 90% of companies worldwide. In addition, by 2026, more than 80% of enterprises will have used GenAI application programming interfaces (APIs) or models, and/or deployed GenAI-enabled applications in production environments, up from less than 5% in 2023, Gartner stated. (Also see Gartner's top strategic technology trends for 2024)
Artificial Intelligence
Datanami - New Data Suggests IT and Security Leaders Are Ignorant to Generative AI Threats
When asked, IT and security leaders are more concerned about getting inaccurate or nonsensical responses (40%) than security-centric issues, like exposure of customer and employee personal identifiable information (PII) (36%), exposure of trade secrets (33%), and financial loss (25%).
Artificial Intelligence
Information Week - Generative AI an Emerging Risk as CISOs Shift Cyber Resilience Strategies
“Often we’re exposing credentials so that anyone who compromises and exploits those can have access to incredibly sensitive content,” he says. “For example, one vendor found their software developers were debugging code in LLMs, and then it was compromised.”
Security
sdxCentral - Netskope report: Social engineering is the attack method of choice
More than half of the malware that users have attempted to download so far this year was delivered via cloud apps. Users were lured into downloading malware from 477 distinct cloud apps, most notably Microsoft.
Security
The Hacker News - Exploring the Realm of Malicious Generative AI: A New Digital Security Challenge
Recently, the cybersecurity landscape has been confronted with a daunting new reality – the rise of malicious Generative AI, like FraudGPT and WormGPT. These rogue creations, lurking in the dark corners of the internet, pose a distinctive threat to the world of digital security. In this article, we will look at the nature of Generative AI fraud, analyze the messaging surrounding these creations, and evaluate their potential impact on cybersecurity.
Security
Information Week - Doing More With Less: A Guide for IT Leaders
Adapting to this landscape isn’t just about juggling resources, it’s about reshaping mindsets. IT leaders now operate at the intersection of frugality and forward-thinking, emphasizing value-driven solutions while keeping an eye on the horizon.
IT Management
NetworkComputing - The Pillars of Cloud Infrastructure Security in 2023 and Beyond
To take up these challenges, companies must embrace a holistic approach to security, whereby the protection mechanisms are as resilient as the cloud environment itself, and uniform security standards are in place across all aspects of the infrastructure. This article sheds light on the fundamental components of a robust security posture in a world where cloud computing plays an increasingly important role.
Cloud Security
TechRepublic - New CISA and NSA Identity and Access Management Guidance Puts Vendors on Notice
“The publication (it’s hard to call it guidance) highlights the challenges with comparing the features provided by vendors. CISA seems to be putting vendors on notice that they want vendors to be clear about what standards they do and don’t support in their products, especially when a vendor only supports portions of a given standard.”
Security
sdxCentral - 4 things you need to know to protect data in multicloud environments
Even though multicloud is the new enterprise reality, it doesn’t mean that enterprises have figured out how to manage that new reality. Recent research from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) forecasts that 88% of enterprises will adopt multiple cloud services by 2024, up from 72% in 2022. However, EMA found that only 35% of enterprises believe that their multi-cloud networking strategies have been successful, and only 24% of the 351 IT organizations surveyed were satisfied with their multicloud network monitoring and observability capabilities.
Cloud
Network World - Networking and security teams tasked to converge, collaborate
The goal of shared processes could be a hefty challenge for some organizations. In the Cato Networks survey, 12% of respondents reported that their networking and security teams either have “turf wars or struggle working together,” and another 34% said they “occasionally have problems working together.” The remaining 54% reported that the two teams work well together now.
IT Management
sdxCentral - Horizontal vs. vertical AI: What do enterprises need to know?
“Vertical AI solutions are designed to provide targeted and specialized functionalities,” said Chen. These tools leverage industry-specific knowledge and expertise to offer more targeted, personalized and reliable results. Specialized algorithms are specifically designed for an industry or use case and are often offered as plug-and-play because they are typically prebuilt.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - Gartner: Top strategic technology trends for 2024
“A lot of the trends are around AI development, but also in protecting the investment that organizations have already made. For example, they’ve invested in machine learning, natural language. And there's a ramp up in software engineering right now where people are building more things because they have access to that data and the development tools are getting better,”
Tech Trends
SiliconANGLE - Nine rules for CIOs to optimize IT costs strategically 
IT financial management tracks the total cost of IT and provide multiple views of IT spend to help stakeholders make informed business decisions. Repeated requests from the business to cut IT costs often indicate that the value of the spend is not understood at the business outcome level. To support your strategic cost optimization initiative, ensure that all IT costs are allocated to a business-valued application, product or service. Add cost detail and complexity to the ITFM allocation model only where needed.
IT Management
TechRepublic - Capital One/Forrester Study: Deploying Self-Service Data Strategies Is Fraught With Challenges
Top challenges cited in the study include maintaining user-friendly environments (49%), increasing data trust and quality (49%) and scaling self-service for decentralized environments (47%).
Data & Analytics
NetworkComputing - Are Smaller, High-volume Outages Dominating Downtime?
The impact of these incidents can be so big that they have a material, reportable impact on uptime for a significant subsection of users, potentially for the entire user base. Often with quite a bit of collateral damage, and as a result, they're often publicly reported on by news outlets and analyzed in depth by the responsible party.  
Network Management
sdxCentral - 5 tips to get your CISO on board with IAM
Look at how stakeholders — infrastructure, DevOps, IAM teams and others — do their jobs, what processes they’re leveraging and where the pain points are, he advised. Have one-on-ones, understand team members’ backgrounds and determine where their skills are (and if there are deficiencies, do they need to do training or hire additional talent?).
Security
AiThority - Risks Of IT Integration
According to a research, 27 percent of companies said their synergies failed to mmet expectations for acquisitions. Fifty to eighty percent of mergers and acqusitions fail because of poor IT integrations. There is a lot of demand for a merged company to produce immediate commercial value and to deliver return on investment. However, the back-end logistics of IT/Security integration are typically difficult, slow, and hazardous, which impedes progress.
IT Management
Information Week - Critical Zero-Day Atlassian Bug: What CISOs Must Know
Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified a nation state threat actor (Storm-0062) exploiting this vulnerability in the wild since Sept. 14, according to an update on X (formerly Twitter). Microsoft noted that this threat actor is also tracked as DarkShadow and Oro0lxy. Storm-0062 is a name for Chinese state hackers who have a history of state-sponsored hacking activity.
Security
sdxCentral - Gartner Magic Quadrant reveals SD-WAN leaders, plus SASE and genAI trends
In choosing a vendor, enterprises should always run a proof of concept (PoC) to ensure solutions work as expected and, if they are managing internally, that they are comfortable with that process. Buyers should also be comfortable with vendor roadmaps as the market continues to evolve.
Network Management
Information Week - Quick Study: The Evolving Roles of CIOs and IT Leaders
The roles and responsibilities of chief information officers have changed dramatically, and will continue to shift as the job itself morphs in the years ahead. Here’s a curated collection of articles that looks at the many hats IT leaders are wearing today.
IT Management
sdxCentral - To pay or not to pay: Why CISOs are the least important in ransom decisions
Notably, in the wake of these events, 18% of the respondents said they paid the ransom directly to the attackers, 37% paid through cyber insurance and 28% used third-party negotiators. The retail sector stands out with a staggering 95% paying the ransom.
Security
Information Week - The Mind of the Inside Attacker
A rough categorization of insider threats has emerged, starting with their roles in the company. While some are permanent employees, others may be part-time or work in contractor roles that nonetheless afford them access to proprietary data. While many insider attacks are motivated by personal spite or revenge, it has become increasingly common for moles to be placed within an organization with the explicit goal of accessing data.
Security
Datanami - Ascend.io Survey: Automation Seen as Key Solution for Overburdened Data Teams
Data teams now use five tools on average in their data stack and over two-thirds (68%) plan to maintain or increase this number in the next year. Despite this trend, data teams report stagnation in their overall capacity. Virtually all data professionals surveyed (95%) report being at or above their work capacity for the fourth year in a row, with data engineers reporting being significantly overworked more than three times as often as their peers in data analytics and data architecture.
Data Management
Information Week - 6 Pain Points for CISOs and CIOs and What to Do About Them
Many companies are working with a mix of legacy technology, like on-premises servers, and new cloud and SaaS systems. CIOs and CISOs are faced with the operational and security challenges that come with this disparate tech stack and the migration to new systems.
IT Management
CIO Influence - Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Tips From an Ethical Hacker to Secure Our World
Recognizing phishing attempts involves being vigilant about suspicious emails, messages, or links that attempt to imitate a trusted source. Cybercriminals often use urgent language, false claims, or deceptive URLs to manipulate victims into taking action that compromises their security. By educating ourselves and others about these tactics, we can reduce the risk.
Security
sdxCentral - High-severity vulnerability led to largest-ever DDoS attack, say Google, Cloudflare and AWS
The attackers exploited this by flooding websites with hundreds of thousands of “requests” and abruptly canceling them. “By automating this trivial ‘request, cancel, request, cancel’ pattern at scale, threat actors are able to create a denial of service and take down any server or application running the standard implementation of HTTP/2,"
Security
Network World - Hot (and not) networking skills for 2023
"We're moving to infrastructure as code for efficiency," says Sangillo. "We're embedding in the job description of every network engineer that we want you to be comfortable with software and orchestration solutions, speak the language of APIs, use Python, and use low-code solutions."
Network Management
CIO Influence - October Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Top 50 IT and Security Professionals Share their Strategies
Most IT and security leaders agree that cybersecurity policies are lagging behind technology trends. Lack of adequately trained IT professionals, poor leadership, excessive reliance on aging IT and security solutions, and growing pressure from cybersecurity regulatory authorities have all combined together to create a difficult scenario for organizations. For 2024, organizations require a staunch, personalized training approach to thwart cyber crimes.
Security
Blocks & Files - Building cyber resilience with data vaults
In August 2023, Danish hosting subsidiaries CloudNordic and AzeroCloud were on the receiving end of one of the most serious ransomware attacks ever made public by a cloud services company. During the incident, CloudNordic suffered a complete encryption wipe-out that took with it applications, email services, websites, and databases, and even backup and replication servers. In a memorably frank admission, the company said that all customer data had been lost and would not be recoverable.
Security
sdxCentral - Why a return to the office brings identity and mental health challenges
Identity remains one of the biggest challenges for organizations with 43% saying that more than 20% of their workforce identities are insufficiently secured, according to Poller’s latest research. A whopping 77% of organizations think or know they’ve experienced credential compromise in the past year, and 76% of those experience multiple compromises And, account compromise leads to cybersecurity attacks more than 70% of the time.
Security
NetworkComputing - Apples for Apples: Measuring the Cost of Public vs. Private Clouds
It's no surprise, then, that an increasing focus among IT leaders is on both the absolute cost and the effectiveness of that cloud spend within their organizations. For some, this has been more than a challenge, with one of the very reasons that cloud has become so popular in the first place - the ability for engineers to swipe a credit card and spin up effectively limitless resources, enabling them to commit to elastic levels of spending, often under the radar of any central budgetary control. This has hampered many in their ability to both get a handle on exactly what and where these costs are coming from and also to plan effectively for a more strategic relationship with the hyperscalers.
Cloud
Blocks & Files How to stop ransomware thieves WORMing their way into your data
One component of this is the 3-2-1-1-0 rule: this means, storing three copies of your data, in addition to the original, across two media types, one of which must be off-site. Ootbi satisfies both of these by storing one in the cloud and the other on the customer’s premises on its own appliance’s NVME flash storage.
Data Protection
DarkReading - 10 Routine Security Gaffes the Feds Are Begging You to Fix
The agencies added that software providers need to immediately adopt principles of secure-by-design to prevent these and other misconfigurations.
Security
VentureBeat - Goldman Sachs CIO is ‘anxious to see results’ from GenAI, but moving carefully | The AI Beat
That’s because for all the C-suite executives out there feeling generative AI FOMO and getting pressure from CEOs to move quickly to develop AI-centric strategies, things are actually moving far slower than you might imagine (or AI vendors, who warn companies about falling behind, might want)
Artificial Intelligence
InformationWeek - Dispelling 5 Misconceptions About Data
Your business will be judged by how much data you collect. Ever since data became a business imperative, companies have been scrambling to gather as much of it as possible, without a coherent strategy.  Yet, no amount of data can solve a business problem if it’s not the right kind of data. Companies will not be judged on the amount of data they have, but in the business decisions that were derived from it.
Data Management
NetworkComputing - Global NaaS Event Roundup: Taking NaaS and SASE Forward
MEF and its member organizations are laying the groundwork to bring a new generation of Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) to market. They envision NaaS as services that combine on-demand connectivity, application assurance, cybersecurity, and multi-cloud-based services. To meet enterprise demands, those providing these services will need a standards-based automated ecosystem.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - Lower for longer: Tech spending remains tepid 
Generative artificial intelligence is in some ways both a blessing and a curse. The excitement, potential and magic of large language models is fantastic. It creates urgency and mobilizes teams to focus on creating new forms of value, new business models, restructure processes and the like. But given the economic climate, what we’re seeing is generally not a lot of new money coming into IT budgets at the top line. Rather, there’s a reprioritization happening.
Tech Spending
InformationWeek - AI and Overcoming User Resistance
You’re not just retraining an employee on a new set of steps for processing an invoice or taking an order. You’re actually introducing an automated thinking process into what an employee has been doing. Now, technology is going to make or recommend decisions that the employee used to make. This can lead to employees experiencing a loss of empowerment and control.
Automation & Productivity
Network World - Generative AI set to reshape SD-WAN market
There’s a trend toward AI capabilities that enable networking decisions to be made with little or no human intervention. These capabilities can help enterprises to streamline network design, configuration and ongoing management as well as increase agility and improve performance, according to Gartner. The research firm predicts that by 2026, generative AI technology embedded in SD-WAN offerings will be used for 20% of initial network configuration, up from near zero in 2023.
Network Management
sdxCentral - Inside global SecOps: A day in the life of a Trellix threat intelligence head
Trellix’s threat intelligence group operates around the clock, collecting and digesting research and intelligence from industry peers and government agencies, analyzing cybercriminal behaviors and attacks, alerting customers, offering threat intelligence services and working with the vendor’s product teams to enhance its cybersecurity services. They also closely collaborate with law enforcement, sharing information and assisting in takedowns of nefarious groups.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Outside the 8½-by-11 box: Five thoughts from Zoomtopia 2023 
Zoom isn’t afraid of Microsoft but would like a level playing field. Most of the collaboration vendors have ceded the leadership position to Microsoft Teams. Not because of product quality – almost every collaboration tool is easier to use – but because the Microsoft licensing engine keeps customers locked in. When I attend analyst events or user conferences from other vendors, there is always a heavy dose of Teams interoperability. At Zoomtopia, nary a word was said about Teams coexistence. Zoom believes it has a superior product and, with a level playing field, feels it can win any customer.
Automation & Productivity
The Hacker News - New OS Tool Tells You Who Has Access to What Data
A comprehensive Data Security Platform is essential for full visibility and control of sensitive data. One example is Satori's Universal Data Permissions Scanner (UDPS), an open-source authorization analysis tool. UDPS, available on GitHub, enables universal visibility into data access permissions across various data stores. With this tool, it's easier to identify who has the potential to access sensitive data, which can help organizations take a proactive approach to enhancing their security posture, streamline compliance, and ensure well-governed data access.
Data Management
InformationWeek - US Tech Layoffs Soar 716% in 2023: Report
But the number of job cuts has been falling steadily over the summer, the firm says, with 2,537 cuts in September, the lowest number since June 2022. The 2023 tech layoffs are the second worst totals on record. In 2001, 168,395 cuts were announced in the sector.
Tech Jobs
Network World - What is DNS and how does it work?
DNS is organized in a hierarchy. An initial DNS query for an IP address is made to a recursive resolver. This search first leads to a root server, which has information on top-level domains (.com, .net, .org), as well as country domains. Root servers are located all around the world, so the DNS system routes the request to the closest one.
Network Management
CIO Influence - 75 Percent of Companies Struggling with IT Operational Challenges in a Hybrid World, According to HP Study
Companies cited a need for more efficient endpoint software tracking and management (48%). To achieve this, respondents want device backup and restore capabilities (55%), automation of device recovery processes (47%), BIOS update deployment (46%), and device location tracking (46%).
IT Management
VentureBeat - The case for bringing generative AI on premises
For many organizations, the latter option is the only sensible solution — they either cannot place certain data in the public cloud or cannot risk their sensitive or proprietary data even with additional security controls offered through enterprise generative AI solutions. But by adopting generative AI on their own hardware within their own environments, organizations maintain maximum control over their data and security posture.
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Public cloud ephemeral storage can’t be persistent – right?
In summary we could say the ephemeral storage supplied by AWS, Azure, and Google for VMs and containers is unprotected media attached to a compute instance. This storage is typically higher speed than persistent storage, much lower cost, and has no storage services, such as snapshotting, compression, deduplication, or replication.
Data Storage
VentureBeat - How AI-powered patch management protects remote and hybrid workers
Cybercrime gangs and state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) threat actors who have launched the largest breaches in history — including the A.P. Møller-Maersk ransomware attack — often understand a target’s network better than admins. Whoever owns identities owns the business, and as devastating ransomware attacks show, threat actors are brazen about shutting an entire business down to meet demands.
Security
sdxCentral - Deloitte: What public company execs think of new SEC cyber disclosure rules
For the companies that haven’t started to prepare, Adib suggested conducting an SEC readiness assessment to make sure they have the foundational capabilities and comprehend where companies stand in relation to the requirements, evaluating their incident response capabilities, setting up the coordination and orchestration process and combining legal guidance and cybersecurity expertise to ensure timely and appropriate material incident disclosures.
Security
Network World - Data centers aren’t ready for AI, Schneider warns
Schneider's white paper notes that AI needs ample supply of three things: power, cooling, and bandwidth. GPUs are the most popular AI processors and the most power intensive. Whereas CPUs from Intel and AMD draw about 300 to 400 watts, Nvidia’s newest GPUs draw 700 watts per processor and they are often delivered in clusters of eight at a time.
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - Zero trust and why it matters to the Apple enterprise
Apple’s fast-growing position in the enterprise is a huge opportunity for Apple admins. They come to the space relatively less encumbered by the traditional silo-based approach to security and have the advantage that most key Apple device management systems already support the superior security magic that is zero trust.
Security
InformationWeek - How to Gain Control Over Shadow Analytics
Shadow analytics is kind of like doing your own home electrical wiring. “You might make [shadow analytics] work, but you risk burning down the building with ungoverned data handling that runs afoul of privacy and risk regulations that could lead to fines and hits to brand reputation,”
Data & Analytics
The Hacker News - Researcher Reveals New Techniques to Bypass Cloudflare's Firewall and DDoS Protection
The problem, per the Austrian consulting firm, is the result of shared infrastructure available to all tenants within Cloudflare, regardless of whether they are legitimate or otherwise, thereby making it easy for malicious actors to abuse the implicit trust associated with service and defeat the guardrails.
Security
NetworkComputing - The Evolution of NaaS APIs and What it Means for the Enterprise
Work on standards-based APIs has been underway for several years. For one, there is the work of the TM Forum, a group of 800+ global companies “working together to break down technology and cultural barriers between digital service providers, technology suppliers, consultancies, and systems integrators.” The organization has created toolkits and frameworks, including Open APIs, used by many cloud service providers. In 2020, the group developed a NaaS API component suite to support functions and capabilities responsible for the complete lifecycle of services.
Network Management
The Hacker News - API Security Trends 2023 – Have Organizations Improved their Security Posture?
Traditional WAFs mainly focus on protecting against common vulnerabilities like injection attacks or cross-site scripting (XSS). However, they may overlook potential risks associated with business logic flaws specific to an organization's unique application workflow. Protecting against such attacks requires a deeper understanding of the underlying business processes and implementing tailored security measures within the API code itself.
Security
sdxCentral - Multicloud brings both opportunity and complexity — how to strike a balance
Multicloud presents DevOps teams with a wider variety of tools, platforms and Kubernetes container orchestration strategies to learn. Added complexity of multicloud native development augers use of automated deployments. Moreover, moving programmed workloads from corporate data centers to single or multiple clouds likely requires refactoring of existing code.  Software architects may argue that moving an application to multiple clouds is a fool’s errand.
Cloud
NetworkComputing - AI Will Soon Transform Network Management and Monitoring
From a network standpoint, AI can be used to input network traffic and telemetry data from switching and routing hardware. Baselines are then formed based on network traffic and health patterns that can then be used to identify, alert, and potentially alter network component configurations to optimize traffic flows or to identify and remediate potential security intrusions.
Network Management
The Hacker News - Protecting your IT infrastructure with Security Configuration Assessment (SCA)
SCA is performed by checking the configurations of your IT assets against known benchmarks such as the Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmark and compliance standards such as NIST, GDPR, and HIPPA. Regulatory standards provide a global benchmark for best practices to help organizations enhance their IT hygiene and improve customer trust. The CIS benchmark provides a guideline for best practices for security configuration and has recommendations for various vendor products.
Security
InformationWeek - Water Scarcity Creates New Business Risks
It’s remarkably easy to underestimate the severity of the problem because many companies haven’t yet encountered severe water shortages. Yet the United Nations predicts a 40% global shortfall in water supply by 2030, based on current water trends, including consumption, economic activity, and population trends.
Sustainability
SiliconANGLE - Report: Over half of phishing emails now use obfuscation tactics to avoid detection 
HTML smuggling is a practice whereby hackers distribute malware in a dormant form to make it more difficult to detect. Rather than sending a malicious program, hackers send the program’s raw source code as part of a seemingly legitimate HTML page. The code only turns into malware after clearing the corporate network and arriving on the recipient’s computer, which makes it more difficult to spot for network-based cybersecurity tools.
Security
sdxCentral - Google, Azure and AWS battle for the hyperscale data center market
According to Synergy Research Group, the top three cloud providers account for 65% of the worldwide market. At the end of the first quarter of 2023, that meant 32% for AWS, 23% for Microsoft Azure and 10% for Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The next 20 providers have only carved out a combined 26% slice of the pie. Of those, the ones with the highest growth rates are Oracle, Snowflake, MongoDB, Huawei and three Chinese telcos.
Data Management
AiThority - Unlocking Game-Changing Cybersecurity With Open XDR
Gartner recently released their Market Guide for Extended Detection and Response report. The report’s Market Description section states that “XDR can improve Security Operations staff productivity by converting a large stream of alerts into a condensed number of incidents that can be manually investigated efficiently,” and by “reducing training and skills needed to complete operational tasks by providing a common management and workflow experience across security products.”
Security
VentureBeat - This week in data: How to create or destroy value with generative AI
Improving and destroying productivity with gen AI: In the BCG study, 90% of participants improved their performance when using gen AI for creative product innovation, and in fact converged on a level of performance that was 40% higher than that of those working on the same task without gen AI. However, when participants used the technology for business problem solving, they performed 23% worse than those doing the task without GPT-4.
Artificial Intelligence
InformationWeek - California’s Delete Act: What, CIOs, CDOs, Businesses Need to Know
The Delete Act would fall under the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) and California Data Broker Law and is targeted specifically at data brokers, providing a robust set of guidelines and a registry for such data-collecting businesses. The law would give consumers power to delete information from every data broker registered in the state through a single verifiable request.  
Data Privacy
InformationWeek - 5 Principles IT Leaders Should Leverage for Business Success
While it's natural to seek certainty, fixating on minute details can hinder progress. Striving for clarity -- understanding the core problem or objective -- allows a business to take action, rather than getting lost in analysis paralysis.
IT Management
AiThority - What’s Required to Exploit Generative AI Responsibly?
We know that the data volumes generative AI applications require will increase dramatically. Planning now for this increase in data, both from within the enterprise and from external sources, is vital. Enterprises should start to catalog the data they’ll need to provide to the large language models (LLM) but also ground the LLM responses and condition the questions in facts and truths.
Artificial Intelligence
InformationWeek - What Certifications Won’t Teach You About Working in Tech
Many IT certifications focus on theoretical concepts and knowledge domains related to the field of study. However, real IT work involves the practical application of knowledge with the ability to solve problems in real time. Gaining hands-on experience in real-world scenarios is something that most IT certifications do not provide, and this knowledge is critical for those looking to switch to IT roles
Training & Certs
NetworkComputing - How SASE Can Help Enterprises with Network Expansion and Protection
Fast forward to what’s happening with SASE, that ease-of-deployment and auto-provisioning is extending to the security and endpoint side. “On the security side, the user/SASE security policy is now starting to be attached to the network provisioning workflows, which gets us one step closer to secure networks out of the box,”
Security
InformationWeek - Analytics and Emotion: An Evolution in Business Intelligence
Essentially, ineffective analytics actively clouds judgement instead of clarifying complex decisions. Users are left confused, lacking the clarity and confidence needed to make data-driven business choices. This widespread dissatisfaction signals an enormously missed opportunity for the majority of SaaS companies today.
Data & Analytics
sdxCentral - Behind the SASE sizzle: Identifying the value of the network security architecture
Complexity is a major factor to consider when looking at SASE solutions. “We see complexity rooted in a hardware-centric network security model,” Anderson said. However, he added that the complexity has expanded into a software-as-a-service model. “The average organization has over 76 discrete tools today that they’re using to protect users.”
Network Management
NetworkWorld - IDC: SD-WAN adoption gets a boost from cloud connectivity requirements, SASE appeal
A second trend is the evolution toward secure access service edge (SASE) architectures that combines SD-WAN and cloud-based network edge security-as-a-service (NESaaS) tools, such as a secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), and zero trust network access (ZTNA), according to Butler. “SD-WAN customers can work with their existing SD-WAN vendor to consume NESaaS and build a SASE architecture or use a multivendor approach,” he said
Network Management
sdxCentral - A tale of two transformations: Adopting secure access service edge (SASE)
While Elevance Health is a large organization, CSCDGR, a French Catholic School district in Ontario, Canada, is not. “By their very nature, they have limited resources, nevertheless, they strive for a world class-leading approach to security,” moderator Skorupa said. “And they’ve transformed their network to enable the entire student and staff population of 6,400 users and more than 7,000 devices to securely work, teach and learn from anywhere.”
Security
NetworkComputing - The Legacy Systems Lurch
But there is risk when that reliance involves sensitive data. From the risk of accidental exposure of customer information to the risk of exfiltration of code and other trade secrets critical to the success of the business, the reality of relying on a third-party provider for AI is existential. That risk is not just from exposure of sensitive data but from not even knowing if data, once shared with the model, might be impacted by a breach.
IT Management
sdxCentral - Carpet-bombing and DNS water torture DDoS attacks on the rise
He noted that in the past most attacks would target one IP address (i.e., the host), but as time has passed, adversaries have realized that defenders are doing host-based monitoring and looking for high bandwidth/throughput destined for those hosts. The attackers have figured out that instead of targeting one host with a lot of traffic, they can target 100 IP addresses with the same amount of traffic spread across all hosts.
Security
VentureBeat - E-commerce fraud to cost $48 billion globally this year as attacks skyrocket, report says
Telesign’s latest Trust Index shows why CIOs, CISOs, and their teams must first see e-commerce fraud prevention as a core business challenge and consider how AI-based techniques can help. Customer trust is on the line. Sift’s Q3 2023 Digital Trust & Safety Index amplifies Telesign’s Trust Index findings, identifying a 36% increase in online payment fraud in early 2023 driven partly by an epidemic of Account Takeover (ATO) attacks. Sift’s Index found that ATO attacks jumped 354% year-over-year in Q2 2023 across Sift’s global network after reaching a 169% increase year-over-year in 2022.
Privacy & Security
InformationWeek - How to Future-Proof Your IT Organization
Fostering an innovative culture, investing in technology and talent, and forming strategic partnerships are all important steps necessary to prepare teams for technology change, Healy advises. “IT leaders should actively seek out emerging trends and continuously adapt to the evolving technology landscape to ensure their organization remains competitive and innovative.”
IT Management
NetworkComputing - Overcoming Cybersecurity Overwhelm: How to Take Charge of Limitless Cloud Data
Modern security teams are being stretched to the limit. More organizations are embracing the digital age and taking their operations to the cloud. It is currently estimated that a massive 1.145 trillion MB of data is created per day. The scale of this growth opens up new opportunities but also introduces more risk.
Security
DarkReading - 4 Pillars for Building a Responsible Cybersecurity Disclosure Program
Software vendors have come to appreciate the value of crowdsourced penetration testing. Many have created incentives to reward users and threat researchers for finding and reporting vulnerabilities. However, even as these bug bounty programs grow in prevalence, challenges persist to make the process streamlined, transparent, and beneficial for all parties. The vast number of vulnerability reports also highlights the need for a structured and responsible approach to manage, address, and rectify these vulnerabilities.
Security
NetworkWorld - DNS security poses problems for enterprise IT
The top response (28% of all respondents) is DNS hijacking. Also known as DNS redirection, this process involves intercepting DNS queries from client devices so that connection attempts go to the wrong IP address. Hackers often achieve this buy infecting clients with malware so that queries go to a rogue DNS server, or they hack a legitimate DNS server and hijacks queries as more massive scale
Security
VentureBeat - As AI-enabled fraudster bots wreak havoc, security teams turn to AI data defense strategies
The 2023 Imperva Bad Bot report found that bad bots make up a whopping 30% of automated traffic, with evasive bad bots accounting for 66.6% of all bad bot traffic. Meanwhile, automated attacks targeting APIs are on the rise. To no one’s shock, generative AI has been a significant driver of more sophisticated attacks – fraudsters are out there using ChatGPT to write code for their bots. And the bots are out there hoovering up personal and business data, stealing accounts and tallying up billions of dollars in damages for targeted companies across industries.
Security
NetworkComputing - Creating a Network Budget Strategy
If doing this sounds like a "no-brainer," it isn't. Too often, the applications group plans or gets notified about new projects, but other IT areas, like networking, get left out of the communication. This later impacts budgets and creates budget exceptions because no one in networking had an early “heads-up” that would have alerted them to the need to budget.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - Internet’s rapid growth faces challenges amid rising denial-of-service attacks 
Those attacks occurred concurrently with an increase in internet traffic, with Netscout tracking 424 terabits per second of internet peering traffic in the first half of 2023, up 5.7% over the 401 terabits per second reported at the end of 2022. The internet’s rapid growth is noted as experiencing drag, a reduction in capabilities, because of an increase in DDoS attacks, including 500% growth in HTTP/S application layer attacks and a 17% increase in DNS reflection/amplification attack volumes in the first half of the year.
Security
VentureBeat - Enterprise workers gain 40 percent performance boost from GPT-4, Harvard study finds
“The fact that we could boost the performance of these highly paid, highly skilled consultants, from top, elite MBA institutions, doing tasks that are very related to their every day tasks, on average 40 percent, I would say that’s really impressive,”
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - What Cisco’s Splunk acquisition means for cybersecurity-observability convergence
Siegfried envisions the full-stack observability data lake could become the foundational platform moving forward. The platform would potentially integrate the front end of both Splunk’s SIEM and observability capabilities, ultimately becoming a replacement for AppDynamics.
Security
Computerworld - Q&A: How one CSO secured his environment from generative AI risks
Through genAI, many of Navan’s 2,500 employees have been able to eliminate redundant tasks and create code far faster than if they’d generated it from scratch. However, genAI tools are not without security and regulatory risks. For example, 11% of data employees paste into ChatGPT is confidential, according to a report from cyber security provider CyberHaven.
Artificial Intelligence
InformationWeek - Accenture Report: Cloud and Edge Can Foster Reinvention with AI
The report indicates that 98% of executives around the world expect AI foundation models to be important to their organizations’ strategies in the coming three to five years. Edge may be a factor in those strategies because, as the report states, it enables real- or near-real-time data analysis, which can simplify training AI models and improve the performance of AI-driven apps.
Automation & Productivity
The Hacker News - Are You Willing to Pay the High Cost of Compromised Credentials?
Attackers use automated tools to test the stolen credentials on numerous sites. To increase their chances of success while reducing the risk of detection, attackers utilize readily available tools that help them match passwords with specific websites. This can be especially easy if the password already contains the name of the website or application.
Security
CIODIVE - Top engineering chiefs hire software generalists, full-stack engineers
Software engineers are so valuable to an organization that 55% of engineering leaders in 2023 say a strong engineer is worth at least three times their total compensation, according to the report. That statistic is up 10 percentage points since 2020.
Tech Jobs
Computerworld - Could Superhuman be your email savior?
A company called Superhuman claims to have cracked the code. Superhuman has technically been around in some form for almost a decade, but you'd be forgiven for failing to notice — or maybe even for reading about it at some point and immediately writing it off. Up until recently, after all, it was available only on an invite and waitlist basis, and it lacked full cross-platform support.
Automation & Productivity
CIODIVE - Innovation spend failing to yield ROI, execs say
Leaders say workplace and cultural issues block enterprise transformation, with collaboration rifts, a skills gap and a risk-averse culture as chief contributors to the problem.
Automation & Productivity
Blocks & Files - Allocating AI and other pieces of your workload placement puzzle
AI workloads comprise two main components – inferencing and training. IT departments can run AI algorithm development and training, which are performance intensive, on premises, IDC says. And the data is trending that way, as 55 percent of IT decision makers Dell surveyed cited performance as the main reason for running GenAI workloads on premises. Conversely, less intensive inferencing tasks can be run in a distributed fashion at edge locations, in public cloud environments or on premises.
Artificial Intelligence
NetworkComputing - Empowering Enterprise IT: The Transformative Power of Network-as-a-Service (NaaS)
NaaS offers a compelling alternative. It brings together a comprehensive suite of on-demand managed network services, application assurance, cybersecurity, and multi-cloud-based, all seamlessly orchestrated through automated networks without any capital investment.
Network Management
eWeek - How Cisco is Addressing the Widening Skills Gap
Cisco’s approach is multifaceted. The company works with education partners, including its learning partner ecosystem and academies. Notably, in the U.S., Cisco’s outreach extends to an impressive 45 percent of community colleges. There’s also a direct-to-learner model, allowing individuals to engage with and access their resources.
Tech Jobs
VentureBeat - Why Cradlepoint’s acquisition of Ericom predicts the future of SASE in the enterprise
Gartner defines SASE as delivering “converged network and security-as-a-service capabilities, including SD-WAN, secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), next generation firewall (NGFW) and zero trust network access (ZTNA). SASE supports branch offices, remote workers, and on-premises secure access use cases.”
Security
eWeek - Why Cloud Will Remain Dominant: 4 Reasons
In fact, going forward, generative AI will be a major factor that drives many organization’s tech stack purchase decisions. Whether in the public or private cloud, generative AI is supported by large language models (LLMs) which process data in real time, requiring powerful – and highly scalable – computing power.  When you combine this point with the fact that the best AI solutions are now offered primarily as cloud services, organizations are more motivated than ever to accelerate their transition to the cloud
Cloud
AiThority - Enterprises Exploring GenAI with Sense of Urgency, Caution, ISG Study Finds
“However, despite the top-down imperative to embrace generative AI, most enterprises lack the focus to identify the right use cases. Right now, the market is being driven by specialist providers that are actively engaging with enterprises to brainstorm and co-create innovative solutions.”
Artificial Intelligence
The Hacker News - The Rise of the Malicious App
These applications add nothing of value to the hub app. They are designed to connect to a SaaS application and perform unauthorized activities with the data contained within. When these apps connect to the core SaaS stack, they request certain scopes and permissions. These permissions then allow the app the ability to read, update, create, and delete content.
Security
InformationWeek - What Are the Biggest Lessons from the MGM Ransomware Attack?
Dikbiyik also notes that ransomware groups’ more nuanced selection of targets is an indication of increased professionalism. “These groups are doing their homework. They have resources. They acquire intelligence tools…they try to learn their targets,” he says.
Security
InformationWeek - Dialing Down AI Risks While Getting Smarter About Its Uses
“Organizations are suddenly waking up to the fact that serious AI risks exist, and legacy controls don’t suffice. It’s important to implement new controls for a new attack vector.”
Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - Comparitech report details alarming rise in cyberattacks targeting the education sector 
In the 561 attacks since 2018, more than 6.7 million individual records were breached. Schools, those serving students up to age 16, were the most targeted in recent years and also accounted for the most records stolen. Ransom demands made to educational institutions varied between $1,000 and a staggering $40 million, with hackers on average demanding $1.5 million.
Security
Network World - How network security can save security dollars
External threats, meaning hacking, are a problem for every CIO. Internal threats, from badly behaving employees, are a problem for three out of four. Data theft is a universal fear, and malware that interferes with applications and operations is an important problem for over 90% of CIOs. As far as approaches or targets are concerned, 100% say access security on applications and data is essential and so is regular malware scanning. If you ask CIOs to pick a single thing they think is essential for IT security, it’s access security.
Security
InformationWeek - Weighing the AI Threat By Incident Reports

The AI Incident Database chronicles over 2,000 incidents of AI causing harm. It’s a gulp-worthy number that ominously continues to grow. But the devil is in the details and a mere count does not provide sufficient detail in degrees of harm or malevolent intent. Pretending AI is safe is sheer folly but imagining it the bringer of doom is equally foolish. To get a more realistic read on the damage AI has caused and is likely to cause, here’s a hard look at reported incidents in the real world.

Artificial Intelligence
InformationWeek - Microsoft’s 38TB Leak: How IT Leaders Should Respond
“In addition to the overly permissive access scope, the token was also misconfigured to allow ‘full control’ permissions instead of read-only. Meaning, not only could an attacker view all the files in the storage account, but they could delete and overwrite existing files as well,”
Security
SiliconANGLE - Employers take note: HP study finds the business-employee relationship is broken 
 “It’s a fundamental shift in expectations. What are the big drivers of a healthy relationship with work? It boils down to fulfillment, leadership, people-centricity, skills, tools and workspace.”
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - Research warns email rules are being weaponized by cyberattackers 
The research details how once an attacker has access to an account, they can use email rules to hide inbound emails like security alerts or cover their tracks from the owner of the account. Using email rules, an attacker can conceal activities, exfiltrate data by setting rules to forward emails containing specific keywords to external addresses and undertake business email compromise attacks by impersonating senior executives.
Security
VentureBeat - Why security and DevOps need to join forces to safeguard containerized environments
Many DevOps engineers leverage infrastructure-as-code (IAC), which means writing the machine learning code that automates things like deployment, monitoring load, autoscaling, exposing ports and more. And this same code can be used to deploy across any number of environments. Security scanning IAC artifacts in the development pipeline, looking for problematic configurations is key — they can be caught and blocked before they’re ever deployed.
IT Management
Network World - Network observability tools promise benefits, but obstacles hinder results
Observability tools aim to fill those gaps. They are an evolution from performance monitoring technologies that provide IT with data on how various components of their networks are performing. The difference is greater visibility and enhanced analytics that go beyond internal networks and extend to everywhere between end-user devices and service provider environments
Network Management
VentureBeat - Why CISOs need zero trust as a ransomware shield
Zero trust security needs to be a mindset that pervades everything from consolidating tech stacks to managing identities at scale. CISOs and their teams must start with the assumption that a breach has already happened, and an organization’s network needs to be designed to limit an intrusion’s blast radius and depth.
Security
NetworkComputing - The Hidden Costs of Legacy Technology
According to a report from Dell, more than 70% of software used by Fortune 5000 companies was developed 20 or more years ago. Many of these large enterprises are specifically concerned about the immediate financial and temporal costs of transitioning to a new digital architecture, and so continue to utilize their existing systems instead.
IT Management
VentureBeat - Cyber resilience through consolidation part 1: The easiest computer to hack
These malicious links direct to a well-designed website impersonating another known site and tricking users into giving up credentials or opening unknown attachments that may contain malware. These emails are usually not very sophisticated, but social engineering can be quite convincing, with up to 98% of cyberattacks carried out via social engineering tactics.
Security
VentureBeat - Cyber resilience through consolidation part 2: Resisting modern attacks
AI isn’t only being used to mimic human speech, however; it is automating cyberattacks. Attackers can utilize the technology to automate attacks and analyze their own malicious programs to make them more effective. They can also use these programs to monitor and change malware signatures, ultimately skirting detection. There are automated scripts to create and send phishing emails and to check stolen data for user credentials.
Security
InformationWeek - Do’s and Don’ts of GenAI Spend
The underlying technology in GenAI is evolving rapidly. For example, many projects delivered outstanding results with the initial release of GPT-4. But, as more users started using the system and the response time became too long, OpenAI seemed to adjust the algorithms such that they run faster (and at lower cost to OpenAI) but deliver much worse results. As a result, pilot projects that had been successful started running into trouble and companies had to redo the work on the projects with other models.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - IoT startups fill security gaps
In May, a mother who runs a large TikTok account discovered that an attacker had breached the family’s connected baby monitor and spoken to her children late at night.
Security
SiliconANGLE - How organizations can implement a cloud center of excellence to strengthen cloud operating models 
Infrastructure and operations or I&O leaders are responsible for planning the successful execution of their organization’s cloud strategies. A cloud center of excellence, or CCOE, is an effective practice for facilitating and scaling successful cloud adoption in organizations of all sizes and types, regardless of the organization’s cloud strategy.
Cloud
Network World - IBM X-Force: Use of compromised credentials darkens cloud security picture
“In particular, there was a high frequency of service account credentials stored on endpoints, and many were over-privileged. Excessively privileged users can be defined as those who have more permissions than they need to do their job or task,”
Security
sdxCentral - Lack of cloud visibility, machine-speed attacks make every company a target
Per Unit 42, the cloud continues to be the dominant attack surface: The majority (80%) of medium, high or critical exposures were observed on assets hosted in the cloud, compared to those on-premise (19%). Furthermore, more than 75% of publicly accessible software development infrastructure exposures were found in the cloud.
Cloud
SiliconANGLE - Deepfake cyberthreats keep rising. Here’s how to prevent them
The posting has an overview of various deepfake media threats, techniques and trends. The document cites numerous examples of how deepfakes have entered the cyber criminal’s toolkit, such as applications that “have the ability to lift a 2D image to 3D to enable the realistic generation of video based on a single image,” and fake audio clips that can be generated with just a few seconds of a genuine recording of a speaker.
Security
NetworkComputing - Industrial IoT Security Skills and Certifications: The Essentials 
What skills do network managers really need to properly secure industrial networks? What new protocols, frameworks, and regulations are important? And what conferences and certifications can help? Here are five tips to get started.
Network Management
InformationWeek - Leading Kubernetes Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)
They fall into a few classes: misunderstanding how to use pods effectively, using Kubernetes in a way that makes observability difficult or impossible, getting security wrong, and using Kubernetes without automating the deployment. There are many other common mistakes and, to some extent, these all overlap and interact.
Data Management
VentureBeat - “Embrace cybersecurity automation and orchestration, but in moderation,” says my puppy
 Automation refers to the use of technology to automatically perform tasks or actions that were previously done manually by humans. Orchestration, on the other hand, refers to the integration and coordination of different tools and technologies to create a unified security platform. In the case of the automatic pet feeder, automation would be the dispensing of food at scheduled times, while orchestration would be aligning feeding times with Mango’s dietary needs and ordering more food when supplies went low.
Automation & Productivity
Blocks & Files - AI: Intelligent data needs intelligent solutions
To cope with the challenges, while also searching for a competitive edge from AI, the research found 40 percent of leaders are pursuing a multi-pronged approach for mitigating risks from unstructured data in AI, encompassing storage, data management and security tools, as well as using internal task forces to oversee AI use.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - Cisco shapes its strategy for Ethernet-based AI networks
“Customers want to know what they need to do now on the networking side to be able to run the huge clusters of GPUs they need and handle the volumes of data they create. And for most customers, it's going to be Ethernet,”
Network Management
eWeek - Challenges of Microsoft Teams: User Experience and Unbundling
The ability to link to a doc from SharePoint is probably not a high priority for people just trying to have a seamless meeting. But those integrations should be relatively easy to maintain. One big step the company could take in improving usability is to acquire a company like Box. One might think that Box and Microsoft OneDrive are overlapping products, but the reality is that Box improves the Microsoft user experience better than Microsoft’s own product.
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - Remote Desktop Protocol exposures leave 85% of organizations vulnerable to attack 
Notable findings in the report include the ability for attackers to move at “machine speed,” with the ability to scan the entire IPv4 address space for vulnerable targets in minutes. Of more than 30 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures analyzed, three were exploited within hours of public disclosure and 63% were exploited within 12 weeks of the public disclosure.
Security
NetworkComputing - How to Stay Up and Running When the Cloud Goes Down – and Avoid Lock-ins
Relying on one provider anywhere is a risk, so it’s not just the cloud that’s the issue. To achieve genuine redundancy and more robust business continuity, organizations must focus on creating a ‘Multi-X’ strategy: multi-cloud, multi-location, and multi-provider.
Cloud
Cyberscoop - Cyber professionals say industry urgently needs to confront mental health crisis
“Unfortunately, there is still a stigma attached to acknowledging and getting the help we need to address our mental health challenges. This is true across our society, as well as across our profession, where stress, burnout, and languishing have plagued our cyber defenders for years — and the pandemic only exacerbated it.”
Security
InformationWeek - Struggling to Build AI Teams? It’s Time to Focus on Skills
As in the early days of programming and the dot-com boom, businesses will need to start fresh to cultivate the skills needed to build AI-focused teams. And, just as in those days, candidates are unlikely to have learned these skills in traditional educational environments, nor are they likely to have field-specific backgrounds.
Tech Jobs
SiliconANGLE - Cloud-based security threats on the rise, according to new IBM X-Force data 
IBM saw a big jump in using compromised plain text cloud credentials this past year, accounting for more than a third of all reported incidents in the past year, up from 9% in the previous year. Many of these credentials were for service accounts that had additional access privileges, making them more attractive for criminals to move about a target’s network more easily
Security
InformationWeek - How to Minimize Multi-Cloud Complexity
“Perhaps most importantly, the knowledge needed to manage different CSPs is not easily transferrable,” he notes. “There are a lot of AWS folks or Azure folks, and many aren’t certified.” Cloud engineering is highly technical, and integrating enterprise applications across clouds is doubly so, Shirk says. “Having the right talent is extremely important.”
Cloud
VentureBeat - Five ways CISOs are using AI to protect their employees’ digital devices and identities
Using generative AI to automate scripts seeking unprotected endpoints, ports and infrastructure security gaps, cybercrime gangs offer bounties for targeted organizations’ employee digital device passwords and identities. As many recent identity-based breaches show, putting any trust in identities is a breach waiting to happen.
Security
InformationWeek - Forrester CEO on GenAI, ‘Death of the Web’ and ‘Technology Thunderstorms’
“We’ve rarely ever told our clients, ‘You should move forward with a technology,’ we typically tell our clients, ‘Wait, let’s let the vendor environment rationalize. Let’s let other companies make some mistakes. Let’s watch this technology as it develops. But I will tell you in the case of generative artificial intelligence, we are not giving you that advice. We are saying you must do this now,” Colony said.
Automation & Productivity
TechStartups - 25 Best SaaS Alternatives & Competitors
As of 2023, there are approximately 30,000 SaaS companies, although some estimates suggest the number could be as high as 70,000 worldwide. It’s also not surprising that a majority of these SaaS companies are based in the United States, with well-known SaaS tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk, Zapier, Slack, Stripe, Google Analytics, Mailchimp, Asana, and Zoom currently dominating the market.
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - Exposed: Cybercriminals jailbreak AI chatbots, then sell as ‘custom LLMs’
SlashNext noted AI jailbreaking is still in its experimental phase, which involves exploiting weaknesses in the public chatbot’s prompting system. Users employ specialized commands or sequences of text to trick the AI into discarding its built-in safety measures and guidelines.
Security
VentureBeat - Want a new job? These 5 cities are the top U.S. tech startup ecosystems
Silicon Valley maintains its dominance, but is just one of a number of key U.S. startup ecosystems fueling startups, all of which drive investment and job creation. The report points to New York in second place, with Los Angeles taking third place. Boston and Seattle come in at fourth and fifth places, respectively.
Tech Jobs
sdxCentral - Dissecting the MOVEit breach: Lessons learned from the ransomware attack
MOVEit file transfer software is used by thousands of organizations around the world. In late May, it was discovered that large amounts of data were being transferred from its deployments. Attackers were exploiting a zero-day software vulnerability — or that which is discovered by threat actors before defenders, meaning there is no known or as-yet developed patch.
Security
Network World - Enterprise DPU advances are spurred by AI, security, networking apps
An early entrant in that category is HPE Aruba’s CX 10000, which combines DPU technology from AMD Pensando with high-end switching capabilities. Available since early 2022, the CX 10000 is a top-of-rack, L2/3 data-center box with 3.6Tbps of switching capacity. The box eliminates the need for separate appliances to handle low latency traffic, security and load balancing, for example.
Network Management
NetworkComputing - Wi-Fi 7 May Be Closer Than You Think
Why is any of this a problem? As the number of users grows and traffic increases, performance issues arise. Contention for the limited bandwidth diminishes bandwidth for each user, increases latency, and introduces jitter. All these issues particularly impact modern applications that rely on streaming data and video. Users need more bandwidth and better responsiveness for their apps.
Network Management
Blocks & Files - Increased cloud costs pulls focus of some SMEs to on-site storage
Although more than a quarter (27 percent) of SMEs said they initially adopted cloud to reduce computing expenditure, they now expect a 10 percent increase in the cost of cloud services this year. Several major cloud providers have introduced double-digit price increases for services used by SMEs already.
Data Storage
sdxCentral - What CISOs need to know about private 5G network security
"The most important is access control. Public 5G networks are designed to provide connectivity to a wide range of users, whereas private 5G is for specific use cases within the boundaries of a company. Access control in a private 5G environment is more centralized and tightly managed,”
Security
SiliconANGLE - Lessons from a ransomware attack: How one healthcare CIO helped her company recover 
The attack took down servers, workstations, network storage and backups, but fortunately not electronic health records, which were hosted offsite. It encrypted the picture archiving and communication system that contains the X-rays vital to orthopedic surgery. The application and database needed to view the images were also hit and the internet protocol phones went down.
Security
sdxCentral - Microsoft vulnerabilities make up 75% of top 20 exploited list
(CVE-2017-11882): This bug, also included in the CISA’s “Additional Routinely Exploited Vulnerabilities in 2022” list, was exploited by 467 malware, 53 threat actors and 14 ransomware. It was trending over the years as recently as August 31, 2023. Qualys researchers noted the vulnerability involves significant memory corruption in Microsoft Office’s Equation Editor, which allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code under the current user’s permissions.
Security
InformationWeek - The Benefits and Drawbacks of Hybrid Cloud Storage
“This can be used to test all aspects of utilizing a new storage architecture, including technical feasibility, program governance, and cost management.” He adds that it’s important to be deliberate and thorough about testing specific low-risk scenarios, such as low-cost cloud storage, when archiving legacy data or using redundant storage to introduce high availability.
Data Storage
The Hacker News - Protecting Your Microsoft IIS Servers Against Malware Attacks
Recently, a slew of activity by the advanced persistent threat (APT) group Lazarus has focused on finding vulnerable Microsoft IIS servers and infecting them with malware or using them to distribute malicious code. This article describes the details of the malware attacks and offers actionable suggestions for protecting Microsoft IIS servers against them.
Security
Blocks & Files - Gartner unveils hottest storage trends for 2023
None of these topics will be news to B&F readers. Each trend is anchored by a strategic planning assumption (SPA), such as “By 2028, consumption-based STaaS will replace over 35 percent of enterprise storage capex, up from less than 10 percent in 2023.”
Data Storage
NetworkComputing - IT Leaders are at a Crossroads – It’s Time They Demand More
In fact, 98% of IT leaders said they were planning to increase their dependence and investment in cloud services. Similarly, 98% said that hybrid work has increased the need for new network and security solutions, with 97% needing hybrid work plans immediately or within the next 12 months. Legacy providers will have you believe that employees going back to the office is a major reason for their declining performance numbers. Whether or not that’s true, it points to the fact that they’re ill-prepared for the shift that has taken place in the enterprise.
IT Management
NetworkComputing - Successfully Implement Zero Trust to Secure Hybrid Environments
While they have proven to be valuable for protecting remote workers, this approach only covers part of the problem. Today's ZTNA solutions for remote workers are cloud-delivered, and they typically become inactive when the user is onsite, thereby reverting to less secure, perimeter-based security approaches in the LAN.
Security
InformationWeek - IT Resilience and How to Achieve It
“Data storage systems lie at the heart of efforts to build IT environments that are resilient to logical data corruption in all its forms.” Protective measures should include technologies designed to avoid downtime, ensure access to critical applications, middleware, and data, and maintain user productivity."
IT Management
Network World - 10 questions to ask about secure service edge (SSE)
On the customer side, a recent Gartner survey of CISOs revealed that “a majority of buyers are planning for a two-vendor strategy for SASE,” with security and networking teams making separate buying decisions rather than opting for single-vendor SASE.
Security
sdxCentral - Research shows mainframes are still vital, support teams getting younger
The survey found that there is continued growth and innovation on the mainframe platform. A large majority – 94% of respondents – have a positive view of the mainframe, and 63% reported increased investments in the past year. DevOps and AIOps adoption on the mainframe teams is increasing, with 62% using DevOps and 32% using AIOps. Mainframe users aren’t myopic, either, and typically also use modern server technology and increasingly have an interest in cloud, according to the report
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - W3LL ‘Phishing Empire’ targets Microsoft 365 accounts 
The group, called “W3LL,” runs a hidden underground market known as the W3LL Store that serves a closed community of at least 500 threat actors. On the store, the group sells a custom phishing kit called the W3LL Panel that is designed to bypass multifactor authentication, as well as 16 other customized tools for business email compromise or BEC attacks.
Security
sdxCentral - Behind the firewalls: A day in the life of a Palo Alto Networks SOC analyst
Palo Alto Networks’ internal security operations center (SOC) ingests more than 36 billion events and 75 terabytes of data per day, yet it’s run by only 10 analysts. The company’s SOC Operations Specialist Devin Johnstone explained their ’30/30/30” working model and how they leverage new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered cybersecurity technologies to handle the workloads of about 16 analysts for them.
Security
SiliconANGLE - It’s the summer of adversarial chatbots. Here’s how to defend against them 
Both WormGPT and FraudGPT are freed from the ethical guardrails that legitimate chatbot tools have. Typically, those guardrails mean the bots can’t directly answer queries about illegal activity, hacking methods or the like. However, Erzberger was able to manipulate ChatGPT to offer up similar phishing lures and other responses to WormGPT after careful prompt engineering.
Privacy & Security
InformationWeek - CFOs and IT Spending: Best Practices for Cost-Cutting
“When the CIOs understand how the CFOs wants to view and present financial data, they are able to optimize and prioritize IT spend,” he says. “We also find that CIOs who are skilled in speaking the language of finance get more IT budget.”
IT Management
VentureBeat - 5 emerging tech job titles for 2023, and beyond
But with over 100 million users to date, prompt engineers have become a vital part of the AI ecosystem with remuneration to match — salaries in the U.S. are reported to be between $230,000 and $335,000 — and the number of job posts featuring the term GPT rose 51% between 2021 and 2022.
Tech Jobs
NetworkComputing - Is It Time to Clean Up Your Network Management Tool Bench?
In many cases, your asset management tracking system can help with the location and identification of these network tools, but not every organization has asset management software. Even those that do still find cases where tools might have been purchased that are not in the asset management system. Situations like these will require IT to manually track down network management tools until all are accounted for, with an end goal of achieving a thorough inventory of total tools.
Network Management
sdxCentral - New SEC cybersecurity disclosure rules: How enterprises can prepare
Not surprisingly, organizations of all sizes have many questions — from whether they have the right protocols and reporting channels in place, to whether they have the basics of cybersecurity down — while they also point to the vagary of the term “material” and express trepidation about the four-day turnaround.
Security
InformationWeek - To Pay or Not to Pay? The Ransomware Dilemma
"As soon as a ransomware demand is made, a company’s cybersecurity team needs to jump into action. The first step is to inform everyone who will be involved in responding to the incident, inside and outside of the company. “The IT/security team should never be operating in a vacuum when these events occur,”
Security
The Hacker News - Three CISOs Share How to Run an Effective SOC
Both Tammy and Rob emphasize that the vast amount of data produced and retained by organizations requires efficient tools for analysis. Automation helps address the skills gap in cybersecurity. CISOs that invest in automation can hire fewer analysts and allow them to focus on high-priority tasks – reducing the volume of manual triage work.
Security
DarkReading - How Companies Can Cope With the Risks of Generative AI Tools
Organizations must be discerning about which data they share with generative AI models. Many employees are stretched thin, and it can be tempting to reduce one's workload by offloading tasks to generative AI. But any data shared with these models can be misused or compromised if it falls into the wrong hands. Things such as sensitive (e.g., financial) data, trade secrets, and other confidential business information need to be protected.
Privacy & Security
InformationWeek - Making Sense of the Commodity We Call Storage
In the survey, 94% of respondents reported that their cloud storage costs were rapidly rising, and 54% said that cloud storage costs were rising at higher rates than other cloud costs. “The survey results confirm that cloud storage costs continue to rise while also showing there is no single prevailing strategy to decide what storage to put in the cloud and what to keep on premises,"
Data Storage
Network World - 3 types of incremental forever backup
Full-file incremental forever, block-level incremental forever or source depulication? The best way to choose is to perform backup and recovery tests and evaluate the performance of each method.
Data Management
NetworkComputing - Private 5G: Not As Scary As You Think 
Private 5G has been a hot topic of late. A recent ZK Research survey found that 92% of organizations have or plan to deploy private cellular. The interest in private 5G is high, but there is some trepidation among enterprises as network engineers fear the complexity to deploy the technology.
Network Management
Computerworld - With BYOD comes responsibility — and many firms aren't delivering
That’s the biggest take-away from the latest Jamf research, which warns that almost half of enterprises across Europe still don’t have a formal Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policy in place. That’s bad, as it means companies have no control over how employees connect and use corporate resources, creating a nice, soft attack surface for criminals and competitors alike.
IT Management
NetworkComputing - The Top 10 Benefits of SD-WAN: Advantages of SD-WAN Explained
When SD-WAN is understood as a conceptual delivery model for services, it can then underpin many best practices for security. It’s not a matter of SD-WAN versus SASE but the knowledge that SD-WAN delivers the foundational building blocks of SASE. The network is still one of the best places for many security controls.
Network Management
InformationWeek - Emotional Intelligence: An Often-Overlooked IT Leadership Skill
“As a leader, be clear about requirements and expectations, be unwavering about commitments, yet be pragmatic with respect to changes and pivots that positively impact the outcome,” he advises. “It’s part art and part science: The balance between both is where the best outcomes emerge.”
IT Management
DarkReading - Addressing Cybersecurity's Talent Shortage & Its Impact on CISOs
What's behind this growing shortage? We're seeing organizations shift their approach to cloud-first strategies to achieve greater scale and flexibility. At the same time, they're using more than one cloud technology provider and multiple database providers, resulting in more work, more alerts, and more data. This creates a need for new tools, changes in practice and skill, and overall involvement due to complexity.
Security
AiThority - Unleashing the Potential of Plugins: The Top 10 ChatGPT Add-ons
ChatGPT has taken AI to unprecedented heights, outperforming its prior capabilities. It’s not only ChatGPT 4; this AI chatbot connects effortlessly with third-party plugins. Plugins are user-friendly and open up a world of opportunities. A sentiment analysis plugin, for instance, enables ChatGPT to evaluate and decipher the emotions underlying text inputs, while a language translation plugin enables it to comprehend and respond in many languages.
ChatGPT
DarkReading - MOVEit Was a SQL Injection Accident Waiting to Happen
We do not have insight into Progress Software's software development life cycle or security practices to ascertain what happened. While a vulnerability assessment system or even a bug hunting program could have potentially identified SQL injection flaws in the code before it was exploited, focusing on producing code that is secure by construction is an even better way to address this class of vulnerability.
Security
VentureBeat - OpenAI launches long-awaited ChatGPT for Enterprise — but is it playing catch-up?
Savvy enterprise technology leaders such as CTOs and heads of IT will be concerned about the security ramifications of ChatGPT for Enterprise. However, OpenAI offers two features to assuage doubts: “Customer prompts or data are not used for training models,” the company states.
ChatGPT
Computerworld - Workers are embracing AI but want more guidance on how to use it, says survey
The use cases for this technology have rapidly expanded since the introduction of generative AI tools into the public domain, with most workers using the technology to streamline tasks and reduce so-called busy work. According to the report, 30% of employees surveyed for the report currently use AI for data analysis, and 25% for administrative functions. However, many want to take things even further, with 45% of US respondents saying they want to use AI for brainstorming. In the UK, that figure sits at 32%.
Automation & Productivity
Blocks & Files - Five steps to mastering multicloud management
This complexity is then magnified when we consider data management challenges. Shuttling data between public clouds and on-premises systems becomes harder with the increase of data gravity, and even container orchestration tools, such as Kubernetes, require deep technical skills when it comes to managing persistent storage. And the data reflects this struggle. According to a recent VMware State of Kubernetes research report published in May, 57 percent of those surveyed citing inadequate internal experience as a main challenge to managing Kubernetes.
Cloud
InformationWeek - Top Cloud Security Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)
“When you use multiple security tools in parallel, each has its own set of capabilities, security policies, management portals, and logging, so each works a bit differently,” he explains. This leads to inconsistent security policies, varying levels of protection for individual platforms, and disparate logging and reporting. “In essence, it means that the level of protection for each application and service is determined by the platform it resides in, not its threat profile.”
Security
Network World - Most hyped network technologies and how to deal with them
The appeal of promising network technologies can be jaded by pressure to adopt untested ideas. When I look over the comments I’ve gotten from enterprise technologists this year, one thing that stands out is that almost three-quarters of them said that entrenched views held by company executives is a “significant problem” for them in sustaining their network and IT operations.
Network Management
VentureBeat - This is how AI will shape early-career tech jobs
Couple this with the fact that AI is predicted to eliminate 83 million global jobs by 2027 and it’s easy to see why for those starting out in their careers, AI will not only shape their day-to-day but have a massive impact on their overall career trajectory.
Tech Jobs
InformationWeek - ChatGPT Enterprise Launch Targets Business Users
ChatGPT had already started selling a premium subscription to its software for consumers and had started offering companies paid access to application programming services. But OpenAI’s latest offering will include unlimited use of OpenAI’s most powerful generative AI tool, GPT-4, along with data encryption and a promise that customers’ data will remain private.
ChatGPT
SiliconANGLE - New report finds growing gap in cyber insurance coverage
The increasing difficulty in obtaining cyber insurance is being driven by increasing cyberattacks, with a remarkable 47% of companies polled for the report saying that they made claims on their cyber insurance more than once in the last year. More companies making claims means that the cost of insurance has also increased, with 67% of respondents saying that their cyber insurance rates increased 50% to 100% upon application or renewal in the last 12 months.
Security
Computerworld - Managed Apple IDs, iCloud, and the shadow IT connection
Because Apple Business Manager supports federation with most cloud-based enterprise identity providers such as Azure AD and Google Workspace or  solutions using oAuth or Okta (full Okta support is coming later this year), the creation of managed Apple IDs can be completely automated with the IDs matched to each user’s enterprise credentials.
IT Management
VentureBeat - Salesforce survey flags AI trust gap between enterprises and customers
While they highlighted multiple concerns, the most prominent challenges they reported were the lack of transparency and the lack of a human in the loop to validate the output of the AI — demanded by more than 80%. Just 37% of the respondents said they actually trust AI to provide as accurate responses as a human would.
Artificial Intelligence
NetworkComputing - Why Distributedness is a Measure of Digital Maturity 
That’s why multi-cloud networking (MCN) exists as a market and why it continues to gain traction. Its entire raison d'être is to establish the capability to seamlessly operate across core, cloud, and edge without requiring a formal IT project with a budget bigger than the 2022 GDP of Vermont. (That’s about $40B, for those wondering).
Network Management
VentureBeat - How to minimize data risk for generative AI and LLMs in the enterprise
Instead of sending your data out to an LLM, bring the LLM to your data. This is the model most enterprises will use to balance the need for innovation with the importance of keeping customer PII and other sensitive data secure. Most large businesses already maintain a strong security and governance boundary around their data, and they should host and deploy LLMs within that protected environment.
Privacy & Security
SiliconANGLE - Meta’s Facebook finally supports end-to-end message encryption: four lessons for IT managers 
It’s an important step, since E2EE, as it’s known for short, is a critical method of providing secure communication that keeps outside parties from accessing data while it’s transferred between systems or devices. But the announcement isn’t the whole story, either, because Facebook is playing catch-up with many of its competitors, such as Signal and Telegram, which have offered E2EE messaging products for years now.
Security
Network World - What are network assurance tools and why are they important?
"As networks evolve to accommodate IoT, cloud services, and remote work, the need for reliable and secure connectivity becomes paramount.” Network assurance tools bridge the gap between network visibility and operational excellence. "These tools encapsulate a suite of technologies and methodologies designed to ensure the reliability, performance, and security of complex network infrastructures.”
Network Management
eWeek - Neural Networks vs. Deep Learning
Many applications don’t need deep learning, with its ability to plumb the depths of AI’s capacity. Neural networks also offer powerhouse performance, though less so; yet  increasingly, even basic AI tools are harnessing relatively simple neural networks as part of their operations. But as complexity rises, deep learning must be introduced to provide the expected level of performance and accuracy.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - Why generative AI is a double-edged sword for the cybersecurity sector
That being said, gen AI and LLMs create output based on existing content, whether that comes from the open internet or the specific datasets that they have been trained on. That means they are good at iterating on what came before, which can be a boon for attackers. For example, in the same way that AI can create iterations of content using the same set of words, it can create malicious code that is similar to something that already exists, but different enough to evade detection.
Security
SiliconANGLE - How the new breed of business virtual private networks will keep them relevant in security 
But the software-centric VPNs bring up an entirely new set of issues, including protecting user privacy, performing regular independent security audits, and having a wide enough access server network across the globe. The leading consumer VPNs have stepped up their game accordingly to be more secure and transparent about their operations. They have also begun to offer business-grade VPNs, such as Proton did this week.
Network Management
sdxCentral - Synthetic identity fraud is at an all-time high — how does it work?
Think of it as the “Frankenstein” of fraud [ed. note: frankenfraud — sorry, couldn’t resist]: A criminal actor steals bits and pieces of personal data from real people — say, a child’s Social Security number, the home address of someone currently incarcerated, the birth date of a recently deceased person — then cobbles them all together to create an all-new fake identity.
Privacy & Security
InformationWeek - How to Build True Cyber Resilience
Where are organizations in their journeys to cyber resilience today? Cybersecurity awareness has grown in recent years. It is no longer just an IT and security executive concern. The rest of the C-suite and board members are getting onboard, but understanding the need to recognize and respond to cyber threats is just the first step to actually implementing cyber resilience.
Security
NetworkComputing - How to Make SD-WAN Predictive Automation a Reality 
Enterprise network managers must consider three key requirements to ensure automation drives value: End-to-end intelligence, analytics-driven prediction, and predictive automation, all rooted on a solid and consistent telemetry foundation.
Network Management
VentureBeat - How AI brings greater accuracy, speed, and scale to microsegmentation
Gartner predicts that through 2023, at least 99% of cloud security failures will be the user’s fault. Getting microsegmentation right in multicloud configurations can make or break any zero-trust initiative. Ninety percent of enterprises migrating to the cloud are adopting zero trust, but just 22% are confident their organization will capitalize on its many benefits and transform their business.
Security
Computerworld - The most in-demand AI skills — and how companies want to use them
The top 10 Generative AI-related skills listed in Upwork job seeker profiles with the largest quarter-over-quarter growth (Q2 2023 vs Q1 2023) were: Large Language Model (LLM); Generative AI; You Only Look Once (YOLO); Object Detection; Stable Diffusion; Prompt Engineering; ChatGPT; Azure OpenAI; AI Chatbot; and AI Text-to-Speech.
Tech Jobs
SiliconANGLE - Barracuda details how AI is being used by attackers and defenders 
Of the data analyzed, 0.1% of customer events, or 985,000, were classed as “alarms,” activity that could be malicious and required further investigation. Out of these, only 9.7% were flagged to the customer for checking, while a further 2.7% were classed as high-risk and passed to a Security Operations Center analyst for deeper analysis. Six thousand required immediate defensive action to contain and neutralize the threat.
Security
Computerworld - The line-blurring brilliance of Google's new ChromeOS-Windows connection
Most of us mere mortals spend most of our time in browser-based apps — or easily could — and especially when you add in the platform's availability of more advanced progressive web apps along with Android apps and even Linux apps, there's very little most people would need to do that they couldn't accomplish on a Chromebook at this point.
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - This is how generative AI will free up your time at work
Crafting first drafts of text documents is its most popular use at 9%, followed by personalized marketing (8%), summarizing text documents (8%) and identifying trends in customer needs (7%). ChatGPT is also being used by 5% of workers to draft technical documents and forecast trends or anomalies, while 4% are using the tool to create new product designs.
Automation & Productivity
AiThority - The AI Litmus Test: 10 AI Detection Tools That Separate Human Touch from Machine Brilliance
One notable case where differentiation between human and AI-generated results became challenging was the emergence of deepfake technology. Deepfakes employ AI algorithms to create realistic, yet fabricated, videos or audio recordings, often impersonating real people. These deceptive creations pose significant challenges in discerning truth from fiction and have raised concerns about the potential misuse of AI-generated content.
Artificial Intelligence
TechRepublic - Gartner: How to Expand Your Value as CIO in 4 Ways
Now, CIOs must look to the next evolution of their role. Digitalization is no longer a large, centrally driven effort, but rather a continuous series of efforts within almost every function, with an increased focus on achieving payback from existing investments. CxOs recognize they must also be accountable leaders of technology and want to partner with CIOs to achieve the right structure for technology democratization. Finally, automation and the advancement of AI are rapidly changing the business technology landscape.
IT Management
InformationWeek - Quick Study: Your Future in IT
To get a sense of what the future holds for the IT group, we gathered a collection of InformationWeek articles focused on just some of the aspects of IT and where it is heading: job opportunities, recruiting, team leadership and skills.
IT Management
Network World - Human error in network operations and how to deal with it
You might have been alarmed to read recently that half of all network problems are due to human error. Well, bad news. That’s true of the number of problems. If you look at the hours of degraded or failed operation, three-quarters of all of it is due to human error.
Network Management
InformationWeek - Does Your IT Organization Need an AI Team?
“On-site AI experts are especially important for teams that work with potentially sensitive data, such as governance, compliance and risk management, to safeguard operations and proactively address any risks.”
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - Networking vendors highlight AI opportunities as order backlog challenges begin to subside
“The acceleration of AI will fundamentally change our world and create new growth drivers for us,” Robbins said. “Cisco's ASIC design and scalable fabric for AI position us very well to build out the infrastructure that hyperscalers and others need to build AI ML clusters. We expect Ethernet will lead in connecting AI workloads over the next five years.”
Network Management
TechRepublic - About 2000 Citrix NetScalers Were Compromised in Massive Attack Campaigns
Shadowserver reported the U.S. is the country with the most unique IPs of unpatched systems, with more than 2,600 unique IPs being vulnerable to CVE-2023-3519
Security
TechStartups - AI Wrappers: The rise of AI wrappers and the challenges ahead
However, our findings revealed that many of these products are nothing but AI wrappers built on top of the existing Large Language Models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s offerings. The differentiating features often involve fine-tuning and a user-friendly visual interface. But that doesn’t really matter to the deep-pocket investors who already bought into the hype.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - How businesses can measure the success of AI applications
One fundamental characteristic that distinguishes AI from traditional software is its non-deterministic nature. Even with the same input, different rounds of computing produce different results. While this characteristic contributes significantly to AI’s exciting technological potential, it also presents challenges, particularly in measuring the effectiveness of AI-based applications.
Artificial Intellgence
InformationWeek - Business Leaders: Asking the Right Questions About Generative AI
We often get asked what the single best use case is to start with. GenAI is so scalable and it’s usually a missed opportunity to focus too closely on any one use case. Instead, focus on how a single, repeatable “pattern” of generative AI deployment can apply across your value chain. For example, generative AI’s capacity for deep retrieval -- extracting actionable insights from unstructured data -- may deliver only modest value in a single function. But if you rapidly roll out deep retrieval in every line of business and every function, from compliance to human resources, the ROI can be spectacular.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - AI in OT: Opportunities and risks you need to know
In Information technology (IT), the consequences are often much less, such as losing data. On the other hand, in OT, if an oil refinery ignites, there is the potential cost of life, negative impacts on the environment, significant liability concerns, as well as long-term brand damage. This emphasizes the importance of making quick — and accurate — decisions during times of crisis. And this is ultimately why relying solely on AI or other tools is not perfect for OT operations, as the consequences of an error are immense.
Artificial Intelligence
NetworkComputing - Adapting to the Cloud Era of Cybersecurity: How CISO’s Priorities Are Evolving
As the CISO role evolves with these moves to the cloud, CyberRatings recommends that CISOs adapt by shifting priorities from operating security programs to overseeing (monitoring and auditing) outsourced security programs. This is where a rigorous certification can help. To that end, MEF and CyberRatings.org recently announced a partnership to launch a new SASE Certification Program to provide confidence to enterprises. Certifications will include SD-WAN, a Zero Trust Framework, and SSE (Threat Protection)
Security
Network World - 9 career-boosting Wi-Fi certifications
The Certified Wireless Network Administrator (CWNA) vendor-neutral certification is more in-depth than the CWT, although there is no prerequisite for this certification beyond the recommendation to have basic knowledge of networking (routers, switches, TCP/IP, etc.) and one year of work experience with wireless LAN technologies. It covers the design and configuration of WLANs and is actually the required base certification you must obtain before proceeding to their higher security, design, analysis, or expert certifications
Training & Certs
NetworkComputing - Understanding Private 5G Deployment Options
The DIY approach comes with significant disadvantages, however. Piecing together a P5G system requires a deep understanding of cellular data technologies and necessitates skilled cellular practitioners to properly deploy, integrate, calibrate, and tune the network. This can be a heavy lift for already overburdened IT staff.
Network Management
InformationWeek - Discussing IT Issues With the Board
For example, the board is not likely to know or understand the implications of more IT being done by user departments (for example, citizen development), or of the move of more IT (and IoT) to the edge of the network. For IT, these operational changes mean making changes in how IT supports, services, develops, deploys, and secures IT assets. The impact of such changes might alter the skills needed, job descriptions and IT organizational deployment.
IT Management
VentureBeat - Top 20 cloud native application protection platforms of 2023
CrowdStrike’s 2023 Global Threat Report explains why cloud-first attacks are growing: Attackers are moving away from deactivating antivirus, firewall technologies and log-tampering efforts and toward modifying core authentication processes, along with quickly gaining credentials and identity-based privileges.
Security
InformationWeek - 4 of the Biggest Vulnerabilities Talked About During Black Hat 2023
Surana tells InformationWeek that vulnerabilities in Azure ML indicate the possibility of security concerns in other MLaaS platforms. “The underlying issues related to insecure logging and storage of sensitive information, sensitive information disclosure, and potential persistence mechanisms could potentially extend to other cloud-based MLaaS platforms as well,” he explains.
Security
sdxCentral - Inside cybersecurity’s mental health crisis: Experts offer advice
That stress goes all the way up the chain: BlackFog found that close to one-third (32%) of CISOs and cybersecurity leaders in the U.S. and UK were considering quitting, citing a lack of work-life balance and too much time spent “firefighting” rather than strategizing, among other factors.
Security
Network World - Hybrid mesh firewall platforms gain interest as management challenges intensify
Hybrid mesh firewalls are also different from cybersecurity mesh architecture, says Gartner analyst Adam Hils. A cybersecurity mesh architecture stitches together multiple cybersecurity products from a single vendor, he says, not just firewalls. But a hybrid mesh firewall could be one component of a cybersecurity mesh architecture, or it could be deployed on its own.
Security
VentureBeat - Want to mitigate cyber risk? Start with zero trust visibility
This idea of getting IT running and letting legacy risk lie, with the only real objective being to “keep the lights on,” has left large swaths of infrastructure and technology within the reach of bad actors. Merely keeping things running, without looking to new functions and opportunities, will provide a wealth of new avenues for cybercrime growth for a long time to come.
Security
sdxCentral - 3 tips for proactive risk management in generative AI
CIOs and technologists know that generative AI is not “thinking” or being creative in a human way, and they also likely know that the outputs are not necessarily as accurate as they might appear. Nontechnical business users, however, may not and may consequently put misplaced trust in the outputs.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - Tackling the not-so-hidden risks of ChatGPT and generative AI
“Does a pharmaceutical company want to upload its IP and customer information into OpenAI? Of course not,” Têtu says “Do I want my customer service people to start loading it up as prompts into GPT, and let GPT store it and use it for someone else? You must isolate the corpus of data that is secure before you even start generating an answer, and control how the generative platform will use the data.”
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - How old Facebook plus new AI could save remote work
I’m talking about the early version of Facebook that Mark Zuckerberg created as a Harvard student. This social networking tool was designed to help new students create relationships and to better connect them to the school so they felt like they belonged. This is the identical problem that new employees are facing, particularly those who are just out of school and have never worked for a firm before.
Automation & Productivity
InformationWeek - 5 Questions Organizations Should Ask Themselves Before Collecting Data
The rise of APIs means systems and applications are more connected than ever. To keep those APIs up and running, most businesses are collecting as much information as possible and analyzing it after the fact. That might work from an operational standpoint, but it leaves the organization in a precarious position from a data security perspective. If data isn’t being used for a specific purpose, it is effectively an albatross for the organization: protecting it requires energy and resources for little or no tangible gain
Data Management
VentureBeat - Gartner Hype Cycle places generative AI on the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’
“Every vendor is knocking on the door of an enterprise CIO or CTO and saying, ‘We’ve got generative AI baked into our product,'” he explained, adding that executives are struggling to navigate this landscape, including figuring out the level of customization and the security and privacy practices of various features.
Artificial Intelligence
eWeek - Risks of Generative AI: 6 Risk Management Tips
Establishing these policies gives your employees a better framework for what they can and cannot do with generative AI and also gives your leadership a clearer understanding of what behaviors they should be monitoring and correcting. If you’re looking for an existing policy to model your own policy after, NIST’s Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework is a great option.
Risk Management
Network World - Data replication works best when combined with robust backups
The prime advantage of synchronous replication lies in its ability to ensure a high level of data protection. With the source and target volumes kept in constant synchronization, the risk of data loss due to a disaster or failure is greatly diminished. However, there is a trade-off: The performance of the target system and the data replication path can introduce significant delays in ACK delivery, affecting application response times.
Data Management
sdxCentral - CrowdStrike CTO explains adversaries’ focus on identity amid skyrocketing attacks
Kerberoasting is a post-exploitation attack technique that attempts to obtain a password hash of a Microsoft Active Directory (recently rebranded as Entra ID) account that has a service principal name, often resulting in threat actors gaining higher privileges and allowing them to remain undetected in victim environments for longer periods of time, according to CrowdStrike.
Security
InformationWeek - Exploring the Contemporary Place of Graph Databases
Many organizations continue to avoid the additional complexity of graph databases by forcing relationship workloads into relational databases, even though graph databases have been around for decades. The benefits of a graph database for relationship/network/tree-based workloads are substantial, even if an additional database platform is required.
Data & Analytics
DarkReading - Boards Don't Want Security Promises — They Want Action
It's not enough to provide insight around security that the board can understand, even though this is a skill in its own right. The biggest challenge that CISOs face is how to demonstrate that our security processes and updates will reduce risk in measurable and achievable ways. For those of us who have fought to get a seat at the table, this immediate response might seem like a poor return on all that investment.
Security
SiliconANGLE - How to prevent multifactor authentication fatigue attacks 
That’s what happened in separate attacks at Uber Inc. and Twilio Inc. last year: Attackers persuaded a single employee in both organizations to enter MFA codes into a phony website that was a replica and controller by the attackers. The attackers don’t have to be very sophisticated: In Uber’s case, it was a teen who contacted the target user via WhatsApp and claimed to be from the IT department to give the request more credibility.
Security
sdxCentral - AMD report finds IT leaders unprepared for AI adoption
The researched identified a host of other roadblocks preventing broader enterprise adoption of AI, including compliance concerns and infrastructure needs, “all of which [are] valid,” Unangst pointed out. But as AI shifts further into the mainstream, IT leaders “need to be intentional” about investing in “the right” AI tools and partners, he said.
Artificial Intelligence
The Hacker News - What's the State of Credential theft in 2023?
At a little overt halfway through 2023, credential theft is still a major thorn in the side of IT teams. The heart of the problem is the value of data to cybercriminals and the evolution of the techniques they use to get hold of it. The 2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) revealed that 83% of breaches involved external actors, with almost all attacks being financially motivated. Of these breaches by external actors, 49% involved the use of stolen credentials.
Security
SiliconANGLE - New reports show phishing is on the rise – and getting more sophisticated 
Some of these links led potential victims on a series of redirections, such as one email that used the Silicon Valley Bank’s logo to prey on users. It went through a series of four different websites until landing on a phony DocuSign site. It illustrates the effort that attackers will go to hide their criminality. Another sophisticated attack was targeted at Cloudflare employees, which wasn’t successful thanks to its using FIDO-2 hardware keys.
Security
InformationWeek - Robotic Process Automation: Is Your Job at Risk?
The good news, he notes, is that most IT positions don’t fit this description. “Even jobs on the IT service desk still, in the main, require a conversation or perhaps the interpretation of a written ticket,” Butterfield says. “That means additional technologies would be needed, along with RPA, to automate even some of these processes.”
Tech Jobs
SiliconANGLE - Analyst ANGLE: What’s happening with cloud-native applications — and what comes next? 
“Sixty-four percent … of the respondents that did our survey are delivering cloud-native applications based on microservices,” he said. “We see that 33% are using multitier or traditional-based cloud-native application approaches, and that’s largely due to the heritage or siloed applications that are being deployed.”
Cloud
eWeek - Generative AI and Data Analytics: Best Practices
The surest way forward here is to rely primarily on first-party data, as your team can easily trace its source and identify any issues with internal resources and users. However, it’s sometimes necessary to use third-party data resources. In those cases, make sure you’re sourcing data from a reputable source, preferably one that is transparent with its data sourcing and security practices. In all cases, assess your data to ensure it is high quality, free of bias, ethically sourced, and compliant with any relevant regulations.
Data & Analytics
Datanami - AMD Study Reveals 75% of IT Leaders Optimistic About AI Benefits But Face Adoption Roadblocks
Today, AMD released the findings from a new survey of global IT leaders which found that 3 in 4 IT leaders are optimistic about the potential benefits of AI — from increased employee efficiency to automated cybersecurity solutions — and more than 2 in 3 are increasing investments in AI technologies. However, while AI presents clear opportunities for organizations to become more productive, efficient, and secure, IT leaders expressed uncertainty on their AI adoption timeliness due to their lack of implementation roadmaps and the overall readiness of their existing hardware and technology stack.
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Coughlin: SSDs will not kill disk drives
Barring a significant economic downturn, we expect demand for digital storage to support AI, IoT, media and entertainment as well as genomic and other medical applications to drive increased storage demand. This should bring growth back to HDDs, SSDs and magnetic tape capacity shipments as all of these storage media increase in their per-device storage capacities.”
Data Storage
VentureBeat - How FraudGPT presages the future of weaponized AI
FraudGPT, a new subscription-based generative AI tool for crafting malicious cyberattacks, signals a new era of attack tradecraft. Discovered by Netenrich’s threat research team in July 2023 circulating on the dark web’s Telegram channels, it has the potential to democratize weaponized generative AI at scale.
Security
sdxCentral- How confidential computing is changing cloud data security
It allows sensitive data to be processed securely in a trusted computing environment, such as a public cloud, without revealing the data to anyone who is not authorized to access it. Confidential computing shields unauthorized access, ensuring that the data remains confidential, even if the computing infrastructure is compromised.
Security
Network World - Hybrid workforce demands change from network ops
“You need secure remote access solutions that offer integrated network security automation, centralized management, and network optimization or network enhancement of some kind. You should consider endpoint monitoring and synthetic monitoring to enhance your overall observability of remote workers,”
Network Management
Computerworld - How to build employee trust as AI gains ground
Most experts agree, however, that newer AI tools are less about replacing people and more about eliminating mundane, manual, or number-crunching tasks that most employees already hate. In fact, the technology will mostly help free up workers to tackle more important jobs such as project management, reach more potential customers and handle more creative tasks.
Automation & Productivity
InformationWeek - Bridging the AI Strategy Gap in the C-Suite
“It’s important to create a clear shared vision of this as part of your enterprise strategy and not as a one-off -- and to assess how your business is going to navigate the disruption and the skills that you’re going to need to drive adoption. The CTO and the CIO have a more nuanced view of where the gaps are in technical skills and infrastructure. They’ll be very instrumental in aligning priorities to manage any potential operation risk of integrating generative AI prematurely.”
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - Why phishing is still successful — and is AI to blame?
A newer, even more troubling cyberattack method is adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) phishing, said Winterford. As he detailed in a recent blog post, this directs targets to a malicious website configured as a reverse proxy server. Real-time phishing sites relay requests between the user and an impersonated web app. If the user is successfully tricked into signing in, attackers can access credentials and session tokens.
Security
VentureBeat - How businesses and governments can work together to stop cyberattacks before they start
For starters, the private sector can’t collect intelligence or mitigate threats at the source. They can only stop malicious actors after they’ve been attacked. Governments have a much larger scope and are capable of stopping an attack — or the attackers — at the source.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Mitigating the latest processor attacks will be a chore on many levels 
Inception is a combination of attacks that were discovered by a group of Zurich-based researchers. “As in the movie of the same name, Inception plants an idea in the CPU while it is in a sense dreaming,” the researchers said in their report, and that forces the processor to take wrong actions and allowing an attacker to hijack the machine.
Security
Network Computing - What’s Causing Cloud Outages? A Network Managers’ Guide
We’re in the age of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and automation. Yet, many critical IT chores like deploying a new server, provisioning storage for an application, or setting up new router tables are done manually via command line interfaces (CLIs). As one would expect, that can lead to configuration mistakes.
Network Management
InformationWeek - Should IT Reinvent Technical Support for IoT?
There are two “high maintenance” areas for IoT devices. Both relate to the fact that many IoT device producers are startup companies that focus on rapid times to market. Consequently, the companies limit the work they do to ensure devices sold are ruggedized for their intended applications. Additionally, many IoT devices on the market don’t interoperate well with other IT, nor are they well secured against threats.
IT Management
The Hacker News - Identity Threat Detection and Response: Rips in Your Identity Fabric
There are a variety of reasons that SaaS security is so complex today. Firstly, there are a diverse range of applications, each having its own UI and terminology. And those environments are dynamic, from SaaS vendors understanding the importance of security and continually enhancing their applications with modern security measures to the ever-evolving user governance required such as onboarding, deprovisioning, adjustments in user access. These controls are effective only when continuously governed, for each app and each user.
Security
Network Computing - More Enterprises Opt for Single-Vendor SASE Solutions
"As single-vendor SASE solution maturity increases, so has the comfort of purchasing it all from a single vendor. The pressure to go after best-of-breed from multiple vendors is slowly diminishing,"
Security
InformationWeek - 6 Secrets of Cloud Cost Optimization
Potter suggests that a highly effective enterprise cloud FinOps team can partner with application and technology platform teams to develop actionable plans to optimize spend by reducing consumption and enhancing system architectures. “Spend optimization activities that can be driven at the application level are added to the application team’s backlog and tagged so that the cloud FinOps team has visibility into when and how the enhancement was delivered,”
Cloud
sdxCentral - IPv6 threats are on the rise as adoption grows
Humeau said that he had expected to find that 40%–50% of attack traffic is hidden behind some kind of virtual private network (VPN). The reality in 2023 is, however, somewhat different. Only a paltry 5% of attack traffic is hidden behind a VPN or a proxy service.
Security
Harvard Business Review - How to Train Generative AI Using Your Company’s Data
Leveraging a company’s propriety knowledge is critical to its ability to compete and innovate, especially in today’s volatile environment. Organizational Innovation is fueled through effective and agile creation, management, application, recombination, and deployment of knowledge assets and know-how.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - How businesses can find the cloud’s elusive ROI
Cloud 2.0 — or cloud-powered — is more strategic, aligning a broader vision with business outcomes. Beyond migration means being clear and intentional about when, where and why the organization is leveraging cloud technology. Developing a roadmap to outline the capabilities helps unlock the cloud and shows how operations can be reimagined.
Cloud
Computerworld - Zoom goes for a blatant genAI data grab; enterprises, beware
The consent mechanism of using the product is particularly troublesome for non-customers. Let’s say an enterprise pays for and hosts a call and then invites customers, some contractors and other partners to participate in the meeting. Do those guests understand that anything they say might be fed to generative AI? Other than refusing to attend, how is a guest supposed to decline consent?
Data Privacy
SiliconANGLE - Cloud vs. on-premises showdown: The future battlefield for generative AI dominance 
The top-down pressures from the corner office to “figure out” generative AI is an urgent matter. But the actual doing is much more challenging. The chart below shows what customers are doing with gen AI in production environments. Although 34% say they’re not evaluating, that number is way down from last quarter. And while you may think that 34% is very high, we believe there is a difference in the minds of respondents between playing with gen AI and “actively evaluating.”
Artificial Intelligence
eWeek - 5 Mistakes to Avoid In a Data Storage Refresh
Forrester found that 83 percent of decision-makers are hampered in their ability to leverage data effectively due to challenges like outdated infrastructure, teams overwhelmed and drowning in data, and lack of effective data management across on-premises and cloud storage silos.
Data Storage
SiliconANGLE - Report from Black Hat: Many questions, few answers as cybersecurity world confronts AI threats 
The hands-on research came with a sense of urgency, as the ability of malicious actors to develop and deploy sophisticated new threats has shifted into a higher gear. At one conference presentation, researchers provided a glimpse into humanlike digital twins, the creation of online personas, sometimes even equipped with 100% digitally generated fake photos, that allow for realistic conversational interaction.
Security
DarkReading - Threat Intelligence Efforts, Investment Lagging, Says Opswat
And while few (11%) are currently using artificial intelligence (AI) for threat detection, 56% are optimistic about its uses going forward, while 7% remain skeptical of AI's value. Organizations face common challenges, according to the vendor: detecting known and unknown malware, dealing with inadequate solutions, and making do with compromised tools.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Unpacking the state of cloud-native applications 
The complexity of multicloud strategies acknowledges that organizations increasingly diversify their cloud providers. Organizations are not merely confined to using a single cloud provider but are venturing into multicloud landscapes to avoid vendor lock-in. This also brings up the notion of repatriation — moving applications from the cloud back to on-premises infrastructure.
Cloud
DarkReading - As Phishing Gets Even Sneakier, Browser Security Needs to Step Up
Serussi listed a number of modern phishing tactics used by attackers. These included using Cyrillic alphabet characters in a URL to disguise the malicious link the attacker pushes to their would-be victim. "To the human eye, it actually looks like a normal text, right? If we copy and paste it to the command line, we can see the suspicious spaces between the different letters and if we are going to break down the unicode, we can see how the hackers are actually managing to manipulate us," he said
Security
SiliconANGLE - How to overcome the challenges of today’s cybersecurity talent shortage 
One of the top drivers for cyber talent attrition is the lack of development and career opportunities. Organizations must provide structure and guidance that will assist employees in planning their career growth. Leading organizations have made efforts to improve the versatility of their cybersecurity workforce through a systematic talent development strategy that enables continuous learning and career growth.
Tech Jobs
CIO Influence - 44% of CISOs State Cloud & Infrastructure Security as their Top Priorities in 2023
CISOs are overwhelmed by the massive influx of pre-trained unstructured data for AIops and cybersecurity-related capabilities. These capabilities are meant to catalyze bigger and faster digital transformations within the organization. Moreover, organizations are collecting and processing more data (most of which is unstructured) than ever before. Apart from managing and securing proprietary data and intellectual property (IP), enterprises are also required to reduce attack surfaces that are vulnerable to cyber threats, such as phishing and ransomware
IT Management
sdxCentral - How to close the cybersecurity talent gap (and why mentoring may be key)
Another critical factor: An overall lack of mentorship. Enterprises leaders globally must be proactive in offering fellowship programs, co-ops, internships, scholarships and free training (as conferences can be expensive, to the tune of thousands of dollars), Ventura said. They should also consider partnering with local communities and national organizations such as Girls Who Code.
Tech Jobs
eWeek - Top Robotic Process Automation Companies
UiPath can help you automate processes with drag-and-drop AI and pre-built templates. Additionally, Uipath offers pluggable integration with Active Directory, OAuth, CyberArk, and Azure Key vault and also complies with regulatory standards such as SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 9001, ISO/IEC 27001, and Veracode Verified.
Automation & Productivity
InformationWeek - Skills Gap in Cloud Tools: Why It Exists and Ways To Address
Business leaders are increasingly recognizing the benefits of building and maturing products and features in the cloud, but as a recent study found, less than 30% have actually taken the steps to modernize their end-to-end workflows. The same study cites skills as one of the top barriers to modernization within organizations -- in fact, leaders feel only 8% of their technical employees have the experience working with cloud-related tools.
IT Management
InformationWeek - Cybersecurity Must Focus on the Goals of Criminals
Firewalls aren’t stopping many breaches, and monitoring technology isn’t protection; it’s a way to watch cybercriminals successfully steal information. Rather than relying on legacy perimeter defenses, such as firewalls, we must adopt an approach emphasizing identity-based security and letting the data protect itself with file-level encryption, which will directly address today’s most significant vulnerabilities.
Security
Moonlock - Remote work is a massive security risk. Are employers keeping up?
The attack that started with a keylogger on Bob’s computer and spread throughout the LastPass system didn’t happen overnight. It came from a hacker who persisted inside the company’s system for months, launching two attacks, one after the other. Not until May 2023 would a LastPass investigation finally acknowledge the full extent of the breach. All 33 million users’ data was at risk.
Security
The Hacker News - Understanding Active Directory Attack Paths to Improve Security
In 2022, our in-house research found that 73% of the top attack techniques used in the compromising of critical assets involved mismanaged or stolen credentials – and more than half of the attacks in organizations include some element of Active Directory compromise. And once they have a foothold in Active Directory, attackers can perform loads of different malicious actions
Security
CIO Influence - Picus Security Analysis of 14 Million Attack Simulations Reveals Organizations Only Prevent 6 Out of Every 10 Attacks
Picus‘ Blue Report data shows that, on average, organizations’ security controls (such as next-gen firewalls and intrusion prevention solutions) only prevent 6 out of every 10 attacks. However, some attack types are prevented far more effectively than others. For instance, organizations can prevent 73% of malware downloads but only 18% of data exfiltration attacks.
Security
TechRepublic - What Is Data Integrity & Why Is It Important? (Definition & Types)
In data management, human error is a major risk factor for data integrity. Human errors can occur when data is incorrectly input, processed or analyzed. In some industries, like finance or customer service, the reliance on multiple data sources can also lead to data integrity issues as staff members draw data from differing or siloed data sources.
Data Management
InformationWeek - Sorting Out the Woes of Digital Migrations and Transitions
We always want clear lines of accountability, but then you also want to be clear on who’s making the decisions because that sometimes gets unclear over time, whereby somebody who thinks they can make a decision could steer things maybe in the wrong direction. We set up the right environment and clear lines of accountability, so it won’t distract the team or slow down or head in a direction that wasn’t intended. Clear lines of accountability are incredibly important and then clear lines of who is making what decisions are as equally important.
IT Management
CSO - Most businesses to ban ChatGPT, generative AI apps on work devices
Three-quarters of global businesses are currently implementing or considering bans on ChatGPT and other generative AI applications within the workplace, with risks to data security, privacy, and corporate reputation driving decisions to act. That's according to new research from Blackberry which found that 61% of companies deploying/considering generative AI bans view the steps long term or permanent.
ChatGPT
TechRepublic - Research Eyes Misconfiguration Issues At Google, Amazon and Microsoft Cloud
Smith wrote that Qualys researchers, analyzing misconfiguration issues at Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, found that within Azure, 99% of the disks are either not encrypted or aren’t using customer-managed keys that give users control of encryption keys that protect data in software as a service applications.
Cloud Security
Blocks & Files - Optionality: The key to navigating a multicloud world
What about that bespoke analytics tool your business stakeholders have been wanting to try? Assign it some assets and watch the magic happen. Click some buttons to add more resources as needed. Such efficient development, fueled by composable microservices and containers that comprise cloud-native development, is a big reason why most IT leaders have taken a “cloud-first” approach to deploying applications
Cloud
The Hacker News - Continuous Security Validation with Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS)
PTaaS is a modern approach to delivering penetration testing services. It utilizes a combination of manual human-led pentesting, AI, and automation tools and techniques that accelerate pentesting without false positives. This solution is gaining momentum, as it helps mitigate the cybersecurity skills gap being faced by security leaders at a global level.
Security
Computerworld - Hybrid work is entering the 'trough of disillusionment'
The "trough of disillusionment" represents a time when the original excitement about potential value of a product or business practice encounters problems with performance, which leads to missed expectations. For hybrid and remote work, the ongoing polarization of views on where work is best done and uncertain returns on investment in the corporate space have forced hybrid work to descend into the trough, according to Gartner.
Automation & Productivity
Blocks & Files - Gartner sees shifting players in enterprise backup
Four leading companies – Commvault, Rubrik, Cohesity, and Veritas – are closely positioned. Veeam is distinct due to its superior execution capability but relatively limited vision, while Dell maintains a consistent position from the previous year, marginally trailing the other five.
Data Backup
InformationWeek - Teach IT: Why Staff Learning Beats Training
Ron Delfine, executive director of career services at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, notes that there’s a big difference between training and learning. “IT training is showing individuals how to perform and accomplish a specific task or tasks, while learning can be thought of as a process to apply knowledge across multiple contexts.”
IT Management
SiliconANGLE - New cyberattack method: tracking typing remotely via keyboard sounds 
They call this an acoustic side channel attack, and it possibly could be used to steal passwords and other critical data from a target’s computer. The accuracy rate drops slightly if the sound is recorded remotely via a Zoom conference via a bad actor participating on the conference call. The combination of better microphones, frequent smartphone usage and machine learning advances have made this possible.
Security
Network World - Who is selling Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and what do you get?
Zero trust also requires buy-in from organizations implementing it. "Zero Trust isn’t just a shopping exercise, however much it helps unlock budget," Holmes says. It’s not something you can simply buy and plug in. An enterprise still needs a cogent approach to data classification, and someone needs to audit employee and third-party privileges. "Both of these are non-trivial, and usually manual tasks,"
Network Management
sdxCentral - Akamai ransomware report shows zero-day exploitation, exfiltration rising
It found ransomware attackers are pivoting from phishing to vulnerability abuse, which has surged both in scope and sophistication. These groups are becoming more aggressive in both extortion and vulnerability exploitation; for example, they started developing zero-day attacks and bug bounty programs in house. They are also willing to pay other hackers for vulnerabilities that can be used in attacks, or to acquire access to their intended targets via initial access brokers, according to the report.
Security
InformationWeek - 5 Pitfalls and Possibilities AI Brings to Cyber Insurance
While companies can greatly benefit from AI’s defensive capabilities, it also introduces risk into their operations. And cyber insurance companies are, naturally, concerned with understanding this risk. Rachel Rossini, product manager, cyber and technology E&O at AXA XL, notes that there is an element of privacy risk with platforms like ChatGPT. What kind of information are employees entering?
Security
Network World - Remote working turbocharged: How WAN Optimization unlocks next-level productivity for remote workers 
According to Andrew Caruth, WAN Optimization is the final piece of the home working jigsaw: “WAN Optimization can accelerate the transition to high-performance remote and hybrid working,” he says. “With the technology in place, home workers will be able to access cloud applications with the same speed and performance as if they had never left the office.”
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - 5 reasons why MPLS isn’t dead yet – and won’t be anytime soon
Trust is important for many business decisions, and both business and IT leaders have learned over the years that they can trust MPLS. Thus, for use cases that require high-speed, low-loss connectivity with predictable quality-of-service (QoS), such as video, conferencing and rich media, MPLS remains the top choice.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - AI as the next computing platform 
What do I mean by the AI platform? Simply put, it is where business requirements and specifications for software converge at a rate higher than could be achieved in the workflows of traditional, more deterministic software. Using generative AI, anyone in an organization can envision a new customer experience and leverage an AI platform to jump start the process of building.
Automation & Productivity
Harvard Business Review - 3 Steps to Prepare Your Culture for AI
Nearly two-thirds of employees surveyed told us they don’t have enough time or energy to do their job. The cause of this drain is something we identified in the report as digital debt: the influx of data, emails, and chats has outpaced our ability to keep up. Employees today spend nearly 60% of their time communicating, leaving only 40% of their time for creating and innovating. In a world where creativity is the new productivity, digital debt isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a liability.
Automation & Productivity
TechRepublic - Google Cloud Study: Big Risk in Proliferating Credentials, Keys
The predominant alerts in the first quarter of 2023, constituting nearly 75% of alerts, were for cross-project abuse of access token generation permissions. Broadly speaking, this is a problem of privilege access management, frequently involving over-provisioned accounts, where IT teams look to increase uptime and reduce complexity by granting too much access to accounts, violating the concept of least privilege.
Security
InformationWeek - Are Public Companies Ready for the New SEC Cybersecurity Rules?
Under the new rules, public companies will be required to disclose information on cybersecurity risk management, strategy, and governance in the annual reports included with their 10-Ks.
Security
TechRepublic - How an 8-character password could be cracked in just a few minutes
Hive found that an 8-character complex password could be cracked in only five minutes if the attacker was to take advantage of the latest graphics processing technology and artificial intelligence. Further, a seven-character complex password could be cracked in 4 seconds, while one with six or fewer characters could be cracked instantly. Shorter passwords with only one or two character types, such as only numbers or lowercase letters, or only numbers and letters, could also be cracked in an instant.
Security
The Hacker News - MDR: Empowering Organizations with Enhanced Security
Threat Detection Capabilities: The ability to detect both known and unknown threats, coupled with the utilization of the latest threat intelligence, is crucial for an MDR solution's efficacy. Managed XDR solutions that offer extended capabilities should efficiently correlate security telemetry and orchestrate a comprehensive real-time response across the network.
Security
CIO Influence - Why Architecture Matters with Generative AI and Cloud Security
Cloud security encompasses multiple domains – from vulnerabilities, compliance violations, runtime events, to CI/CD security – each with numerous data sources and its own formats and semantics. Most users, including experts, are not experts in all these domains. For AI to be helpful here, it needs to understand the jargon and implications of these knowledge silos and then correlate data from these domains into a cohesive story. It should help users fill their knowledge gap and help them connect the dots between seamlessly unrelated events.
Security
VentureBeat - Why cybersecurity vendors are selling tech stack consolidation with Zero Trust Edge
Forrester’s study reveals that the key drivers behind ZTE adoption include the shift to remote work and distributed assets, increased business speed and disruptive vendors offering integrated network/security, along with profiles of 22 of the leading vendors in the market.
Security
Network slicing maximizes 5G technology, but are security concerns slowing adoption?
A network slice provides specified network capabilities and characteristics – or multiple, isolated virtual networks – to fit a user’s needs. Although multiple network slices run on a single physical network, network slice users are sometimes (depending upon the access level of the individual) authenticated for only one network level, enabling data and security isolation and a much higher degree of security. Individuals can be sanctioned for more than network level.
Security
CIO Influence - The State of Upskilling: Tackling the IT Skills Gap
A research study involving more than 1,000 business executives found that organizations are having trouble finding the right candidates because of the skills gap and that the educational system is not doing enough to address the issue. According to the study, 75% of organizations believe the main reason for the difficulty in hiring is the lack of applicant skills. However, 51% claim that the educational system is either making little to no progress or doing nothing at all to address this.
Tech Jobs
InformationWeek - Developing a Super User Strategy
IT leaders will anticipate pushback from business department managers who don’t want their super users (usually the best performing employees in their departments) to take on new responsibilities. However, in many cases these same super users are already doing the front-line IT job. They do it every time they stop by the desk of an inexperienced employee to help them navigate through a system problem.
IT Management
CIO Influence - How to Choose a Third-Party Vendor?
Rather than relying on multiple-point solutions, invest in higher-value software able to solve multiple problems — and sunset anything extraneous. Organizations prioritizing tech stack consolidation can expect simplified workflows, improved team alignment, higher operational efficiency, and lower costs.
IT Management
TechRepublic - Cybersecurity: How Can Companies Benefit From FBI and Homeland Security Collaboration?
The reasons why large, medium and small companies choose not to report a cyberattack include fear of reputation damage, business disruption and the risks of sharing data with the government. These misconceptions are impacting private companies, as they fail to recognize the benefits of working with federal agencies and law enforcement to respond to cybercrime.
Security
InformationWeek - 6 Challenges and Opportunities for Hybrid and Remote IT Teams
“Protecting the end point (laptop, phone, etc.) has never been more critical. This means that IT teams have an elevated role to play in a hybrid/remote environment,” says Dunne. “I think as work culture continues to shift and evolve, the IT team will be at the forefront of executing its success.”
IT Management
CIO Influence - Keeper Security Survey Finds 91% of IT leaders Are Better Protected With Privileged Access Management, but Seek Affordable Solutions Amid Economic Downturn
The report explores global insights from IT and security executives, revealing that while IT leaders consider PAM solutions critical to their security stack, cost constraints and complex solutions are impacting deployment. Fifty-six percent of respondents tried to deploy a PAM solution but did not fully implement it, and 92% cited overly-complex solutions as the main reason. 58% of IT teams have not deployed a PAM solution because traditional platforms are too expensive.
IT Management
InformationWeek - Cyber Risk and Resiliency Report: How CIOs Are Dueling Disaster in 2023
Against this backdrop, how do enterprises allocate an often tight cybersecurity budget to fight against an ever-growing list of threats? How resilient are today’s modern companies? Are our cybersecurity champions burned out or enthusiastically rising to the challenges? How is cyber insurance working out for policyholders now that there’s sufficient time to weigh effectiveness against costs?
Security
InformationWeek - IT Ethics: What It Means for Your Organization
Relatively few IT leaders spend much, if any, time pondering their organization’s values and ethics. Yet as technology continues to integrate itself into virtually every aspect of business and personal life, establishing a moral code is rapidly becoming as important as creating security, employment, asset management, and other fundamental organization policies.
IT Management
Computerworld - Return-to-office mandates rise as worker productivity drops
Studies have shown that most bosses believe remote work hurts worker productivity. A survey of 20,000 people in 11 countries by Microsoft this spring found that 85% of business leaders believe the shift to hybrid work has made it harder to have confidence that employees are being productive.
Automation & Productivity
InformationWeek - The Value of the Fractional Chief Technology Officer
There are valid reasons why this role may have been overlooked. For startups and small businesses, shouldering the hefty salary may have been a strong deterrent. Also, the workload may have been lacking to justify the position for companies that aren't heavily utilizing tech. Regardless of the reason, not having a strategic resource in this role can present challenges as businesses face an ever-changing technology landscape.
IT Management
The Hacker News - What is Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)?
Data discovery and classification tools have been around for years. But they've lacked the ability to offer any business context. If you can find sensitive data but don't know whether it's business critical or not, and don't understand its security posture, it's not much help to the security team that's trying to prioritize thousands of alerts from different tools.
Security
sdxCentral - Arista Networks predicts Ethernet will power AI networking
Beyond just what is happening with Ethernet, Arista is also building out capabilities in its extensible operating systems (EOS) networking platforms to handle the demands of AI. She explained that AI traffic and performance demands are different from other network traffic as it comprises a small number of synchronized high-bandwidth lanes, making them prone to collisions that slow down the job completion time of AI clusters.
Network Management
Network World - Flight to cloud drives IaaS networking adoption
IDC describes IaaS cloud networking as a foundational networking layer that allows large enterprises and technology providers to connect data centers, colocation environments, and cloud infrastructure. With IaaS networking, the network infrastructure and services are scalable and available on-demand, provisioned and consumed just like any other cloud service
Network Management
sdxCentral - SD-WAN by the numbers: Market size, growth, adoption
“Case in point: some networking and security companies gobbled up the original SD-WAN vendors and have integrated their SD-WAN solutions into routers, WAN-optimization controllers, and cloud-based security solutions such as [cloud access security broker], [secure web gateway (SWG)] and next-generation firewall.”
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - Surge in threat activity in OT and IoT environments uncovered by Nozomi Networks 
In terms of malware, denial-of-service activity was found to remain prevalent against OT systems. Remote access trojan attacks followed DoS attacks and are noted as being used to establish control over compromised machines. In IoT network domains, distributed denial of service attacks were found to continue to be a top threat.
Security
VentureBeat - Generative AI is quickly infiltrating organizations, McKinsey reports
So far, North America-based respondents lead the globe in terms of gen AI adoption for work, with 28% of them using the tech in their jobs and outside of work, compared to 24% of European respondents and 22% of Asia-Pacific respondents (Greater China was just 19%).
Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - What is a data platform? 
Data represents how the business works and captures its history and current state. With artificial intelligence, data predicts a business’s future state. Increasingly, changes in operational data, not humans interacting with a user interface, drive applications. In addition, as more and more application logic is embodied in AI models, an enterprise’s data actually sets the design-time application logic itself by “programming” the AI at training time.
Data & Analytics
VentureBeat - IBM study reveals how AI, automation protect enterprises against data breaches
The more integrated AI, automation and threat intelligence are across tech stacks and SecOps teams, the stronger they make an enterprise against breaches. Follow-on benefits include greater cyber-resilience, and spending less on data breaches than enterprises with no AI or automation defenses at all.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Google’s Web Environment Integrity project raises a lot of concerns 
These fingerprints have been around for many years and began their life as part of the HTML v5 specifications. They are a very rich and detailed look at the inner workings of a user’s computer, and the data is collected automatically and without the user’s explicit approval with any web server. Readers can get an idea of what is collected with tools such as BrowserLeaks.com or AmIUnique.org.
Data Privacy
VentureBeat - How CISOs can engage the C-suite and Board to manage and address cyber risk
The role of the CISO is no longer to be a tactical facilitator or pure technologist. It’s about being a transformative leader that tightens the gap between the organization’s cybersecurity and business operations to help drive market adoption and sustained success.
IT Management
CIO Influence - Future Ready Leadership: Fostering the Success of Emerging Leaders
Today, emerging leaders arrive in the workplace with a pre-nurtured skillset from the tech-driven world they have grown up in. As digital natives, emerging leaders are already proficient in new technologies, sometimes more so than existing leaders. With this in mind, young people shouldn’t be patronized and instead encouraged to allow existing skillsets to thrive and inspire their colleagues.
Tech Jobs
SiliconANGLE - Five best practices to capture AI value 
AI benefits are also difficult to plan for because they require business actions, as well as process and behavioral changes, that go beyond the direct control of AI teams. It can also be challenging to attribute benefits specifically to AI model outputs. This often results in a fundamental gap between AI model outputs and business benefits: Organizations could have the best AI models, yet still fail at delivering value.
Automation & Productivity
CIO Influence - Telefónica Tech Identifies The Cybersecurity Landscape Shifts Amidst Rising Threats With The Help Of Recent Stats
In response to escalating cyber threats, a staggering 60% of large UK businesses have opted to outsource their cybersecurity operations. The primary reasons cited for this strategic move include gaining access to specialised expertise, abundant resources, and adherence to stringent security standards.
Security
CIO Influence - Cautious Enterprises Still Eyeing Hybrid Cloud Objectives
Enterprises make outsourcing decisions on cloud services based on factors including attitudes toward data center integration, virtualization, governance, downtime and data loss, ISG says. These decisions are also shaped by each organization’s cloud maturity and goals for cloud implementation.
Cloud
sdxCentral - How to use Gartner’s Hype Cycle for your zero-trust and SASE strategies
“Zero trust, it’s similar now to a word like cloud or a word like software-defined, where so many people use it, it means everything to everyone and nothing to everyone at the same time,” he said. “One thing we see is our clients sometimes struggle to delineate things that truly exhibit zero-trust characteristics from just pure vendor marketing,”
Security
CIO Influence - Is ChatGPT Effective in Finding in Vulnerability Discovery?
Recently, ChatGPT was put to an acid test by a leading bug bounty and security services platform for the web3 domain. The results were astonishing when 64% of whitehats surveyed by the company found that ChatGPT provided inconclusive answers in vulnerability discovery.
ChatGPT
sdxCentral - The 5G paradox: Why increasing IoT efficiency creates new security risks
Additionally, 5G also will speed up the attacks on enterprises that use the IoT inside their corporate systems. The challenge now is for enterprise security to become faster than the attackers, and that has yet to happen on a widespread basis.
Security
AiThority - 15 Important Skills Required to Become an AI Engineer in 2023
Now, don’t confuse them with data scientists, though. Data scientists are all about digging out those valuable insights from big datasets. But our AI engineers come from an IT background and have a mission to create algorithms for AI apps and make them play nicely with the rest of the company’s tech.
Tech Jobs
The Hacker News - A Data Exfiltration Attack Scenario: The Porsche Experience
The /charging/WebAjaxGet endpoint of the vulnerable website (campaigns.porsche.com) did not properly sanitize nor encode query string parameter values before including them in the HTML server response. Bad actors could have exploited this issue to inject arbitrary code into the server response, which would end up being executed by the web browser into the victims' session context
Security
SiliconANGLE - API cyberattacks projected to jump nearly tenfold by 2030 
“APIs and modern microservice architecture are central to nearly all innovation we’ve seen emerge in recent years,” noted Whaley. “That’s everything from generative AI to decentralized blockchain, and the future applications appear limitless. The research, however, indicates poorly managed and leaky APIs have left the back door open to security threats that carry significant individual and macroeconomic consequences.”

VentureBeat - What enterprise leaders need to know about generative AI: 8 key takeaways from VB Transform
 Most enterprise companies have huge challenges in getting their data in order, and if they ignore or avoid this, they will miss out on the benefits of generative AI. Data is the fuel for the large language models (LLMs) that fuel generative AI, and without clean, reliable and secure data, LLMs will not perform well, or will even cause harm.
Artificial Intelligence
AiThority - How AI Is Redefining Application Security
AI-powered software testing is about to revamp the way we develop and secure code. In this article, I want to explain why the rise of AI-powered testing tools is introducing the cultural and procedural change we so desperately need to build secure applications amidst growing complexity.
Security
Network World - Is your data center ready for generative AI?
Neural networks require tremendously dense high-performance computing (HPC) clusters of GPU processors running continuously for months, or even years at a time, Martynek says. “They are more efficiently run on dedicated infrastructure that can be located close to the proprietary data sets used for training,” he says.

Blocks & Files - Backblaze warns of AI-assisted cyber threats
The report provides a comprehensive review of ransomware’s prevalence, attack vectors, the sequence of events during an attack, and the necessary steps for responding to an attack. It stops short of suggesting foolproof methods to prevent attacks from breaching IT infrastructure, as no solution that is 100 percent reliable exists.
Security
The Hacker News - The Alarming Rise of Infostealers: How to Detect this Silent Threat
RedLine and Vidar, two well-known stealers, took advantage of log-providing services to infiltrate private systems. RedLine primarily targets credentials and cryptocurrency wallets on Windows systems, as well as browser information, FTP connections, game chat launchers, and OS data. Vidar relies on delivery methods such as phishing emails and cracked software for dissemination.

Data Privacy
AiThority - Explosive Popularity of AI and LLMs—and How They Impact Application Security
Existing LLM technologies still can’t be used to reliably assist in malware detection and scale–in fact, they accurately classify malware risk in barely 5% of all cases. They have value in manual workflows, but will likely never be fully reliable in autonomous workflows. That’s because they can’t be trained to recognize novel approaches, such as those derived through LLM recommendations
Security
FedScroop - Building security resilience across global missions with next-gen firewalls 
More than half (55%) of respondents reported that their security tools function moderately to completely independently from their suite of solutions. And 33% said their organization uses between 11 to 40 different vendors across their security technologies, while 11% use more than 50 security vendors.
Security
CIO Influence - IaaS Cloud Networking Gains in Importance as Organizations Seek Seamless Operations Across Multiple Platforms, According to IDC
IDC defines IaaS networking as public cloud-based IaaS network services in which all the network infrastructure and services are elastic and on demand. They are provisioned and consumed just like other cloud services. The five major segments of the IaaS networking market included in IDC’s research are direct cloud connects/interconnects, cloud WAN (transit), ADCaaS (IaaS load balancing), IaaS service mesh, and cloud VPNs (to IaaS clouds).
Network Management
sdxCentral - Will 5G replace Wi-Fi? (Or will they coexist and complement each other?)
He pointed out that it’s important to understand what 5G means for enterprise. While technically the same as public macro 5G accessed via smartphones and other devices, private 5G networks are what they sound: Private. That is, they are nonpublic and can be licensed, unlicensed or shared.
Network Management
Network World - The real risk of AI in network operations
One who tried generative AI technology on their own historical network data said that it suggested a configuration change that, had it been made, would have broken the entire network. “The results were wrong a quarter of the time, and very wrong maybe an eighth of the time,” the operations manager said. “
Network Management
sdxCentral - Source code is the most common sensitive data shared to ChatGPT
Netskope’s report also revealed that sensitive data is shared with genAI applications at a troubling frequency within large enterprises: per 10,000 enterprise users, there are approximately 183 incidents of sensitive data being posted to the app monthly.
Security
VentureBeat - The top 10 technologies defining the future of cybersecurity
CISOs from insurance, financial services and professional services enterprises tell VentureBeat that their goal is to access the latest AI and ML technologies to help reduce tool sprawl and alert-fatigue, help close skill gaps and shortages, and eliminate response inefficiencies.
Security
Computerworld - ‘Windows is a declining ecosystem,' Jamf CEO says
Apple's forays into the enterprise are succeeding and likely to push aside Windows over the next decade, according to outgoing Jamf CEO Dean Hager. “...In 10 years’ time, Windows will not be the dominant ecosystem; ...Apple is coming up because it already dominates the mobile enterprise."
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - Top 10 certifications for building a SASE career
The MEF SD-WAN Certified Professional cert has the most value for those in presales, applications teams, product management/marketing, those designing and developing SD-WANs, and those in operations, service and support.
Security
SiliconANGLE - NetApp’s chief security officer calls for new approaches to securing the cloud 
NetApps Inc.’s chief security officer (pictured) has written about streamlining data protection and simplifying security processes for cloud architectures. Her approach challenges the security industry to assess the true effectiveness of various practices and create a more secure cloud ecosystem as the technologies surrounding it become more complex.
Security
eWeek - How Cloud Cost Optimization Can Help Solve the Tech Hiring Crisis
For workers outside the tech sector, the Great Resignation is over. Voluntary employee resignations have receded nearly back to pre-pandemic levels, and employers no longer report the deep hiring and retention challenges for most roles that they faced a year or two ago.
Tech Jobs
VentureBeat - AI for execs: How to cut through the noise and deliver results
For decision-makers at large enterprises, LLMs (and AI in general) present a head-scratching number of options. Every single business function can get the AI treatment. The first thing to consider is the differing maturity and development levels of each solution. It can be attractive to experiment with the latest innovation or create your own unique use cases, but this naturally carries some risk.
Automation & Productivity

CIO Influence - Data Monetization in 2023 – Better Late Than Never
People used to think the best approach was bringing an organization’s data into one massive database. That idea has fallen out of fashion. Data is everywhere – on premises, in your cloud and service provider Clouds, at the Edge and elsewhere. And, more non-IT folks in lines of business are now managing and owning data. You need to meet your data where it lives.
Data Management
SiliconANGLE - IBM Security report finds data breach costs have hit new highs in 2023 
According to the report, businesses are divided in how they plan to handle the increasing cost and frequency of data breaches. The study found that though 95% of studied organizations have experienced more than one breach, breached organizations were more likely to pass incident costs onto consumers — 57% — than to increase security investments, at 51%.  
Security
Blocks & Files - Gartner storage hype cycle has selective memory
Storage Class Memory was rising up the Slope of Enlightenment in 2022 but faced setbacks after Intel discontinued Optane. However, technologies like SCM-class SSDs, MRAM, and RERAM continue to be developed. Notable trends from last year’s storage hype cycle include the disappearance of Copy Data Management, Enterprise Information Archiving, Persistent Memory DIMMs, and Management Software-Defined Storage.
Data Storage
Network World - Data centers grapple with staffing shortages, pressure to reduce energy use 
“Digital infrastructure managers are now most concerned with improving energy performance and dealing with staffing shortfalls, while government regulations aimed at improving data center sustainability and visibility are beginning to require attention, investment, and action,”
Data Management
SiliconANGLE - ChatGPT can write ransomware, but what about incident response plans? 
Immediately I noticed significant gaps in the IR plan generated by ChatGPT. It could only outline the definition of an IR plan and provide a general overview of what types of procedures an IR plan should include rather than presenting a detailed, step-by-step playbook on how to manage the specific theoretical incident.
Security
CIO - 5 ways CIOs can help eliminate a culture of busyness
Regarding this culture of busyness, many CIOs say that working longer hours is regularly associated with harder work. Many workplaces still value this idea of compliance, where employees are seen to be more dedicated if they’re the first in the office in the morning and the last to leave at the end of the day. “We need to shift this focus away from compliance and toward value,”
IT Management
The Hacker News - Azure AD Token Forging Technique in Microsoft Attack Extends Beyond Outlook, Wiz Reports
This includes every application that supports personal account authentication, such as OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams; customers applications that support the "Login with Microsoft functionality," and multi-tenant applications in certain conditions.
Security
CIO Influence - The Rise of OT Cybersecurity Threats
“Five years ago, few people were talking about OT cybersecurity. OT is a separate and distinct domain of technology and a more complex cyber problem to solve. There is a lot to do to address it, and many people in charge don’t realize it.”
Security
VentureBeat - Generative AI and Web3: Hyped nonsense or a match made in tech heaven
While AI and blockchain have both been around for decades, the impact of AI, in particular, is now visible with ChatGPT, Bard and the entire field of generative AI players. Together with Web3’s decentralized power, we’re about to witness an explosion of practical applications that build on progress automating interactions and advancing Web3 in more visible ways.
Emerging Tech
TechStartups - ChatGPT’s accuracy in solving basic math declined drastically, dropping from 98% to 2% within just a few months, study finds
The study identified significant fluctuations in the ChatGPT’s capabilities, referred to as “drift,” while performing specific tasks. The researchers focused on two versions of the technology: GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. Notably, they observed remarkable variations in GPT-4’s ability to solve math problems.
ChatGPT
CIO - 10 most difficult-to-fill IT roles — and how to address the gap
The 2022 ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study calculated a cybersecurity workforce gap of 3.4 million professionals. To get the skills they need, IT leaders may have to play a longer game, focusing on lifelong learners and developing depth of experience in-house.
Security
TechRepublic - What is DevOps Automation?
Several processes can be automated in DevOps to streamline the SDLC. You can automate continuous integration (code compilation, build processes, unit testing, packaging, artifact creation, etc.) and continuous delivery (deployment to staging and production environments, integration and functional testing in multiple environments, smoke tests, etc.)
DevOps
SiliconANGLE - Top sports CIOs provide lessons for IT operations in all industries
One interesting point that did come up was the 5G-Wi-Fi debate. Although 5G is a viable, sometimes preferred option for fans, the data generated by telco-based services is invisible to the team. Some of the CIOs echoed their frustration with the telcos’ inability to provide the same level of granular data as they get from the Wi-Fi network. This is a business opportunity the telcos should capitalize on but to date have not.
IT Management
VentureBeat - How businesses can shape the (safer) future of social media
Take “strengthening and enforcing age minimums” as one example where nuance is easily lost. The goal itself is laudable, but we need to strike a tricky balance: verifying identity to keep young people safe, but without requiring personal information that can be aggregated and used for harm by others.
Social Media
VentureBeat - AI, automation to take center stage as IT demands surge: Salesforce survey
While AI and automation have been helping businesses for quite some time, current IT needs position the technologies squarely for mainstream adoption. In the survey, 78% of IT leaders said the role of AI in their organization is already well-defined, with the top uses being service operations optimization, new AI-based products, customer service analytics and customer segmentation
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - AI gives cyber attackers the advantage – for now 
Moreover, macro spending headwinds continue to force organizations to make budget tradeoffs, not the least of which is how to fund AI experiments and deployments. Notably, however, 45% of organizations are using LLMs in production for use cases that may very well improve the productivity of security operations teams in the long run and accelerate the cat-and-mouse game back to a state of quasi-equilibrium.
Security
Network World - Gartner: Generative AI not yet influencing IT spending, but enterprises should plan for it
“Generative AI’s best channel to market is through the software, hardware and services that organizations are already using,” Lovelock stated. “Every year, new features are added to tech products and services as add-ons or upgrades. Most enterprises will incorporate generative AI in a slow and controlled manner through upgrades to tools that are already built into IT budgets.”
IT Management
CSO Online - Sophisticated HTTP and DNS DDoS attacks on the rise
These included DDoS attacks launched by pro-Russian hacktivist groups like REvil, Killnet, and Anonymous Sudan against Western websites; a large increase in targeted DNS attacks; UDP amplification attacks leveraging a vulnerability in Mitel MiCollab business phone systems; and an alarming escalation in HTTP attack sophistication, the company said.
Security
VentureBeat - 59% of orgs lack resources to meet generative AI expectations: Study 
The study also found that 66% of respondents cannot fully measure the impact and return on investment (ROI) of their AI/ML projects on the bottom line. This highlights the profound inability of underfunded, understaffed and under-governed AI, ML and engineering teams in large enterprises to quantify results effectively.
IT Management
Computerworld - Microsoft 365 Copilot — a new desktop productivity revolution begins
Bing Chat Enterprise will eventually have a $5 incremental per user price for those not under one of the included licensing programs; it provides the benefits of Bing Chat, but secures internal data. The data is not shared externally or used to train the primary generative AI platform.
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - The growing impact of generative AI on cybersecurity and identity theft
For instance, a data breach offers a treasure trove of usernames and passwords, and then bots infiltrate accounts and conduct brute force attacks using that data. With AI’s ability to process large amounts of information, that process is stunningly fast. And with AI, attackers can create combinations of passwords based on PII as well. As an example, it can use your password as a guide to what passwords you might choose across other sites.
Privacy & Security
eWeek - Autonomous AI Agents
Unlike other forms of artificial intelligence, autonomous AI does not require repeated human inputs, hands-on guidance, or as much ongoing training to do its work. After its specialized infrastructure – which includes generative AI – is set up and it receives its initial training on massive datasets, an autonomous AI agent can do what it’s trained to do based on environmental and context clues.
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Social media’s reaction to generative AI proves just how valuable data is
But perhaps an area that is sparking the biggest seismic shifts is in social media, where typically, the platforms are granted some level of access and assigned rights via terms of service and offer a free platform as a result. The challenge here is that many had built extensions to their platforms using APIs or allowed unfettered access to users, and now they see GenAI as a massive threat to their efforts and valuation.
Data Management
SiliconANGLE - Empowering innovation through the fusion of AI and security: Supercloud 3 event wrap-up analysis The distribution of value and the emergence of abstractions is a recurring pattern in technology waves, according to Vellante. The supercloud wave follows this pattern, making tasks faster, simpler and easier to use. With the advent of AI, applications powered by human intellect and data become valuable intellectual property. This simplification and democratization of technology will lead to a Cambrian explosion of applications, transforming industries and the way we work.Emerging Technology
sdxCentral - Zero-trust principles stand firm in the face of generative AI threatsWith all the new threats that are coming in, a lot of those zero-trust principles will be automated to an extent. The connectivity that needs to happen and the amount of data that’s available, and building models on top of it, I think that will only become advanced and that will make people’s life easier,” Venkata said.Security
SiliconANGLE - Report: Apple built ‘Apple GPT’ chatbot using internal AI development framework Ajax, Apple’s framework for building large language models, was reportedly created last year. Its purpose is to “unify” the company’s various machine learning development initiatives. That may mean Apple has asked its engineers to standardize their workflows on Ajax instead of using multiple, disparate AI development tools with overlapping feature sets.Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - Endor Labs report warns AI and LLMs struggle to classify malware risk The rise of services such as OpenAI LP’s ChatGPT application programming interface comes in for particular attention, with the report finding that almost half of all applications make no calls to security-sensitive APIs in their code base.Security
Computerworld - AI-skills job postings jump 450%; here's what companies wantUpwork’s freelance job site lists 294 skills under “AI Services.” Roles gaining steam include prompt engineers, AI content creators, machine learning and deep learning engineers, data scientists, AI chatbot developers, and professionals with model tuning and AI model integration expertise,Tech Jobs
SiliconANGLE - How Google’s AI Red Team is shaping the future of cybersecurity Google released its Secure AI Framework in June to help companies protect artificial intelligence models from hacking. The framework is aimed at ensuring that when AI models are implemented, they are secured by default. SAIF can help companies stave off attempts to steal a neural network’s code and training dataset and can be useful for blocking other types of attacks.Security
Computerworld - This is why personal encryption is vital to the future of businessData encryption is threatened by government forces who haven’t yet recognized that without personal security, you cannot have enterprise security. Because attackers will exploit any available weakness to undermine protection — and if your people or your customers aren't secure, neither is your businessSecurity
sdxCentral - Standalone 5G continues slow simmer — will enterprises spur growth?A 5G SA core, which consists of the user plane, control plane and shared data layer network functions, allows operators to deliver a more resilient core network and support highly-touted 5G services like network slicing, automation, orchestration and mobile edge computing (MEC). This differs from a non-standalone (NSA) 5G core that relies on an operator’s legacy 4G LTE core for base processing and routing, but lacks access to the more advanced 5G features.5G
SiliconANGLE - Gartner: Worldwide cloud infrastructure spending topped $100B for the first time in 2022 AWS continued to lead the IaaS segment by a wide margin in 2022. According to Gartner, $48.12 billion of the $120.3 billion that organizations spent on cloud infrastructure went to buying AWS resources. In percentage terms, the Amazon.com Inc. unit grew its market share to 40% last year from 38.1% at the end of 2021.Cloud
CIO Influence - 10 Things You Should Know About the Modern Data Infrastructure Dynamics in 2023CIOs and CISOs recognize that any chink in their existing data infrastructure management could cost their businesses millions of dollars in wasted resources, lost opportunities, and security incidents. Worse, if left unaddressed, these gaps can result in data breaches and compliance-related penalties. Most leaders understand that data infrastructure is critical to digital transformation, a majority of these front-line professionals also accept that it takes more than just a good data center or a cloud computing platform to address all the issues related to data management.Data Management
SiliconANGLE - The rise of zero-trust architecture and the role of AI in supercloud security He outlined a strategic approach for organizations, including asking key questions such as whether an organization’s zero-trust security solutions reduce external attack surfaces and enforce consistent security with full transport layer security inspection, as well as if companies have measures in place to contain the blast radius in case of a breach and consistently inspect outgoing data to prevent data exploitation.Security
TechRepublic - Can Generative AI Be Used to Apply for a Job?“Not enough job seekers are using AI just to play around with it and to be able to find different versions of their resume,” Chad Sowash, former recruiter and cohost of the HR industry podcast Chad and Cheese, said. “Whether they’re looking for VP of Marketing or CMO or any type of position, they can come up with really great rough drafts from generative AI.”Automation & Productivity
Tech Startups - Indian coders and programmers will lose their jobs in 2 years due to AI, Stability AI CEO saysHowever, in India, Mostaque noted that “outsourced coders up to level three programmers will be gone in the next year or two, whereas in France, you’ll never fire a developer.” He added, “So it affects different models in different countries in different ways in different sectors.”Tech Jobs
AiThority - Biggest AI Trends Transforming the Customer Service Industry (And, How You Can Prepare for the Future)According to the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey, business leaders are planning to invest heavily in Artificial Intelligence tools for contact centers (71%), sales (73%), Marketing (75%), Customer Experience Management (79%), and IT Operations (85%). Clearly, customer-centric teams are more likely to adopt AI tools and solutions to stay competitive in the vastly volatile market conditions in 2023Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - The brewing battle for data platform dominance Our Angle is that a data platform is more than a storage solution. It offers comprehensive functionality, including the ability to access data programmatically through SQL queries and RESTful application programming interfaces, built-in virtualization tools, and the capability to extract, transform and load data to and from various sources, such as data warehouses, data lakes, and object storage.Data Management
Network World - IDC: Server and storage price hikes fueled cloud infrastructure growthThe research firm’s quarterly enterprise infrastructure tracker finds that spending on compute and storage infrastructure products in the first quarter increased 14.9% year over year to $21.5 billion. Spending on cloud infrastructure continues to outpace the non-cloud segment, which declined 0.9% in 1Q23 to $13.8 billion.Cloud
sdxCentral - Graph databases gain traction as AI uses expand data management stackGraph databases are gaining attention as enterprises work on their next-generation  artificial intelligence (AI) applications. While still a bit of an outlier, graph-oriented databases continue to find a role in the modern data stack. Using the concepts of nodes, edges and properties rather than tables, graph databases represent relationships and store complex data in a way that relational databases can’t.Data &am
SiliconANGLE - Endor Labs report warns AI and LLMs struggle to classify malware risk 
The rise of services such as OpenAI LP’s ChatGPT application programming interface comes in for particular attention, with the report finding that almost half of all applications make no calls to security-sensitive APIs in their code base.
Security
Computerworld - AI-skills job postings jump 450%; here's what companies want
Upwork’s freelance job site lists 294 skills under “AI Services.” Roles gaining steam include prompt engineers, AI content creators, machine learning and deep learning engineers, data scientists, AI chatbot developers, and professionals with model tuning and AI model integration expertise,
Tech Jobs
SiliconANGLE - How Google’s AI Red Team is shaping the future of cybersecurity 
Google released its Secure AI Framework in June to help companies protect artificial intelligence models from hacking. The framework is aimed at ensuring that when AI models are implemented, they are secured by default. SAIF can help companies stave off attempts to steal a neural network’s code and training dataset and can be useful for blocking other types of attacks.
Security
Computerworld - This is why personal encryption is vital to the future of business
Data encryption is threatened by government forces who haven’t yet recognized that without personal security, you cannot have enterprise security. Because attackers will exploit any available weakness to undermine protection — and if your people or your customers aren't secure, neither is your business
Security
sdxCentral - Standalone 5G continues slow simmer — will enterprises spur growth?
A 5G SA core, which consists of the user plane, control plane and shared data layer network functions, allows operators to deliver a more resilient core network and support highly-touted 5G services like network slicing, automation, orchestration and mobile edge computing (MEC). This differs from a non-standalone (NSA) 5G core that relies on an operator’s legacy 4G LTE core for base processing and routing, but lacks access to the more advanced 5G features.
5G
SiliconANGLE - Gartner: Worldwide cloud infrastructure spending topped $100B for the first time in 2022 
AWS continued to lead the IaaS segment by a wide margin in 2022. According to Gartner, $48.12 billion of the $120.3 billion that organizations spent on cloud infrastructure went to buying AWS resources. In percentage terms, the Amazon.com Inc. unit grew its market share to 40% last year from 38.1% at the end of 2021.
Cloud
CIO Influence - 10 Things You Should Know About the Modern Data Infrastructure Dynamics in 2023
CIOs and CISOs recognize that any chink in their existing data infrastructure management could cost their businesses millions of dollars in wasted resources, lost opportunities, and security incidents. Worse, if left unaddressed, these gaps can result in data breaches and compliance-related penalties. Most leaders understand that data infrastructure is critical to digital transformation, a majority of these front-line professionals also accept that it takes more than just a good data center or a cloud computing platform to address all the issues related to data management.
Data Management
SiliconANGLE - The rise of zero-trust architecture and the role of AI in supercloud security 
He outlined a strategic approach for organizations, including asking key questions such as whether an organization’s zero-trust security solutions reduce external attack surfaces and enforce consistent security with full transport layer security inspection, as well as if companies have measures in place to contain the blast radius in case of a breach and consistently inspect outgoing data to prevent data exploitation.
Security
TechRepublic - Can Generative AI Be Used to Apply for a Job?
“Not enough job seekers are using AI just to play around with it and to be able to find different versions of their resume,” Chad Sowash, former recruiter and cohost of the HR industry podcast Chad and Cheese, said. “Whether they’re looking for VP of Marketing or CMO or any type of position, they can come up with really great rough drafts from generative AI.”
Automation & Productivity
AiThority - Biggest AI Trends Transforming the Customer Service Industry (And, How You Can Prepare for the Future)
According to the Equinix 2023 Global Tech Trends Survey, business leaders are planning to invest heavily in Artificial Intelligence tools for contact centers (71%), sales (73%), Marketing (75%), Customer Experience Management (79%), and IT Operations (85%). Clearly, customer-centric teams are more likely to adopt AI tools and solutions to stay competitive in the vastly volatile market conditions in 2023
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - The brewing battle for data platform dominance 
Our Angle is that a data platform is more than a storage solution. It offers comprehensive functionality, including the ability to access data programmatically through SQL queries and RESTful application programming interfaces, built-in virtualization tools, and the capability to extract, transform and load data to and from various sources, such as data warehouses, data lakes, and object storage.
Data Management
Network World - IDC: Server and storage price hikes fueled cloud infrastructure growth
The research firm’s quarterly enterprise infrastructure tracker finds that spending on compute and storage infrastructure products in the first quarter increased 14.9% year over year to $21.5 billion. Spending on cloud infrastructure continues to outpace the non-cloud segment, which declined 0.9% in 1Q23 to $13.8 billion.
Cloud
sdxCentral - Graph databases gain traction as AI uses expand data management stack
Graph databases are gaining attention as enterprises work on their next-generation  artificial intelligence (AI) applications. While still a bit of an outlier, graph-oriented databases continue to find a role in the modern data stack. Using the concepts of nodes, edges and properties rather than tables, graph databases represent relationships and store complex data in a way that relational databases can’t.
Data & Analytics
VentureBeat - How AI can improve the future of incident response
“I think the future is self-healing software; the future is applying these models to our code bases to discover vulnerabilities and fix them before our attackers can find them,” Zoller told the Transform audience. “Because I can tell you, as a human running a human team, we are not equipped to operate at the velocity of what our attackers are going to bring to us in the next two to three years.”
Security
TechRepublic - Using Snapshots to Improve Data Security
Snapshots are point-in-time copies that provide near-instantaneous data protection. By copying storage metadata rather than on the data itself, they provide a record of where each block of data is stored. Not only does this not take up much space, but it can also typically be done in a few seconds.
Data Management
Datanami - Dresner Advisory Services Publishes Inaugural Enterprise, Social, and Governance Reporting Market Study
According to the study, adoption of ESG reporting is currently low, with only 32 percent of organizations using it today. Current usage is highest in EMEA, and in larger organizations. Despite low adoption, there is good awareness of ESG reporting, with a total of 64 percent of respondents regarding it as important to their organization.
ESG
SiliconANGLE - The state of collaboration: It’s the people, not the tech, who make it all work 
With all this technology, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that what makes for great collaboration is to have people with complementary skills working together on a project. Without a culture of collaboration, all the fancy tools won’t do much to make people more inclined to share their work, their thoughts and their expertise.
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - The knowledge economy is dead. Long live the intuition economy
Another way to view it: AI will never replace humans, as the doomsayers fear, but as AI systems grow more intelligent, they will force people to become smarter and more creative too. The value of pure knowledge decreases; the importance of what is done with that knowledge rises.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - 3 ways AI is already transcending hype and delivering tangible results
Today, the hype cycle is so hot that even companies without legitimate AI credentials are trying to align themselves with the technology, prompting the Federal Trade Commission to issue a terse warning to companies: “If you think you can get away with baseless claims that your product is AI-enabled, think again.”
Artificial Intelligence
eWeek - Top 6 AI Trends 2023
However, it’s important to note that the majority of these generative AI companies are fine-tuning or otherwise relying on third-party foundation models rather than building their own infrastructure. In the near future, expect the generative AI market to start to consolidate, with leaders like Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, possibly Amazon, and others vying for preferred provider spots for both foundation models and AI assistant tools.
Artificial Intelligence
eWeek - F5 Report: Hybrid IT Is Here To Stay
Some apps work better in a physical data center, and others work better in one or more clouds. However, public clouds aren’t being used as much as expected. Five years ago, most organizations planned to have half of their apps in the cloud. But three years later, only half of those surveyed had any apps in the cloud. Many are worried about data control, security, or costs.
IT Management
SiliconANGLE - Attackers target the Domain Name System, the internet’s phone book. Here’s how to fight back 
This shift, especially as superclouds, containers and multiple application collections create and destroy virtual instances millions of times a day, puts tremendous stress on the DNS infrastructure. Without a fully functioning DNS, the workloads and workflows can easily get in trouble: packets disappearing or dropped, malicious software supply chains taking control, and web servers brought down, requiring restarting or, worse, rebuilding before they can return to production.
Security
Blocks & Files - Could NAND capacity replace HDDs by 2029?
One of the most important discussions in the storage industry has been opened up by Pure Storage saying no new hard disk drives (HDDs) will be sold after 2028. Pure’s bold claim means that all the capacity of the new HDDs – ones not replacing failed drives – that would have shipped in 2029 will be replaced by shipped SSD capacity. That is a huge number of extra SSD shipments, and raises a question about global NAND manufacturing capacity being able to make enough flash.
Data Storage
sdxCentral - SD-WAN tips from the trenches
“Challenges have been that it’s not recommended to have same subnets on different sites, so that is one thing we have had to clean up,” Hjørland said. “We also still haven’t removed all the old firewalls on the different sites, this is something we will concentrate to do in next phase.”
Network Management
Blocks & Files - We need network air traffic control for files
According to Bleeping Computer, the malware people behind the Forta vulnerability used MFTaaS “to create user accounts in some customer environments.” The accounts then downloaded files, exfiltrating them from the MFTaaS facility. Other malware tools, Netcat and Errors.jsp, were reportedly loaded into some Fortra customers’ systems to facilitate file downloads and backdoor activity.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Understanding these nine ransomware stages can help harden cyber defenses 
A variety of tools come into play through these nine stages — for example, a way to monitor potential intrusions, which can often be as subtle as a few network packets, or a way to examine outbound data flows, which can be an indication of an attack in its later stages. By breaking the attack down into these stages, organizations can assess if their tool collection is adequate or if there are holes that need filling to shore up their defenses.
Security
Network World - New ML benchmarks show best algorithms for training chatbots
The MLPerf Training benchmark suite is a full series of tests that stress machine-learning models, software, and hardware for a broad range of applications. It found performance gains of up to 1.54x compared to just six months ago and between 33x and 49x compared to the first round in 2018.
Automation & Productivity
TechRepublic - Gartner: Due to stress, half of cyber leaders will change jobs, and a quarter will quit the field
Partly due to emerging technologies such as Web 3.0, conversational artificial intelligence, quantum computing and supply chains, along with increasingly sophisticated attacks, security leaders now have more influence in the C-suite. However, as Craig Porter, director advisory for Gartner’s Security Research and Advisory team said, “Threat actors have access to powerful tools like ChatGPT, which can generate polymorphic malware code that can avoid detection, or even better, write a convincing email.
Tech Jobs
VentureBeat - Integrating intelligent automation: Advice from Citi Ventures
Now we’re in a “hyper-automation” phase, he said, which involves performing more complex tasks across multiple systems using multiple technologies. One example: applying optical character recognition to understand what a document is, and natural language processing (NLP) to contextualize it, then feed it into an algorithm so that data can be used to make decisions.
Automation & Productivity
AIThority - Operational Efficiency Emerges as Key Driver in Modernization Investments as Enterprise Spending to Hit $33 Million on Average, Couchbase Research Finds
These survey results show how an efficient approach to digital transformation, taking full advantage of advances in data, cloud and AI can help with business resiliency, and at the same time pursue new growth opportunities.And rightly so, empowering developers has emerged as a key priority for enterprises, demonstrating their commitment to innovation.”
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - Network, IAM and cloud are the top 3 cybersecurity spending priorities for 2023
Ransomware breach attempts fell by 30% last year as attackers pivoted to new attack strategies that are proving more lucrative and less detectable. As attackers out-innovate the current generation of security platforms, total attack activity continues to grow, despite budgets growing too in an uncertain economic climate.
Security
AIThority - OPSWAT Survey Reveals Only 2 Percent of Organizations Feel Confident with Current Security Strategies
By adopting and combining advanced threat prevention technologies like multi-AV scanning, CDR, DLP and dynamic threat analysis, organizations can effectively establish multiple lines of defense against known and unknown emerging threats and safeguard their critical infrastructure.”
Security
SiliconANGLE - Five thoughts from the Cisco collaboration device tour 
The Cisco devices natively interoperate with Webex, Teams, Zoom and Google Meet so users can join meetings across those platforms without having to reboot the device.
Automation & Productivity
Datanami - Forrester: Generative AI Dominates Top 10 Emerging Technologies In 2023 And Beyond
Conversational AI, enabled by generative AI, is the second top emerging technology that will deliver the fastest ROI. E-commerce, B2B sales, and customer service functions will see the biggest impacts from conversational AI. AWAs will also deliver near-term benefits for most firms, as they are poised today to take over increasingly complex but repetitive human tasks.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - AI is changing server sales but paying off for enterprises
Omdia found that demand for compute resources remains high. However, it also reports that demand for more expensive servers with specialized hardware for AI model training (translation: GPUs) are being prioritized over the typical enterprise server with just a CPU.
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - Inside the infrastructure behind Amazon Prime Day: 4 lessons for IT
The resulting fleet handled 11.4 trillion requests per day and transferred 532 petabytes of data per day. More than 5,300 database instances processed 288 billion transactions, stored 1,849 terabytes of data and transferred 749 terabytes of data. Furthermore, Amazon Simple Queue Service set a new traffic record by processing 70.5 million messages per second at peak, the company reported.
IT Management
VentureBeat - AI and cybersecurity: Friends, foes, collaborators
First and foremost, it is critical to educate employees on the risks of AI and implement guardrails to ensure data protection, said Harbison. Models must be well trained with the right datasets that can’t be manipulated. Enterprises also don’t want to have models that may produce hallucinations that can disrupt business decisions.
Security
Computerworld - 7 questions to ask when considering a new Apple MDM platform
Like many parts of IT infrastructure, MDM needs to integrate with a variety of core disciplines, particularly identity management, user support and self-service portals, network management, and security. Investing in the right platform should make the lives of IT administrators, end users, and anyone in between more friction-free, while choosing the wrong MDM can create headaches, bottlenecks, and support tickets.
IT Management
Datanami - Couchbase Study Shows IT Modernization and Business Resilience as Top Priorities for Enterprises
78% of IT decision makers confirm their main priorities for transformation have changed in the last three years. 54% say their digital transformation focus has become more reactive to market changes and customer preferences in order to help the wider organization stay agile.
IT Management
Computerworld - Microsoft Dev Box — a better path to provisioning and productivity?
Microsoft Dev Box is a cloud workstation instance that can be rapidly configured to the unique needs of a new developer. No hardware needs to be ordered, no capital expenses approved, and there’s no shipping or lengthy setup time. The Dev Box can be deployed from the Dev Portal, configured against guidelines by project, and will immediately be in compliance with data management and security practices.
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - Managing supercloud authentication remains tricky – with no easy solution in sight 
The situation is made worse yet by sloppy access controls, which were a perennial problem for information technology departments even before clouds were invented. Proofpoint Inc.’s annual Human Factor report, based on its customers’ telemetry from 2022, says that “around 10% of endpoints have an unprotected privileged account password, with 26% of those exposed accounts being domain administrators.” Those percentages can only increase as clouds become more complex and pervasive.
Cloud
VentureBeat - VentureBeat Transform Day 1: Moving fast with care advised for AI adoption
Today’s efforts are mostly focused on technology, model size and data size. But we should focus on human needs if we want everyone to benefit from this new wave of technology.
Artificial Intelligence
TechRepublic - How AI Will Impact the Future of Your Work?
The World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs Report 2023 found that AI is expected to be adopted by nearly 75% of surveyed companies, with 50% of organizations expecting it to create job growth. The study found that the fastest-growing roles are driven by technology, digitalization and sustainability.
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Veeam CTO on SaaS backup, chatbots and ransomware
And the framework approach? “We have not introduced a framework per se, mostly because we believe that there is value in having specific capabilities around the SaaS service. If you do the generic framework, you end up with generic data protection and generic data recovery, and you’re dependent on the partner to write to it.”
Security
AiThority - Focus on Upskilling Your Workforce for Generative AI Success
Generative AI is extraordinarily powerful and the whole argument about AI taking our jobs, well, forget about it—it’s ancient history. The real talk now is all about the exciting roles that Generative AI is set to create. We’re talking about AI auditors, AI ethicists, and more, as reported by the Capgemini Research Institute. Generative AI has found a deeper adoption in the marketing, sales and customer service departments, where AI-generated responses are driving better personalization and contextual conversations with customers.
Tech Jobs
Forrester Study Highlights Companies Need to Invest in Zero Trust AI to Protect ML Integrity and Security
Alarmingly though, the majority of respondents noted they currently rely on manual processes to address ML model threats and 86% of respondents were ‘extremely concerned or concerned’ about their organization’s ML model security. To address this challenge, a majority of respondents expressed interest to invest in a solution that manages ML model integrity and security within the next 12 months.
Security
Computerworld - Microsoft wants you to pay for Windows from the cloud — good luck with that
With that in mind, the company is considering doing the same thing for Windows, but with an even stronger focus on the cloud. If Microsoft has its way, not only will people pay an annual subscription for Windows, but they’ll also load Windows directly from the cloud rather than on their own PCs.
IT Management
AiThority - Demystifying Artificial Intelligence vs. Machine Learning: Understanding the Differences & Applications
AI and ML are closely related, but what sets them apart is their scope and specific uses. AI encompasses a broader concept of creating intelligent machines capable of mimicking human intelligence, while ML focuses on enabling computers to learn and improve from data without explicit programming.
AI/ML
Network World - Are AI-powered networks already outperforming SD-WAN?
Comparatively, SD-WAN is able to detect that there is a connectivity issue, but can’t fix it. SD-WAN is dependent on the best efforts of the internet - and can only control the exit point from which the traffic will reach its destination, such as private lines, internet, or DIA.
Network Management
sdxCentral - When multicloud becomes reality
While some may arrive at multicloud on purpose, most are getting there organically. In fact, multicloud really is a natural progression of an organization’s requirement to leverage best-of-breed technology from any number of cloud providers to enable innovation. And, as that survey showcased, innovation is the true value of cloud computing.
Cloud
AiThority - World’s Largest Association of Computing Professionals Issues Principles for Generative AI Technologies
Drawing on the deep technical expertise of computer scientists in the United States and Europe, the ACM TPC statement outlines eight principles intended to foster fair, accurate, and beneficial decision-making concerning generative and all other AI technologies. Four of the principles are specific to Generative AI, and an additional four principles are adapted from the TPC’s 2022 “Statement on Principles for Responsible Algorithmic Systems.”
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - Gartner: SSE landscape shifts as vendors add more security services
A security-centric offshoot of SASE is security service edge, or SSE, which is essentially SASE minus the SD-WAN. SSE combines several key security functions – including a cloud-access security broker (CASB), secure web gateway, zero-trust network access (ZTNA), and a next-generation firewall – into a cloud-based service to streamline management.
Security
sdxCentral - AWS and Nokia: It’s time for telcos to overcome SaaS-shift reluctance
“You can imagine the level of scrutiny that public hyperscalers and SaaS providers get — not only our own audits and compliance requirements, internal and external audits by third-party assessors, [and] regulatory assessment that is done routinely, but also supporting customer audits of our infrastructure.”
Security
VentureBeat - Slack’s vision for enterprise AI: Empower ‘everybody to automate’
Slack has embraced automation technologies and leveraged large language models (LLMs) from OpenAI and Anthropic to more efficiently summarize busy channel activity in the instant messaging platform. It also generates new work flows from the contextual information found in a company’s online discussion.
Automation & Productivity
Computerworld - 4 collaboration security mistakes companies are still making
What’s more, organizations that adopt collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Box, Dropbox, GitHub, Jira, Asana, and others are often focused on the productivity benefits. Securing these platforms, communications, and the data that they share is typically an afterthought — if it’s thought about at all,
Security
SiliconANGLE - Unveiling Neeva’s AI search: Maximizing data insights and simplifying retrieval 
“But as I said, generative AI was a big unlock for us, because we said, ‘we can get away from giving you a set of links where you have to do the work to go figure out maybe it’s the 40th paragraph that has the answer to the question that you’re looking for,'” he explained. “What it let us do was figure out the right components of the page that supply the answer for you and give you this really pithy, understandable, but believable summary of what you needed to see.”
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - Generative AI revolution: Here’s where theCUBE analysts see the tech going next 
“All the insiders, we know, have been doing AI for a long time. Google’s one of them. Google has so much AI. It’s ridiculous how good they are. Now, the question is, can they hold on to their engineers?” Furrier said on a recent episode of theCUBE podcast. “Or will they flee to join a hot startup? Can they get out of their own way to create good products?”
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - Multiple SD-WAN vendors can complicate move to SASE
The SASE model combines network security functions with WAN capabilities, delivering the security elements in the cloud and using SD-WAN at the edge or in the cloud. Key security functions include secure web gateway (SWG), zero trust network access (ZTNA), firewall as a service (FWaaS), and cloud access security broker (CASB).

Blocks & Files - Unsure about your generative AI plans? Start with your data
What’s interesting is that while 70 percent of developers surveyed by Stack Overflow say they are already using or plan to use GenAI in coding, only 42 percent trust the accuracy of the output in their tools. This tells us we’re still relatively early in the GenAI cycle, but the rate of acceleration might keep some leaders up at night.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - Maximizing ChatGPT potential: Building business-specific plugins for your company and customers
The Wolfram plugin gives ChatGPT access to computation, math, curated knowledge and real-time data and visualization through Wolfram|Alpha and Wolfram Language. Other plugins can dive into knowledge bases, or perform tasks like booking a flight (see the plugins created by Kayak and Expedia), making reservations (OpenTable’s entry), shopping for groceries (Instacart’s plugin) and more, without a user leaving the chat window.  
ChatGPT
SiliconANGLE - Enterprise-grade generative AI automation: Unpacking the hype, understanding the challenges 
Although generative AI has already spawned much experimentation, most demonstrations are focused on the technology’s ability to generate outputs — text, music, art and even code templates — as guided by human prompts. These outputs, while impressive in their own right, are generally understood to be first drafts, often with varying degree of acceptable errors and omissions, such as an entry-level assistant might provide.
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - Q&A: How AI can help enterprise HR automate employee experiences
"We had a high amount of onboarding that needed to be done virtually. When lockdown happened in COVID, we needed to onboard like 800 people…in multiple batches of 200 people each, things like that. So, we gamified it. We made it a spaceship. You're going to take a tour like astronauts and earn gold coins."
Automation & Productivity
Computerworld - Annual public cloud revenue reaches half a trillion dollars 
This foundational spending, according to IDC, reflects the growing dependence organizations have on data and AI services, distributed computing and app frameworks. Spending on IaaS and PaaS, in particular, should continue to grow more quickly than the overall public cloud market, which cloud providers have reacted to by deploying increasingly high-performance infrastructure.
Cloud
VentureBeat - Code Interpreter comes to all ChatGPT Plus users — ‘anyone can be a data analyst now’
Code Interpreter allows ChatGPT Plus users to generate charts, maps, data visualizations and graphics, analyze music playlists, create interactive HTML files, clean datasets and extract color palettes from images. The interpreter unlocks a myriad of capabilities, making it a powerful tool for data visualization, analysis and manipulation.
ChatGPT
eWeek - Navigating the Perfect Storm with Applied Intelligence
But humans are slow, much slower than an AI algorithm in the cloud. In the time it takes for a seasoned professional to make one decision, AI can ask thousands of questions, get just as many answers, and then winnow them down to an array of targeted, executed optimizations.
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - How AI is reshaping the rules of business
First, we need to update our requirements for businesses developing and deploying AI models. This is particularly important when we question what “responsible innovation” really means. The U.K. has been leading this discussion, with its government recently providing guidance for AI through five core principles, including safety, transparency and fairness.
Artificial Intelligence
eWeek - Best Text Analysis Tools 2023
The primary purpose of text analysis tools is to automate the analysis of large volumes of text, uncover patterns, sentiments, and relationships within the data, and derive valuable insights for decision-making, research, or other purposes.
Data & Analytics
VentureBeat - How generative AI tools like ChatGPT can revolutionize web accessibility
Despite efforts to improve web accessibility over the years, internet accessibility is far from available to everyone. WebAIM’s 2022 accessibility report showed that only one in four websites passed the basic accessibility standards of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Automation & Productivity
eWeek - What is AIaaS? Guide to Artificial Intelligence as a Service
Artificial intelligence as a service, often referred to as AIaaS, is a service artificial intelligence companies provide to customers, offering them access to AI technologies and AI-powered business operations through the cloud without requiring them to invest in their own AI infrastructure.
Artificial Intelligence
TechRepublic - The Importance of Penetration Testing in Cloud Security
Penetration testing simulates real-world attacks. The goal for the penetration tester is to find and exploit vulnerabilities in the cloud infrastructure and report it to the requesting entity, generally the chief information security officer. It’s performed under guidelines from the cloud service providers.
Security
Computerworld - How many jobs are available in technology in the US?
Among the six top tech occupation categories, three have shown positive gains through the first half of 2023: IT and custom software services and systems design; PC, semiconductor and components manufacturing; and cloud infrastructure, data processing and hosting.
Tech Jobs
sdxCentral - What role will mmWave spectrum have in 5G and 6G?
While the FCC has been able to free up some lower-band spectrum resources – most specifically the C-band in the 3.7 GHz to 3.95 GHz band that is currently the basis for Verizon and AT&T to boost their 5G capacity – the more than 1,000 megahertz of new spectrum being requested will have to come from the mmWave band. This is considered spectrum residing above the 20 GHz band, and can span all the way up to 100 GHz.
5G
sdxCentral - Critical vulnerability still threatens 69% of Fortinet firewalls after a month, exposing patch challenges
Despite the patch release and Fortinet’s advisories, security consulting firm Bishop Fox found only 153,414 devices on the internet have been patched out of nearly 490,000 exposed SSL-VPN interfaces, which means around 69% of Fortinet firewalls are unpatched.
Security
Computerworld - Lawyers and Incident Response can be a dangerous combo
Lawyers and C-suite leaders have the same basic mission: protect the enterprise from bad actors who want to do harm. But they often often approach the job in such polar opposite ways that they wind up fighting each other instead of working together.
Security
VentureBeat - Generative AI’s secret sauce — data scraping— comes under attack
Data scraping practices in the name of training AI have come under attack over the past week on several fronts. OpenAI was hit with two lawsuits. One, filed in federal court in San Francisco, alleges that OpenAI unlawfully copied book text by not getting consent from copyright holders or offering them credit and compensation. The other claims OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL·E collect people’s personal data from across the internet in violation of privacy laws.
Data Privacy
Computerworld - Digital transformation, AI, and the productivity problem
When we learn about process optimization, we usually discuss a concept called “the critical path.” This is the path a process has that defines how quickly something can get done. If you improve anything but the critical path, the rate at which the process completes is still gated by the untouched critical path and you’re unlikely to see a productivity improvement.
Automation & Productivity
Network World - Networking, security initiatives dominate IT spending priorities
The most prevalent connectivity concerns that CIOs say they’re dealing with are network performance issues (cited by 37% of respondents), expanding connectivity into new markets (37%), and the constraints of legacy platforms (35%).
IT Management
Datanami - IDC: Compute and Storage Cloud Infrastructure Spending Continued to Grow as Prices Soared in 1Q 2023
For 2023, IDC forecasts cloud infrastructure spending to grow 7.3% compared to 2022 to $96.4 billion – a slight improvement from the prior outlook for the year of 6.9%. Non-cloud infrastructure is expected to decline 6.3% to $60.4 billion. Shared cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 8.4% year over year to $68.0 billion for the full year, while spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 4.8% to $28.4 billion for the full year.
Cloud
VentureBeat - Gartner survey: Most corporate strategists find AI and analytics critical to success
Conducted between October 2022 and April 2023, the poll highlights enterprises’ growing focus on next-gen technologies. Now, companies are looking at advanced systems not only to handle repetitive or basic tasks but also high-value projects directly related to business growth, such as strategic planning and decision-making.
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - The evolving role of CTOs: Intel research identifies IT investment priorities
The survey polled more than 2,000 CTOs, CEOs and chief sustainability officers (CSOs) from 22 markets and found a global consensus that CTOs are crucial for success in terms of business and environmental aspirations. The survey found 81% of CEOs and CSOs believe tech leaders “must now be sustainability leaders” and 82% believe the CTO role is crucial to reaching net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
IT Management
Network World - 5 ways to boost server efficiency
Upgrading from 2019 to 2021 CPU-based servers will increase efficiency by 32% for Intel servers, and by 47% for AMD servers. The improved efficiency numbers cut across all levels of utilization.
IT Management
SiliconANGLE - State data privacy laws are changing fast – here’s what businesses need to know 
The larger the geographic entity involved, the longer it takes to enact the legislation, and longer still to actually spell out the regulations, enforcement actions and other consequences of noncompliance. One point to realize: each state has enacted multiple laws concerning privacy, making it difficult to suss out a coherent picture.
Data Privacy
CIO Influence - Get an Enterprise Data Storage Solution to Pay for Itself within a Year
Ways you can tell if a storage product may become a problem in the future are complexity, high overhead, the need for constant IT operations management, the lack of autonomous automation, the need for too many storage arrays, the lack of flexibility, the lack of flexible consumption models, hidden costs, and mediocre service and support.
Data Storage
sdxCentral - Zscaler sees sharp increase in ransomware attacks with encryptionless extortion and RaaS
Zscaler listed LockBit, ALPHV/BlackCat, and BlackBasta as the most prevalent ransomware families over the last year based on the number of victims listed on their leak sites. Additionally, manufacturing was the most-targeted market sector globally in 2023, accounting for 14.8% of ransomware attacks.
Security
Computerworld - Of cut cables and the sad state of tech support
Let’s face it: many of us would like to have an extremely knowledgeable person come to our businesses with every tool available, the ability to diagnose any tech issue, and knowledge about what to do. The reality is that it takes time, experience, and communication skills even the best tech support personnel don’t always have.
IT Management
VentureBeat - The best-paying tech jobs in 2023
And despite the stark reality that 2023 has seen 809 tech companies lay off 211,400 employees so far this year, organizations are still hiring at pace to fill roles in emerging sectors like cloud technology, blockchain and cybersecurity.
Tech Jobs
TechRepublic - Aqua Security Study Finds 1,400% Increase in Memory Attacks
The Nautilus team reported that more than 50% of attacks focused on defense evasion and included masquerading techniques such as files executed from /tmp, a location used to store temporary files. The attacks also involved obfuscated files or information, such as dynamic loading of code, which loads libraries – malicious in this case – into memory at runtime, leaving no suspicious digital trail.
Security
SiliconANGLE - How organizations can combat AI-equipped attackers 
In February, Gartner published three recommendations in this vein: Have humans review output, favor Microsoft’s branded Azure OpenAI Service ChatGPT over OpenAI’s less-secure public version, and prohibit employees from disclosing confidential enterprise data in a conversation with a chatbot.
Privacy & Security
sdxCentral - How to grow your own SD-WAN and SASE resources
“While we’ve seen IT leaders implement a number of strategies, there is no tried-and-true method for developing and hiring IT talent because the skills profile changes too frequently,” said Evans. “What we’ve seen innovative organizations do is upskill current employees.”
IT Management
sdxCentral - How Linux 6.4 Kernel improves Wi-Fi 7 and IPv6 networking
The Linux kernel offers essential capabilities for running operations that are widely used in networking equipment, enterprise, telco and the cloud. The kernel is part of a larger Linux operating system, with various vendors offering supported distributions including Red Hat, SUSE, and Canonical. Linux kernel development follows a rapid pace with new releases every six to ten weeks.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - Cybersecurity in the AI age: The power, the promise, the peril
Just two months after OpenAI LLC released its ChatGPT large language model into an open beta test, researchers at WithSecure Corp. published a report demonstrating how the chatbot could be used to write convincing email messages that encouraged recipients to share corporate secrets, create tweets that hyped once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunities and even attack individuals through social media.
Privacy & Security
Blocks & Files - Generative AI has democratized AI – what does this mean for COEs?
Centralizing AI functions afforded organizations the ability to dictate strategy and policy and control costs, thereby reducing risks. But COEs’ dedication to rigorous processes had its drawbacks. Typically, the COE received specifications and built a deliverable over several months. Over a long enough timeline, the goal posts moved. As data grew stale, the output rarely resembled the desired outcome.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - How new AI tools like ChatGPT can transform human productivity in the enterprise
This article dives deeper into how business leaders can use the transformative potential of AI to revolutionize human productivity, providing insightful examples and statistics that demonstrate the technology’s profound impact.
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Dell-commissioned report praises APEX file services speed in AWS cloud
Dell’s APEX File Storage is based on its on-premises PowerScale (Isilon as was) scale-out OneFS software. This was compared to NetApp’s high-availability configuration of its Cloud Volumes ONTAP (CVO). There were several points of comparison, but we want to focus on the performance aspect where Prowess was looking for high performance.
Data Storage
VentureBeat - Why healthcare in the cloud must move to zero trust cybersecurity
Eighty-eight percent of global healthcare decision-makers have adopted public cloud platforms, and 59% are adopting Kubernetes to ensure higher availability for their core enterprise systems. On average, healthcare providers spend $9.5 million annually across all public cloud platforms they’ve integrated into their tech stacks.
Security
TechRepublic - Data Scientist Survey: Do Tech Leaders Believe the AI Hype?
Most (55%) of the data science professionals and IT platform owners Domino Data Lab surveyed prefer to use foundation models from large third parties like OpenAI, Microsoft or Google but create different experiences for their customers on top of the base model. Another 39% want to build their own proprietary generative AI from scratch. Just 6% want to use AI features solely planned and provided by independent software vendors and other third parties.
Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - Ex-Uber and SolarWinds CISOs are taking the legal rap for attacks (how to avoid the same fate)
CISOs have a good perspective of what needs to be done, but they have to kind of fight to get things prioritized. And there’s always a roadmap of things that you have to do and so I think putting the blame on after the fact is super unfair.”
Security
The Hacker News - 3 Reasons SaaS Security is the Imperative First Step to Ensuring Secure AI Usage
They raise legitimate questions about the usage and permissions of AI applications within their infrastructure: Who is using these applications, and for what purposes? Which AI applications have access to company data, and what level of access have they been granted? What is the information employees share with these applications? What are the compliance implications?
Security
VentureBeat - Inside the race to build an ‘operating system’ for generative AI
The operating system analogy helps to illustrate the magnitude of the change that generative AI is bringing to enterprises. It is not just about adding a new layer of software tools and frameworks on top of existing systems. It is also about giving the system the authority and agency to run its own process, for example deciding which LLM to use in real time to answer a user’s question, and when to hand off the conversation to a human expert.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - AI requirements exceed infrastructure capabilities for many IT teams, study finds
Customers often will opt for end-to-end solutions from AI vendors in the cloud, especially initially, “because they make it easy for the customers with a simple button,” Voruganti said. But variable cloud costs – which enterprises incur with each read or write to cloud-based data, or with every data extraction, for example – may cause IT teams to reconsider that approach.
IT Management
SiliconANGLE - ‘Zero trust’ was supposed to revolutionize cybersecurity. Here’s why that hasn’t happened yet. 
Moreover, Watts predicted that “over 60% of organizations will embrace zero trust as a starting place for security by 2025 but more than half will fail to realize the benefits.” A report from Nathan Parde of MIT’s Lincoln Lab last May, meantime, estimated the typical zero-trust deployment will take anywhere from three to five years. That is a depressing thought, to be sure.
Security
Network World - How IT pros can benefit from generative AI safely
We went right to source and asked ChatGPT itself how it can make life easier for enterprise IT. After a pause of no more than a couple of seconds, we got back a numbered list: 1) troubleshooting and issue resolution, 2) documentation and knowledge management, 3) automation and scripting, 4) training and onboarding, 5) security and compliance, 6) project management and planning, 7) stay updated on technology trends.  
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - What role will Cisco play in AT&T’s SD-WAN simplification plans?
Frost and Sullivan recently placed AT&T into a crowded leadership category as part of its latest ranking of managed SD-WAN providers. It noted the carrier provided customers with a “choice of market-leading SD-WAN vendors” such as Cisco, Aruba, VMware, Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks, and “has the most SD-WAN sites deployed in North America.”
Network Management
Network World - Recovery options: Copy-on write vs redirect-on-write snapshots
This article will deviate from the commonly employed term "volume" and instead uses the phrase "protected entity" to allude to the entity being safeguarded by a specific snapshot. Although it is true that the protected entity is typically a RAID volume, certain object-storage systems eschew RAID and may employ snapshots to protect alternative entities like object stores or NAS shares
Data Management
VentureBeat - How Microsoft Fabric aims to beat Amazon and Google in the cloud war
Even before the announcement Microsoft had already become a leader in data and analytics software, according to Gartner, a research firm. But with Microsoft Fabric, analysts said, the company has taken its offerings to a new level of integration and ease of use that could be hard for its competitors to match anytime soon.
Cloud
Bloomberg - Big Tech Wants AI Regulation — So Long as Users Bear the Brunt
The rules governing tech vary dramatically on opposing sides of the Atlantic. The EU has had comprehensive data protection laws on the books for over five years now and is in the process of implementing strict guidelines for competition and content moderation. In the US, however, there’s been almost no regulation for more than two decades.
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - AI will kill these jobs (but create new ones, too)
Career fields with the highest exposure to AI automation are administrative positions (46%) and tasks in legal (44%) professions. Not surprisingly, jobs less likely to be affected tend to be in physically intensive areas such as construction (6%) and maintenance (4%).
Tech Jobs
SiliconANGLE - New report highlights security vulnerabilities in open-source AI projects 
The researchers found that many AI models are granted excessive access and authorization, often without adequate security measures. An overall lack of maturity and basic security best practices in the open-source projects adopting these models, combined with excessive access and authorization, is said to create an environment ripe for potential breaches.
Security
AiThority - Enhancing Cybersecurity with AI: This New Approach Identifies Threats, Comprehend The Sources
“Cyber defenders are inundated with information and lines of code. What they need is interpretation and support for prioritization. Where are we vulnerable? What actions can we take?”
Security
TechRepublic - Gartner: 81% of IT Teams Will Grow Despite AI Adoption
Companies working on digital transformation rely on full-time IT workers to do it, Gartner reported. Full-time IT employees perform 56% of this work. Another 21% is done by IT contractors or part-time employees, 9% by IT consultants and 4% by IT gig workers.
IT Management
The Hacker News - 5 Things CISOs Need to Know About Securing OT Environments
In more recent years, an uptick in cyberattacks against industrial facilities and the trend of IT/OT convergence driven by Industry 4.0 have highlighted the vacuum of ownership around OT security. According to a new Fortinet report, most organizations are looking to Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) to solve the problem.
Security
VentureBeat - Enterprises need to control their own generative AI, say data scientists
The data, from data and analytics professionals who attended Domino Data Lab’s recent Rev conference in New York City, found that 90% of data science leaders — who are typically a skeptical bunch – believe that the hype surrounding Generative AI is justified. More than half believe it will have a significant impact on their business within the next 1-2 years.
Data & Analytics
Datanami - Insight Survey Finds Employee Productivity Fueling Generative AI Adoption
finds that within the next three years, most business leaders expect to adopt generative AI to make employees more productive (72%) and enhance customer service (66%). Around half of the respondents for Insight’s generative AI report, released today, say they expect to use the technology to assist with research and development (53%) and/or software development/ testing (50%).
Artificial Intelligence
The Hacker News - How Generative AI Can Dupe SaaS Authentication Protocols — And Effective Ways To Prevent Other Key AI Risks in SaaS
Security and risk teams are already overwhelmed protecting their SaaS estate (which has now become the operating system of business) from common vulnerabilities such as misconfigurations and over permissioned users. This leaves little bandwidth to assess the AI tool threat landscape, unsanctioned AI tools currently in use, and the implications for SaaS security.
Security
VentureBeat - How ChatGPT could replace IT network engineers
So, in the case of configuration management, ChatGPT performed fairly well on basic configuration tasks, and I concluded that it is aware of vendor-specific syntax and can generate configurations. However, the configurations generated by the system should be carefully inspected for accuracy. The generic prompts I tested would be akin to building a quick lab, a task most young networking engineers find tiresome at a minimum and clearly a chore that can be handled by the technology (with, again, some human oversight).
ChatGPT
Network World - How IT pros can benefit from generative AI safely
”Although generative AI is still in its infancy and there are many pitfalls that need to be navigated, Gartner says, “Generative AI provides new and disruptive opportunities to increase revenue, reduce costs, improve productivity and better manage risk. In the near future, it will become a competitive advantage and differentiator.”
Artificial Intelligence
IEEE Spectrum - A CRITICAL LOOK AT AI-GENERATED SOFTWARE
GitHub Copilot, built on top of OpenAI Codex, a system that translates natural language to code, can make code recommendations in different programming languages based on the appropriate prompts. And this is not the only such system: Amazon CodeWhisperer, CodeGeeX, GPT-Code-Clippy, Replit Ghostwriter, and Tabnine, among others, also provide AI-powered coding and code completion [see “Robo-Helpers,” below].”
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - M365 Copilot, Microsoft’s generative AI tool, explained
The M365 Copilot “system” consists of three elements: Microsoft 365 apps such as Word, Excel, and Teams, where users interact with the AI assistant; Microsoft Graph, which includes files, documents, and data across the Microsoft 365 environment; and the OpenAI models that process user prompts: OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT-4, DALL-E, Codex, and Embeddings.
Automation & Productivity
AiThority - Rocket Software Study Reveals 93 Percent of IT Leaders Believe Hybrid Cloud Solutions are the Future of IT
The report revealed that IT leaders are losing sleep over improving overall IT performance (60%), data security (50%), process risk and compliance (46%), and the need to improve agility (41%). To overcome these challenges, IT organizations are turning to hybrid solutions to leverage the benefits of the cloud and the mainframe.
IT Management
Android Authority - GPT-5: Release date, rumors, and features we expect from ChatGPT 5
Still, the steady march of AI innovation means that OpenAI hasn’t stopped with GPT-4. That’s especially true now that Google has announced its upcoming multimodal Gemini language model. That is rumored to match GPT-4, so OpenAI will have to move quickly if it wants to keep its lead.
Artificial Intelligence
eWeek - 5 Ways Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) Unlocks the Potential of ChatGPT
There are, however, some drawbacks and limitations that are keeping it and AI in general from achieving full potential. This is where event-driven architecture, EDA, can facilitate the flow of information between the systems that “publish” events and the other systems that indicate interest in that kind of information by “subscribing” to topics.
ChatGPT
TechRepublic - How to Get the Most Out of Your Cloud Disaster Recovery Plan
The second major challenge is about cloud capacity. An organization might try to optimize cloud costs by shutting down some of their virtual machines when not in use, but what happens when you need to bring them back up? Even if the cloud is available, there may not be capacity in that cloud region or cloud to accommodate bringing those machines back up again, and that has another chilling effect on productivity.
Cloud
SiliconANGLE - Millions of GitHub projects found vulnerable to exploit
Aqua analyzed a sample of more than a million GitHub code repositories and found almost 3% were vulnerable to an attack called repojacking. The bad actors could take control over an entire GitHub project or a particular piece of software. The issue is that sometimes organizations that own these projects change their name, and then create links to maintain the older account name.
Security
The Hacker News - The Power of Browser Fingerprinting: Personalized UX, Fraud Detection, and Secure Logins
With browser fingerprinting, many pieces of data can be collected about a user's web browser and device, such as screen resolution, location, language, and operating system. When you stitch these pieces together, they reveal a unique combination of information that forms every user's visitor ID or "digital fingerprint." Websites can use the visitor ID in various ways, including personalizing the user's experience, improving fraud detection, and optimizing login security.
Privacy & Security
TechRepublic - Dell Technologies World 2023: Q&A on how Dell sees security at the edge
One of the biggest things that companies are looking to do is there is an interest in being able to consume (cloud) in an as-a-service fashion. They want to take the experiences they are getting from hyperscalers and potentially be able to bring those experiences on-prem, especially toward the edge. Customers want to leverage edge technologies to drive new business outcomes, to be able to act upon data more rapidly
IT Management
sdxCentral - Palo Alto Networks: Operational tech security isn’t one-size-fits-all
As the threat landscape continues to grow, achieving full visibility into the OT network is more critical than ever, Oswal noted. Security teams for those systems must understand what devices are connected to the network and the specifics about each one. This includes the make, model, version of software running, open vulnerabilities and whether it has been patched or not.
Security
Blocks & Files - MinIO: Open source object storage will rule the cloud
The company said its object storage software was frequently downloaded (1.2 billion Docker pulls) and widely deployed. Its thesis starts with the point that the cloud is taking over virtually every IT environment. Kubernetes powers the cloud operating model, providing one abstraction across any computing infrastructure – public, private or edge.
Data Storage
VentureBeat - The next wave of cyber threats: Defending your company against cybercriminals empowered by generative AI
Data breaches that bypass safety checks are made possible by tricking generative AI into writing malicious code that reveals the chat history of active users, personally identifiable information like names, email addresses, payment addresses, and even the last four digits and expiration data of credit cards.
Security
TechRepublic - Shadow SaaS, changing contracts and ChatGPT adoption: SaaS trends to watch
Engineering teams tend to use the most SaaS apps, with an average of 108 apps. The IT and security teams saw the most growth in SaaS app usage between 2022 and 2023, with an increase of 33% mostly in point solution and ROI tools.
Security
SiliconANGLE - The top five cloud cybersecurity threats – and what to do about them 
Why do these hard-coded credentials still exist? Mainly because of lazy DevOps practices, such as providing full access rights to the entire enterprise source code repositories. Unit 42’s report found that more than 80% of their customers used hard-coded credentials in their source control management tools.
Security
Blocks & Files - A last line of defense against ransomware
However, Object First’s Bennett notes that reported attacks represent just the tip of the ransomware iceberg given that so many organizations are typically very reluctant to admit being hit: “Unless they have a legal requirement, organizations are concerned about disclosing their vulnerability to cyber attacks,” he says. “The risk of reputational damage that can come from a data loss incident is enormous.”
Security
sdxCentral - How confidential computing and zero-trust data clean rooms ease AI fears
These new functionalities will allow separate organizations to securely analyze and collaborate on combined raw sensitive data while maintaining confidentiality and allow organizations to use LLMs without revealing their data.
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - IT firms expect to increase hiring next quarter, Manpower says
Across all industry verticals in the US, 48% of employers plan to hire in Q3, while just 13% expect staffing decreases, according to the survey. For US tech firms, 55% plan to add to their current headcount, up 10% from the previous quarterly outlook. Even so, Q3 hiring projections are expected to be about 5% less than for the same period in 2022.
Tech Jobs
SiliconANGLE - Antonio Neri on HPE’s cultural transformation: Unlocking the power of hybrid cloud and AI 
While the company excels in organic innovation, evident in the success of GreenLake, it also recognizes the value of external innovation and talent. Strategic acquisitions, such as Aruba, and recent additions, such as OpsRamp and Determined AI, have enhanced HPE’s portfolio and complemented its in-house capabilities.
Cloud
Computerworld - The coming productivity disruption of generative AI
Another problem: the people doing code generally have no idea about the environment in which the application will be used. They don’t know the company culture culture and rarely meet those who will use the application.
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - Exclusive: MongoDB foresees AI-powered future as it navigates shifting software development landscape 
The database landscape has been a dynamic one, witnessing substantial shifts as industry heavyweights such as Oracle Corp. adapt their services to meet emerging demands. But MongoDB’s roots in document space and its emphasis on availability at scale provide a unique competitive edge, even as others rush to announce MongoDB application programming interfaces.
Data & Analytics
Datanami - Recent Study Highlights Rising Dangers of AI and the Pressing Need for Ethical AI; Majority of Businesses Battle to Keep Up
While more than half (53%) of organizations rely exclusively on third-party AI tools, having no internally designed or developed AI of their own, 55% of all AI-related failures stem from third-party AI tools, according to new research by MIT Sloan Management Review (MIT SMR) and Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Generative AI and automation: accelerating the datacenter of the future
If time stood still, perhaps the dire prognosticators of the datacenter’s end would have been right. I myself was quite the cloud evangelist before learning more about the other side of the fence. So why hasn’t this extinction-level event come to pass? Because the datacenter has adapted. Sure, there are “aaS” and subscription models now available on-premises; but the real stabilizing force has been automation.
Automation & Productivity
Datanami - Rackspace Survey Unearths IT Leaders’ Concerns Over Legacy Infrastructure Hindering AI Implementation
The survey finds that global IT organizations have been slow to modernize key applications, including customer resource management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and human resources (HR) systems. Moreover, the study suggests that failure to modernize key apps and data will limit organizations’ ability to deploy and benefit from cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
IT Management
VentureBeat - 5 ways generative AI will help bring greater precision to cybersecurity
Demand for generative AI-based cybersecurity platforms and solutions is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22% between 2022 and 2023 and reach a market value of $11.2 billion in 2032, up from $1.6 billion in 2022. Canalys estimates that more than 70% of businesses will have their cybersecurity operations supported by generative AI tools within the next five years.
Security
TechRepublic - One overlooked element of executive safety: Data privacy
All of this data is collected legally by data brokers. Every time you interact with a computer — be that via a smart device, a bar code at checkout or on a website — data about you is being collected. In the U.S. there is essentially no limit to the amount of data companies can collect, and few limits on how they can use it.
Data Privacy
sdxCentral - How to move from VPN to ZTNA (3 best practices)
A common ZTNA myth is that you have to move to the cloud to implement zero trust or that it can only be used for remote employees. Newton noted that sometimes organizations even set up separate solutions: one for cloud access and another one for on-premises.
Security
VentureBeat - How generative AI is creating new classes of security threats
Attackers are using AI to improve phishing and fraud. Meta’s 65-billion parameter language model got leaked, which will undoubtedly lead to new and improved phishing attacks. We see new prompt injection attacks on a daily basis.
Security
The Hacker News - Activities in the Cybercrime Underground Require a New Approach to Cybersecurity
The research stems from an analysis of Cybersixgill's collected intelligence items throughout 2022, gathered from the deep, dark and clear web. The report examines the continuous evolution of threat actors' tactics, tools, and procedures (TTPs) in the Digital Age – and how organizations can adapt to reduce risk and maintain business resilience.
Security
VentureBeat - How to navigate the AI jungle with pragmatic steps for enterprise
To simplify this, focus on encouraging experimentation in concrete, manageable areas. Encourage the use of AI in areas like marketing, customer service and other more straightforward applications. Prototype and pilot internally ahead of defining complete solutions or working through every exception case (that is, workflows to manage AI hallucinations).
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - 5 tips for business leaders to leverage the real potential of generative AI
Generative AI is here, and it’s poised to have a transformational impact on our world. The potential upsides of leveraging it in your business are too great — and the downsides of being a laggard too many — not to get started now. But the very beginning of this journey is making sure you have the right data foundations for AI/ML. In order to train quality models, you must start with quality, unified data from your business.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - How to navigate the co-management conundrum in MSP engagements
 As a minimum, the client needs an effective contractual framework (and some assigned people) to allow monitoring, feedback, and control levers to keep the service provision commercially and operationally on track. Without these, the enterprise will be left exposed to the potential degradation of MSP service provision over time, and vulnerable to cost increases or scope gaps.IT Management
Geekwire - Data’s destiny: Former Microsoft and Snowflake exec Bob Muglia on the future of AI and humanity
"Then there’s the question about what happens as this AI that we’re building becomes smarter and smarter, and reaches what we might call the point of an artificial general intelligence, where it’s as smart as an average human."
Artificial Intelligence
TechRepublic - AI vs AI: Next front in phishing wars
Business email compromises, which supplanted ransomware last year to become the top financially motivated attack vector-threatening organizations, are likely to become harder to track. New investigations by Abnormal Security suggest attackers are using generative AI to create phishing emails, including vendor impersonation attacks of the kind Abnormal flagged earlier this year by the actor dubbed Firebrick Ostricth.
Privacy & Security
eWeek - Generative AI Ethics: Concerns and Solutions
In this guide, we’ll discuss what generative AI ethics look like today, the current challenges this technology faces, and how corporate users can take steps to protect their customers, their data, and their business operations with appropriate generative AI ethics and procedures in place.
AiEthics
sdxCentral - Regulated industries and large enterprises lag behind in MFA adoption
“Surprisingly, highly-regulated industries tend to lag behind,” Okta noted. The MFA adoption rate of the government (48%) was 16% lower than the private sector (64%). And the rates for health care, financial services and energy are 56%, 60% and 62% respectively.
Security
VentureBeat - This Google leader says ML infrastructure is ‘conduit’ to company’s AI success
I always tell my team that we need to look at the entire journey from the point the researcher has a great idea or product has a need and finds a researcher to solve it — all the way to the point that a billion people’s lives have been changed by that idea. That journey is especially interesting these days because ML is going through an accelerated journey of becoming an industry, while up until two or three years ago, it was just the subject of academic research.
Machine Learning
sdxCentral - US federal agencies hit by cyberattack — what you need to know about MOVEit
MOVEit is a popular application developed by Progress Software and used by many healthcare, technology, financial and energy companies as well as government agencies. Progress Software first announced the MOVEit Transfer vulnerability (CVE-2023-34362) on May 31, which allows an attacker to perform an SQL injection in the web application and gain access to MOVEit Transfer’s database.
Security
TechRepublic - Akamai’s new study: Bots, phishing and server attacks making commerce a cybersecurity hotspot
In its new report, Entering through the Gift Shop: Attacks on Commerce, Akamai determined that 14 billion or 34% of all incursions were against commerce sites, driven by bots, API attacks, remote code execution through local file inclusion attacks and server-side exploits. The migration to cloud, availability of dark net apps and the proliferation of IoT devices have also driven a big increase in attacks.
Privacy & Security
VentureBeat - Tribe AI’s CEO on why generative AI is seeing more rapid uptake by enterprises than Web3 and crypto
What I found when I actually left Google was that I was not alone because there were a lot of people who had similarly stepped out of these amazing companies where they had built the cutting-edge AI machine learning technology. And they wanted different things in their career, but they still wanted to monetize their skill sets.
Tech Jobs
VentureBeat - Why data management matters: Turning analytics insights into income
According to Salesforce’s Connected Customer report, 88% of customers say their experience with the company is as important as its products or services. Meanwhile, 8 in 10 business leaders say data is critical in decision-making at their organization.
Data & Analytics
TechRepublic - CISA advisory on LockBit: $91 million extorted from 1,700 attacks since 2020
In a May 2023 study on the professionalization of ransomware, cybersecurity firm WithSecure noted the RaaS model LockBit uses is a service-oriented system; just like legitimate software: it creates tools, infrastructure and operating procedures — “playbooks” — and sells access to these tools and services to other groups or individuals.
Security
Computerworld - Employees want remote-work tools, not in-office mandates, Atlassian says
But Atlassian — whose Jira, Trello and Confluence applications are geared for hybrid-work environments — pointed to its survey results to conclude that problems with distributed work are not related to the physical separation of employees but rather, that companies aren’t providing their workers with the right tools or ways of working in order to make a success of such a strategy.
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - Data collection and privacy: Understanding the legal limits
In parallel with the GDPR — now in its fifth year — roughly 25 states and Puerto Rico have introduced or are considering about 140 consumer privacy bills this year. These include the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (effective Jan. 1); the Colorado Privacy Act (effective July 1); the Connecticut Personal Data Privacy and Online Monitoring Act (also effective July 1); and the Utah Consumer Privacy Act (effective Dec. 31).
Data Privacy
The Hacker News - Activities in the Cybercrime Underground Require a New Approach to Cybersecurity
This article summarizes a few of the report's findings, including trends in credit card fraud, observations about cryptocurrency, AI developments and how they're lowering barriers to entry to cybercrime, and the rise of cybercriminal "as-a-service" activities
Security
Blocks & Files - GigaOm gurus say three Cs lead large enterprise hybrid cloud backup
GigaOm has published findings showing Cohesity, Commvault and lesser known Cobalt Iron are “outperforming” other suppliers when backing up data in large enterprise hybrid clouds.
Data Storage
sdxCentral - Accenture: High tech has a hidden scope 3 emissions problem
In terms of managing scope 3 value chain emissions, “enterprise tech and consumer tech companies have a very big challenge in terms of the size of scope 3 emissions, but I think semiconductor companies have a bigger challenge,” he said.
Sustainability
AiThority - Global CMOs Are Profiting from the Transformative Power of GenAI, with 91% Reporting a Positive Impact on Efficiency
Some 70% of respondents said their organizations already implement GenAI to address a wide range of marketing challenges, and another 19% said that their organizations are testing it. The greatest focus area is personalization, with roughly two-thirds (67%) pursuing efforts there, followed by insight generation (51%) and content creation (49%)
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - Management consoles can be a security nightmare, but they still lack good protection 
It doesn’t take much to discover these misconfigured public-facing consoles, as the recent attacks on MOVEIt demonstrated. Victims in these attacks included many state and federal government sites. There are a number of tools, including Shodan, GreyNoise Inc. and Censys Inc., all of which can quickly provide a variety of information on all sorts of devices with just a few mouse clicks
Security
sdxCentral - How digital twins and AI optimize IT and more (and 4 questions to ask before you try)
Rolling out hypothetical 5G infrastructure, optimizing manufacturing workflows, testing experiential new products, even building out a complete – constantly evolving – doppelganger of the entire world. Those are just a few examples of what digital twins make possible.
Automation & Productivity
AiThority - Will ChatGPT Traffic Ever Touch Google’s?
A new report stated that ChatGPT’s traffic is beginning to flatten, even as its closest competitor Google’s BARD is quickly catching up after a slow start. The news about ChatGPT’s meteoric rise overshadowed all other AI-related developments for a good six months, before it hit the wall in terms of website visits.
ChatGPT
SiliconANGLE - New report details how cybercriminals are leveraging AI in email attacks 
Abnormal Security’s researchers analyzed a series of recent attacks and discovered that these AI-generated emails could take various forms, ranging from credential phishing to vendor fraud and sophisticated BEC schemes. In previous years, the presence of grammar mistakes, awkward language or other inconsistencies made phishing emails easier to spot. Now, AI-generated content makes these cyberthreats indistinguishable from normal business communication, amplifying the challenge for companies and individuals.
Security
Computerworld - 5 hot workplace collaboration trends (and 2 going cold)
“They look at email volume versus what’s happening in Teams,” she said. “They would prefer to see more collaboration taking place in Teams than email, [so they are] using that anonymized data to understand where an intervention might need to take place, with more learning and more coaching [to encourage real-time collaboration in Teams].”
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - McKinsey report finds generative AI could add up to $4.4 trillion a year to the global economy
The $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion economic impact figure marks a huge increase over McKinsey’s previous estimates of the AI field’s impact on the economy from 2017, up 15 to 40% from before. This upward revision is due to the incredibly fast embrace and potential use cases of GenAI tools by large and small enterprises.
Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - Trustwave report finds attacks targeting Microsoft’s MS SQL are skyrocketing 
The findings came from a four-month study that employed a network of honeypots, or decoy systems, set up in various regions around the world, including Central Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the U.K., China and the U.S. Nine popular database systems were examined: MS SQL Server, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle DB, IBM DB2, Cassandra and Couchbase. MS SQL Server experienced significantly more attack activity than the others.
Security
VentureBeat - Top 10 cybersecurity findings from Verizon’s 2023 data breach report
Statistics from 2022 and into 2023 show the cybersecurity industry has more work to do to people-proof attack vectors. Attackers are capitalizing on stolen credentials, privilege misuse, human error, well-orchestrated social engineering, business email compromise (BEC) and, doubling in just a year, pretexting.
Security
sdxCentral - Big Tech reality check: ESG targets, progress and impact
Gartner analysts predict that by 2026, 75% of organizations will increase the amount of business they do with IT vendors that are focused on specific environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals “and will seek to replace vendors” that don’t demonstrate sustainability progress.
Sustainability
ZDNet - GPT-3.5 vs GPT-4: Is ChatGPT Plus worth its subscription fee? 
Don't get me wrong -- ChatGPT-4 can still make blunders, often referred to as "hallucinations". But if you're looking to get some smart answers to some challenging questions, ChatGPT-4 is here to help. With that in mind, here are the technical differences between the free version of GPT-3.5 and the paid-for version of GPT-4 in ChatGPT Plus.
ChatGPT
Datanami - New EY Consulting Survey Finds Majority of US Workers Eager for Emerging Tech, Yet Frustrated by Slow Adoption
The Emerging Tech at Work Survey asked more than 1,000 US employees about their familiarity with and expected impact of 12 emerging technologies — including artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR), digital twin, edge and quantum computing, biometrics, among others — revealing crucial insights for business leaders considering the implementation of new technologies and navigating barriers to adoption.
Automation & Productivity
Computerworld - Q&A: For UST’s CTO, AI is ‘a necessary evil’ Niranjan Ramsunder, CTO of UST, has been learning how generative AI 
"There’s a lot of discussion about... blockchains. But none of them translated into business. Right now, generative AI and large language models [LLMs] is definitely a place where we find the buzz and the reality are matching. So, that’s the number one trend in my mind for customers.
Automation & Productivity
Datanami - Latest Research Uncovers Data Quality as Top Concern for Enterprises Seeking to Drive Business Agility through Trusted Data
The findings reveal a concerning disconnect, with 77% of the professionals surveyed naming data-driven decision-making as their top goal for data programs in 2023. This was closely followed by the desire to improve operational efficiency (73%), reduce costs (62%), generate revenue (59%), and improve regulatory compliance (57%) — all of which rely on trusted data to be successful.
Data & Analytics
sdxCentral - Google’s Secure AI Framework: How to build a safer AI future
The Secure AI Framework (SAIF) is a conceptual framework for secure AI systems that aims to help mitigate AI-related risks, including theft of the model, data poisoning of the training data, injecting malicious inputs through prompt injection and extraction of confidential information in the training data, according to Google.
Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - Snowflake Summit will reveal the future of data apps. Here’s our take. 
We see the world of apps moving from one that is process-centric to one that is data-centric, where business logic is embedded into data versus today’s stovepiped model where data is locked inside application silos.
Data & Analytics
VentureBeat - The AI feedback loop: Researchers warn of ‘model collapse’ as AI trains on AI-generated content
But, as those following the burgeoning industry and its underlying research know, the data used to train the large language models (LLMs) and other transformer models underpinning products such as ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney comes initially from human sources — books, articles, photographs and so on — that were created without the help of artificial intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - Network spending priorities for second-half 2023
The average company on my list that predicted just over 4% higher spending on networking this year is now looking for almost exactly the same amount of cost reduction. Spend more, spend less. Does that seem contradictory? No, what it means is that they want to cut the cost of sustaining what they have in order to help fund new initiatives, and that they’re prepared to increase spending to fund the remainder.
Network Management
AiThority - 78% of Digital B2C Marketers say AI Helps Marketing, While 47% Responded That AI is Dangerous: Optimove Survey
“Many may fear that generative AI could be dangerous in marketing. But the operative question is, ‘What task are you asking it to do?’ It is not dangerous if asked to provide information on a subject or suggest viable solutions to a problem. Armed with information, the next action is still in the hands of humans. If asked to take unmonitored action, generative AI could go astray."
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - Hybrid work: What does and doesn’t work (and how security is evolving)
“Cybersecurity and data breaches are the biggest factor by far worrying employers about work from home,” said Fersht. “They need to develop a platform that can secure the business and encrypt data seamlessly and manage it effectively in a compliant way. If you don’t have that, you are not really a hybrid workplace, you are just remote.”
Automation & Productivity
ZDNet - 5 ways to explore the use of generative AI at work 
"I think we are probably in a similar place to lots of people," he says. "We're using it to generate content ideas, whether it's blog posts, marketing posts, or product descriptions. But we're not putting it into a production environment."
Artificial Intelligence
Employees lament lack of automation tools for productivity: monday.com survey 
The results from the Global Productivity Survey, involving 4,000 workers from diverse industries in three countries, reveal that most employees don’t believe their organizations provide enough efficient processes, tools and workflows for maximum productivity.
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - The future of AI is unknown. That’s the problem with tech ‘prophets’ influencing AI policy | The AI Beat
The blog post offered revelations, foretold events, warned the world of what is coming, and presented OpenAI as the trustworthy savior. The grand message seemed oddly disconnected from its product-focused PR around how tools like ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Bing might help in use cases like search results or essay writing.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - How IT pros might learn to believe in AI-driven network-management
In an Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) survey of 250 IT professionals who use AI/ML technology for network management, 96% said those solutions have produced false or mistaken insights and recommendations. Nearly 65% described these mistakes as somewhat to very rare, according to the recent EMA report “AI-Driven Networks: Leveling Up Network Management.” Overall, 44% percent of respondents said they have strong trust in their AI-driven network-management tools, and another 42% slightly trust these tools.
Network Management
eWeek - Generative AI: Enterprise Use Cases
For software developers and programmers, generative AI uses cases include writing, completing, and vetting sets of software code. Quality assurance is perhaps the most important emerging use case in this area, with generative AI models handling bug fixes, test generation, and various types of documentation
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - Why attackers love to target IoT devices
Lacking designed-in security and plagued with chronic default password use, Internet of Things (IOT) devices are quickly becoming attackers’ favorite targets. Add to that the rapid rise of the many different roles and identities assigned to each advanced IoT sensor in an operations technology (OT) network, and their proximity to mission-critical systems running a business, and it is no surprise attackers love to target IoT devices.
Security
VentureBeat - Just 14% of CISOs possess desired traits for cybersecurity-expert board positions: Report
“We identified five traits: infosec tenure, broad experience, scale, advanced education and diversity — as differentiators for CISOs seeking candidacy for cyber-expert roles on boards"
Security
Blocks & Files - Seven steps for using zero trust to protect your multicloud estate
Seventy-two percent of 1,000 IT decision makers cited the inability to locate and protect dynamic and distributed data generated by DevOps and cloud development processes, according to the Dell Technologies Data Protection Index. Overall, 67 percent of those surveyed said they are not confident that they can sufficiently cope with ransomware and malware attacks.
Security
VentureBeat - To combat GPU shortage for generative AI, startup works to optimize hardware
According to the company, access to compute is one of the biggest obstacles to AI development, and the scarcity is only going to increase as inference workloads accelerate. By extending the yield of the current AI chip supply and legacy inventory without affecting accuracy, CentML says it can increase access to compute in what it calls a “broken” marketplace for GPUs.
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - 2023 Verizon data breach report warns of soaring ransomware, weak credentials – and human failings
Looking specifically at web applications and how they are breached, the 2023 DBIR found that 86% of breaches involved the use of stolen credentials. Only 10% of web application breaches involve the exploitation of an actual software vulnerability.
Security
Computerworld - WWDC: What’s new for enterprise admins and device management?
These become more versatile this year with updates to Continuity, Apple Wallet, and iCloud Keychain. Administrators also gain additional control to encourage users to sign into the apps and services they need. Managed Apple IDs can also be used in more situations, such as when enrolling a device in order to keep personal and work data separated.
IT Management
The Hacker News - How to Improve Your API Security Posture
It involves identifying potential vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that could be exploited by attackers, and taking the necessary steps to remediate them. Posture management also helps organizations classify sensitive data and ensure that it's compliant with the leading data compliance regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS.
Security
TechRepublic - Verizon 2023 DBIR: DDoS attacks dominant, while pretexting drives BEC growth
BECs have evolved to include several sophisticated gambits, including one recently reported by Avanan, a unit of Check Point Software, involving the use of legitimate services, like Dropbox, to hide malware.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Report: Just 42% of US workers see generative AI as a threat
“Generative AI is more uniquely suited for augmentation — primarily of knowledge workers — rather than automation,” she said. “At KPMG, we know that to realize the augmentation benefits like increased productivity, people will need to swiftly adopt the technology and learn how to work with it effectively. It’s a mindset and skills shift.”
Artificial Intelligence
TechRepublic - New zero-click threat targets iPhones and iPads
Kaspersky’s zero-click attack report has caused controversy, as the Russian Federal Security Service claims thousands of Russians, including foreign diplomats and government officials, were targeted and compromised by the malware. Russia’s Federal Security Service has accused Apple and the U.S. National Security Agency of masterminding the attacks; Apple has denied this claim.
Security
Network World - What is SDN and where is it going?
 In a traditional network structure, decisions on how network packets get transmitted from one computer to another are made by the physical routers, switches, and firewalls that make up the network infrastructure. The functionality of these network devices is divided conceptually into elements called planes, including the data plane (sometimes called the forwarding plane), the control plane, and the management plane.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - There’s a lot of enterprise-grade secure browsers out there, but are they ready for prime time? 
One way that the enterprise products — and some of the consumer ones such as Brave — work is by doing a sleight-of-hand trick. When the browser is fired up, the user is transported to the vendor’s data center and runs a virtual session, or a complete Linux virtual machine, so that any phishing or malware attempt can’t touch the endpoint.
Privacy & Security
SiliconANGLE - How Auto-GPT will revolutionize AI chatbots as we know them 
ChatGPT might seem magical to users for its ability to answer questions and produce content based on user prompts, such as summarizing large documents or generating poems and stories or writing computer code. However, it’s limited in what it can do because it’s capable of doing only one task at a time. During a session with ChatGPT, a user can prompt the AI with only one question at a time and refining those prompts or questions can be a slow and tedious journey.
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - Oracle’s ‘Starlink’ cloud strategy gets interesting 
Oracle typically doesn’t get first mention, not just among hyperscalers, but on its home turf of databases, its Autonomous Database processes many times more queries per hour than Snowflake Inc., which typically tends to get the spotlight. OK, that encompasses both transaction processing and data warehousing, so Oracle casts a wider net. But specifically, that’s more than 9 billion queries per hour. Who knew?
Data & Analytics
Datanami - IDC Report: The Convergence of Modern Technologies Transforms IT Roles, Fueling Growth in DataOps and MLOps
“The census data shows that a dramatic, once-in-a-generation shift in the composition of the IT workforce is underway. This shift is akin to what took place during the years from 1997 to 2002 when the emergence of the commercial internet and the .com era turned priorities upside down for much of corporate IT and led to the hiring of vast numbers of web developers and networking experts,”
Tech Jobs
Computerworld - IT is driving new enterprise sustainability efforts
For most IT organizations, says Bjoern Stengel, global sustainability research lead at IDC, “the low-hanging fruit is increasing infrastructure performance with equipment that has a lower carbon footprint and is more energy efficient.”
Sustainability
sdxCentral - 4 security myths hindering CISOs effectiveness
“Rather than continuing to pursue more data and more analysis, savvy CISOs engage in a minimum effective insight approach,” Teixeira said. “Determine the least amount of information needed to draw a straight line between the enterprise’s cybersecurity funding and the amount of vulnerability that funding addresses.”
Security
SiliconANGLE - New ways to reduce the chances of ransomware attacks 
The IBM “X-Force Definitive Guide to Ransomware 2023” touches on tactics and is based on examining their customers’ anecdotal incidence response data as part of the company’s X-Force security practice. It found that in the past year, “the average time to complete a ransomware attack diminished from two months to fewer than four days — giving organizations very little time to detect and thwart potential attacks.”
Security
ZDNet - The impact of generative AI on software team productivity is... complicated 
"However, most of the code that is generated is security-vulnerable and might not pass enterprise-grade code. So, while AI can help accelerate coding, care should be taken to analyze the code, find vulnerabilities, and fix it, which would take away some of the productivity increase that AI vendors tout about."
Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - Six technical security trends CISOs need to know in 2023 
Geopolitical risk continues to affect organizations worldwide in 2023, and many of these risks are emerging as supply chain exposures. This puts enterprises and their supply chains at increased risk for malware attacks, attacks on cloud infrastructure, attacks on system integrity and availability such as distributed denial of service, and data theft or loss.
Security
Network World - How IT pros might learn to believe in AI-driven network-management
But members of network-engineering teams reported more skepticism than other groups—IT tool engineers, cloud engineers, or members of CIO suites—suggesting that people with the deepest networking expertise were the least convinced. In fact, 20% of respondents said that cultural resistance and distrust from the network team was one of the biggest roadblocks to successful use of AI-driven networking.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - Cloud conundrum: The changing balance of microservices and monolithic applications 
“There is no one-size-fits-all. If there are a set of services that have the exact same scaling and performance requirements, same security vectors, and most importantly, are managed by a single team, it is a worthwhile effort to see if combining them [into a monolithic app] simplifies your architecture
Cloud
Computerworld - How many jobs are available in technology in the US?
Technology companies shed an estimated 4,725 jobs — a figure that includes nontechnical workers — in May, according to an analysis of the latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures by IT industry group CompTIA. Job postings for open technology positions also eased off, down to about 234,000 from April’s 300,000, according to a new report from CompTIA.
Tech Jobs
TechRepublic - ChatGPT vs Google Bard (2023): An in-depth comparison
ChatGPT and Google Bard are useful tools for producing text –– anything from summaries of information to creating a poem to writing an essay. ChatGPT was trained on text from the internet, and Google bard was trained on a specific dataset for conversations. This leads some to argue that ChatGPT is better at producing paragraphs and summaries and other text-based processing tasks, while Google Bard is better at conversations.
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - Fixing email security: It’s still a rocky road ahead 
So what accounts for the holdup? First, implementing these protocols — including yet a fourth one called Brand Indicators for Message Identification or BIMI, which brings visible brand logos in inboxes — is devilishly difficult. When I tried to implement them across my own domains, I needed professional help from Valimail to put this all together properly, plus several months of trial and error to get everything right.
Security
Computerworld - Nvidia Neuralangelo: A faster path to the industrial metaverse
Unlike the consumer metaverse, which was largely backed by Facebook and was effectively dead on arrival, the commercial metaverse is doing rather well. Nvidia is currently the darling of Wall Street and is the primary driver for the commercial metaverse. But creating this industrial-grade metaverse and the digital twins of real objects in it requires a lot of heavy lifting in terms of 3D scanning to duplicate real objects in this virtual environment.
Metaverse
sdxCentral - Is XDR another security buzzword? What you should know
Today, endpoint detection and response (EDR) vendors are pivoting their products toward extended detection and response (XDR) solutions. XDR has the potential to become an advanced form of EDR, but the market lacks a universal standard, said Gartner Senior Director Analyst Jon Amato, who predicts that within the next 12 months, dominant players will emerge and shape the definition and standards of the XDR market.
Security
Network World - 6 lessons from the Amazon Prime Video serverless vs. monolith flap
A software-development team caused quite a stir recently with a blog post describing how it abandoned a serverless architecture project in favor of a monolith—and slashed cloud infrastructure costs by 90% in the process.
IT Management
sdxCentral - What is quantum computing? Its architecture, advantages and disadvantages
Error correction is still difficult, making computation sometimes unreliable. Quantum hardware also requires an optimized environment, with many quantum processors only functional at or around absolute zero (-273°C), under no atmospheric pressure, and completely insulated from the earth’s magnetic field. Retrieving quantum results may also corrupt data.
Quantum Computing
AiThority - Top 10 Gen AI Platforms that are Driving Transformation In B2B
Generative AI encompasses different algorithms (artificially generated images and texts), usually based on neural network architectures like generative adversarial network (GANs), that are trained on massive amounts of data, images or texts, to produce similar looking images or texts, yet not the same.
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Komprise and relevance in the AI age
Several storage suppliers are directly involved in delivering storage capacity to the GPU servers used in generative AI processing, including Dell, DDN, HPE, IBM, NetApp, Panasas, Pure Storage, VAST Data and Weka. Others are fielding data sets for use by the models such as Databricks, Snowflake and their ilk. Building vector databases? Think Pinecone.
Data Storage
SiliconANGLE - Coalition of AI leaders sees ‘societal-scale risks’ from the technology’s misuse 
A statement issued today and signed by more than 375 computer scientists, academics and business leaders warns of profound risks of artificial intelligence misuse and says the potential problems posed by the technology be given the same urgency as pandemics and nuclear war.
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - The metaverse: Not dead yet 
As the hype spotlight has shifted sharply to generative AI and all its dangers and possibilities, talk of the metaverse — or “Meh-taverse” — these days largely centers on its demise. And not without reason: Meta (formerly Facebook), which changed its name in 2021 to reflect its new focus, has spent billions on VR development with comparatively little return, at least so far.
Metaverse
sdxCentral - The great CISO resignation: Why security leaders are quitting in droves
Recent research from anti data exfiltration and ransomware prevention company BlackFog revealed that nearly a third (32%) of CISOs or IT cybersecurity leaders in the U.S. and UK were considering leaving their current organization. Nine in 10 CISOs report being “moderately” or “tremendously” stressed, according to another study, and average CISO tenure is just two years and two months.
Security
AiThority - Combating the Rise of Deepfakes in Cybercrime: Strategies for Combating the Issue
An Observatory Report from the Europol Innovation Lab found that by 2026, a staggering 90% of web material may have been produced automatically. Deepfakes undermine trust in digital technology and are becoming an increasing danger to organizations since they are frequently used to deceive and carry out social engineering attacks.
Security
The Verge - Top AI researchers and CEOs warn against ‘risk of extinction’ in 22-word statement
The 22-word statement, trimmed short to make it as broadly acceptable as possible, reads as follows: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - What are large language models — and how are they used in generative AI?
If you need to boil down an email or chat thread into a concise summary, a chatbot such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard can do that. If you need to spruce up your resume with more eloquent language and impressive bullet points, AI can help. Want some ideas for a new marketing or ad campaign? Generative AI to the rescue.
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - GPUs get all the headlines, but the future of AI is real-time data 
In this Breaking Analysis, we look at the infrastructure of AI examining the action at the silicon layer specifically around Nvidia’s momentum. Since much of AI is about data, we’ll also look at the spending data on two top data platforms, Snowflake and Databricks Inc., to see what the survey data says and examine the future of real-time data and automation as a catalyst for massive productivity growth in the economy.
Artificial Intelligence
Datanami - Airbyte’s Pioneering State of Data Survey Sheds Light on Global Data Engineering Practices
The most used data warehouses are Snowflake and Google BigQuery, then AWS Redshift and Databricks with Azure Synapse lagging behind. In the larger organization segments, Databricks popularity is near on par with Snowflake and BigQuery.
Data & Analytics
Tech Startups - ‘Everyone is a programmer’ with generative A.I., Nvidia CEO says
Currently, generative AI tools using like ChatGPT and Google Bard can assist users with programming tasks. Just last month, Alphabet launched Google Bard AI which can write and debug software code. The new chatbot is able to generate, debug, and explain code. Bard supports 20 programming languages, including C++, Java, JavaScript, and Python, and can now integrate with other Google products.
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - Password report: 65% spend more money on sites where logging in is easier
When forgetting their login credentials, American respondents (28%) rely heavily on resetting their password or username more than the global average (24%). And only 57% of Americans still have access to all of their accounts and the online products and services they have registered for — 39% of them track their login information and 18% of them use a password manager.
Automation & Productivity
TechRepublic - Gartner releases 4 trends that will impact cloud, data centers and infrastructure in 2023
Refactoring cloud infrastructure should focus on optimizing costs. This can be done through a series of steps that starts with eliminating redundant, overbuilt or unused cloud infrastructure, as well as building business resilience rather than service-level redundancy; using cloud infrastructure as a way to mitigate supply chain disruptions; and modernizing infrastructure.
Cloud
VentureBeat - 4 trends shaping the future of practical generative AI
This use case for generative AI is urgent because access to institutional knowledge is vanishing. Enterprise data is growing at an explosive rate, yet Gartner estimates that over 80% of that data is unstructured (i.e. PDFs, videos, slide decks, MP3 files etc.), which makes it difficult for employees to find and use.
Artificial Intelligence
TechRepublic - Tech Impact: Sustainable solutions to tackle tech plastic waste
For example, the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool and the Global Reporting Initiative Standards have detailed wide-ranging environmental and sustainability benchmarks; these vary widely depending on industry. GRI, for example, takes into account energy use, the rights of indigenous people, biodiversity, waste and much more.
Sustainability
VentureBeat - Generative AI poised to reshape workplace efficiency, revolutionize jobs: KPMG study
The survey findings reveal that a substantial 72% of respondents believe that GenAI has the potential to significantly enhance productivity within their organizations. Additionally, 66% of participants anticipate a transformation in the future work landscape, while 62% recognize the ability of AI to stimulate innovation and facilitate the development of novel products and services.
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - The shadow IT fight — 2023 style
Are an enterprise’s employees supposed to report it to IT? Is that partner supposed to? You guessed it: nobody reports it to IT and yet there it is, accessing and interacting with sensitive corporate intellectual property. Is that particular partner interaction shadow IT?
IT Management
SiliconANGLE - Veeam: Ransomware keeps rising, and paying fraudsters is still not the right approach 
One of the most glaring report findings is that one in seven organizations could potentially have over 80% of their data compromised from a ransomware attack. This reflects a major deficiency in the protection measures currently implemented by many businesses. Even worse, 93% of these attacks target backups, and in three out of four cases, the attackers succeed in crippling an organization’s ability to recover.
Security
AiThority - Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2023: A Brief Day-by-Day Overview
It’s critical to understand that not every choice should or can be automated. We face the risk of developing data-driven businesses without conscience or a clear purpose if we only concentrate on advancing decision automation without taking into account the human aspect.
Data & Analytics
Blocks & Files - ChatGPT, LLMs, and storage
Such GAIs, with their ability to understand text requests and output competent answers, have the potential to be applied across the entire enterprise and public sector IT landscape enabling fundamentally better search and analytics. Their use threatens/promises to replace and/or improve the productivity of knowledge workers of all sorts, ranging from call center and inside sales staff to accountants, lawyers and financial analysts over the next decade.
Tech Trends
The Hacker News - 5 Must-Know Facts about 5G Network Security and Its Cloud Benefits
With its low latency, higher bandwidth, and extensive security measures, 5G strengthens the security of cloud connectivity. This upgrade enables secure and reliable transmission of sensitive information as well as real-time data processing. 5G allows organizations to confidently use cloud services to store and manage their data, reducing the risk of data breaches.
5G
Forbes - Information Technology’s Treasure Map To The Business Value Of Enterprise Storage
You may think it can take years and years for a storage array to attain an appealing return on investment (ROI) and pay for itself, as you venture into the inefficiency-infested, pitfall-strewn caverns of legacy and conventional enterprise storage. You may think it’s too hard to measure. Can you really know the business value of something so technical as enterprise storage?
Data Storage
Network World - Converge NOCs with SOCs to save time and effort
At the very least, the lower tiers of separate NOC and SOC operations should be converged, so that there is neither duplication nor a game of hot potato as staff try to figure out what a problem actually is, and whether the response will be network focused, security focused, or both. Maintaining separate or semi-separate escalation paths is supportable given that lower-level convergence.
IT Management
sdxCentral - Don’t pay ransom: US government updates ransomware guide as attacks rise
NCC Group recorded an unprecedented surge in ransomware attacks in March with 459 victims, a  91% increase over February. The all-time high volume was likely associated with the highly publicized GoAnywhere MFT vulnerability being exploited across the world.
Security
AiThority - A Guide on How MLCopilot is Using LLMs & Empowering Developers to Straighten ML Processes
On the online side, the tool uses a prompt that incorporates pertinent examples from prior studies to determine the most effective strategy for completing a task. This is considered way more accurate than the manual selection and the application of algorithms.
Machine Learning
sdxCentral - How Dell’s NativeEdge has finally solved complicated edge deployments
 “The optimization piece comes in because then they will need less [proof of concepts], they could consolidate multiple applications into the same architecture and yet we will keep it highly open for different [operation technology] systems, IoT frameworks, applications, many partnering opportunities, a lot of customer choice, including the right-sizing of the hardware required with the same experience.”
Edge Computing
Blocks & Files - How to master multicloud from the ground to cloud (and back again)
IT organizations must now grapple with how to manage, govern and rationalize a complex ecosystem that spans across public clouds, on premises, colocation facilities and edge locations. As a result, they may discover the innovation sought by consuming multiple cloud services is stymied by the toil of managing it all. This is what’s known as multicloud by default.
Cloud
The Hacker News - The Rising Threat of Secrets Sprawl and the Need for Action
The report shows a 67% year-over-year increase in the number of secrets found, with 10 million hard-coded secrets detected in 2022 alone. This alarming surge in secrets sprawl highlights the need for action and underscores the importance of secure software development.
Security
Network World - 5G network slices could be vulnerable to attack, researchers say 
About 75% of communication service providers worldwide said that they had experienced up to six security breaches of 5G networks within the past year, according to a November 2022 survey by GlobalData and Nokia. Half of the respondents said that they experienced an attack that resulted in the leakage of customer data, and nearly three quarters said that an attack had caused a service outage.
5G
sdxCentral - Top 5 cloud security risks and best countermeasures
Orca found around half of the analyzed organizations have at least one Git repository containing sensitive data, such as database passwords, API keys, encryption keys, hash salts and secrets. If that information is part of organizations’ source code, attackers can potentially extract them and compromise the systems.
Cloud Security
VentureBeat - Forrester predicts 2023’s top cybersecurity threats: From generative AI to geopolitical tensions
The nature of cyberattacks is changing fast. Generative AI, cloud complexity and geopolitical tensions are among the latest weapons and facilitators in attackers’ arsenals. Three-quarters (74%) of security decision-makers say their organizations’ sensitive data was “potentially compromised or breached in the past 12 months” alone. That’s a sobering cybersecurity baseline for any CISO to consider.
Security
Network World - Ethernet turns 50, but its voyage has only begun 
“The most impactful area for Ethernet at this point is inside large cloud data centers which have shown high growth including interconnecting AI/ML clusters which are ramping up quickly,” Bechtolsheim said.
Network Management
sdxCentral - Forrester: Top 3 tips for choosing an MDR vendor
The report noted that some MDR vendors require automation for any vendor-performed response action, but only “assist” customers in non-automated actions. Human expertise still holds a significant value in understanding the threats. “Restricting response to automated actions does help reduce the cost of delivering the service to customers but lets down customers that are unable — or unready — to automate,” they wrote.
IT Management
SiliconANGLE - AI, edge and multicloud lead the conversation in Las Vegas as Dell embraces role as enterprise collaborator 
“We’ve had, over the last several years, roughly 1,000 AI and machine learning projects inside the company,” Dell said. “This is a massive unlock of the power of data. It’s going to accelerate the economy. We think this is a huge wave.”
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - Apple bans employees from using ChatGPT. Should you?
“While AI-powered chatbots are trained and further refined by their developers, it isn’t out of the question for staff to access the data that’s being inputted into them. And, considering that humans are often the weakest element of a business’ security posture, this opens the information to a range of threats, even if the risk is accidental.”
ChatGPT
eWeek - Web3 and Smart Contracts Enable a Scalable API Economy
The key is developing your digital service for Web3 is a very different mindset and approach than you might take if you are to develop your digital service for Web2. It will require some expertise in blockchain technologies and considerations for using a public or private blockchain.
Web3
VentureBeat - AI-powered automation enhances job fulfillment for nearly 60% of workers: Report 
These factors are contributing to the emergence of what has been called the “automation generation” — professionals who proactively adopt automation and AI to enhance collaboration, foster creativity and boost productivity, regardless of age or demographic.
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - The AI-powered hybrid-multi-super cloud 
In this Breaking Analysis, we examine some of the key infrastructure players in hybrid multicloud, with a focus on Red Hat Inc. and Dell Technologies Inc., two firms that increasingly are partnering with each other as VMware Inc.s future evolves. We’ll share recent Enterprise Technology Research survey data on the position of several other hybrid/cross-cloud players, including Cloudflare Inc., Equinix Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., IBM Corp., Oracle Corp., VMware and others.
Cloud
AiThority - Transforming Businesses: Key Components of AI Orchestration and How it Works
The fact is, both automation and orchestration are crucial to establishing a seamless and successful digital transformation. AI Orchestration comes in handy to reduce duplication and streamline any repetitive process through automatization. Orchestration involves advanced logic and decision making and automation combines different elements to form orchestration.
Automation & Productivity
eWeek - Generative AI Landscape: Current and Future Trends
In this guide to the generative AI landscape, we’ll explore what generative AI is capable of and how it emerged and became so popular. We’ll also examine current trends in the generative AI space and predict what consumers should expect from this technology in the near future.
Artificial Intelligence
Datanami - Toggled Survey: Businesses Grapple with Data Analytics in the Race for Greener, Smarter Buildings
 “Most businesses are only scratching the surface of what the technology can do. Once facility managers start to capitalize on what their performance data is telling them and where to adjust, the true business value of a scalable and flexible IoT-enabled smart building network comes to life.”
Data & Analytics
eWeek - Top 10 AI Detector Tools for 2023
Consequently, there is a great need for AI detector tools. AI content detector software uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify text written with a generative AI model. The software aims to provide readers with transparency and ensure that only quality content is published.
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - CEOs cite AI as a priority (now what?) and sustainability gets real
“They talk about cost management, to some extent, but they usually focus elsewhere,” Raskino explained. “The proposition that the world seems to be putting behind AI is substantial augmentation of professionals and potentially replacing certain tasks. But CEOs have not been  driving productivity in terms of output per worker. So we’ve got a powerful tool meeting a relatively unpracticed set of solutions.”
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - 4 priorities B2B technology leaders should strive to meet this year
Optimizing costs doesn’t necessarily mean refusing to sign new software contracts. Often, in fact, the smartest way to curb costs is to replace legacy systems with more modern and flexible tools that better suit the organization’s current business needs. An ecommerce solution that can manage both B2B and B2C applications might replace two separate legacy tools, for instance, dramatically reducing overall IT costsIT Management
sdxCentral - Dell’Oro digs into NaaS market growth indicators, inhibitors
While the firm’s analysis of the market’s total value is still under wraps, Morgan shared that the report evaluates NaaS as a subset of the public cloud–managed LAN market. “Most of these [NaaS] services only make sense” if they’re delivered in a way that allows equipment to be managed from a central point in the cloud, which is a key functionality of true NaaS offerings.
Network Management
VentureBeat - Business leaders investing in generative AI, automation to reinvent physical operations: Report
Leaders are revising their supply chains and technology budgets to address these challenges and build resilience. The study also found that leaders are now embracing generative artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, with 84% planning to use generative AI and 91% automation to modernize their operations by 2024. Additionally, 51% are already using or planning to use autonomous vehicles or equipment this year.
Automation & Productivity
ZDNet - 6 major risks of using ChatGPT, according to a new study 
These risks include fraudulent services generation, harmful information gathering, private data disclosure, malicious text generation, malicious code generation, and offensive content production.
Privacy & Security
VentureBeat - Predicting the future of endpoint security in a zero-trust world
Endpoints must become more intelligent, resilient and self-healing to support the many new identities they need to protect. Even the most hardened endpoints are at risk because they can’t protect against identity-based breaches. Putting any trust in identities is a breach waiting to happen.
Security
Security Magazine - 47% of all internet traffic came from bots in 2022
For the fourth consecutive year, the volume of bad bot traffic — malicious automated software applications capable of high-speed abuse, misuse and attacks — grew to 30.2%, a 2.5% increase over 2021.
Security
VentureBeat - Early adopters of data streaming see up to 10x returns, survey finds
Confluent classified respondents into five groups based on the maturity of their data streaming stack. The so-called level 1 respondents (7%) had data streaming experiments in pre-production, level 2 folks (20%) had projects deployed for non-critical applications, level 3 (63%) had deployment for a few critical systems, while levels 4 and 5 (9%) had several deployments in production for critical systems with streams managed as a product.
Data & Analytics
SiliconANGLE - We need more breach transparency, but a lot of obstacles are in the way 
The U.K. authors go on to bust a few myths about transparency. Among them: Coverups are fine (they aren’t because they prevent others from learning tactics and early warning signs), reporting attacks can’t be done without public disclosure (privacy is more the norm now with many agencies), paying the ransoms is the most expedient solution (it often backfires or encourages the attackers to try to leak your data), and fines are only levied if your data is leaked (the two things are independent of each other and organizations can be fined for all sorts of violations).
Security
TechRepublic - Sticking to traditional security playbook is mistake for cloud security: Palo Alto Networks SVP
Recent research by Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 found that more than 60% of organizations take over four days to resolve security issues, over 63% of codebases in production have unpatched vulnerabilities, and threat actors exploit a misconfiguration or vulnerability within hours.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Report finds just one unpatched vulnerability increases the risk of a cyber insurance claim by 33% 
Notable insights from the report included that in addition to “human inaction” — not patching software — human error is also a primary risk factor among companies that have cyber insurance. Phishing accounted for 76% of reported incidents, more than six times greater than the next-most popular attack technique. In the case of phishing, nearly all cyber insurance claims were a direct result of employees falling for phishing tricks
Security
The Verge - Meta security analysts warn of malicious ChatGPT imposters
In the company’s new Q1 security report, Meta shares that malware operators and spammers are following trends and high-engagement topics that get people’s attention. Of course, the biggest tech trend right now is AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard, so tricking users into trying a fake version is now in fashion — sorry, crypto.
Security
TechRepublic - Splunk report sees upsides to observability
Respondents to the study who were leaders were nearly eight times as likely as beginners to say that their ROI on observability tools far exceeded expectations. Approximately 90% of leaders said they were “completely confident” in their ability to meet availability and performance requirements for their applications and were four times as likely to have resolved instances of unplanned downtime or serious service issues in just minutes versus hours or days.
IT Management
Network World - IT pros worry about network data being fed to AI tools
As more IT organizations apply artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and so-called AIOps technology to network management, network data is critical to success. AI/ML technology requires more and more data to learn individual networks, derive insights, and offer recommendations. Unfortunately, many organizations encounter problems when trying to feed network data to these AI tools
Network Management
VentureBeat - 5 ways AI-driven patch management is driving the future of cybersecurity
Cyberattackers’ growing tradecraft now includes greater contextual intelligence about which CVEs are most vulnerable. The result: Manual approaches to patch management — or overloading endpoints with too many agents — leaves attack surfaces unprotected, with exploitable memory conflicts.
IT Management
Computerworld - Survey: Most workers would welcome digital monitoring to boost productivity
A whopping 96% of “digital workers” indicated they would be willing to accept electronic monitoring of their online work in exchange for training opportunities or career development (34%); learning more about their job (33%); or gaining proactive help from IT (30%).
Automation & Productivity
Blocks & Files - Storage races to innovate in face of data explosion
The whole area of IT storage is buzzing with innovation, as startups and incumbents race to provide the capacity needed in a world exploding with unstructured data. Chatbot technology, the I/O speed to get data into memory, the memory capacity needed, and the software to provide, manage, and analyze vast lakes of data all create massive opportunities.
Data Storage
Blocks & Files - 4 ways CIOs can optimize IT and boost business value
Companies are seeking IT leaders who can be surgical about cutting costs and other critical measures for building business resiliency during a downturn, executive recruiters recently told CIO Journal. Also, financial leaders for leading technology providers noted in earnings calls that customers are optimizing their consumption of cloud software in the face of macroeconomic headwinds.
IT Management
VentureBeat - ChatGPT is about to revolutionize cybersecurity
The widely available use of machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) for cybersecurity practitioners is relatively new. One of the most common use cases has been endpoint detection and response (EDR), where ML/AI uses behavior analytics to pinpoint anomalous activities. It can use known good behavior to discern outliers, then identify and kill processes, lock accounts, trigger alerts and more.
Security
SiliconANGLE - As cloud computing gets more complex, so does protecting it. Here’s what companies need to do 
Authentication isn’t as simple as just maintaining a single sign-on system, requiring integration to protect all kinds of clouds, across all vendors and across all on-premises equipment under a single umbrella. The nature of cloud computing itself is changing as differences among software as a service, platform as a service and infrastructure as a service have blurred together, making it harder to figure out the best protective scheme.
Security
Computerworld - Prepare for generative AI with experimentation and clear guidelines
IT leaders may remember how, in the past 10 years or so, some user departments ran off to the cloud and made their own arrangements for spinning up instances of software — then dumped the whole mess into IT’s lap when it became unmanageable. Generative AI can make that situation look like child’s play, but there are strategies for starting to manage it ahead of time.
IT Management
VentureBeat - The evolution of the chief data officer (CDO) and what it means for businesses today
The expectations of the CDO were tremendous, regardless of where they rolled up. The CDO was at the center, between IT and business leaders, and was responsible for managing the data “currency” that both sides were dependent on.
Data & Analytics
SiliconANGLE - Dear CEO: Your employees are already using AI to do their work. What’s your AI plan? 
Having basic guidelines for your employees to follow will be important. Your IT team may have strong opinions on which AI tools your company should or should not use. Your legal team may raise significant concerns over issues ranging from who owns the intellectual property generated from AI.to prohibited information that your legal team may not want inputted into an AI tool. Do not wait. Get ahead of this situation now.
Artificial Intelligence
AiThority - Couchbase Survey Shows 9 Out of 10 Developers Are at or Over Capacity; Automation and SQL-based Query Capabilities Top Their Productivity Wish Lists
With so many developers at or over their work capacity, only 5.1% responded they have the ability to take on more projects. As developers’ overall workload increases, more developers are also taking on tasks outside of their normal purview. Specifically, when developers were asked if their responsibilities have been affected in the past 12 months, 3 out of 4 shared they sometimes or consistently take on responsibilities outside of their job description
DevOps
VentureBeat - Executives fear accidental sharing of corporate data with ChatGPT: Report
The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise report found that ChatGPT is the most popular chatbot in use amongst enterprises, with CopyAI (35%) and Anyword (26%) following closely behind as the second and third most commonly used. However, many companies have banned the use of generative AI tools in the workplace, with ChatGPT being the most frequently banned (32%), followed by CopyAI (28%) and Jasper (23%).
ChatGPT
Network World - Multivendor 5G network slicing test claims 70% gain in deployment speeds
The test deployment used cloud-native network functionality provided by Enea, Oracle and Casa Systems, and orchestration systems from Nokia and Red Hat. Security was provided by Palo Alto, and active monitoring by Emblasoft. Services ran on Red Hat OpenShift, on hardware supplied by Intel, Nokia and HPE.
5G
Aithority - Nearly Half of Senior Leaders Believe Colleagues Have Inadvertently Shared Corporate Data with ChatGPT
Love/hate relationship: ChatGPT is both the most used and most banned tool. 47% of respondents (and 52% of respondents in regulated industries) cite using OpenAI’s popular free chatbot at work. CopyAI (35%) and Anyword (26%) were a distant second and third. But companies banning generative AI in the workplace number almost as high: ChatGPT is the most banned (32%), followed by CopyAI (28%) and Jasper (23%).
ChatGPT
AiThority - Nearly 40% of Enterprises Surveyed by expert.ai Are Planning to Build Customized Enterprise Language Models
A significant majority of enterprises (78.5%) realize that the efforts required to effectively train a usable and accurate enterprise-specific language model is a significant undertaking which will require dedicated resources and budget. Almost three-quarters of enterprises surveyed have budget or are discussing adding budget to support large language model (LLM) adoption.
Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - The chief trust officer was once the next hot job on executive row. Not anymore.
But those bromides aside, the report is worth reading for its Cassandra-like warnings. For example, only 24% of the respondents are planning to increase budgets for digital trust activities. Even fewer say that their organization has a dedicated staff role for digital trust. And although the majority of respondents say it is important to have a framework for digital trust practices, only 20% currently use one.
Privacy & Security
sdxCentral - Top 3 open source networking trends for 2023
The challenge now is that organizations realize they have put all the various disaggregated network components back together to enable a full end-to-end stack for enterprise, cloud and telecom service providers.
Network Management
Computerworld - Will Bing and Edge become the center of the Microsoft universe?
In search, Google has a stranglehold with 85% of the worldwide search market share in the first quarter of 2023, compared to 9% for Bing. In browsing, Edge fares even worse: it accounts for a 5% market share compared to 64% for Chrome and 20% for Safari. That’s a far cry from 2003, when Internet Explorer had a 95% market share.  
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - The future of open source in the age of AI: Analysts break down Open Source Summit insights 
The organizational model, project model, licensing model and human equation are all areas of concern for open source in the face of the AI surge. However, startups, companies and non-profits will all leverage the value of open source, and finding a balance between using open source and making money will be important, Furrier added.
Artificial Intelligence
The Hacker News - Why Honeytokens Are the Future of Intrusion Detection
"There are clear steps organizations can take beyond common safeguards and security tools to strengthen their defenses and increase their chances of detecting, thwarting or minimizing attack [...] Honeypots, or fake accounts deliberately left untouched by authorized users, are effective at helping organizations detect intrusions or malicious activities that security products can't stop".
Security
ZDNet - 70% of employees are happy to delegate work to AI, according to new Microsoft report 
The employees would be open to receiving assistance in all different sectors including administrative tasks (76%), analytical (79%), creative work (73%), finding the right information (86%), summarizing their meetings and action items (80%), and even planning their day (77%).
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - Desperately seeking cloud repatriation
The post posited that cloud expenses would become an increasingly large component of cost of goods sold for cloud native software-as-a-service companies at scale. And these costs would become so dilutive to profits that it would either force repatriation or a large discount concession from cloud providers. The authors used the Dropbox case study as an example of the potential savings from repatriation where the company saved $75 million by moving infrastructure back on prem.
Cloud
Datanami - New Pure Storage Survey Underscores Importance of IT Modernization to Support New Tech Initiatives
More Than Half of IT Buyers are Prioritizing AI/Machine Learning and Sustainability Technology Investments: IT buyers have cited that their top investments planned for the next five years are AI/machine learning (52%) and sustainable technology (51%). While less than half (46%) predict they’ll invest in infrastructure automation or orchestration.
IT Management
sdxCentral - What is network-as-a-service (NaaS)? Its benefits, its features and what it replaces
NaaS replaces legacy network architecture like hardware-based VPNs and MPLS connections or on-premises networking appliances like firewalls and load balancers. NaaS vendors use software to run networking functions so customers can set up their own networks without using hardware.
Network Management
ZDNet - 8 habits of highly secure remote workers 
To practice safe remote working, if you have to work in a public place, you should avoid connecting to public Wi-Fi. Working in public spaces has its own set of risks, but public Wi-Fi networks will only amplify your risks of getting hacked and put corporate sensitive information at risk.
Privacy & Security
sdxCentral - Palo Alto Networks SVP identifies top SASE trends: AI, managed services
Recent statistics showed a 161% increase in usage of tools like Cobalt Strike, which enable large-scale attacks, while at least 100 new URLs are created daily using generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) technology, he added.
Security
VentureBeat - A CISO’s perspective on a TikTok ban and what it means for enterprises 
But for businesses that use TikTok for marketing or employ any of the 150 million Americans who have the app, what’s to be done? The answer, for now, lies in following basic security hygiene practices for all data-collecting apps, not just TikTok.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Where is our national cybersecurity strategy? All over the place 
One place that is ripe for improvement is with the federal government sprawling procurement system. However, as one law firm suggests, there aren’t any new regulations proposed in the paper that will specifically drive better cybersecurity practices and norms. This sprawl – and the resulting complexity — don’t instill any confidence if we will continue to require the lowest-cost bidder to solve our cybersecurity problems.
Security
Computerworld - How to choose the right UCaaS platform for your company
Unified Communications as a Service brings voice, text chat, meetings, and other communication technologies together into a single integrated platform. Here’s what to look for when shopping for a UCaaS platform, along with six top vendors to consider.
Automation & Productivity
ZDNet - ChatGPT and the new AI are wreaking havoc on cybersecurity in exciting and frightening ways 
Generative AI has helped bad actors innovate and develop new attack strategies, enabling them to stay one step ahead of cybersecurity defenses. AI helps cybercriminals automate attacks, scan attack surfaces, and generate content that resonates with various geographic regions and demographics, allowing them to target a broader range of potential victims across different countries.
Security
Motherboard - Tech by Vice - Scary 'Emergent' AI Abilities Are Just a 'Mirage' Produced by Researchers, Stanford Study Says
The researchers found that AI abilities only appeared to suddenly emerge when people used specific metrics to measure the task.  The researchers wrote that a person’s choice of a "non-linear" or "discontinuous" measurement can result in what appear to be sharp and unpredictable changes that are then falsely labeled as emergent abilities when in reality the performance curve is increasing smoothly.
Artificial Intelligence
The Hacker News - Lack of Visibility: The Challenge of Protecting Websites from Third-Party Scripts
Third-party scripts are often invisible to standard security controls like Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) because they are loaded from external sources that are not under the control of the website owner. When a website loads a third-party script, it is executed in the user's browser alongside the website's own code.
Security
TechRepublic - HackerOne: How the economy is impacting cybersecurity teams
HackerOne published the results of its new study, which reveals that half of the organizations surveyed experienced increased cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the last year as they faced security budget cuts and layoffs. HackerOne is the world’s biggest ethical hacker community.
Security
Network World - How to shop for network observability tools
“If you cannot get visibility into all the components comprising the digital experience, everything that is between the end user clicking the mouse to the deepest part of a cloud or data center network, then you are flying blind, you are incurring a lot of risk, and you could be overspending, too,”
Network Management
sdxCentral - Cisco customers focus on data center sustainability, worry about complexity
“Responsibilities for sustainability are increasingly being passed down from CIOs to infrastructure and operations leaders to improve IT’s environmental performance, particularly around data centers,” Gartner Senior Principal Analyst Autumn Stanish explained. “This has led many down the path of greater spend and investment in environmental solutions,”
Sustainability
TechRepublic - Generative AI defined: How it works, benefits and dangers
Generative AI is based on machine learning processes inspired by the inner workings of the human brain, known as neural networks. Training the model involves feeding algorithms large amounts of data, which serves as the foundation for the AI model to learn from. This can consist of text, code, graphics or any other type of content relevant to the task at hand.
Artificial Intelligence
TechRepublic - Spaces in Google Chat: 4 new features for better connectivity and management
Each space may be configured to allow colleagues in your organization to access the space either via a shared link or a search. Spaces shared in this way are accessible to anyone in the organization, which works well for broad interest topics, such as policy discussions, how-to tips or cultural concerns (e.g., books, research or focused interest group communities).
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - Is it time to ‘shield’ AI with a firewall? Arthur AI thinks so
Arthur AI is now taking its AI observability a step further with the launch today of Arthur Shield, which is essentially a firewall for AI data. With Arthur Shield, organizations can deploy a firewall that sits in front of large language models (LLMs) to check data going both in and out for potential risks and policy violations.
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - ChatGPT’s rock star status has executives buying into generative AI
Gartner today announced that a poll of 2,500 executives revealed that almost half (45%) reported that ChatGPT’s rock star status  has prompted them to up their AI investments.  And 70 percent said that their organization is currently investigating and exploring generative AI. Nineteen percent are already in pilot or production mode.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - 10 ways ChatGPT and generative AI can strengthen zero trust
Generative AI can deliver the greatest value in the shortest time when we look at it as a continuous learning engine that finds correlations, relationships and causal factors in threat data — and that never forgets. ChatGPT and generative AI can be used to create “muscle memory,” or immediate reflex, in cybersecurity teams to stop breaches.
Security
Computerworld - AI deep fakes, mistakes, and biases may be unavoidable, but controllable
“This is a problem in general with technologies,” said Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at machine learning app vendor Hugging Face. “It can be developed for really positive uses and then also be used for negative, problematic, or malicious uses; that’s called dual use. I don’t know that there’s a way to have any sort of guarantee any technology you put out won’t have dual use.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - Lack of AI and automation adoption hinders employee productivity: Slack report
“Part of the confusion comes from a growing schism between leaders and teams over how to properly define and measure productivity in today’s environment. Organizations need to take a more holistic approach, and that includes enabling employees to experiment with tools and technology to drive better results.”
Automation & Productivity
Blocks & Files - Gartner: Begun the cloud file services wars have
Palmer starts from more or less the same points: unstructured (file) data is growing and organizations are using the scalability of the public cloud for several things, bursting compute capacity, bursting storage, archival storage, remote worker access and so forth.
Cloud
Datanami - AI is Top Digital Priority in the Path to Operational Resilience: Accenture Study
With a talent strategy that mirrors data and digital maturity, enterprises averaged nearly three-times (11%) higher productivity when prioritizing training and specialized skills to address talent needs. This was further echoed by investments being made in new ways of working (cited by 94%) and the 90% of (COO, CIO, CHRO) respondents who plan to increase specialized and technical talent over the next three years.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - How to handle IT vendors' worst bad habits
Enterprises also say that vendors often finger-point even when there’s no other network vendor involved, instead blaming the enterprise network operations staff or perhaps some past sales or technical support person now conveniently not working for the vendor any longer.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - Is it time to deploy passkeys across the enterprise? Here’s what you need to know 
Certainly, it’s about time we moved away from passwords. According to the 2022 Verizon Data Breach Incident Report, 80% of data breaches still begin with a phishing or “man-in-the-middle” attacks, using hijacked account credentials to take over an account. And according to HYPR’s “State of Passwordless Report,” a third of information technology help desk time is spent on password resets. Passkeys can prevent these sorts of attacks and cut down on these support calls.
Security
Network World - Certifications that can land you a job as a network-automation engineer
The first major use case for network automation is DevOps workflows. Given the highly dynamic nature of the modern application stack there are scenarios where adjusting the underlying network for scalability or availability adds value to the application-hosting architecture.
Tech Jobs
Computerworld - Apple, platform security, and the next big war
He was championing encryption and opposing the creation of designer vulnerabilities that can be exploited by any entity that knows they exist. Since then, we’ve seen a cancerous tumult of surveillance as a service that companies such as the NSO Group break out, each of them using the kind of hard-to-find flaws governments may insist on platform providers creating.
Security
VentureBeat - Report shows 92% of orgs experienced an API security incident last year
The report, scheduled to release on May 5, also revealed that 57% experienced multiple API security incidents, highlighting that many organizations still have a lot more to do to defend cloud-native applications and APIs against threat actors.
Security
Forbes - Information Technology’s Treasure Map To The Business Value Of Enterprise Storage
You may think it can take years and years for a storage array to attain an appealing return on investment (ROI) and pay for itself, as you venture into the inefficiency-infested, pitfall-strewn caverns of legacy and conventional enterprise storage. You may think it’s too hard to measure. Can you really know the business value of something so technical as enterprise storage?
Data Storage
VentureBeat - New AI tools poised to revolutionize 3D engineering
For example, if an architect is looking to put a certain type of room — a laundry room, maybe — inside a house or apartment with a certain floor plan, the AI within the building information modeling (BIM) software will have seen enough successful examples of this being done in other situations to know exactly how to seamlessly make it happen.
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - How a pre-mortem can tell you what’s wrong with zero trust
“I think one of the things we forget is that the modern enterprise is 10 to 20 years of technical depth, pulled forward by the latest cloud, blockchain, AI/ML thing and it’s only the AI/ML thing that we are scared about,” he said. “One of the concerns from a people, process and scope perspective is making sure that we haven’t over rotated, ignoring the existing oftentimes much larger technical base.”
Security
SiliconANGLE - Don’t be fooled by slowing cloud growth: Cost optimization is a feature, not a bug 
Hyperscale clouds remain the epicenter of innovation in tech and foundation models such as GPT will only serve to harden this fundamental fact. Our data suggests the deceleration in cloud spend is a function of two related factors: 1) cautious consumption patterns; and 2) aggressive cloud optimization, which is being promoted by the big three cloud vendors in an attempt to lock customers into longer-term commitments.
Cloud
VentureBeat - Cybersecurity meets AI: Augmenting and accelerating humans
As is often the case with many new and exciting technologies, the perceived short-term impact of the latest news-making developments is probably overestimated. At least that’s my view of the immediate within the narrow domain of application security. Conversely, the long-term impact of AI for security is huge and is probably underappreciated, even by many of us in the field.
Security
Techrepublic - Google’s 2FA app update lacks end-to-end encryption, researchers find
On April 25, security researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry, who are known collectively on Twitter as Mysk, warned users of Google’s Authenticator 2FA app to not turn on a new syncing feature. Mysk discovered a flaw in the feature in which “secrets” or credentials shared across devices are not end-to-end encrypted; this could allow attackers or Google to view those credentials.
Security
ZDNet - Smartphone trends in 2023: Here's what's coming next
As well as the usual advances in processing power, display technology, AI-powered photography and videography, and power management, there's a lot of activity on the form-factor front -- notably with folding and flip-open phones. We may also see the first phone with a rollable screen in 2023.  
Tech Trends
VentureBeat - Tenable report shows how generative AI is changing security research 
The research focuses on four new tools designed to help human researchers streamline reverse engineering, vulnerability analysis, code debugging and web application security, and identify cloud-based misconfigurations.
Security
The Hacker News - Wanted Dead or Alive: Real-Time Protection Against Lateral Movement
Just a few short years ago, lateral movement was a tactic confined to top APT cybercrime organizations and nation-state operators. Today, however, it has become a commoditized tool, well within the skillset of any ransomware threat actor. This makes real-time detection and prevention of lateral movement a necessity to organizations of all sizes and across all industries.
Security
Computerworld - How to pick the best content services platform for your business
“That’s the biggest challenge I see with most organizations — they think that they’re going to suddenly bring one of these systems in and it’s going to bring everything under control,” he said. “Individuals have to realize that it’s a different way of working and that they have to put all their documents in this repository and they have to set metadata, [for example].”
Automation & Productivity
Blocks & Files - Backup and security one and the same for CISOs
Essentially, there are three ways to stop attackers. You either prevent them from entering in the first place, or you detect and eliminate them if they get through the defenses. But you’ve got to have a robust recovery strategy in place if the first two fail. So it’s becoming more likely that the CISO’s who understand all three are required will opt for service providers who can deliver each layer.
Security
eWeek - Tangoe Report: Complexity, Cost Eat Into Cloud Benefits
The survey found that 82% of businesses plan to increase their spend in software as a service (SaaS), unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). But almost that same number, 80%, see costs as a challenge with their current cloud deployments.
Cloud
sdxCentral - 5 most dangerous new attack techniques (yes, they include AI)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a new tool for bad guys. Katie Nickels, certified instructor at the SANS Institute, said that from her perspective, search engine optimization (SEO) is a growing risk. To be clear, these are the same basic SEO approaches and techniques that publishers and websites have been using since the dawn of the very first search engines. Though instead of SEO used for positive purposes, it is being abused for nefarious gains by miscreants
Security
VentureBeat - How post-quantum cryptography will help fulfill the vision of zero trust
Anne Dames of IBM warned that enterprises need to start thinking about which of their systems are most threatened by potential rapid advances in quantum computing. She advised the audience that public key cryptography systems are the most vulnerable ones.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Ocean’s roar of generative AI and expanding dark web capture security world’s attention at RSA
SANS Institute researcher Stephen Sims described how ChatGPT rejected his initial attempt to write a ransomware attack using the tool. Yet when Sims broke down the request into separate steps, such as writing encryption code and checking for a bitcoin wallet, the AI platform delivered.
Security
Network World - Who is selling NaaS, and what do you get?
According to IDC analyst Brandon Butler, “NaaS is a cloud-enabled, usage-based consumption model that allows users to acquire and orchestrate network capabilities without owning, building, or maintaining their own infrastructure.
Network Management
sdxCentral - 10 tips to build a long-lasting career in enterprise IT
There are examples of companies where management suddenly decide to replace its in-house security team with a managed security service provider (MSSP). What appears to be a comfortably secure and long-term career can disappear in a heartbeat. Thus, the cultivation of new technology skills, programming languages and certifications should never stop.
Tech Jobs
SiliconANGLE - The cybersecurity conundrum: integrated platforms vs. best-of-breed solutions 
“You have to keep security policies up to date,” he said. “Some systems pool while some use telemetry, and so you could end up with this inconsistent data. It’s about analyzing the data that you have to be able to find those needles in the stack of needles. If you’re working off your own data set and everything is consistent, you can do that better than if you’re trying to cobble together data sets from multiple vendors.”
Security
Network World - Aruba banks on integrated security, AI, NaaS for enterprise growth
“What we've heard from customers about NaaS  is they want flexibility and agility, and it's not one size fits all,” Hughes said. “And so you have situations like someone that wants to pay all upfront, but they'd love someone to manage it for them or someone that wants to pay over time, but they want to control everything very tightly themselves.”
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - RSA 2023 and the security identity crisis, part two 
The narrative from security vendors is organizations don’t spend enough money on cyber defense. Maybe… but will spending more actually address the problems organizations face? The conventional wisdom is it will help; or at least it can’t hurt. But as we and others have pointed out over the years, a crowded market and mega venture capital funding have created more tools, more complexity and more billionaires… but are we safer?
Security
Network World - Your decommissioned routers could be a security disaster
Retired enterprise routers—and the sensitive data that's still on them—are showing up on the used-equipment market where attackers could mine them for vulnerabilities to exploit.
Security
sdxCentral - How to balance security and transparency for responsible AI
One of the keys to this for data scientists and developers is getting the AI models right – and up to date – for use in the real world. Security then can step in and protect the models from intruders intent upon creating mayhem in the networks. For example, as of this month, ChatGPT’s mindstore did not yet include data from 2022 or 2023.
Security
ZDNet - Generative AI can make some workers a lot more productive, according to this study 
A working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that access to generative AI can increase workers' productivity by 14% on average, as measured by the amount of customer issues the agents were able to resolve per hour.
Automation & Productivity
SiliconANGLE - The future of cybersecurity and AI: An exclusive interview with John Chambers 
The importance of data in the AI-driven security landscape shouldn’t be overlooked, as companies will be hesitant to share their data with others, Chambers pointed out. As such, the ability to effectively use and analyze data through AI algorithms will become increasingly important.
Security
sdxCentral - RSA on how to use 'good AI' to beat 'bad AI' in next-gen identity authentication
“Just having credentials to log on is not sufficient anymore,” Taylor told SDXCentral. “You need more than that. We are starting to see things like AI malware. People are using AI engines for hacking, which is a terrifying prospect – because when you think about the most predominant AI, it’s in social platforms.
Security
VentureBeat - KPMG: US executives unprepared for immediate adoption of generative AI
Generative AI has become a buzzword among executives and boards, as the technology has become increasingly accessible. However, organizations are struggling to keep up with its rapid development. The KPMG survey found that less than 50% of respondents believe they have the necessary technology, talent and governance to implement generative AI successfully.
Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - Beyond the firewall: Exploring AI-driven security and the future of hybrid work 
Another key focal point is the increasing significance of AI in security, which will lead to three fundamental changes: altering the user experience, improving the efficacy of security and increasing the efficiency of security professionals. AI will help drive a platform approach to security, allowing for better correlation across multiple domains and providing an end-to-end picture of security threats.
Security
VentureBeat - For recession-proof security spending, embrace the value of multi-layered integrations
Two-thirds (66%) of respondents in Mimecast’s newly released State of Email Security Report 2023 said their organization’s cyber-defense budget is less than it should be. The sentiment reinforces a similar tone from the annual report’s 2022 version, which found that respondents with a reduced cyber budget were nearly united (95%) in agreeing their organization’s cyber-resilience was impaired.  
Security
Datanami - Report: Cloud Managed Services Market Worth $164B by 2027, Growing at a CAGR of 10.6%
The government sector is spending on cloud to drive digital transformation and to serve citizens with better processes. The increasing need for managed services in this sector is driven by the lack of skilled professionals and a limited IT budget.
Cloud
VentureBeat - 6 tips for combatting vendor lock-in and the data gravity challenge
This is exacerbated when vendors make it difficult, costly or nearly impossible to move data to another solution provider’s service. The larger the dataset and the more services that are used, the harder and more expensive it is to move. This phenomenon is referred to as “data gravity.”
Data Management
Datanami - Active Archive Alliance 2023 State of the Industry Report Now Available
At the center of an active archive resides an intelligent data management system. This software system plays the central role of automatically placing data where it belongs for cost, performance and workload priorities. The data management layer uses technologies such as metadata and global namespaces to make data accessible, searchable and retrievable on whatever storage platform or media it may reside.
Data Management
VentureBeat - How Veza helps companies map data access and stop insider threats
In fact, research shows that insider threats are incredibly common. Cyberhaven found that nearly one in 10 employees (9.4%) will exfiltrate data over a six-month period, with customer data (44.6% of incidents) and source code (13.8%) being the most common assets leaked.
Privacy & Security
sdxCentral - Big changes coming to Kubernetes cloud native networking
Other limitations of the Ingress API outlined by Utt include an insufficient permissions model and a focus largely only on HTTP traffic. The challenges of the Ingress API have been well known in the cloud native community for several years, which has led to the development of a replacement known as the Gateway API.
Network Management
VentureBeat - How to vet your vendors: Ensuring data privacy and security compliance
A company’s compliance record is only as strong as its weakest link, so they must vet and approve any potential vendors and partners before signing on to work with them, as well as assess their existing vendors to confirm that they are data compliant.
Data Privacy
Computerworld - Do the productivity gains from generative AI outweigh the security risks?
Using generative AI to code is dangerous for a variety of reasons, but its efficiencies will tempt corporate leaders — especially CIOs and business execs — to use it anyway. A senior AWS executive at Amazon argues the decision doesn’t have to be an either/or calculation.
Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - Dissecting Gartner’s new Security Service Edge Magic Quadrant
One notable point in the Gartner definition is the inclusion of visibility or digital experience management, which hasn’t historically been part of security. IT leaders have been laser-focused on employee and customer experience and the ability to monitor the performance of apps is critical today. A security platform is ideally suited to provide visibility as it sees every packet that traverses the network and can infer application and user experience.
Security
Computerworld - Global cloud spending expected to jump 21.7% as IaaS leads the way
Nag said that the next phase of IaaS will also be driven by emerging technologies, particularly as applied to customer experience. He explains that many of these technologies also help businesses interact better with their customers in real time, for example with generative AI-powered chatbots, and are reliant upon cloud infrastructure and platform services to meet growing demands for compute and storage power.
Cloud
InfoWorld - Why generative AI will turbocharge low-code and no-code development
While early results show that ChatGPT can be helpful — including for reviewing code — developers programming complex applications will likely never be able to entirely offload coding to AI tools. Generative AI, however, is poised to revolutionize use of low-code and no-code development environments, analysts said
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - Why data gravity is helping cloud providers become cybersecurity companies
At its core, cybersecurity is a data problem. First, it is data that is being secured, and second, whoever has the security data has the ability to find patterns, identify anomalies and generate useful insights. All this makes it surprising that not everyone in the industry has heard and understands the role of the data gravity effect.
Security
Datanami - Generative AI Benchmark Report: Banking & Retail Lead the Way in Harnessing This Tech
The Conversica Conversation Index Report delves deeply into the performance of the GPT wave, measuring the results of generative AI-powered conversations applied to revenue-focused outcomes across industries, geographies, and specific use cases in Marketing, Sales and Customer Success (CS) environments
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - Report: Security teams take an average of 6 days to resolve alerts 
In any case, the report highlights that many security teams are making the same mistakes, which are leading to alert generation. For instance, 80% of alerts are triggered by just 5% of security rules in most organizations’ cloud environments.
Security
Blocks & Files - Gartner anoints file systems and object storage ‘peer insights’ winners
Analyst house Gartner says its customers have listed the companies they think are above average distributed file systems and/or object storage suppliers. Topping the list was Huawei, MinIO, Nutanix, Pure and WEKA.
Data Storage
VentureBeat - Report finds 82% of open-source software components ‘inherently risky’ 
Lineaje also found significant risk among widely-used open-source solutions, analyzing the top 44 popular projects of the Apache Software Foundation and discovering that 68% of dependencies are from non-Apache Software Foundation open-source projects, many with opaque origin and update mechanisms.
Security
Datanami - ManageEngine Study Reveals Observability and AIOps Knowledge Gap Hinders Customer Experience Improvements
The primary challenge with observability was a lack of understanding. More than 57% of the IT decision makers who responded stated that their organization was not fully familiar with the concept of observability. Similarly, more than 65% of respondents said their organizations lacked a proper understanding of AIOps and its use cases.
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - Why unifying endpoints and identities is the future of zero trust
Attackers are cashing in on the proliferation of new identities being assigned to endpoints and the resulting unchecked agent sprawl. Scanning every available endpoint and port, attackers are automating their reconnaissance efforts using AI and machine learning, and enterprises can’t keep up.  
Security
Computerworld - Q&A: How 2023 college grads can boost chances of finding their IT dream job
In 2023, there is a skills mismatch, according to Tarner. That is, the tech job marketplace has changed and employers want candidates with less conventional soft skills, along with technical skills not typically attained in a brick-and-mortar classroom.
Tech Jobs
sdxCentral - Generative AI like ChatGPT fuels sophisticated phishing attacks
The team analyzed 280 billion daily transitions and 8 billion daily blocked attacks over 2022 and found a nearly 50% increase in phishing attacks compared to 2021. Additionally, the education sector emerged as the most targeted industry, followed by finance and insurance, and government in 2022.
Privacy & Security
SiliconANGLE - Akamai research finds application and API attacks jumped 137% in 2022
2022 was found to be a record-breaking year for application and API attacks, with the 137% increase said to be a major concern as organizations are adopting more web applications and APIs to enhance their business and increase ease of use for customers. The report found that Local File Inclusion remains the top attack vector, with year-over-year growth of 193%.
Security
ZDNet - Generative AI is changing your technology career path. What to know
AI -- and generative AI, which creates content from training data -- will impact technology careers in two ways. As a tool, AI will boost professionals' productivity and capabilities. At a business level, the growth in automation means increased demand for AI-specific skills to design, build, and maintain such systems.
Tech Jobs
Datanami - New IBM Study Reveals Inadequate Data Hinders Progress Against ESG Goals
The study* reveals that surveyed executives point to inadequate data (41%) as the biggest obstacle to their ESG progress, followed by regulatory barriers (39%), inconsistent standards (37%) and inadequate skills (36%
Sustainability
SiliconANGLE - Taming complexity: A holistic approach to multicloud management 
By presenting end-to-end solutions, Aria eliminates the need for going from one app to another, according to Padmanabhan. For instance, Aria Guardrails makes multicloud seamless by dealing with log-ins and credentials.
Cloud
Computerworld - How will Apple help IT manage third-party app stores?
I very much hope that Apple will create an API developers of device management software can use to allow IT to disable access to third-party app stores, or at least to limit such access to only those that have passed security policy review.
IT Management
SiliconANGLE - Report: Google is racing to build a new, AI-powered search engine to stave off ChatGPT 
Google has reportedly been in a frenzy since last December, when executives first realized the significance of OpenAI LP’s ChatGPT and how it could pose a challenge in search. The threat to Google’s decades-long dominance of the search industry only increased in February, when Microsoft Corp. announced plans to integrate ChatGPT with Bing.
ChatGPT
ZDNet - Future ChatGPT versions could replace a majority of work people do today, says Ben Goertzel 
Goertzel also commented on the difference between AI models considered "narrow" and those that are AGI, emphasizing that AGI would be capable of human-like thinking and creativity. He noted that developers are closer to achieving AGI than ever before.
ChatGPT
VentureBeat - Why privacy-preserving synthetic data is a key tool for businesses
As cleverly as synthetic data is created, it can just as easily be reverse-engineered to extract personal data from the real-world samples used to make it. This can, unfortunately, become the doorway hackers need to find, manipulate and collect the personal information of user samples.
Data Privacy
sdxCentral - How AI will drive the metaverse (and vice versa -- eventually)
Notably, Illenberger sees AI being used in the creation of virtual worlds, objects and characters. For example, AI algorithms can generate realistic environments, creatures, and objects. This can reduce manual demands on human artists and designers.
Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - RSA 2023 highlights a cybersecurity identity crisis in the age of AI 
There’s little doubt that attackers will use GPT to develop more sophisticated and better-written phishing techniques and increasingly clever evasion methods. As well, adversaries will use AI to better target high-value assets and sniff out those that are most exposed.
Security
VentureBeat - How mass layoffs can create new risks for corporate security
“Insider threat risk includes theft of sensitive data, embezzlement, sabotage of critical systems, creation of backdoors into corporate environments or even causing reputational harm.”
Security
sdxCentral - What ChatGPT does for data automation – and what it doesn’t
Although they are “growing intelligence pretty fast,” Goren warned that users should be aware that these natural language processors are capable of hallucinating information. ChatGPT is a writer of fiction and nonfiction mixed together. It can choose either of those roles depending on what it thinks is going to give users the best “human readable answer.”
ChatGPT
VentureBeat - Everywhere and nowhere: Metaverse leaders plan for data centers on a whole new scale
“I believe that the infrastructure that we need to build out is going to be different for the metaverse as a whole compared to the data centers we have today. There are going to be differences even within these two classes of the metaverse, the consumer one and the industrial metaverse.”
Metaverse
VentureBeat - CISA pressures tech vendors to ship secure software ‘out of the box’
The guidance, a report named “Shifting the Balance of Cybersecurity Risk: Principles and Approaches for Security-by-Design and -Default,” aims to “encourage every technology manufacturer to build their products in a way that prevents customers from having to constantly perform monitoring, routine updates, and damage control on their systems.”
Security
sdxCentral - Palo Alto Networks joins Netskope, Zscaler as ‘leaders’ in Gartner SSE Magic Quadran
Gartner named Netskope and Zscaler as “leaders” for the second year in a row in its annual Magic Quadrant ranking of  security service edge (SSE) vendors, while Palo Alto Networks replaced McAfee Enterprise (rebranded as Skyhigh Security last March) in that prestigious quadrant for the first time.
Security
VentureBeat - Managing machine identities in a zero-trust world
The typical enterprise has 45 times more machine identities than human ones — and many organizations don’t even know exactly how many they have. More than six in 10 enterprises are unsure of their organization’s key and certificate count, up 17% from last year.
Security
AiThority - Unveiling SnapGPT: Impact of GPT-4 on Data and App Integration
So far we are extremely impressed with the improved accuracy of the GPT-4 responses. It is worth noting that GPT-4 is currently more expensive per token (prompt length) and slightly slower in response generation. That said, the cost and time seem justified for the improved response accuracy.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - ChatGPT can turn toxic just by changing its assigned persona, researchers say
The study — which the researchers say is the first large-scale toxicity analysis of ChatGPT — found that the large language model (LLM) carries inherent toxicity that is heightened up to six times when assigned a diverse range of personas (such as historical figures, profession, etc).
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - Guess what? Email security is still a problem – BEC attacks on the rise
While many organizations rely on the native security capabilities of their cloud email providers, the report found that’s often not nearly enough. According to the report, 77% of business email compromise (BEC) attacks were able to bypass the built-in protection layers email providers have in place. BEC overall rose by 72% year over year, according to the report.
Security
Blocks & Files - StorPool: The traditional SAN is dead. Arise, software-defined multi-controller block storage
The traditional SAN, which is a dual-controller, shared disk system is just too inflexible. What happens if six months after you install your building block, you realize you need lower latency or higher capacity? How do you do that without breaking up your building blocks?
Data Storage
Computerworld - Down in Q1, US IT job market rebounded slightly in March: Report
“Layoffs at big tech companies are having an adverse on overall IT hiring,” Janco CEO Victor Janulaitis said in the report. “More CIOs are looking at a troubling economic climate and are evaluating the need for increased headcounts based on the technological requirements of their specific business operations.”
Tech Jobs
Network World - 3 ways network teams can influence SASE decisions
Unfortunately for the network team—and the enterprise—all the energy for SASE being centered on cybersecurity means that network staffs and network functions can get short shrift in the selection process, with the staff being looped in as an afterthought or included only in the final selection via a proof-of-concept deployment.
Network Management
Datanami - Progress Research Study: 65% of Organizations Suffer from Data Bias
Biases are often inherited by cultural and personal experiences. When data is collected and used in the training of machine learning models, the models inherit the bias of the people building them, producing unexpected and potentially harmful outcomes
Data & Analytics
sdxCentral - What is technical debt? And 3 ways to overcome it
A 2023 IDG survey found that tech debt has become the No. 2 issue for IT executives, second only to skills shortages. IDG defines tech debt as “the measure of the cost of reworking a solution caused by choosing an easy, yet limited, solution.”
It Management
VentureBeat - Clearing visibility and unifying security tools with a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP)
Cloud-native application protection platforms (CNAPPs) aim to declutter and streamline this landscape. A CNAPP pulls multiple security and protection capabilities together into one single platform to help identify risk across a cloud-native application and its infrastructure.
Security
VentureBeat - How machine learning can help crack the IT security problem
While digital transformations and cloud migrations are undoubtedly smart decisions that all organizations should make (and those that haven’t yet, what are you doing!), security systems meant to protect such IT infrastructures haven’t been able to keep pace with threats capable of undermining them.  
Security
Computerworld - How many jobs are available in technology in the US?
Technology employment across all industry sectors increased by an estimated 197,000 positions for the month, according to CompTIA’s analysis of BLS data. “This represents the highest level of employer hiring activity as measured by job postings in seven months,” CompTIA said in its Tech Jobs Report.
Tech Jobs
ZDNet - 'OpenAI is product development, not AI research,' says Meta's chief AI scientist LeCun 
"OpenAI pivoted from an AI research lab that was relatively open, as the name indicates, to a for-profit company, and now a kind of contract research lab mostly for Microsoft that doesn't reveal anything anymore about how they work, so this is product development; this is not R&D."
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - Top three computer vision trends to follow in 2023
Many of us interact with computer vision applications every day, from Apple’s Face ID and Tesla Autopilot to the Meta Quest and Google Lens. Computer vision gives machines the ability to “perceive” the world like humans do and use that knowledge to augment human efforts. The potential is immense, and analysts agree: The computer vision market is expected to expand to $9.62 billion according to research from Report Ocean.
Tech Trends
SiliconANGLE - How vVols are breaking traditional storage barriers 
Despite vVols being mostly on-prem, they aid in the cloud migration journey, depending on the storage framework, according to Massae. vVols are also a perfect fit for enterprises adopting a cloud service-provider model.
Data Storage
Computerworld - Global IT spending forecast to rise 5.5%, fueled by software, services
The software category is predicted to show the largest year-on-year growth figures in Gartner’s forecast, at 12.3%. That’s driven largely by analytics and business intelligence, as well as custom applications for work, Lovelock said.
Tech Trends
TechRepublic - More phishing campaigns are using IPFS network protocol
IPFS identifies files by their content rather than their location. Each file is given a unique cryptographic hash called CID; the content identifier can be used to retrieve the file from any node on the network that stores a copy. This makes it easy to distribute and access content, even if the original source is offline or unavailable.
Security
VentureBeat - Meeting the challenge of skill gaps in the age of digital transformation
The biggest trend is upskilling technology literacy for previously non-technical workers, as the number of digital solutions proliferate in workers’ daily lives — cloud-based tools or automation-focused tools, for instance. The other growing gap is in the cloud space.
Tech Jobs
eWeek - Real-Time Data Management Trends for 2023
Real-time data management is the application of intelligence to data as soon as it’s created or acquired, rather than being stored for later analysis. Data is processed and forwarded to users as soon as it’s collected – immediately without any lag.
Data Management
Computerworld - Should we do more business with our iPhones?
Even simple tasks such as expense tracking, simple document editing, or time sheet recording are mostly done on other devices, which suggests the scale to which iPhone-toting knowledge workers aren’t fully exploiting the full potential of their device. What makes this particularly odd is that when handling personal "stuff," most people already engage in bill payments, online shopping, and equivalent tasks.
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - Direct-path attacks skyrocket, now represent half of DDoS attacks
Netscout released its annual DDoS Threat Intelligence Report this week, revealing a number of new trends as threat adversaries have shifted tactics as part of a never-ending game of cat and mouse with network defenders. Looking at aggregate traffic, Netscout reported that it saw peak DDoS alert traffic hit a staggering high of 436 petabits (a petabit is one million gigabits) in a single day.
Security
Computerworld - Pausing AI development is a foolish idea
The right approach would be to create such an authority beforehand, so there’s some way to assure the intended outcome. I tend to agree with former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates that the focus should be on assuring AI reliability, not trying to pause everything.
Artificial Intelligence
AiThority - New Bitdefender Survey Reveals Top Cybersecurity Challenges and Concerns for Businesses Globally
“The results of this survey demonstrate, more than ever, the importance of layered security that delivers advanced threat prevention, detection and response across the entire business while improving efficiencies that allow security teams to do more with less.”
Security
CSO - UK data regulator issues warning over generative AI data protection concerns
Almond also said that, for organizations processing personal data for the purpose of developing generative AI, there are various questions they should ask themselves, centering on: what their lawful basis for processing personal data is; how they can mitigate security risks; and how they will respond to individual rights requests
Data Privacy
sdxCentral - Gartner's Top 8 Security Predictions: CISOs Will Focus on Individuals
The analysts forecast that half of CISOs will adopt human-centric design for their security programs by 2027 to minimize operational friction and maximize control adoption. This approach prioritizes the individual over technology, threat, or location as a recent Gartner research showed that over 90% of employees admitted they knowingly engage in unsecured actions, despite being aware of the risks.
Security
Network World - 3 ways network teams can influence SASE decisions
Unfortunately for the network team—and the enterprise—all the energy for SASE being centered on cybersecurity means that network staffs and network functions can get short shrift in the selection process, with the staff being looped in as an afterthought or included only in the final selection via a proof-of-concept deployment.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - OpenAI details how it’s striving to improve the accuracy and safety of its AI systems 
At the same time, blocks have been implemented to prevent its systems from generating hateful, harassing, violent or adult content. These are being improved continuously, and GPT-4 is said to be 82% less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content than its previous model, GPT-3.5.
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - Low code/no code solves skill shortages, but there’s a catch
DevOps engineers are “really, really hard to find,” said Venkat Thiruvengadam, CEO of DevSecOps software provider DuploCloud. “It’s this unique skill set where you need to be a developer and you need to be an operator – and operator also means being aware of security and compliance and whatnot, especially in the SaaS world.”
Tech Jobs
VentureBeat - MLPerf Inference 3.0 results show 30% performance gain across multiple vendors
Among the vendors that participated in the MLPerf Inference 3.0 effort are Alibaba, ASUS, Azure, cTuning, Deci, Dell, GIGABYTE, H3C, HPE, Inspur, Intel, Krai, Lenovo, Moffett, Nettrix, Neuchips, Neural Magic, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Quanta Cloud Technology, rebellions, SiMa, Supermicro, VMware and xFusion.
Automation & Productivity
Datanami - New Unravel Data Survey Finds Two Thirds of Data Teams Report Cloud Spending as Critical KPI
“In just the course of a year we’ve seen a significant shift in how these growing, cross-functional teams are prioritizing DataOps as an established discipline across their organizations in a similar way that DevOps became an entrenched practice among software teams a decade ago. But despite this progress, this year’s survey also demonstrates that issues like FinOps, cloud utilization, and data security continue to present unique challenges to data teams.”
Data Management
sdxCentral - Unlocking the encryption dilemma: How AI/ML-powered deep packet inspection brings visibility to encrypted traffic
Threat adversaries are increasingly hiding attacks in encrypted data traffic. Encryption also makes it significantly more difficult for organizations to protect against compliance issues and potential data loss. The unfortunate reality for many organizations is that encryption poses challenges such as reduced visibility and control, which can disrupt networks that heavily depend on deep insights to manage and secure their assets.
Privacy & Security
VentureBeat - 4 high-paying tech jobs to know about this week
Machine learning is another area that unsurprisingly pays well. Comprehensive.io’s data indicates that a Machine Learning Scientist can earn around $133,000 at the lower end of the scale, right up to $630,000.
Tech Jobs
Network World - Colocation vs. cloud: SEO firm finds cloud to be cost prohibitive for its high density computing 
There’s a wide swath of colocation providers, ranging from firms with just a few locations to global giants like Equinix. According to Allied Market Research, the colocation market was worth $46 billion in 2020 and is projected to top $202 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of nearly 16% from 2021 to 2030.
Cloud
VentureBeat - Zero trust for web and application access: Developing a cybersecurity playbook for BYOD and beyond
“Recessions make the revenue risk aspects of a zero-trust business case real, showing why securing browsers deserves urgency.” More than anything else, CISOs from the banking, financial services and insurance industries fear inbound attacks aimed at exploiting browsers’ weaknesses to launch sophisticated phishing and social engineering attacks.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Semiconductors rebound, but enterprise tech spending remains soft 
The catalyst for this Breaking Analysis was a research post SPEAR put out on LinkedIn asking if the semi rebound spells good news for broader enterprise software. In that note, SPEAR showed the chart  above which is pretty self-explanatory – you have Nvidia, AMD and the SOXX ETF significantly outperforming two names SPEAR owns, Snowflake and Zscaler.
Tech Trends
Computerworld - Ransomware as a service? Windows users can still fight back.
Beyond that, attackers are also targeting search results for the information tools IT teams need to do their job. A search result could, for example, point admins to a malicious tool that tricks them into installing a potential back door. That access is then sold on the black market.
Security
Datanami - Compute and Storage Cloud Infrastructure Spending Stays Strong as Macroeconomic Headwinds Strengthen in Q4 of 2022, IDC Reports
Spending on shared cloud infrastructure reached $16.8 billion in the quarter, increasing 18.5% compared to a year ago. For the full year in 2022, spending on shared cloud infrastructure totaled $61.5 billion, growing 20.1% year over year. IDC expects to see continuous strong demand for shared cloud infrastructure, which is expected to surpass non-cloud infrastructure in spending in 2023.
Cloud
VentureBeat - The strange new world of AI power, politics and the ‘pause’ | The AI Beat
No longer are AI debates just about technology, or science, or even reality. They are also about opinions, fears, values, attitudes, beliefs, perspectives, resources, incentives and straight-up weirdness.
Artificial Intelligence
SiliconANGLE - Netscout finds DDoS attacks have jumped almost sixfold since 2019
The report’s highlights include peak distributed denial-of-service alert traffic reaching as high as 436 petabits and more than 75 trillion packets in a single day. Service providers are said to have rigorously scrubbed a large percentage of this traffic, while enterprises eliminated an additional daily aggregate average of 345 terabytes of unwanted traffic.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Splunk report finds security leaders are seeing increased cyberattacks and outages 
Key findings from the report include bad actors going unnoticed on corporate networks for extended periods of time. Disturbingly, respondents reported that, on average, more than two months go by from when a bad actor gains access to when businesses become aware of the intrusion.
Security
VentureBeat - How microservices have transformed enterprise security
Microservices have upended this paradigm. They allow DevOps to ring-fence security flaws or concerns and address them without worrying about breaking their entire application stack. This doesn’t just mean a quicker turnaround for security patches, but more resilient and efficient DevOps teams and IT stacks overall.
Security
ZDNet - ChatGPT's intelligence is zero, but it's a revolution in usefulness, says AI expert 
While it's easy to be impressed by AI's ability to perform tasks like natural language processing, Kaufman argued that large language models like GPT-3 merely mimic intelligence without truly possessing it. In particular, they lack the capacity to tackle challenges they have yet to encounter before.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - The role missing from the tech company C-suite
Additionally, it’s an important focus for companies because at least 70% of developers feel they substantially or completely influence purchasing decisions, with 87% of companies consulting developers during the procurement process, and 91% of developers saying it matters that they are consulted.
IT Management
Datanami - NetApp’s 2023 Cloud Complexity Report Highlights Shifting Demands of a Multicloud Environment
Data complexity has reached a boiling point for companies globally, and tech executives are feeling the pressure to contain its impact on the business. However, technical and organizational challenges may stunt their cloud strategies, with 88% citing working across cloud environments as a barrier, while 32% struggle just to align on a clear vision at the leadership level.
Cloud
Computerworld - Being future ready in a generative AI world
So how do leaders prepare for change at this speed? Both CEOs said success depends on a laser-like focus on the customer; understand how they’re adapting the technology, how it affects hybrid work (which both feel is here to stay), and then develop and modify plans for future products and services accordingly.
Artificial Intelligence
ZDNet - Job scams powered by ChatGPT could try to rob you. How to protect yourself 
But as generative AI becomes more advanced, chatbots like ChatGPT can be leveraged to write impressively accurate job descriptions. If a job scammer uses AI to write a job description, you'll have to pay closer attention to the recruiter's identity to determine if the listing is fake.
Security
Tech Republic - Ransomware attacks skyrocket as threat actors double down on U.S., global attacks
The NCC Group also reported that ransomware LockBit 3.0 was the leading arrowhead, with the eponymous threat group having launched 129,  or 54%, of ransomware salvos last month, including an attack on the U.K.’s Royal Mail. The security group reported that LockBit’s targeting of utilities, health care and consumer staples escalated it to the top three threat actors for the first time, with 20 incidents, a 150% increase in victims in this sector since January.
Security
VentureBeat - Securing cloud tech stacks with zero trust will drive growth of confidential computing
Board members on risk management teams recall Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities that target processors that rely on branch prediction and advanced speculative actions. CIOs and CISOs say boards need to see pilot data and simulated attacks thwarted before they go into production with confidential computing.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Goldman Sachs report says AI could put 300 million jobs at risk 
The researchers figure that one of the biggest disruptions will be for people who do administrative jobs. They predict 46% of tasks in this milieu will be automated with AI. Some 44% of jobs will go in legal professions, they added. Other industries greatly affected will be architecture and engineering (37%), business financial operations (35%), community and social services (33%) and management (32%)
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Samsung forecasts petabyte SSD in a decade
Samsung exhibited a prototype 128TB SSD at last year’s August Flash memory Summit in San Jose, calling it a petabyte “scale” SSD. This used QLC (4 bits/cell) NAND, supported zoned name spaces and came with a PCIe/NVMe interface.
Data Storage
sdxCentral - Ransomware Attacks Target Critical Infrastructure – And It’s Paying Off
In IT, tech and telecom, 69% of attacks originated via email, 56% by web traffic or web apps, and 39% by network traffic.
Privacy & Security
AiThority - Escalating Security Gaps and Costly User Experience Issues Exposed, With Three out of Four Attack Vectors Connected to Authentication
This third annual edition reveals that insecure authentication is a primary cause of cyber breaches and that cumbersome login methods take an unacceptable toll on employees and business productivity. Respondents indicate that a passwordless approach would increase productivity (45%), improve user experience (86%), strengthen security (86%) and accelerate adoption of multi-factor authentication (42%).
Security
sdxCentral - Microsoft, OpenAI Copilot Security to Aid ‘But Not Replace’ Human Analysts
Forrester analysts pointed out that currently, the security industry is inundated with misleading marketing claims such as “autonomous SOCs,” “AI assistants,” and “AI analysts.” However, Microsoft Security Copilot finally made AI do more than enhance threat detection.
Security
Network World - Predictive networking promises faster fixes
The integration of AI tools into predictive network technology also has the potential to be an economic game-changer. "With mature AI and ML tools at their disposal, service providers and organizations alike can reduce the costs of problem discovery and resolution,"
Network Management
VentureBeat - GPT-4 kicks AI security risks into higher gear
CyberArk, meanwhile, was able to bypass filters to create polymorphic malware, which can repeatedly mutate. CyberArk also used ChatGPT to mutate code that became highly evasive and difficult to detect.
Security
Datanami - Virtana Releases Latest State of Multi-Cloud Management Report
The report found that 83% of IT leaders are using more than one cloud service provider (CSP), and 44% are using more than three CSPs. The survey results demonstrate growing management and data complexities that come from the high number of cross-provider interactions.
Cloud
VentureBeat - Why SASE will benefit from faster consolidation of networking and security
Seventy-five percent of enterprises are pursuing vendor consolidation, up from 29% just three years ago, with secure access service edge (SASE) experiencing significant upside growth as a result. SASE is also proving effective at improving enterprise security postures by providing zero trust network access (ZTNA) at scale.
Security
sdxCentral - 5G FWA Potential Remains Robust Despite Tech Concerns
The research firm noted the capability for 5G technology to support quality of service (QoS) requirements tied to unlimited data offerings will bolster support for FWA services. Increased spectrum support and enhanced antenna beamforming technology will also allow 5G-based FWA services to compete more directly from a performance perspective with wireline-based broadband services.
5G
Computerworld - How Microsoft became tech’s top dog again
But the move involved a lot more than that. It represented Nadella’s recognition that the future of AI wasn’t in smart assistants like Cortana, Siri, and Alexa. Instead, he saw the future of AI — and possibly the future of computing — would be in generative AI like what is now ChatGPT.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - How to prepare for a world without passwords
 So what is a passkey, and why is it different? A passkey is a passwordless credential, where the website and the authenticator are communicating by exchanging keys. These cannot be seen or accessed by humans, removing all human-related risks of password usage.
Privacy & Security
TechRepublic - Even after armed with defense tools, CISOs say successful cyberattacks are ‘inevitable’: New study
“For decades, new problems in security have arisen and small companies come up with innovative solutions to address these. But buying individual best-in-breed solutions from new vendors puts the burden on the customer to ingest all of these solutions and integrate them,”
Security
VentureBeat - Analysts share 8 ChatGPT security predictions for 2023 
ChatGPT will lower the barrier to entry for cybercrime.  Crafting convincing phishing emails will become easier. Organizations will need AI-literate security professionals. Enterprises will need to validate generative AI output. Generative AI will upscale existing threats.
ChatGPT
Computerworld - Microsoft Copilot could fix a long-running Office problem
The initial instructions that direct the underlying AI on what to collect — and what the finished product should look like — can be centralized and applied to all of Office. That would dramatically simplify and reduce the time needed to create a complex document with charts, pictures, and dynamic data that keeps a document, webpage, or other content up to date
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - Skills mapping: Turning skills to workforce gold
Studies show that while a skill used to last 15 to 20 years, the shelf-life of any skill is now only 3 to 5 years. The one-size-fits-all approach to learning is no longer going to cut it, even if the system we grew up in is telling us otherwise.
e-Learning
Datanami - IDC Report: Responsible AI Integral to Unlocking Benefits for B2B Enterprises
The survey underscores the key role artificial intelligence will have for B2B enterprises in 2023 and beyond. Executives expressed eagerness for their organizations to adopt responsible AI, citing customer satisfaction (30%), improved sustainability (30%) and increased profits (25%) as top expected business benefits.
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Enterprises need one hybrid cloud operating model to rule them all, says Nutanix
“What this year’s ECI [study] shows and what we’re hearing from customers is that there’s a need in the market for a cloud operating model to help build, operate, use, and govern a hybrid multi-cloud to support all types of applications – starting today and planning for tomorrow.”
Cloud
InformationWeek - CIOs Must Make Call on AI-Based App Development
Using a technology like low code/no code would take care of the front end of an application, however many go far beyond the top layer and require the services of a data management expert on staff.
IT Management
Datanami - Gartner Survey Reveals Less Than Half of Data and Analytics Teams Effectively Provide Value to the Organization
The survey found that CDAOs are tasked with a broad range of responsibilities, including defining and implementing D&A strategy (60%), oversight of D&A strategy (59%), creating and implementing D&A governance (55%) and managing data-driven culture change (54%).
Data & Analytics
AiThority - Transforming Work As We Know It: 8 Things You Can Do With Microsoft Copilot 365
This recently launched natural language chat is compatible with different applications including documents, emails, and chats. Only a select group of people will have access to Business Chat on Teams, Bing, or Microsoft365.com.
Automation & Productivity
InformationWeek - How to Downsize IT With Minimal Damage
Lewis suggests comparing your organization’s cost structure to similar bodies. “Understand the cost levers that exist in various cost categories and build a heat map of optimization opportunities.” He also recommends targeting short-term savings without losing sight of longer-term, bigger ticket items, such as technical debt reduction or application rationalization.
IT Management
35 Generative AI Tools for 2023 That You Should be Using Right Now
In this post, we are looking at the top 35 generative AI tools from the visual, audio, text generator, and code generator form, that are completely transforming the AI game, and empowering brands to take assistive technology to another level.
Artificial Intelligence
sdxcentral - How to Create an Effective Cyberdefense Strategy in an AI-Driven World
The code generation capabilities of AI are also a potential risk, as Fisher noted they are more capable of writing scripts that are commonly used in ransomware. She noted that the barrier for somebody who doesn’t actually have much training to generate phishing emails and write ransomware has gone down dramatically.
Security
Network World - Cloud vs on-prem: SaaS vendor 37signals bails out of the public cloud
Hansson’s argument is simple:  By pulling server workloads off the Amazon AWS infrastructure, purchasing new hardware from Dell, and running his business from a colocation facility, he will save millions of dollars.
Cloud
TechRepublic - Massive adversary-in-the-middle phishing campaign bypasses MFA and mimics Microsoft Office
Microsoft has already seen millions of phishing emails sent every day by attackers using this phishing kit. Learn how to protect your business from this AitM campaign.
Privacy & Security
VentureBeat - 4 key trends from the Gartner IAM Summit 2023
Identity is the new network perimeter. In a world powered by cloud computing, every human and machine identity, whether it exists on-premises or in the cloud, needs to be protected to prevent a breach. Yet the Gartner IAM Summit, which began yesterday in Grapevine, Texas, highlights that most organizations still have a long way to go.
Privacy & Security
sdxCentral - IDC Forecasts Security Spending to Outpace Rest of IT
“Almost all industries and company size segments will see low double-digit growth through 2026, driven by the expansion of cloud and container deployments, the need to secure remote access to resources, and the compliance requirements of privacy and data protection legislation.”
IT Management
Network World - How network pros can fight being squeezed out of cloud decisions
As cloud and IT professionals begin managing network hardware, it can be tempting for organizations to overlook the critical role that network experts play in ensuring the success of a multicloud infrastructure. "Far from becoming redundant, network professionals are uniquely equipped to tackle the complex and essential responsibilities that come with a multi-cloud environment,"
Cloud
Blocks & Files - AIOps cuts support ticket numbers but not support desk jobs, claims report
More than 60 percent of business and MSP help and support desk operations saw an incident ticket cut with artificial intelligence (AIOPs) help, claims a 57 page OpsRamp research report that seems to indicate that AIOps doesn’t kill support desk jobs. HPE is buying OpsRamp and so enabling GreenLake to have an ITOM presence
IT Management
TechRepublic - Ransomware gangs’ harassment of victims is increasing
Targeting such sensitive information as health records and financial records, the attackers will publish the data on Dark Web leak sites where other criminals can access and exploit it for their own purposes. These incidents of data theft have shot up to around 70% of all cases on average, up from 40% in mid 2021.
Privacy & Security
sdxCentral - AI Has a Long-Term Memory Problem (How to Make Neural Networks Less Forgetful)
Many of today’s leading AI systems are recurrent neural networks (RNNs). This deep-learning method uses past information to improve performance on current and future inputs. One of the most applied of these is the Long short-term memory (LSTM) model.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - Best-of-breed networking: There’s an opportunity for white boxes in the WAN
Today, 37% of those same enterprises say they have multivendor networks and another 9% say they have open networks. In the net, a bit over 40% of those single-vendor enterprises have shifted their vendor mix over time, and the biggest reason given is pedestrian: Acquisitions and mergers brought in other vendors. The second-biggest reason is more interesting: Their single vendor did something dramatic to discredit themselves.
Network Management
Blocks & Files - Infinidat hybrid array RoI? 11 months, says IDC in sponsored white paper
The IDC researchers claim the “interviewed companies uniformly found that InfiniBox provided a robust infrastructure for more efficient storage management and significantly improved data compression, with high value at low cost.
Data Storage
Computerworld - Generative AI comes to Office: What it means (and who’s at risk)
The tool’s strongest power is quantitative, because you can do far more in less time with it. (It has some qualitative capabilities, too, but those are less mature at this stage.) All too often, people who focus on quality do so at the expense of quantity, so boosting output using AI tools might allow them to turn out more top-notch work; conversely, those who work quickly may be sacrificing quality — so increasing their output will only make things worse.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - Shared spectrum, converged networks will shape enterprise connectivity in 2023 and beyond
In our experience, most enterprises that employ both networks see about 80 to 90% of traffic moving over Wi-Fi and the remainder over cellular, reinforcing that Wi-Fi is the workhorse of connectivity, and cellular as the specialized option for critical applications.
Network Management
The Verge - Microsoft’s new Copilot will change Office documents forever
Copilot appears in Office apps as a useful AI chatbot on the sidebar, but it’s much more than just that. You could be in the middle of a Word document, and it will gently appear when you highlight an entire paragraph — much like how Word has UI prompts that highlight your spelling mistakes. You can use it to rewrite your paragraphs with 10 suggestions of new text to flick through and freely edit, or you can have Copilot generate entire documents for you.
Automation & Productivity
Blocks & Files - AWS S3: You can check out but can never leave
Only Alibaba, with its $6,150 charge, is worse than AWS’s $4,300 cost. OVH and Scaleway have zero egress charges. Backblaze charges $0.01/GB to download data, meaning $10 to download 50TB, the same as Digital Ocean.
Data Storage
VentureBeat - On-device AI is transforming computing for hybrid workforces
Millions of people turn on their cameras and microphones every day across multiple applications, from Discord and Google Meet to Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom and many more. A recent study showed that 75% of people judge colleagues based on their audio quality in meetings, while 73% judge based on video quality.
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - SASE CTO Weighs In on the Future of Network Infrastructure ‘As-a-Service’
Analyst firm Gartner reported enterprises are turning to internet services for their WAN connectivity as SD-WAN replaces aging network equipment. The analyst firm expects that by 2026, 45% of enterprise locations will exclusively use internet services for their WAN connectivity.
Network Management
VentureBeat - How access management helps protect identities in the cloud
CISOs tell VentureBeat that access management (AM), identity and access management (IAM) and privileged access management (PAM) are under attack by threat actors who can quickly monetize stolen identities by becoming access brokers or working with access brokerages.
Privacy & Security
Blocks & Files - Most failed disk drives fail just before they hit 3 years’ use, says data recovery biz
The current pending sector count refers to the number of damaged or unusable sectors the hard drive developed during routine read-and-write operations.” It excluded drives that failed from non-predictable events such as electrical surges, malware, natural disasters, or accidental mishandling.
Data Storage
TechRepublic - How to prevent data theft by existing and departing employees
The i3 team investigated almost 700 cases of data theft by departing employees; this was twice as many cases as 2021. Based on the incidents, DTEX determined that 12% of employees take sensitive information with them when they leave an employer. The stolen information included customer data, employee data, health records and sales contracts.
Privacy & Security
VentureBeat - Unleashing the potential of AI: The power of an end-to-end environment for innovation
Every enterprise technology wave of the last 20 years, from databases and virtualization to big data and others, has imparted a crucial lesson. AI ­– and the infrastructure that enables it ­– is no exception. To gain the traction and widespread adoption that can spark innovation requires standardization, cost management and governance. Unfortunately, many organizations today struggle with all three.
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Gartner: So long HCI MQs, hello full-stack HCI software
The full stack components are hypervisor, containers, storage, network, infrastructure management, cloud management and monitoring. The global full stack HCI market is worth more than $1 billion. The report writers think that, “as full-stack HCI software has evolved, the integrated support of orchestration tools such as Kubernetes has increased across many providers.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - Study finds humans beat ChatGPT when creating phishing attacks 
The study analyzed over 53,000 email users in over 100 countries, comparing the win rate of simulated phishing attacks created by human social engineers and those created by large artificial intelligence language models. Although the potential for ChatGPT to be used for malicious phishing activity exists, human social engineers outperform AI in inducing clicks on malicious links.
Privacy & Security
AiThority - The 3 Building Blocks to Make AI Accessible
One of the biggest challenges in creating accessible AI is the complexity of the technology and the need for niche roles, such as data scientists, to operate it. Most AI systems require specialized knowledge and expertise to develop, deploy, and maintain. This can create a barrier to entry for many users, especially those with limited technical expertise.
Artificial Intelligence
ZDNet - ChatGPT's most lauded capability also brings big risk to businesses 
Its ability to mimic humans with its responses has ignited much of the hype currently swirling around the AI-powered tool and is also what presents the biggest threat.
ChatGPT
SiliconANGLE - R-Ladies aims to bridge data science gender gap, says Microsoft cloud advocate 
“Data science such a broad field that it doesn’t require you to come from a specific background,” she noted. “The most successful data science teams are the teams that have all these different backgrounds. So if you think that we as data scientists … started programming when we were nine, that’s not true. You can be 30, 40 shifting careers.”
Tech Jobs
VentureBeat - How NLP is turbocharging business intelligence
“NLP-driven analytical experiences have democratized how people analyze data and glean insights — without using a sophisticated analytics tool or craft[ing] complex data queries,”
Data & Analytics
SiliconANGLE - Generative AI: hype or reality? AWS, Cohere and Stability AI analyze new tech applications 
Despite the already brilliant capabilities that LLMs are showing with products like Bard and ChatGPT, their range of use is still quite limited. Advancing their potential would imply things like an external knowledge base, where these models stay up to date in real time. Equipping these AI tools to access and use APIs, for instance, can greatly improve how they approach end-user queries.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - Cryptocurrency is fueling the ransomware boom. Here’s how to protect yourself
The way crypto has upended cybercrime payments has changed the nature of cybercriminals’ fraudulent schemes, too. Credit card fraud, e-gold Ponzi schemes, GreenDot Moneypak schemes and gift card fraud from some of the biggest retailers cumulatively earns cybercriminals hundreds of millions of dollars.
Privacy & Security
Computerworld - Unnecessary meetings draining employee productivity: Report
Knowledge workers surveyed for the report also estimate that 4.9 hours per week would be saved if their company had improved processes, such as streamlined application usage. The research found that the average number of apps used at work sits at 8.8 for knowledge workers and 10 for those at director level or higher.
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - The hottest party in generative AI is productivity apps
After years of being relegated to nerdy, wallflower AI status while self-driving cars, robot dogs and the future of the AI-powered metaverse got the spotlight, generative AI’s email-writing, blog-producing, copy-powering abilities are suddenly popular. And top companies from startups to Big Tech are developing tools to gain admittance to the generative AI bash.
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - Why You Should Never Bet Against Ethernet
The Ethernet Alliance is also working on certification efforts for Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). While there have long been PoE standards, there hasn’t been a full-scale certification effort in the same way that there is for Wi-Fi in the wireless world. Jones said that while PoE mostly works today, there have been some instances of vendor technologies that weren’t interoperable.
Network Management
Computerworld - GrammarlyGo and the coming wave of generative AI productivity
GrammarlyGo is a prompt-based implementation of ChatGPT (though it could use other frameworks in the future). If you are writing a paper or a column like this one, it will ask you a series of questions —  and from the resulting answers, it will write the piece faster than you could type it.
Automation & Productivity
sdxCentral - How OpenSSF Aims to Make Log4j-Like Incidents Rare
Founded in 2020, OpenSSF is a cross-industry organization hosted by the Linux Foundation that brings together individuals and companies including Cisco, GitHub, Google, and VMware, to develop better security tools and practices for open source application development without bias toward a specific ecosystem or vendor.
Security
AiThority - How ChatGPT Will Transform Customer Service
Neither automation nor AI can ever fully substitute humans—capable of empathy, flexibility, and emotional intelligence—who can manage the nuanced interpretations that are nearly always required to generate the best customer service outcome.
ChatGPT
Blocks & Files - Who’s winning and losing in the storage market?
NetApp is slowly distancing itself from HPE in storage revenue terms, though both rise above the rest. Three suppliers are edging towards HPE – Pure, followed by Snowflake and Nutanix, which has been overtaken by Snowflake.
Data Storage
Network World - Artificial intelligence helps solve networking problems
“The center of gravity has shifted from the corporate data center to a hybrid multicloud environment, but the network was designed for a world where all traffic still flows to the data center. This means that many of the network elements that dictate traffic flow and policy are now beyond the reach and control of the enterprise’s networking teams,”
Network Management
AiThority - Generative AI is Over-hyped: Bias and Security Risks Biggest Barriers
While implementing Generative AI remains the top priority for senior IT leaders (33%) in the next 18 months, there are perennial operational challenges, security risks, and latent biases in the technology that could douse the fiery intent of high-growth companies scaling with this technology.Artificial Intelligence
TechRepublic - CrowdStrike: Attackers focusing on cloud exploits, data theft
CrowdStrike said cloud-conscious actors gain initial cloud access by using valid accounts, resetting passwords or placing web shells designed to persist in the system, then attempting to get access via credentials and cloud providers’ instance metadata services.
Security
Blocks & Files - A tale of two realities: women in hi-tech balancing progress and backlash
While the proportion of women graduating with core STEM degrees is increasing steadily, the gender split remains at 26 percent, since the number of men graduating with core STEM degrees is increasing at a faster rate. This trend is also reflected in the STEM workforce, with women accounting for just 24 percent.
Tech Jobs
Dark Reading - Employees Are Feeding Sensitive Biz Data to ChatGPT, Raising Security Fears
In a recent report, data security service Cyberhaven detected and blocked requests to input data into ChatGPT from 4.2% of the 1.6 million workers at its client companies because of the risk of leaking confidential information, client data, source code, or regulated information to the LLM.
Privacy & Security
VentureBeat - The good, the bad and the ugly: The world of data is changing
Beyond needing to meet companies’ goals to create more compelling customer experiences and optimize operations, technology leaders will see data play an increasingly integral role in their career evolutions in new and interesting ways: According to Gartner, 25% of traditional large enterprise CIOs will be held accountable for digital business operational results — effectively becoming “COO by proxy” by next year.
Data & Analytics
Computerworld - Jamf VP explains enterprise security threats — and how to mitigate them
The report points to a range of ways in which privacy, once broken, creates security instability, including nation states that subvert device security to watch, photograph, and record what people do in order to blackmail or otherwise exploit victims.
Security
VentureBeat - Research shows two-thirds of orgs have had breaches caused by remote working 
More specifically, respondents cited network access control, antivirus solutions, multi factor authentication (MFA) and cloud security solutions such as cloud access security broker (CASB) as the most important tools for securing work-from-anywhere environments in the future.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Palo Alto Networks report finds organizations struggle to detect and respond to cyberattacks 
More than 80% of respondents say they have embedded security professionals in DevOps teams at an average ratio of 10 developers for every security professional. The report notes that security must enable development and it’s critical to an organization’s success to equip developers with the proper security tools that don’t hinder their ability to build and deploy applications quickly.
Security
sdxCentral - 5G SASE Marketing Heats Up, But Is It All Hype?
Most network and security vendors agree that as 5G deployments proliferate, changes in network architecture will require cybersecurity to change too. “Centralized internet breakout and backhauled user connections contradict the intent of 5G. This is why SASE and 5G are naturally complimentary,”
Security
Computerworld - Maybe one day every platform will be as secure as Apple
The proposal suggests that privacy protection will no longer be something big tech can argue against – companies will be required to prioritize privacy. That’s fine if you run a business that does not require wholesale collection and analysis of user information, which has always been Apple’s approach. The best way to keep information private, the company argues, is not to collect it at all.
Privacy & Security
Axios - Chatbots trigger next misinformation nightmare
Generative AI programs like ChatGPT don't have a clear sense of the boundary between fact and fiction. They're also prone to making things up as they try to satisfy human users' inquiries.
Artificial Intelligence
TechRepublic - To deliver innovative experiences, organizations must develop a clear cloud strategy
Cloud strategy starts by determining which workloads are not cloud-ready — cases where data sovereignty, security and latency (and, in some cases, costs) rule out public cloud in the near- to medium term. Simply transitioning the rest of your applications and data to cloud can result in greater resilience, but without modernization, it is simply a change in data centers.
Cloud
VentureBeat - A SaaS leader’s guide to pricing in 2023
The focus is shifting from rapid growth to efficiency. Already, CFOs are carefully examining contracts to identify potential cost savings: 57% of IT teams say they’re under pressure to reduce their SaaS spend, and the trend is likely to escalate in 2023. It’s up to SaaS vendors to anticipate this: Only those demonstrating real value and flexibility to their customers will survive
Security
AiThority - Research Reveals LockBit Ransomware Surges While Android Droppers Emerge as Top Business Threat
“This report acts as a guide to those organizations by focusing their limited time on a small number of critical threats across Windows, Mac, and Android. If organizations can understand what it takes to prevent these threats, they are well placed to stop a huge number of other attacks as well.”
Security
TechRepublic Top 10 open-source security and operational risks of 2023
According to Endor’s report, attackers can target legitimate resources from an existing project or distribution infrastructure to inject malicious code into a component. For example, they can hijack the accounts of legitimate project maintainers or exploit vulnerabilities in package repositories. This type of attack can be dangerous since the malicious code can be distributed as part of a legitimate package and can be difficult to detect.
Security
The Hacker News - Security and IT Teams No Longer Need To Pay For SaaS-Shadow IT Discovery
In 71.4% of companies, employees use an average of 2.4 SaaS applications that have been breached in the past three months. On average, 58% of SaaS applications are used by only one employee. A quarter of organizations' SaaS users are external
IT Management
VentureBeat - 5 key factors for successful cloud transformation
Data is the lifeblood of innovation, and there’s no stemming the flow: A survey published in January 2022 revealed that in North American enterprises with more than 1,000 employees, the average monthly rate of growth in data volume was a staggering 63%, and the average number of data sources was 400. It is absolutely unviable to manage information of this size and complexity with on-premise infrastructure. This is why more than 99% of respondents said they would migrate their data to the cloud within two years
Cloud
Computerworld - IT’s lovefest with GPT-3 needs to meet reality now
There are few pieces of technology — ever — that have enjoyed a deeper lovefest from the media and the consumer public than ChatGPT and other efforts built atop vanilla GPT-3. And enterprise IT executives have been stampeding to develop homegrown apps based on GPT-3.
Emerging Tech
Network World - MWC analysis: Conditions are ripe for cloud providers to drive faster network services.
The bad news is that the API focus of MWC was aimed mostly at exposing providers’ OSS/BSS features to developers or exploiting things like knowing device location, things that given the GPS in smartphones could be as easily exploited by a cloud provider or even a smartphone vendor.
Cloud
Venturebeat - Device virtualization is key to IoT adoption
Second, success in IoT adoption is earned through iteration: Since the IoT has a myriad of elements, organizations need to gather data from devices, convert it into analysis, act upon that insight, and do it all over again in a continuous feedback loop that’s always refining, learning and improving the various IoT constituents
IoT
sdxCentral - How Security Vendors Can Support the White House National Cybersecurity Strategy 
“the new White House cyber strategy is a rallying cry for developer security. Organizations should address developer security now before rules are put in place that will impose fines and other penalties on organizations that fail to do so.”
Security
CSO - Unpatched old vulnerabilities continue to be exploited: Report 
The top five exploited vulnerabilities in 2022 include several high-severity flaws in Microsoft Exchange, Zoho ManageEngine products, and virtual private network solutions from Fortinet, Citrix and Pulse Secure.
Security
SiliconANGLE - An open standard threatens to disrupt the cloistered world of wireless networking 
Supporters say it could have the same impact on the telecommunications industry that Unix and TCP/IP had on the data center in the 1990s when open standards disrupted the proprietary – and highly profitable – domain of a few large equipment makers, brought prices crashing down and changed the economics of data processing
Network Management
Technical.ly - The remote work scam that’s blowing up in the recruiting industry
Once the target is “hired,” they’re told that they’re going to send them some money to help them get set up with office expenses, which requires the target to give them their bank information, which they say they’ll also use to send your paychecks.
Privacy & Security
The Sofware Report - The Power 500 Software Companies of 2023
In addition, investors in both the public and private markets are eager to back those software companies that will catapult us into the next era of operational efficiency. And with a growing emphasis on remote and hybrid work environments, we’re still in the early innings of pervasive business adoption of cloud-based infrastructures, strategies, and solutions.
Tech Trends
sdxCentral- Crowdstrike Reports Cloud Attacks, Microsoft Vulnerabilities, SIM Swapping Biggest Threats
Among the key findings in the report is that cloud exploitation grew by 95%. Perhaps even more troubling is that there are now more “cloud-conscious” threat actors – that is attackers with an emphasis and skills in the cloud –  than ever before by a wide margin.
Security
The Verge - This is Meta’s AR/VR hardware roadmap for the next four years
With regards to the VR roadmap, employees were told that Meta’s flagship Quest 3 headset coming later this year will be two times thinner, at least twice as powerful, and cost slightly more than the $400 Quest 2.
AR/VR
VentureBeat - AI-generated content detection tools put to the test
Why not automate it? Ever since ChatGPT hit the news, many software companies — including OpenAI — have launched authentication tools that help users identify text written by AI software. In this article, we examine some of the top automated AI-content detection tools and put them to the test
Artificial Intelligence
ZDNet - Just how big is this new generative AI? Think internet-level disruption
One fundamental limit to ChatGPT's capabilities is the hard stop on its knowledge. Its corpus ends in 2021. ChatGPT is oblivious to any information, trends, issues, or popular cultural themes that have occurred since 2021.
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - Q&A: ChatGPT isn't sentient, it’s a next-word prediction engine
"The best we understand right now is these models intrinsically are word prediction engines. At its most basic level, it’s just predicting the next best word. In some cases, when it predicts that next best word, that word is no longer factually accurate for the particular question. But given that word, the next best word given after that continues down that path, and then you build a series of words that go down a path that’s no longer accurate — but it’s very convincing in the way it’s been written.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - NCA executive director shares top cybersecurity risks in 2023
“So, although attacks there will continue — and sufficient deterrence measures have a long way to go — bad actors are now seeking out more nascent spaces to execute low-tech, high-impact attacks within education, gaming, aviation and automotive. In fact, we’ve already seen several high profile DDoS attacks in the latter two categories in the last months. Expect that to continue.
Security
sdxCentral - IBM, Microsoft, and Google Race to Close Quantum Skills Gap
“People who have traditional software development experience, are good at creating control electronics, have experience working in a lab with radiofrequency electronics, and [have] a traditional EE [electrical engineering] background are all in very high demand,” she added
Tech Jobs
Datanami - Big Data Services Market to Grow by $154B from 2023-27: Technavio
By component, the market will observe significant growth in the solution segment. Growing competition and the need to understand consumer behavior across numerous channels are increasing the use of big data and big data analytics solutions among businesses. This is one of the key factors driving the growth of the segment.
Data & Analytics
VentureBeat - How to use zero trust and IAM to defend against cyberattacks in an economic downturn
“A key finding from the report was that upwards of 60% of interactive intrusions observed by OverWatch involved the use of valid credentials, which continue to be abused by adversaries to facilitate initial access and lateral movement,”
Security
SiliconANGLE - How 5G will help blaze the trail to the long-awaited metaverse
Although 5G hasn’t yet delivered on its promised bandwidth and hasn’t fully rolled out everywhere, wireless telecom companies are still investing billions of dollars to make it universally available. During 2020 and 2021, the big four collectively spent nearly $100 billion in back-to-back auctions for the so-called mid-spectrum radio band considered essential for 5G communications.
Metaverse
Infinidat - The Hot Trend − Security and Enterprise Storage Together
Enterprises need to make sure they are fully securing their data, both at rest and in motion. With datastores moving between on-premises enterprise data centers and the public cloud in hybrid environments, security experts agree that it’s vital to invest in creating secure datastores for both primary data sets and for backup datasets that use immutable snapshots and air-gapping.
Data Storage
VentureBeat - Big tech isn’t evil — it’s just wrong
These companies with their innovative approaches unlocked a universe of sharing and tracking in the name of progress. They found a way to harness data to grow their businesses, while creating a no-questions-asked society of data sharers. They helped us consumers get comfortable with sharing, without helping us protect ourselves.
Tech for Good
TechRepublic - Dice’s salary report indicates it’s still a good time to work in tech
“Combined with the 52% who are likely to change employers within the next year, you have a double-edged sword for organizations: More skilled tech talent is available, but retention will be even more difficult,” the report said. “Expressing appreciation and value to tech professionals remains a key to retention, across all industries and roles.”
Tech Jobs
VentureBeat - Experts predict how AI will energize cybersecurity in 2023 and beyond
Cybercriminal gangs and sophisticated advanced persistent threat (APT) groups actively recruit AI and ML specialists who design malware that can evade current-generation threat detection systems. What attackers lack in size and scale, they more than make up for in ingenuity, speed and stealth.
Security
Computerworld - As Microsoft embraces AI, it says sayonara to the metaverse
Microsoft officially denies it, but the company has practically shut down work on the metaverse. The speed with which it happened is stunning — and it’s a cautionary tale for businesses tempted to invest in the technologies currently on their hype lists.
Emerging Tech
TechRepublic - Digital forensics and incident response: The most common DFIR incidents
As a result, digital forensics found new ways to integrate that complexity with incident response teams. It allowed more deep-dive analysis on systems while not shutting them down, and now digital forensics and incident response are usually together in the SecOps team within the Security Operations Center.
Privacy & Security
VentureBeat - Forrester: Question generative AI uses before experimentation
“The important thing for leaders — whether it’s at the C-level or a couple clicks down — is to take a very investigative, skeptical and questioning approach in adopting generative AI,” he said.
Artificial Intelligence
Datanami - Pepperdata Survey Uncovers the State of Kubernetes 2023 and Emergence of Cloud Cost Remediation as Top Priority
The survey aimed to gain insights into the types and sizes of containerized applications and other workloads on Kubernetes clusters, as well as the FinOps tools and practices used to optimize Kubernetes deployments and control costs.
Cloud
Computerworld - 5 reasons videoconferencing is on the decline (again)
The benefits of videoconferencing are clear: reduced travel costs, safer employees, higher productivity, happier employees, and a better work/life balance. While the ongoing need to connect remote workers to their companies will likely head off a catastrophic collapse of the industry, it won’t rise to its full potential until the issues Ive listed are addressed.
Automation & Productivity
Matt Turck - The 2023 MAD (Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence & Data) Landscape
First, we’ve made the decision this year again to keep both data infrastructure and ML/AI on the same landscape. One could argue that those two worlds are increasingly distinct. However, we continue to believe that there is an essential symbiotic relationship between those areas.
Machine Learning
Datanami - Latest Risk Report from Concentric AI Shows 60% Increase in Oversharing of Sensitive Data over the Past Year
The report revealed the number of overshared files rose 60 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, highlighting the significant impact of hybrid remote work, cloud migration and information sprawl across on-premises and cloud data, as well as email and messaging environments, on data security.
Data Privacy
TechRepublic - Report: Stress will drive a quarter of cyber defenders out the door
In a new report, the firm predicts that nearly half of cybersecurity leaders will change jobs, and that by 2025, lack of talent or human failure will be responsible for over half of significant cyber incidents.
Security
VentureBeat - What will security and threat prevention look like in Web3?
But, while touted for its decentralization and user- (and data-) centricity, when it comes to security and threat detection, “Web3 is outgunned, plain and simple,” asserts Christian Seifert of Forta Network. “We need new, faster and more surgical threat prevention measures, and we need them now.”
Web3
Datanami - Comet Releases MLOps Industry Report | 2023 Machine Learning Practitioner Survey
Bias has been one of the leading topics related to AI in recent years. Some view bias as overhyped, with ML practitioners capable of implementing best practices to mitigate it, while others think it is a problem that will continue to plague AI systems. The latest survey reveals how ML practitioners are approaching bias.
Machine Learning
TechRepublic - 5G Open RAN gains momentum: Next steps and challenges
TIP explained that breaking away from the business models that have dominated the connectivity industry for decades implies a significant shift. Historically, wireless systems have been closed and controlled by a single vendor, but the industry must pivot from competition to collaboration and open multi-vendor markets.
5G
SiliconANGLE - Veeam: Orchestrated and tested backup and recovery strategy is critical to data protection
The survey reflects a high level of concern, despite the increased level of spending. For example, 30% of companies still expect to recover resources during a data crisis manually, and only 18% currently have an orchestrated workflow capability.
Data Management
ZDNet - These experts are racing to protect AI from hackers. Time is running out
AI is becoming a key part of our lives. Hacking it could cause chaos, so the race is on to build defenses.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - New research suggests that privacy in the metaverse might be impossible
And by “simple motion data,” I mean the three most basic data points tracked by virtual reality systems – one point on the user’s head and one on each hand. Researchers often refer to this as “telemetry data” and it represents the minimal dataset required to allow a user to interact naturally in a virtual environment.
Privacy & Security
Datanami - Panasas Survey Shows Specialty Knowledge as Biggest Challenge for Managing High-Performance Storage
Survey results show an overwhelming 96% of respondents across the US, UK, and Germany face challenges in building and managing high-performance storage. In addition to over half of respondents (52%) citing specialty knowledge as the top challenge,
Data Storage
VentureBeat - Salesforce survey sees data trove untapped — data skills spend to rise
A new global survey conducted by Salesforce has revealed that as many as 41% of business leaders see lack of understanding as a major barrier to unlocking the full potential of their data assets. However, the survey suggests these same business leaders will continue to spend to boost data skills in the organization
Data Management
Network World - Multicloud: Keep providers separate and distinct or integrate them?
One model for cloud adoption treats each external cloud as another data center, connected only as additional WAN destinations, and leaves them otherwise distinct. That would mean routing-level connections only, with separate network management and controls for each. The other model is allowing deeper integration, including tunneling Layer 2 protocols and centralizing control not only between on-prem data centers and cloud but among and across clouds.
Cloud
VentureBeat - 2023 data, ML and AI landscape: ChatGPT, generative AI and more
We’ve made the decision to keep both data infrastructure and ML/AI on the same landscape. One could argue that those two worlds are increasingly distinct. However, we continue to believe that there is an essential symbiotic relationship between those areas. Data feeds ML/AI models. The distinction between a data engineer and a machine learning engineer is often pretty fluid. Enterprises need to have a solid data infrastructure in place in order before properly leveraging ML/AI.
Tech Trends
sdxCentral - How Platform Engineers Help Narrow Cloud Skills Gap
Although platform engineers need to be skilled in technologies like Kubernetes, SQL systems, and data storage, Thiruvengadam noted soft skills are just as important to build a solid team. “It’s the soft skills that make for good platform engineers [who] are likely to remain more consistent as time passes,” he explained
Tech Jobs
Network World - Wi-Fi HaLow: Wireless for the internet of things
Wi-Fi HaLow, the marketing term the Wi-Fi Alliance has chosen for the IEEE 802.11ah standard, is a long- range, low-power, low-speed version of traditional Wi-Fi. It shows promise with deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as sensors, wearables, machine-to-machine (M2M) applications, smart buildings, and smart cities.
IoT
sdxCentral- Endpoint Security Is SASE Vendor Stretch Goal
“Can we also protect the endpoint when the user is on a customer site such that somebody can’t transfer data off of that endpoint,” Tolbert said, adding that he sees the need for “bigger emphasis on data protection, especially at the endpoint and then just broader endpoint security integration.”
Security
VentureBeat - 5 key cybersecurity trends for 2023
Cybercriminals continue efforts to steal credentials from users to gain access to networks. Historically, they’ve used email, but they are increasingly using social engineering. In the first half of 2022, around 70% of email attacks contained a credential phishing link.
Security
Datanami - Should Companies Disclose if Their Content Was Written by AI?
It’s easy to see why GPT-3 has been such a hit since its introduction in May 2020. The technology has helped countless companies generate landing pages, draft press releases, write bios and blogs, and as a result helped to free up copywriters to take on tasks of higher priority. This technology, like all good technologies, is cheaper and faster than anything before it.
Artificial Intelligence
GTSC - Homeland Security - GAO Provides an Update on Federal Protection of Privacy and Data
In GAO’s September 2022 review of 24 agencies, the watchdog found that most had generally established policies and procedures for key privacy program activities. These activities included, among other things, developing system-of-records notices that identify types of personal data collected, conducting privacy impact assessments, and documenting privacy program plans.
Data Privacy
VentureBeat - Google Cloud CISO Phil Venables: Zero trust ‘essential’ to protect the cloud
With IAM tools, you’re able to grant access to cloud resources at a granular level, creating more access control policies for attributes such as device security status, IP address, resource type and date and time, to better ensure appropriate access controls are in place.
Security
Datanami - Americans Don’t Trust AI and Want It Regulated: Poll
Only 48% of Americans told Harris Poll that they believe AI is safe and secure, while 78% say they are very or somewhat concerned that AI can be used for malicious intent. A similar percentage (77%) said they were concerned AI could be used to generate deepfakes. Less than half (49%) said they would be okay with AI being used for a chat about “routine medical questions” and for allowing the federal government to use it to assist benefits processing.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - 3 ways businesses can strike the ideal marketing and IT balance
For organizations looking to be more efficient and work smarter to maximize their data, being overly IT-focused or overly media/marketing-focused could hold them back. Standing on both legs instead of one will make businesses more fortified at a time when most are striving for resiliency.
MarketingTech
CSO - New Mirai botnet variant V3G4 targets Linux servers, IoT devices
A new variant of Mirai — the botnet malware used to launch massive DDoS attacks —has been targeting 13 vulnerabilities in IoT devices connected to Linux servers, according to researchers at Palo Alto Network’s Unit 42 cybersecurity team.
Security
sdxCentral - Cloudflare Fights Off Record-Breaking DDoS Attacks, What’s Coming Next?
“This attack was approximately 100 gigabits per second (gbps),” Omer Yoachimik, product manager at Cloudflare, told SDxCentral. “It is important to note that there is a difference between request-intensive attacks, bit-intensive attacks, and packet-intensive attacks – they are not apples-to-apples comparisons.”
Security
Network World - Oracle outages serve as warning for companies relying on cloud technology
“Cloud based solutions, like their on-premise equivalents, need to be architected for true high availability and continuity," said Sam Higgins, an analyst at market research firm Forrester. "Having a cloud foundation and a global footprint does not immediately give you 100% uptime for an application. Especially for applications with a long on-premise history and heritage.”
Cloud
sdxCentral - Network Security Revenue Rebounds, Moderation Coming
“With 400Gb Ethernet pipes coming online and Ethernet expected to continue to increase in speed, each speed step is the driver for a new wave of high-end hardware firewalls,” Sanchez told SDxCentral in an email. “Hardware is really the only way still to process the enormous amount of data. On the other hand, I see standalone low-end firewalls shifting to become secure SD-WAN boxes.”
Network Management
Computerworld - Enterprise mobility 2023: UEM meets DEX
Another force is integration with endpoint analytics and endpoint security tools, to build proactive and resilient defenses against better-skilled adversaries, Wilson says. In addition, there is a greater focus on intelligence and automation to drive operational efficiency and improve digital employee experience (DEX).
Automation & Productivity
Blocks & Files - Storage security toughen-up for compliance and cyberwar in 2023
Importantly, EO 14028 implies that suppliers lacking comprehensive security will not be doing business with the US government. In effect, cybersecurity responsibility is being deferred to solutions providers, and away from their customers, having a game-changing impact on procurement procedures – and cybersecurity provisioning.
Security
Computerworld - Q&A: What happened when a customer support company upgraded some features to ChatGPT?
"These open APIs that OpenAI has are very expensive compared to any normal API you might use. It just costs a lot of money whenever you get it to summarize something you do. It might cost you like five cents or 10 cents. That gets very expensive. It’s a lot cheaper than paying for a human to do it themselves, but this is something businesses are going to have to figure out. How do we price this?
Automation & Productivity
Datanami - To Improve Data Availability, Think ‘Right-Time’ Not ‘Real-Time’
When done successfully, this framework gives the business stakeholders the power to “dial the knob” of data freshness, cost, and quality. As we saw in the BOPIS example, dialing the knob is a massive competitive advantage for both the business and the data engineers because the data freshness can adjust to the needs of the business without relying on infrastructure changes
Data Management
VentureBeat - How edge devices and infrastructure will shape the metaverse experience
Edge computing, networking and related advancements are required for the metaverse to prove out estimates like Accenture’s. That consultancy expects the metaverse to fuel a $1 trillion revenue opportunity by the end of 2025.
Metaverse
AiThority - Explainable AI: 5 Popular Frameworks To Explain Your Models
To explain it in layman’s language, Explainable AI can be defined as a compilation of different methods and processes that enable human users to understand the predictions made by their machine learning models. It is primarily used to describe an AI model, forecast its expected impact and point out its potential biases.
Artificial Intelligence
Computerworld - How enterprises can use ChatGPT and GPT-3
Enterprises can use the out-of-the-box approach to augment or create content, manipulate text in emails to soften language or take a particular tone, and to summarize or simplify content. “This can be done with limited investments,” Gartner explained in its report.
Artificial Intelligence
Datanami - Prompt Engineer: The Next Hot Job in AI
Technology professionals who want to catch the hottest wave in AI at the moment may consider becoming prompt engineers, which appears to be one of the most in-demand professions for 2023. And developers who want to get the most out of large language models such as ChatGPT may want to check out prompt engineering tools, an emerging category of tools designed to direct the LLM toward a desired outcome.
Tech Jobs
sdxCentral - SASE 'Undermines' SD-WAN, GigaOm Says
A new emphasis on the three – SSA, SSE, SASE – has led to the SD-WAN landscape becoming “increasingly blurred, with incumbent vendors repackaging and repositioning legacy products as integrated platforms, acquiring new technologies, or making strategic alliances to fill the gaps in their portfolios.”
Network Management
Datanami - Everything You Need to Know About Human Annotated Data
It will be an understatement to say that the amount of data generated every day is colossal and to some extent, unstructured. In reality, we produce around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day and most of it is not classified clearly or accurately.
Data Management
sdxCentral - Okta Finds Increasing ‘All-In’ Zero-Trust Attitude
The survey also found the use of risk-based policies for  networks has increased 147% over the past two years; a 60% increase in the use of passwordless Web Authentication (WebAuthn) and a 21% increase in the use of device-trust configurations over the past two years; and that 24% of those surveyed used security keys and biometrics last year.
Security
Datanami - Bright Data Survey: Majority of Data Professionals Consider Public Web Data Crucial to Their Mission
100% said their organization uses publicly available web data in their operations to some extent, with 94 percent saying that it is used in their day-to-day operations.
Data & Analytics
Blocks & Files - Pure: The disk/flash crossover event is closer than you think
Emerson says flash $/TB will continue to decline because, firstly, more layers can be added to 3D NAND and, secondly, PLC (5 bits/cell penta level cell) flash will increase density faster than cost of manufacture. He writes: “Moving from four to five bits per cell would improve density by 25 percent, which presents an obvious cost-efficiency advantage.”
Data Storage
SiliconANGLE - Digging into Google’s point of view on confidential computing 
There’s not a ton in the ETR dataset on the topic of confidential computing. It’s a technology that’s deeply embedded into silicon and computing architectures, so it’s not as visible to chief information officers and the information technology decision makers in ETR’s quarterly surveys. But at the highest level, security remains the No. 1 priority being addressed by organizations in the coming year, as shown above.
Privacy & Security
Datanami - Nucleus Research Releases 2023 Data Warehouse Technology Value Matrix
Looking ahead through 2023, Nucleus expects customers to prioritize a solution’s managed services, ease of use and integration, and capabilities to support advanced use cases such as machine learning and real-time streaming.
Data & Analytics
SiliconANGLE - How ChatGPT will – and won’t – change the face of business 
ChatGPT has been hailed as everything from the future of search to the end of term papers, but it’s far from a sentient being. While OpenAI LLC’s chatbot is a wonder at explaining the infield fly rule in Shakespearean English, detractors have noted that its answers can be overly simplistic, confusing or just plain wrong.
Artificial Intelligence
Datanami - Infrastructure and Compute Are Top Barriers to AI, Run:ai Report Reveals
The survey also pointed to another shift over the past year as the number of organizations deploying less than half of their AI models in production increased from 77%, according to last year’s survey, to 88% this year. Weighted for average, just 37% of AI models make it into production.
Artificial Intelligence
Network World - Why network pros need a seat at the application-planning table
Almost 90% of that same group say that their companies’ application cost overruns and benefit shortfalls were either predictable based on network behavior, or a direct result of mistakes that network professionals could have caught.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - Cloud and DevOps outlook for 2023: Getting more out of data 
“A lot of times, they’re trying to really understand how their business utilizes these clouds and where their spend is going in those clouds,” Strechay explained. “Can they use lower tiers of storage? Do they really need the best processors? Do they need to be using Intel, or can they get away with AMD or Graviton2 or 3?”
Cloud
AiThority - Could ChatGPT Herald the Next Stage for CX AI Adoption?
However, unlike existing chatbots that interact with people in a ‘seemingly intelligent’ conversational manner, the GPT-3 neural network ML model enables ChatGPT to deliver responses that Gartner suggests: ‘appear to have understood the question, the content and the context’ of the user’s question.
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - Cisco Reinforces Frictionless Zero Trust, ‘Intelligent MFA’
The index is based on data from a survey of 6,700 security leaders across 27 global markets. It found respondents selected identity and device management as two of the three top cybersecurity threats, and only 20% of them considered their organizations “mature” in readiness to protect identity.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Generative AI drives an explosion in compute: The looming need for sustainable AI 
You’ve heard about “moving beyond Moore’s Law” and the physical limitations of packing more transistors onto larger die sizes. Chiplets are helping to address these challenges, but current solutions have a key weakness when it comes to AI inference: Shuttling data in and out of random-access memory leads to significant slowdowns.
Sustainability
Computerworld - How many jobs are available in technology in the US?
While the overall US unemployment rate dropped to a figure not seen since 1969 (to 3.4%, from 3.5% a month earlier), the number of technology workers hired in January fell into negative territory for the first time in more than two years. Technology occupations throughout the economy declined by 32,000 for the month, representing a reduction of -0.5%, according to CompTIA.
Tech Jobs
VentureBeat - Getting results from your zero-trust initiatives in 2023
“Don’t start with the technology; start with a protect surface,” Kindervag advised during our interview. CISOs and CIOs tell VentureBeat that their zero-trust initiatives and strategies can be affordable as well as effective. As Kindervag advises, starting with the protect surface and identifying what’s most important to protect simplifies, streamlines and reduces the cost of zero-trust initiatives.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Cloud players sound a cautious tone for 2023
n this Breaking Analysis, we share our view of what’s happening in cloud markets – not just for the hyperscalers but other firms that have hitched a ride on the cloud. And we’ll share new Enterprise Technology Research data that shows why these trends are playing out, tactics customers are employing to deal with their cost challenges, and how long the pain is likely to last.
Cloud
Blocks & Files - Cloudian sees cloud software going on-prem
"On-prem computing is here to stay. A quarterly survey of enterprise VARs indicates that 40 percent of workloads will remain on-prem, a figure that has remained steady for about two years now. Migration to the cloud did accelerate during the early part of the COVID era, but what we are seeing now is customers bringing some of those workloads back on-prem."
Cloud
VentureBeat - Could blockchain be your next big career choice?
The healthcare sector has cottoned on, using blockchain’s ledger technology for secure sharing of medical records and data management, and global governments are using it for voting systems, land registry and identity management.
Blockchain
sdxCentral - Juniper CEO Remains ‘Optimistic’ Despite Slower Spend Forecast
The company saw “a normalization of buying patterns amongst our cloud and service provider customers,” Rahim noted. “As we expected, overall demand moderated in the December quarter, with total orders declining more than 20% year-over-year.”
Cloud
SiliconANGLE - AI threats and open-source vulnerabilities top host of security issues facing cloud-native community 
Implementation of zero-trust security in the enterprise, supply chain vulnerability, threats to cryptography from quantum computing, and the rise of powerful artificial intelligence engines such as OpenAI LLC’s ChatGPT are high on the list of worries among cloud-native security personnel.
Security
Blocks & Files - HCI is more than a blip on GigaOm’s radar
Comparing this year’s enterprise HCI Radar (above) to last year’s (below), we can see that Nutanix is now ahead of Microsoft, VMware and Dell in the leader’s ring, and that Cisco has gone backwards from being a leader in 2022 to a challenger this year. SmartX has moved from the new entrant’s ring into the challenger’s ring where newcomer ArcherOS is placed as well.
Network Management
Blocks & Files - Mr Backup spills the beans on 30 years in the storage industry
"Now anything mission-critical is RAID-protected, and most things are solid state. Today’s admins (and people with their own personal data) just don’t have the same respect for backups they once did, and assume far too much as a result."
Data Management
sdxCentral - Forrester Finds Enterprises Will Focus on Resiliency in Face of Recession
That said, the firm said virtual machine (VM)-centered workloads should now be regarded as legacy,” and anticipates 40% of organizations will take a cloud-native-first strategy this year. Many are expected to also increase investment in K8s as a distributed compute backbone for current applications and new workloads that can be run more efficiently in K8s’ environments.
IT Management
Computerworld - Big banks' proposed digital wallet payment system likely to fail
The system will be managed by Zelle’s parent company, Early Warning Services LLC (EWS). It will have about 150 million Visa and Mastercard credit and debit cards connected at launch, with plans to add other card networks later, according to an EWS blog.
FinTech
VentureBeat - Making security invisible with adaptive access management
With every organization obsessed with speed as a competitive differentiator, it is no wonder that CIOs are tasked with streamlining login and system access user experiences. When security measures are fast and seamless, users are much more likely to embrace them, contributing to, rather than detracting from, speed and accelerated response.
Securty
Computerworld - Tech jobs dominate the top 25 'best' jobs in the US, Indeed says
Online job site Indeed this week released its list of the 25 best jobs in the US, and the top slot went to full stack developer, which offers a median annual salary of $130,000 and allows for a mostly remote or hybrid workplace.
Tech Jobs
sdxCentral - ISG Launches SDN Study to Shape Enterprise Network Strategy
“A change is evident in how enterprises purchase networks,” Basu told SDxCentral in an email. “ISG is witnessing a tendency to shift toward the concept of network-as-a-service (or network as a subscription) among enterprises, which can sidestep heavy [capital expense].”
Network Management
VentureBeat - What the FBI’s Hive takedown means for the ransomware economy 
“The real challenge lies in the protection racket that exists between the cybercrime cartels and the Russian regime, which endows them with untouchable status from western law enforcement."
Security
Datanami - IDC Survey Finds Data Sovereignty and Compliance Issues Shaping IT Decisions
Almost half the respondents (48%) to IDC’s Cloud Pulse 2Q22 survey (n=1350) say that data sovereignty and industry compliance have factored highly in discussions about their future IT architectures. And just 4% of respondents believe their IT organizations will not be impacted by data sovereignty and compliance considerations.
Data Management
AiThority - Understanding AIOps and Its Impact on Cybersecurity Management
In the current scenario, AIOps are the need of the hour, especially as the pandemic ushered in a lot of changes in the working style. Today, some companies are completely remote and some are following the hybrid working model, in either case, businesses are under tremendous pressure to detect data anomalies, critical issues, and multiple service interruptions.
IT Management
Blocks & Files - A block data migration specialist talks about … block data migration
Typically, you use block migration tools for block data and file migration tools for file data. That said, there are exceptions to this rule depending on the desired outcome.
Data Storage
Datanami - GigaOm Report Reveals Advantages of Modern Approach to Data Access Control
Immuta required just eight policy changes to accomplish the same security objectives compared to 745 policy changes with legacy role-based access control (RBAC) used by other data security platforms, representing a 92x improvement.
Data Management
sdxCentral - SecurityGen Talks Top 5G Network Security Priorities
Last week, SecurityGen released its top five priorities for telecom operators in 2023. Its council boiled down to a memorandum for telcos: Because operators are such high-target entities for ransomware, they must take a more hands-on and collaborative approach in addressing the security threats of openly integrated – and moreover nonstandalone – 5G technology.
Security
VentureBeat - Why leveraging privacy-enhancing tech advances consumer data privacy and protection
However, despite the many benefits that insights from location data provide, to the average person, consumer data privacy remains a top concern. This often leaves businesses struggling to achieve the fine balance between using data to uncover meaningful insights while ensuring consumer privacy.
Data Privacy
ZDNet - Technology spending will rise next year. And this old favourite is still a top priority
In short, digital leaders believe an investment in technology – whether that's on-demand IT, data analytics or automation – will help their organisations deal with what's already a hugely challenging business environment.
Tech Trends
VentureBeat - IBM: Quantum computing poses an ‘existential threat’ to data encryption 
The report argues that quantum computing poses an “existential risk” to classical computer encryption protocols, and notes that cybercriminals are potentially already exfiltrating encrypted data with the intention of decrypting it once quantum computers advance as part of “harvest now, decrypt layer attacks.”
Data Protection
VentureBeat - T-Mobile data breach shows API security can’t be ignored
With cloud adoption increasing dramatically over the past few years, analysts have long warned enterprises that a tidal wave of API exploitation has been brewing. Back in 2021, Gartner predicted that in 2023, API abuse would move from infrequent to the most frequent attack vector.
Security
Networld World - Pros and cons of managed SASE
Managed SASE can be appealing for enterprises that want a single provider for deployment and management of WAN and security infrastructure, but there can be tradeoffs depending on provider flexibility, platform interoperability, and cost.
Network Management
SiliconANGLE - Uber, Walmart and others set out to redefine the modern cloud data stack
Most applications today codify forms or business processes. But there is growing momentum behind application tools in the cloud that can orchestrate people, places or things. An example of this can be seen in the work of dbt Labs, a Philadelphia-based data analytics startup that is creating a development framework built on the modern data stack. By adding a semantic layer to describe data, dbt Labs is seeking to build new bridges between data science and data analytics.
Data & Analytics
sdxCentral - GlobalData: Zero Trust Will Gain Traction in 2023
Bicknell also expects a zero-trust officer role to emerge at organizations to “coax, cajole, and bully companies on their zero-trust journey.
Security
Network World - IT to shoulder more responsibility for data center sustainability
Cutting-edge server chips are turning heads for their potential to boost performance, but next-generation processors also run hotter than older designs, and data-center operators will struggle to figure out what to do with limited guidance from chip makers.
Sustainability
VentureBeat - How to get started with intelligent automation
Process mining, which is technology for discovering, optimizing, and monitoring processes, is proving to be an ideal starting place for businesses ready to embrace automation and begin their digital transformation journeys.
Automation & Productivity
Blocks & Files - Iron Mountain on getting rid of storage junk
“Secure disposal practices start with strong data protection and asset management practices – drives should be encrypted, tracked, and maintained via tags tied to an inventory system."
Data Storage
AiThority - Key Trends Driven by Data and Computing in 2023
“Observable” data include key digitized artifacts, such as logs, traces, API calls, dwell time, downloads and file transfers, that appear when any stakeholder takes any kind of action."
Data & Analytics
SiliconANGLE - Analysts anticipate next wave of innovation from new breed of data applications 
“Keep your eye on this North Star, where instead of building apps that are based on code, you’re building apps that are defined by data coming off things that are linked to the real world, like people, places, things and activities,” Gilbert said. “Amazon.com is defined by stuff coming off data in the Amazon ecosystem or Marketplace.”
Emerging Tech
Networld World - T-Mobile, Xfinity are tops in latest Ookla speed test report
The median download speed for T-Mobile customers, Ookla said, reached over 151Mbps, marking a sharp increase from the company’s 116Mbps mark in the previous quarter, which was already good enough to make T-Mobile the fastest mobile carrier by a distance.
5G
AiThority - The A-Z on Transforming Content: What is Generative AI?
Generative AI also known as GI, brings together the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to create and personalize short as well as long-form content. With the constant technological evolution, GI’s approach has also explored a variety of machine learning techniques including deep learning, Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), and transformers.
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Toshiba exec says SSDs can never replace HDDs
“259 million HDDs were shipped last year – a case in point. Their total capacity reached 1.338 zettabytes, an increase of almost one-third compared to 2020. Never before have HDDs been shipped with more combined storage capacity.”
Data Storage
SiliconANGLE - ChatGPT won’t give OpenAI sustainable first-mover advantage
You’ve got the big cloud and internet giants all poised to go after this opportunity. Microsoft investing up to $10 billion, and Google has evidently sounded the code red. There’s Apple, of course, and several alternatives on the market today such as Chinchilla, Bloom or Jasper.
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - 7 Layers: FortiGuard Labs Sees Nation-State Actors, Cybercriminals Colluding
Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs recently released its predictions for 2023, highlighting the trend of advanced persistent cybercrime enabling a new wave of destructive attacks at scale and fueled by cybercrime-as-a-service.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Supercloud debate offers insight into key choices confronting enterprise IT 
“It all works great as long as you are in one platform,” Mohan said. “But if your primary goal is to choose the most cost-effective service irrespective of which cloud it sits in, then things start falling sideways. How do I move my workload from one platform to another platform? That tooling does not exist.”
IT Management
AiThority - How AI Is Becoming the Next Frontier in Cybersecurity
Novel viruses often known as zero-day threats infiltrate data centers before the security team can widely circulate updated signatures. The problem security teams face today is traditional cyber applications are not able to update malware signatures quickly enough.
Security
sdxCentral - How Economic Downturn Adds Complications to CISO Role
“The role of the CISO has been growing in importance for a while now as companies increasingly recognize the importance of securing their data,” Kapoor told SDxCentral in an email. “It is one of the hardest jobs in IT, where the number of job responsibilities and the importance of said responsibilities keep increasing.”
Security
SiliconANGLE - Gartner sees robust IT spending growth in 2023 
Spending on data center systems, which leaped 12% in 2022, will see the biggest slowdown this year, with growth expected to fall to just 0.7%. Spending on software is expected to jump 9.3%, with IT services growing a healthy 5.5%. Overall IT spending will be dragged down the most by a decline in spending on devices, which more buyers than expected have opted to keep in their pockets rather than replace this year.
IT Management
Blocks & Files - Data management is still human labor for most Register readers
The report, Data Management is Still Manual Labor for Most Register Readers, looked at three general topics: storage tiers and data placement; on-premises and public cloud data movement; and use of data warehouses and lakes.
Data Management
SiliconANGLE - Supercloud2 explores cloud practitioner realities and the future of data apps
But creating a consistent experience across clouds and on-prem estates has been an elusive capability for most organizations, forcing tradeoffs and injecting friction into the system. The need to create seamless experiences is clear and the technology industry is starting to respond with platforms, architectures and visions of what we’ve called supercloud.
Cloud
Datanami - Growing Developer Skills Expand US Market for AWS: ISG
Google and Microsoft are challenging AWS by introducing highly advanced tools for analytics, AI and machine learning in the cloud, ISG says. These offerings, including tools from Google’s DeepMind and Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, often enter the mix first in the U.S., traditionally an early adopter of cloud technologies.
Training
SiliconANGLE - Supercloud forecast: the new data architecture requirements 
“From there, thought about rethinking database architectures and file formats so that we can take each one of these services and bring them together, whether distributed or centrally, such that customers can access and get answers — whether it’s operational data, whether it’s business data, AKA search or SQL.”
Data & Analytics
AiThority - The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Email Customer Service
In addition to chatbots and predictive analytics, AI is also being used to automate more complex customer service tasks, such as email categorization and prioritization, and even the generation of personalized signatures through an email signature creator.
Automation & Productivity
Computerworld - Gen Zers and Millennials split over the appeal of remote work
The study found that about half (49%) of millennials surveyed want to work fully remote, whereas only 27% of Generation Z (Gen Zers) feel the same way; they're much more likely than average “to be seeking in-person” work opportunities. Oddly, Gen X and baby boomers felt less impassioned about remote options. Only 40% of either group indicated  “their ideal workplace setting” should be remote.
Automation & Productivity
eWeek - Tech Predictions for 2023: AI, Cloud, Edge, Cybersecurity, and More
Artificial intelligence: The stunning debut of ChatGPT in November put us on notice: AI is growing exponentially, offering a toolset (for free!) that would’ve been sci-fi not that long ago.
Tech Trends
VentureBeat - Google’s Muse model could be the next big thing for generative AI
Muse leverages conditioning on pretrained language models used in prior work, as well as the idea of cascading models, which it borrows from Imagen. One of the interesting differences between Muse and other similar models is generating discrete tokens instead of pixel-level representations, which makes the model’s output much more stable.
Artificial Intelligence
TechRepublic - Securing the edge begins with securing IoT devices
IoT is vulnerable to security attacks because many IoT device manufacturers fail to install adequate security on their devices. Many of these devices have been developed by startup companies that are focused on getting their offerings quickly to market, even if security and governance are skipped.
Security
SiliconANGLE - Analysts forecast key enterprise data trends for 2023
“It’s really a three-to-five-year time period that graph databases will become significant,” Olofson said. “They still need accepted methodologies that can be applied in a business context, as well as proper tools for people to use them seriously. But I stand by the idea that it is taking off because Neo4j, which is the leading independent graph database provider, had a very good year.”
Data & Analytics
Computerworld - Microsoft aims to improve OKR adoption with Viva Goals integrations
In order to improve the level of understanding and foster a greater sense of cohesion around goal setting, Microsoft has announced it is enhancing Viva Goals integration with the company's Teams collaboration software. This will allow leaders and employees to receive notifications around OKR activity, bring goal-setting into conversations, and create, edit, and make check-ins to OKRs directly in a Teams chat.
Automation & Productivity
Datanami - IDC: Spending on Cloud Infrastructure Continues Strong Growth in Q3 2022
Spending on shared cloud infrastructure reached $16.8 billion in the quarter, increasing 24.4% compared to a year ago. IDC expects to see continuous strong demand for shared cloud infrastructure with spending expected to surpass non-cloud infrastructure spending in 2023.
Cloud
ZDNet - Metaverse minus the headset: A deeper look at Lenovo's Project Chronos
There was also an intriguing announcement from Lenovo -- Project Chronos, a camera-based full body motion-capture system that allows you to animate an avatar in the metaverse without the need for a headset or other wearable sensors.  
Metaverse
VentureBeat - 3 factors that can ensure zero trust success
The first factor is overall complexity. It is often noted that complexity is the enemy of security. Overly complex and difficult solutions and policies make security unusable and promote workarounds that circumvent the solution or practice. The old Post-It notes with passwords on the side of an employee’s monitor as a way to deal with stringent password policies used to be a good example of this.
Security
Computerworld - The productivity promise (and perils) of generative AI
But much like searching on the web, you need to develop skills for these tools so you can word a command or query that quickly delivers the result you want. Without that skill, you’ll struggle — either because you haven’t taken the time to fully detail your query or you don’t know how to properly word it.
Artificial Intelligence
VentureBeat - AWS security heads offer top cybersecurity predictions for 2023
“MFA [multifactor authentication] adoption will continue to grow for both business and personal use, including increased use of biometric forms of authentication that improve security and convenience (that is, unlocking devices with a fingerprint or face identification).
Security
Network World - 7 ways to secure backup data 
Encrypted backup data cannot be used to extort your company. Attackers might be able to exfiltrate it, but it will be useless without the keys. Encryption technology has evolved to a point that this can be handled with relative ease, allowing you to encrypt all backups wherever they are stored.
Security
sdxCentral - Dell CTO: We Can Demonstrate ‘Zero Trust Is Actually Real’
The center is designed to provide a secure data center for organizations to test configurations and validate zero-trust use cases, which allows organizations to test configurations based on the Department of Defense (DoD) Zero Trust Reference Architecture before deployment into their own environments.
Security
Network World - What to expect from SASE certifications
Compared to other networking certifications, like the CCNA, which is more about how to operate the technology, Cato’s SASE and SSE certifications are high-level overviews. “Our certification is more about what SASE and SSE mean, what are the implications, and what it means to different IT teams,”
Tech Certs
ZDNet - Hackers are using this old trick to dodge security protections 
Scattered Spider is a financially motivated cybercrime operation, which researchers say takes particular interest in telecoms and the business outsourcing sectors, with the objective of gaining access to mobile carrier networks.
Security
sdxCentral - Low-Code Security Requires Shared Responsibility Model
The LCNC market is so successful because of its its naturally faster speed of application development and deployment. “There is one stakeholder that can do everything from thinking about the need to solving the need [on] their own,” he said. That doesn’t mean, however, that those citizen developers or business technologists should be solely responsible for the security risks posed by low-code application development.
Security
AiThority - How Much is Tech Actually Costing You? Understanding the True Cost of Ownership
Many companies use the latest technology to be as efficient and competitive as possible, but research indicates a good number of them may be wasting money on tech. One study by Gartner, a global research and advisory firm, found that companies spend $13,000 per employee annually on software as a service (SaaS), but $4,000 is unnecessary due to overlapping solutions.
IT Management
Network World - 8 hot networking technologies for 2023
Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) tightly integrates security and networking into a single platform. The technology uses a single-pass scanning architecture combined with a unified policy that's configured via a unified console that draws from a unified data lake.
Network Management
Computerworld - Your next job recruiter might be an AI bot
As many as 49% of candidates turn down a job offer because of poor recruiting, according to PwC's Future of Recruiting survey. Along with improving the candidate interview experience, organizations need higher quality candidates who are also more likely to remain, and they're turning to AI to find, cull, and woo job candidates.
Tech Jobs
sdxCentral - VMware: Customers Want ‘Open Architecture’ SASE
“Or said differently, to minimize the inefficiencies of two vendors, enterprises are asking SD-WAN and SSE partners to collaborate to achieve a tight integration across both management and data planes. This gives the enterprise more options on how they start their journey to a single vendor SASE architecture.”
IT Management
VentureBeat - How upskilling and training providers help close the cybersecurity skills gap
One of Hack the Box’s main competitors in the market is Immersive Labs, which raised $66 million in funding in October 2022, and offers security teams a platform for continually testing and measuring cyber resilience, with defensive and offensive upskilling training content and exercises tailored toward executive, cybersecurity, and risk and compliance teams.
Security
Datanami - Neutronian Releases Expanded Q1 2023 Data Privacy Scores Rankings List
For the first time, Neutronian has included the top 800 publisher domains in the rankings (including NYTimes.com, Pinterest, Yahoo, NBC, CBS, and Conde Nast) to highlight the level of data privacy on sites where digital campaigns are running.
Data Privacy
VentureBeat - AI may be red-hot, but Scale AI layoffs send shivers
But last night, an Insider’s report that the unicorn company had laid off 20% of its 700-person staff sent shivers down the spines of those who thought AI was generally immune to the current wave of tech layoffs — especially at this red-hot AI moment when news that Microsoft is reportedly in talks to invest $10 billion in OpenAI and buzzy generative AI startups like Jasper and Stability AI are boasting over $100 million raises.
Artificial Intelligence
sdxCentral - Axis Promotes Public Cloud as SSE Priority
While Hines said the term “hybrid” has been overused in the market, the new reality of dispersed users and more branch locations can’t be ignored. “All those branches, they all have different levels of needs — some have users, some have printers and IoT devices,” he added. “The whole reality here is you’re not going to have to require a full SD-WAN or network stack at every single location.”
IT Management
VentureBeat - How ChatGPT in Microsoft Office could change the workplace | The AI Beat
The stream of Microsoft news made me wonder: How would these apps-on-steroids, used by billions of companies globally, change how we work? Especially once Google gets fully in the game, integrating its own generative AI capabilities into Google Workspace? Will AI become as mundane in our day-to-day work lives as the humble spreadsheet?
Automation & Productivity
ZDNet - People are already trying to get ChatGPT to write malware 
"Threat actors with very low technical knowledge - up to zero tech knowledge - could be able to create malicious tools. It could also make the day-to-day operations of sophisticated cybercriminals much more efficient and easier - like creating different parts of the infection chain,"
Security
sdxCentral - Where Is Edge Headed in 2023?
The hybrid workplace has been adopted globally, allowing millions of employees to work from any location and making edge technology implementation a top priority. As such, Gartner estimates that three-quarters of enterprise-related data will be created and processed at the edge by 2025.
Edge Computing
VentureBeat - Ransomware attacks dropped 61% last year, but orgs can’t be complacent
One such sign of complacency is the decrease in the number of organizations with incident response plans, dropping from 94% to 71%, which could make these companies less effective at responding to data beaches, and give threat actors more opportunities to exfiltrate critical data assets.
Security
Computerworld - This lawsuit against Microsoft could change the future of AI
But there's a dirty little secret at the core of AI — intellectual property theft. To do its work, AI needs to constantly ingest data, lots of it. Think of it as the monster plant Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors, constantly crying out “Feed me!” Detractors say AI is violating intellectual property laws by hoovering up information without getting the rights to it, and that things will only get worse from here.
AI Ethics
sdxCentral - Too Soon to Invest in Wi-Fi 6E, Gartner Says
Despite growing enterprise investment in Wi-Fi 6E infrastructure, most end-user devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones are still limited to 802.11ac and 802.11ax, and cannot use the 6 GHz spectrum quite yet.
Network Management
Blocks & Files - VMware and Nutanix still dominating HCI market
As before, VMware leads in revenue and market share ($982.3 million, 41.5 percent) followed by Nutanix ($581.2 million, 24.6 percent) with Huawei, Cisco and HPE distantly behind.
Data Storage
VentureBeat - Director of data analytics: Role and key skill requirements
A data analytics director must first be a data analyst conversant in creating, maintaining, improving and correctly integrating analytical tools and processes across an organization’s internal departments.
Tech Jobs
SiliconANGLE - CIOs are in a holding pattern – but ready to strike at data monetization 
The bottom line is, for the moment at least, the mindset is not to cut everything, rather it’s to put a pause on cleaning up legacy hairballs and continue to fund initiatives to drive monetization. Cloud has become fundamental and getting data “right” is a consistent theme that appears to be an underpinning of initiatives getting funded today.
Data & Analytics
sdxCentral - How to Build Successful Data Stacks
Companies using a multi-tool systems environment are struggling to keep pace because they’re managing a tangle of single-function systems that weren’t designed to work together. Businesses are reaching their breaking point as they tire of assembling and managing upstack tools and not seeing enough returns on those investments.
Data Management
Network World - Work from home is here to stay, so how should IT adjust? 
Migrating from hardware-centric, on-premises systems to cloud-based services helps organizations scale in order to handle a remote workforce, but IT execs should beware that this type of shift often moves problems around, rather than eliminating them altogether, or creates new ones.
IT Management
TechRepublic - Data ingestion vs. ETL: How are they different?
Data ingestion is an umbrella term for the processes and tools that move data from one place to another for further processing and analysis. It typically involves transporting some or all data from external sources to internal target locations.
Data Management
AiThority - Applications of Data Science & Machine Learning (DS/ML)
This list is far from comprehensive – in general, DS/ML is almost omnipresent in our daily lives, with countless iterations impacting almost everything we do. The popularity of DS/ML models shows no sign of slowing, and inevitably will become increasingly integrated into our daily lives until we barely remember life before it.
Machine Learning
SiliconANGLE - Enterprise support for the metaverse flourishes at this year’s CES 
Earlier this week, Accenture PLC released research findings during CES that showed more than half of consumers surveyed view the metaverse as a business opportunity and 88% of C-suite executives believe the metaverse will have an important role in their organizations’ future growth.
Metaverse
VentureBeat - Why cloud observability will be critical in 2023
Over the past decade, there has been a solid push to increase agility in enterprise IT to support the digitization of business processes and services. This trend has led to various technological innovations, such as infrastructure virtualization and containerization. However, traditional IT monitoring tools need to be equipped to handle the complexity and vast amount of telemetry data that come with deploying new containerized microservices.
Cloud
Storage.com - Opinion of Storage Vendors on 2022 Market
Flexible storage consumption models have been top of the agendas for most CIOs and IT leaders for a few years now. But 2022 was the year when the discerning CIO was quick to spot the difference between a product on subscription and a true service. Customers recognized and firmly rejected legacy financial leasing models dressed as STaaS).
Data Storage
VentureBeat - Why IAM’s identity-first security is core to zero trust
Two core areas of the zero trust framework — enforcing least privileged access and implementing segmentation — are challenging, as enterprises are seeing huge growth in machine identities. These machine identities (such as bots, robots, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices) on organizational networks are increasing at twice the rate of human identities.
Security
Computerworld - How many jobs are available in technology in the US?
CompTIA’s analysis also showed that 30% of all tech jobs postings are for positions in emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, or in roles requiring emerging tech skills.
Tech Jobs
VentureBeat - Top AI conference bans ChatGPT in paper submissions (and why it matters)
It didn’t take long for a brisk social media debate to brew, in what may be a perfect example of what businesses, organizations and institutions of all shapes and sizes, across verticals, will have to grapple with going forward: How will humans deal with the rise of large language models that can help communicate — or borrow, or expand on, or plagiarize, depending on your point of view — ideas?
Artificial Intelligence
Blocks & Files - Pure Storage on its predictions for 2023
"The benefits of flash for data storage are undeniable – it has until now been largely a question of cost, and what workloads a customer has justify the additional cost for flash.  To bridge that gap, customers have had to make tradeoffs, or manage tiering between flash and disk to save costs."

Data Storage
sdxCentral - Cisco, Aruba, Juniper Among Gartner LAN Leaders
Gartner again gave a nod to Cisco, Extreme Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)/Aruba, and Juniper Networks as leaders in its Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure, with Huawei joining that list for the first time
Network Management
Network World - Cloud providers should unify virtual networking and SD-WAN
Traditional VPNs based on MPLS require usage of border gateway protocol (BGP), routers, and often some form of carrier Ethernet access, all of which can drive small-site connection costs so high that CFOs cringe at any suggestion that the sites should be on the company network. But, as worker empowerment through application and data access became more important to businesses, they were trapped.  So along came SD-WAN.
Network Management
AiThority - “Evolve or Die”: AWS Re:Invent Delivers Inspiration in a Cost-Conscious Environment
In the past, AWS has been reluctant to tell its customers how they should use the ever-growing functionalities of the cloud. They leave it to internal teams to discern the best way to leverage the vast library of AWS services. But it may be time for AWS to be more opinionated. For instance, customers now can select from about 600 instance types
Cloud
sdxCentral - Top SASE Execs Make 2023 Predictions
Gartner also announced its single-vendor SASE leaders. The firm’s definition specifies that a complete SASE offering combines network edge capabilities like SD-WAN, and a set of cloud-centric security service edge (SSE) capabilities, including secure web access gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), and zero-trust network access (ZTNA).
Security
AiThority - Edge Adoption is Growing Across Industries—Here’s Why
The Edge OT are the advanced computing devices that will power the smart factory by managing machines and equipment focused on advanced analytics, maintenance and augmented reality, and is projected to grow by as much as 13%.
Edge Computing
Blocks & Files - Opinion: Online disk archives are just wrong
In other words, an active archive covers non-primary data, meaning secondary (nearline) and tertiary (offline) data with no mention of online media being restricted to caching. The AAA is saying you can have an online archive.
Data Storage
Datanami - CelerData Cofounder and CEO Identifies Cloud and Real-Time Analytics Predictions for 2023
“Cloud costs, consumption models, and ROI will come under the microscope as organizations look for ways to tighten spending in light of economic uncertainty. In response, many cloud vendors will become more creative in product development, service offering, and pricing structure in an effort to retain existing customers and become more competitive for new business.”
Cloud
Computerworld - Raises for some IT pros could jump 8% in 2023, exceeding inflation
In 2022, however, merit increases for IT pros lept to 5.61%, with the median salary for all IT professionals rising from $95,845 to $101,323. The median salary for an IT executive rose to $180,000.
Tech Jobs
ZDNet - These grim figures show that the ransomware problem isn't going away 
Researchers suggest that much of the rise in reported ransomware attacks against local governments can be linked to a single incident in Miller County, Arkansas, where one compromised mainframe resulted in malware being spread to endpoints in 55 different counties.
Security
The Hacker News - The FBI's Perspective on Ransomware
To help ransomware victims and to prevent ransomware, the FBI has set up 56 Cyber Task Forces across its field offices. These Task Forces work closely with the IRS, the Department of Education, the Office of Inspector General, the Federal Protective Service and the State Police. They're also in close contact with the Secret Service and have access to regional forensics labs.
Security
VentureBeat - Consumer and business interest in the metaverse is growing | Accenture
According to the research, more than half (55%) of the roughly 9,000 consumers surveyed see the metaverse as a business opportunity for creating and monetizing content. Most (89%) C-suite executives also believe the metaverse will have an important role in their organization’s future growth, according to a parallel survey of 3,200 C-suite executives.
Metaverse
sdxCentral - Are Enterprises Prepared for Data Pipeline Failure?
Data pipelines enable the movement of data and support customer experience, which should render observability at this layer an enterprise priority. A majority (63%) of execs dealing with data networking pipeline failures noted those issues negatively impact their organization’s customer experience.
Data Management
The Hacker News - Enforcement vs. Enrollment-based Security: How to Balance Security and Employee Trust
The applications these tools don't support are often the riskiest because they don't meet common industry and security standards, including SAML for authentication and SCIM for user management. At Cerby, these are called "unmanageable applications," and according to their research, 61% of SaaS applications are unmanageable.
Security
sdxCentral - Analysys Mason: Telcos, Cloud Platforms Will Make the Metaverse Real
“What we need is really scalable compute and really low latencies. If all of that processing does happen in the cloud, rather than happening locally on your Meta Quest Pro headset, then it does become possible to create those kinds of experiences, but the platform needs to exist.”
Metaverse
AiThority - Click Fraud Prevention Service Polygraph Advises Advertisers To Invest In Search Engine Optimization
Click fraud is an online scam where website publishers generate income by programming bots to repeatedly click on advertisements. Since the advertisements are displayed on the scammers’ websites, for every fake click, the advertisers pay fees to the advertising networks, and the advertising networks share the money with the criminals.
Marketing Tech
Network World - AI is coming to the network
AI tools that feel different to work with, that change the way network admins work with their tools, are beginning to enter the market. A solid example is the introduction of virtual assistants that can have meaningful conversations about what is happening in the network, and that can (if allowed) take actions that alter network function.
IT Management
VentureBeat - 5 reasons why data privacy compliance must take center stage in 2023
And U.S.-based companies limited to domestic business are paying attention, too. While there is no national data privacy referendum in the U.S., four states — Colorado, Connecticut, Utah and Virginia — will begin enforcing state data privacy legislation in 2023.
Data Privacy
sdxCentral - Will 2023 Be the Year of NaaS?
IDC reported that 69% of global respondents to a recent survey are planning to invest in network transformation over the next 12 months, highlighting network-as-a-service (NaaS) as a challenger to legacy network models that necessitate substantial upfront capital.
Network Management
Blocks & Files - Object storage: Coldago moves Quantum up and Cloudian down in the rankings
The Coldago Research Map 2022 for Object Storage lists and ranks 15 vendors playing in the object storage market segment. They are, in alphabetic order: Cloudian, Cohesity, Commvault, DataCore, Dell, Hitachi Vantara, IBM, MinIO, NetApp, Pure Storage, Quantum, Scality, Spectra Logic, VAST Data and WEKA
Data Storage
Computerworld - 4 up-and-coming employee mobile apps
The app, which supports both Android and iOS devices, gives operational managers a complete view of their deskless enterprise. It allows workers and managers to use a single system for scheduling, resource travel, time management, and analytics and data reporting.
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - 14 data predictions for enterprise growth in 2023
“Part of the problem is that CIOs today have to manage too many systems. Too many disjointed data pools lead to duplicated, siloed and locked-up data, which is not only timely and costly to manage and analyze, but also leads to security issues."
Data Management
Network World - 9 steps to protecting backup servers from ransomware
Backup servers get attacked in two ways—by exploiting a vulnerability or logging in using compromised credentials. Disabling all but the necessary inbound ports can stop both. Only ports the backup software needs to perform backups and restores should be left open, and they should be accessible only via a VPN dedicated to the backup serve
Security
ZDNet - ChatGPT's next big challenge: Helping Microsoft to challenge Google search 
Bing could be getting ChatGPT-enhanced search capabilities as early as March in a move that capitalizes on Microsoft's $1 billion investment in Open AI in 2019, which included an exclusive multi-year cloud-computing partnership to build new Azure AI supercomputing technologies.
Automation & Productivity
VentureBeat - Defensive vs. offensive AI: Why security teams are losing the AI war
Eighty-eight percent of CISOs and security leaders say that weaponized AI attacks are inevitable, and with good reason. Just 24% of cybersecurity teams are fully prepared to manage an AI-related attack, according to a recent Gartner survey
Security
SiliconANGLE - Report: Apple’s mixed reality headset will get auto-adjusting lenses and more
A particularly alluring feature mentioned in the report suggests that small motors will automatically adjust the internal lenses to match the user’s vision in order to provide the clearest view possible. It will do so using the wearer’s interpupillary distance – the range between the pupils – in order to provide the largest field of view possible for each individual.
Emerging Tech
Network World - Looking ahead to the network technologies of 2023
During COVID, one of the less-reported changes enterprises made was to start using the Internet to support work-from-home requirements. They then figured out that if they supported workers via the Internet, they could take their traffic directly into the data center and bypass VPNs. Thus, the Internet started to erode VPN traffic growth, and that’s going to continue and accelerate in 2023.
Network Management



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