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Countless App Developers Have Unsecured Cloud Databases, And Its Putting Consumers at Risk – Digital Information World

March 21, 2022 | Author: admin

The move to cloud databases has the potential to transform data storage because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing people to avoid having to rely on bulky and space consuming physical servers. However, a prime disadvantage of cloud based data storage is that it is vulnerable to all manner of cyber attacks, and that is something that makes it essential for businesses to use encryption and other methods to keep this data secure.

There have been numerous examples of unsecured cloud databases getting hacked which resulted in the widespread loss of personal and private data, but in spite of the fact that this is the case it seems that app developers havent gotten the memo. A recent analysis conducted by Check Point Research revealed that there are over 2,000 apps that dont have an adequate level of security for their cloud data storage spaces, or 2,113 to be precise.

Some of these apps are relatively small scale with only a few thousand downloads at most, but with all of that having been said and now out of the way it is important to note that there are apps with over ten million downloads that have unsecured cloud data storage as well. That is especially concerning when you take into account the sensitive nature of the data that is stored on these databases with all things having been considered and taken into account.

Things like chat history, pictures that you might have taken as well as a wide range of other things can be easily stolen by hackers due to the lack of security measures put in place by these app developers. Its clear that this is not something that they seem to be taking all that seriously, and if things continue in this vein we might see a crisis of lost data in the near future. Such insecurity could lead to problems as severe as identity theft among other things, and steps need to be taken to mitigate the risk that consumers are currently being exposed to.

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Countless App Developers Have Unsecured Cloud Databases, And Its Putting Consumers at Risk - Digital Information World

Slazzer launches the first ever on premise image background removal Platform As A Service (PaaS) – Gulf News

March 21, 2022 | Author: admin

While Slazzer's cloud-based solution already provides a high level of security and privacy, it's on premise solution goes a step further for when data simply cannot leave local servers. Clients will now have the ability to control the deep-learning visual recognition technology as if it were their own.

"Our on premise offering is the most comprehensive image background removal solution for private cloud, ecommerce, advertising, design, photography, government, medical, legal, and highly sensitive corporate content." "Slazzer's image recognition technology, when installed on a server, can process millions of images without leaving the company's premises," says Deep Sircar, CEO and co-founder. "It ensures the utmost in data security and privacy." No other image AI company in the world offers this level of control and security."

Deployment will require a minimum server configuration of 16GB GPU memory, 16 VCPU, and 110GB RAM. When running, the on premise solution offers parameters identical to the existing Slazzer API to create a transparent, colored or custom background for all images as well as additional options to position, scale, crop, crop_margin, or create a region of interest. It is highly scalable and delivers the same level of accuracy as the existing cloud offering, which is currently deployed by over 15,000 developers worldwide and has been used by companies such as Microsoft, ScandiSystem, and Visme.

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Slazzer launches the first ever on premise image background removal Platform As A Service (PaaS) - Gulf News

Why Ransomware Attacks Steer Clear of the Cloud – Business Wire

March 21, 2022 | Author: admin

FREDERICK, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In a brief video explainer and commentary, Josh Stella, chief architect at Snyk and founding CTO of Fugue, a cloud security and compliance SaaS company, talks to business and security leaders about why the cloud is generally spared from ransomware and examines the top threat to their cloud environments.

Ransomware made news headlines worldwide earlier this month after a successful attack against one of Toyota Motor Corp.s parts suppliers forced the automaker to shut down 14 factories in Japan for a day, halting their combined output of around 13,000 vehicles.

That attack was the latest example of the threat ransomware poses to all industries. The most recent edition of SonicWalls annual threat report states that the volume of ransomware attacks in 2021 has risen 231.7% since 2019. And an advisory jointly issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI, and the NSA reveals the latest trend is ransomware as a service gangs of bad actors essentially franchising their ransomware tools and techniques to less organized or less skilled hackers.

Clearly, protecting against ransomware attacks must be part of your organizations holistic cybersecurity strategy if youre still operating data center infrastructure and not cloud infrastructure. Hardening data centers and endpoints to protect against ransomware attacks is mandatory, but cloud infrastructure faces a different kind of threat. And if your organization is all in on cloud, ransomware is less of a worry.

What Is Ransomware?

Dont confuse a ransomware attack with a data breach, which involves stolen data. The purpose of ransomware is not to steal your data (although that can also occur during a ransomware attack) but rather to take control of the systems that house or encrypt your data and prevent you from accessing it until you pay the ransom. This can have a devastating impact on an organization by effectively shutting down operations until access to the data is restored.

While ransomware is a major cybersecurity threat, were simply not seeing ransomware attacks executed against cloud environments. The reason for this involves fundamental differences between cloud infrastructure and data center infrastructure.

A New Threat Landscape

Your cloud environment is not simply a remote replica of your onsite data center and IT systems. Cloud computing is 100% software driven by application programming interfaces (APIs) the software middlemen that allow different applications to interact with each other. The control plane is the API surface that configures and operates the cloud.

For example, you can use the control plane to build a virtual server, modify a network route, and gain access to data in databases or snapshots of databases (which are actually a more popular target among cloud hackers than live production databases). The API control plane is the rapidly growing collection of APIs your organization uses to configure and operate the cloud.

The priority for all cloud platform providers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft is to ensure your data is robust and resilient. And replicating data in the cloud is both easy and cheap, and a well-architected cloud environment ensures there are multiple backups of your data. Thats the key inhibitor to an attackers ability to use ransomware: Multiple copies of your data negates their ability to lock you out. If an attacker is able to encrypt your data and demands ransom from you, you can simply revert to the latest version of the data prior to the encryption.

The redundancy and resiliency that AWS, Google and Microsoft are building for hundreds of thousands of their customers running millions of servers and networks are impossible for you to replicate in your own data center infrastructure. And if your access to your on-premises systems is taken away from you and encrypted, it can be extremely difficult and in some cases effectively impossible for you to regain access without paying the ransom.

Security in the cloud is different because its a function of good design and architecture not intrusion detection and security analysis. Hackers are not trying to penetrate your network in order to lock you out of your systems; theyre trying to exploit cloud misconfigurations that enable them to operate against your cloud control plane APIs and steal your data right out from under you.

What Is Cloud Misconfiguration?

A misconfiguration can vary from individual resource misconfigurations that can appear simple, such as leaving a port open, to significant architectural design flaws that attackers use to turn a small misconfiguration into a massive blast radius. And I can guarantee that if your organization is operating in the cloud, your environment has both kinds of vulnerabilities. The good news is that because cloud infrastructure is software that can be programmed, these kinds of attacks can be prevented with software engineering approaches using policy as code.

Build Cloud Security on Policy as Code

When developers build applications in the cloud, theyre also building the infrastructure for the applications as opposed to buying physical infrastructure and deploying apps into it. The process of designing and building cloud infrastructure is done with code, which means developers own that process, and this fundamentally changes the security teams role.

In a completely software-defined world, securitys role is that of the domain expert who imparts knowledge to the people building stuff the developers to ensure theyre working in a secure environment. And that knowledge is delivered as automated developer tooling that leverages policy as code rather than checklists and policy documents written in a human language.

Policy as code enables your team to express security and compliance rules in a programming language that an application can use to check the correctness of configurations. Its designed to check other code and running environments for unwanted conditions or things that should not be. It empowers all cloud stakeholders to operate securely without any ambiguity or disagreement on what the rules are and how they should be applied at both ends of the software development life cycle (SDLC).

Cloud Security Must Be Automated

At the same time, policy as code automates the process of constantly searching for and remediating misconfigurations. There are no other approaches that in the long run are successful at this because the problem space keeps growing. The number of cloud services keeps growing, the number of deployments you have, and the amount of resources keeps growing. And so you must automate to relieve security professionals from having to spend their days manually monitoring for misconfigurations and enable developers to write code in a way that is flexible, that can be changed over time, and that can incorporate new knowledge, such as the latest big data breach that makes news headlines.

Harden Your Cloud Security Posture

Organizations that have implemented effective cloud security programs share some characteristics that any enterprise can emulate to harden their cloud security posture:

I dont want to downplay the threat ransomware attacks pose to your organization and encourage you to visit http://www.StopRansomware.gov, the U.S. federal governments resource for learning how to protect yourself from becoming a ransomware victim.

But I also want to emphasize that although your cloud environments are not highly vulnerable to ransomware, the risk of a data breach due to misconfigurations is high and growing as you adopt more cloud-based platforms and services.

The best defense is prevention. Use policy as code in the development phase, in the continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, and in the runtime to quickly identify and remediate misconfigurations. As you gain maturity, these steps can be operationalized throughout your DevOps processes so that the entire process is automated and efficient.

About Josh Stella

Josh Stella is chief architect at Snyk and a technical authority on cloud security. Josh brings 25 years of IT and security expertise as founding chief technology officer at Fugue, principal solutions architect at Amazon Web Services, and advisor to the U.S. intelligence community. Joshs personal mission is to help organizations understand how cloud configuration is the new attack surface and how companies need to move from a defensive to a preventive posture to secure their cloud infrastructure. He wrote the first book on Immutable Infrastructure (published by OReilly), holds numerous cloud security technology patents, and hosts an educational Cloud Security Masterclass series. Connect with Josh on LinkedIn and via Fugue at http://www.fugue.co.

About Fugue

Fugue (part of Snyk) is a cloud security and compliance SaaS company enabling regulated companies such as AT&T, Red Ventures, and SAP NS2 to ensure continuous cloud security and earn the confidence and trust of customers, business leaders, and regulators. Fugue empowers developer and security teams to automate cloud policy enforcement and move faster in the cloud than ever before. Since 2013, Fugue has pioneered the use of policy-based cloud security automation and earned the patent on policy as code for cloud infrastructure. For more information, connect with Fugue at http://www.fugue.co, GitHub, LinkedIn and Twitter.

All brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Tags: Fugue, Snyk, cloud security, SaaS, Josh Stella, ransomware, policy as code, cybersecurity, cloud, infrastructure as code, open source, cloud security automation, network configuration, cloud configuration, cloud misconfiguration, data breach, cloud threats, application programming interface, API

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Why Ransomware Attacks Steer Clear of the Cloud - Business Wire

Datadog: Sorting Through The Rubble – Seeking Alpha

March 21, 2022 | Author: admin

Just_Super/E+ via Getty Images

The last couple of years in the market have seen some significant volatility. It started with the COVID crash in March 2020, which whipsawed into an insane rally through the end of that year to seemingly punish anyone too fearful to buy the dip. Now, those investors who benefitted most from the high growth rally at the end of 2020 have taken a beating in early 2022. A few names worth mentioning are Zoom (NYSE:ZM)(80% off highs), Roku (ROKU) (68% off highs), and Fastly (FSLY) (87% off highs). The baby has been thrown out with the metaphorical bathwater in the high growth space, much in the same way that the rising tide lifted all boats regardless of the validity of the investment thesis in 2020.

Datadog

One of the best-in-class cloud operators I want to take a look at today is Datadog (NYSE:DDOG). The best analogy I've seen to explain what the company does is that they operate a cloud version of the Windows Task Manager but for the entire technology stack of a company.

That's dumbed down, and the company continues to buy/build new features for its clients, but it's good enough to understand it at a basic level. The company operates a monitoring and security platform for company's cloud applications, which is used for event-tracking of enterprise services. The software is compatible across nearly every cloud service and in on-premises servers, and continues to expand its offering to be an all-in-one solution.

Like many other cloud companies, Datadog is looking to ease the transition for companies as they conduct their digital transformation. In this case, companies may have multiple different pieces of software or some home-grown monitoring that doesn't communicate across the enterprise when there are issues. Datadog seeks to solve that by "breaking down silos" and not only enhancing visibility but also predicting issues using commonalities across the customer base like on-premises shared hardware, third-party software, etc.

An interesting case study discussed by Datadog management was Seven.One Entertainment, a Germany company which was able to lower its monitoring costs by 78% after onboarding Datadog software.

Datadog Investor Presentation

Another interesting metric is that 78% of customers now use at least 2 products, up from 72% YOY, 43% use at least four products, up from 22%, and 10% use six or more products, which is up from 3%.

Add that to a >130% net revenue retention rate for 18 straight quarters and those metrics set the stage for an incredibly successful SaaS business.

Datadog Investor Presentation

If you haven't been paying much attention to the market, cloud software has been a huge story, and for good reason. Between high margins, easy onboarding, and the necessity of digitization made abundantly clear by a global pandemic, you couldn't lose investing in the cloud space in 2020. I think this year has shown the importance of digging a little deeper and finding the best-in-class operators, but either way it's a rapidly growing market opportunity. Gartner Peer Insights projects just IT operations management to be a $25B opportunity in 2025.

Datadog Investor Presentation

Generally speaking, these software/tech companies tend to compete with different companies across the business lines. Datadog is no exception, as there is no perfect parallel, but Splunk (NYSE:SPLK) and Dynatrace (NYSE:DT) are decent proxies.

Gartner Peer Insights

Looking above, Datadog has been well reviewed within its industry on Gartner Peer Insights, and carries a similar rating to its competitors mentioned above. Datadog typically competes with Splunk in log management and Dynatrace in application performance monitoring. However, when discussing competition on the most recent earnings call, Co-Founder and CEO Olivier Pomel had this to say:

So, first off all, we don't actually see the competition all that much. So I don't wake up every morning asking myself how are we going to win or whether we're winning. We mostly compete against customers building it themselves or being under-tooled and starting in the cloud without the clear idea what's going on. We do see a few big replacements in every quarter. We've mentioned a few on the call. When that's the case, we - I mean, the ones we mentioned are typically the ones that are upmarket. The reason why we win in those situations is we offer integrated platforms where others don't. We're cloud native where others aren't. And most importantly, we have a lot more usage and adoption from the teams on the ground around our product. So, that's the deployed everywhere, used by everyone saying that I repeat at every call, and that really is what makes us win in the end with customers. And that applies upmarket, that applies down-market, that applies everywhere.

[W]e build a product and a company that serves the whole market, like the whole gamut of potential customers. We think that developers at small companies behave, especially in the cloud, like they behave very much the way as developers in very large enterprises. They have the same tool box. They work the same way largely. And so, we build a product that serves everyone. We do expect to have very large counts of customers in the end. But to your second question, we also see right now a lot of that demand, a lot of the growth is coming from midmarket and large enterprises and also the higher end of the market. And we feel good about that part of the market, like we see it successfully standardize on Datadog. We see it successfully land and expand with us. I think we're growing faster - we're in equivalent size and growing faster than anybody else in the market for that specific part of the market. So, I think we feel good about it. That's a big part of what we do.

That's really the best-case scenario. Looking at it as a green-field opportunity, you don't have to worry as an investor about some of the pricing pain and potentially slower growth that can come with intensely competitive industries. There appears to be plenty of room and Datadog is growing into the field quickly.

Speaking of which, the company's recent results were pretty fantastic. Q4 revenues of $326M were up 84% yoy, the company was GAAP profitable, and drove $250.5M of free cash flow in 2021. Net revenue retention rate remained above 130% and the company is carrying $1.6B on its balance sheet. It's starting to make sense why the company is so expensive. Management has guided for FY2022 for $1.51-1.53B in revenue for 48% growth with high 70's% gross margins and net income of $0.45-0.51 per share.

The company is obviously growing at a blistering pace, but the fact that management is keeping its expenses in check while continuing to maintain a best-in-class net revenue retention rate for existing customers sets it apart. Of course, keep an eye on everyone's favorite technology metric, share-based compensation. The share count rose 3% YOY, with share-based compensation up to $163M in 2021 from $74M in 2020. It's basically a fact of life at this point in the tech space, but it's still worth monitoring.

One additional takeaway from the most recent quarter is the win the company had on the federal government side, which could yield some highly lucrative and sticky contracts.

The goal is really to be able to sell to fully go-to market on the federal side. With the FedRAMP law we had before, we were limited in the number of agencies we could target and we also were limited in number of use cases. We basically could only target Infrastructure Monitoring use cases. We couldn't send logs, APM, things like that. With FedRAMP medium, what we can do is we can sell all of our products and we can pretty much sell to every single civilian agency in the federal government as well as a number of other government agencies that are - local agencies but that take the same or use FedRAMP as the same guidelines for security and compliance. So it really opens up the market. We've seen already some success to-date. We already have as of last quarter a $1 million-plus customer on the federal side on our FedRAMP on OSCAL offer. So we're optimistic, but we still have a lot of building to do on the go-to market there, like it's not necessarily exactly the same go-to market that we're used to.

I just wanted to highlight this as one of many growth vectors the company is pursuing.

Clouded Judgement Substack

Looking below, the market has not punished Datadog like much of the rest of the tech sector. After a significant run-up (the company IPO'ed in 2019 at $26 a share), the company is really treading water, a mere 27% off of its highs.

Finviz

I do own shares of Datadog, and I have continued to buy the company over time. I don't think it's a bargain today, but I don't like to wait anymore for the best companies to become bargains to own them. Quite a bit of the froth has come out of the market, and amid the selloff, Datadog appears to me to be a best-in-class operator trading at a deserved premium that is already profitable and will reward shareholders for many years to come.

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Datadog: Sorting Through The Rubble - Seeking Alpha

Digital Cleanup Day: It’s time to take out the digital trash – ComputerWeekly.com

March 21, 2022 | Author: admin

In this guest post,Yann Lechelle, CEO of French cloud provider Scaleway, sets out the steps consumers and businesses can take to reduce the environmental impact of their digital activities, ahead of Digital Cleanup Day

Back in 2012, a survey revealed that 51% of Americans believe stormy weather affects cloud computing. This might seem amusing today, but even now there remains a disconnect among the general population between what digital is imagined to be and what it really is.

Things like the internet, the cloud, and other digital technologies are often regarded as light and fluffy, floating somewhere through the air, making it easy to forget that behind these services lies expansive infrastructure that gobbles up gargantuan amounts of resources.

Did you know that the digital sector uses 10% of all the electricity produced globally and is responsible for 4% of total global CO2 emissions? Thats more than aviation.

A household internet router uses as much electricity as a refrigerator and the energy consumed by a single bitcoin transaction (~2250 kWh) could power an average US household for 2.5 months or a French household for nearly half a year. More than that, every digital action has a physical impact a single online search uses as much electricity as a lightbulb for 1-2 minutes.

Even so, the bulk of the carbon impact of the digital sector comes from manufacturing. For example, 90% of the carbon impact of a smartphone comes from its manufacture and just 10% from its usage.

As things stand, the digital sector is a major contributor to the climate crisis. The bad news is that its global carbon dioxide footprint is expected to double to 8% by 2025.

The good news is that we can do something about it.

Digital Cleanup Day (March 19 2022) is conceived to shine a light on these efforts, and to encourage us to minimize digital pollution by cleaning up digital trash, reducing e-waste, and spreading the word. And there are steps we can all take to make a difference.

When you upload something online, its stored in a physical drive in a datacentre somewhere in the world. The emails in your inbox, the videos on your social media profile, the images in your cloud account they all take up space in servers that are running 24/7.

The chances are, though, that you will never revisit most of those files, emails, documents, which means theyre sitting there wasting energy. Its like keeping a light on in a room that youll never use.

Join thousands of others on Digital Cleanup Day and beyond in cleaning up your folders and deleting unnecessary files, apps, emails, photos, videos, and other digital waste.

E-waste is short for electronic waste and refers to the hardware itself. As mentioned earlier, the electronics manufacturing process is among the biggest culprits in terms of carbon emissions. In response, one of the best things you can do is to give your old electronics a second life.

Dont just throw out hardware repair it, donate it, sell it, repurpose it instead. Do you have an old laptop sitting in the back of the closet? Why not donate it to a local school to help support remote students?

Sometimes electronics are beyond repair. If its not salvageable, then make sure you recycle it. E-waste can contain materials that are harmful to the environment and disposing of them properly will help minimize the damage. Apple has even developed robots specifically trained to disassemble iPhones. So if you dont know what to do with your old smartphone, why not take it back to its maker?

The digital sectors environmental footprint is still something most people are oblivious to. You can amplify your own positive contribution toward a more sustainable future by involving others as well.

Simply having a chat with friends and family and educating them about how the internet and the cloud works (its all run on electricity-powered, water-cooled servers) can help them understand the real-world impacts of their digital actions. In terms of concrete actions, you can, for example, invite your friends to switch to a privacy-focused messaging tool such as Signal it doesnt process any data on you, and hence uses less energy. Privacy is green.

Spreading the word beyond your social circles also matters. You can organise events on social media, invite people to join digital cleanup initiatives, or even publicly call out organizations to consider their digital footprints and act to lessen them.

To that last point, all of your favorite online platforms and websites are using hosting services (read: datacentres) to stay online. But not all datacentres are made equal some are more efficient and environmentally friendly than others. Accordingly, you can write to companies and institutions and ask them to host their services in modern datacentres that waste less resources.

Deleting an email is like turning the water off while you brush your teeth its good to do your part, but your individual impact is small. That email takes up a minuscule fraction of just one server, whereas a datacentre will host thousands of servers that not only use up electricity, but also water for cooling.

How much electricity? Datacentres are reportedly responsible for ~1% of the worlds electricity use and this share is growing. To put it into perspective, a single datacentre can use as much power as a small city.

The numbers are jaw-dropping for water use as well. For instance, datacentres in the Netherlands use an average of 1 million cubic meters of water per year, which is roughly equivalent to the yearly water consumption of 20,000 people.

Accordingly, minor datacentre efficiency improvements translate to massive resource savings. More than could ever be achieved by deleting old emails.

Lack of public awareness about the environmental impact of datacentre means inefficient ones arent publicly scrutinized. Nor are the companies that choose to use these services. In turn, energy continues to be wasted.

That said, the tides are turning thanks to improved understanding about the role of the digital sector, which has been accelerated by events such as Digital Cleanup Day. Soon, popular pressure, hand-in-hand with legislative action, will reshape the environmental standards all datacentres must adhere to.

Scaleway stands with future generations to take on the urgent challenge of climate change, and empower them with the tools and knowledge needed to demand a more sustainable technology sector.

The climate crisis can be averted by a combination of individual, collective, legislative, and industrial measures. The only condition for success: that everyone plays their part, be it through deleting an email, donating an old laptop, or choosing an eco-conscious cloud service provider.

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Digital Cleanup Day: It's time to take out the digital trash - ComputerWeekly.com

Key important tech skills that can shape your future – Times of India

March 21, 2022 | Author: admin

Todays world is moving with constant changes in different sectors, including business and technology. According to the changing trend, you need to update your skills regardless of your profession. You need to adapt to the latest changes taking place at your work and learning new skills can enhance your career growth. Also, you can boost up many new career chances with this.

If youre in a technology profession or planning to become a professional techie then you must need to grasp some important skills. The skills that are most in-demand and help to stay competitive can change your future.

While no one can predict the future but the following technology skills can upgrade your career positively.

So, learn the in-demand, future-proof, and trending skills that help you to get into a desired profession.

Most in-demand tech skills

The following are a few of the most in-demand technology skills that can shape your future much better.

Let us begin to know these skills in detail and how they are useful in a career.

Cloud computing

One of the most in-demand tech skills nowadays is Cloud computing. This is useful in storing and accessing different computing services like software, servers, databases, analytics, etc. through the internet. It allows companies and business entities to store their files and applications on a remote server or cloud server. Hence, it eliminates the need for a computers hard disk drive and reduces the storage costs also.

The files stored on the remote server can be accessed any time anywhere using the internet. According to some market reports, the Cloud Computing industry market size will increase up to $ 830 bn by 2025 globally. This major forecast says that cloud computing has much demand and in the future, the need will increase. Therefore, the demand for Cloud Computing Professionals and Engineers will highly increase and many entities will hire them.

Moreover, the benefits of cloud computing include- reduced costs, better speed, reliability, and will have better security also.

Data Science (DS)

Data Science is another most important and trending tech skill and has a good demand in the tech industry. This technical skill is mainly useful in extracting information and insights from different data sources. Besides, the process includes some scientific methods, tools, and techniques that help in this regard.

Moreover, data science professionals are highly required to extract this complex data. Many companies and business entities rely on these skilled DS experts to collect huge data. Hence, these Data Scientists help entities in compiling, sorting, and presenting accurate data & insights. This clear data helps them to make many informed decisions in their business.

The world market size of the DS industry is going to grow by $140 BN in the upcoming years.

Many business entities are mainly focusing on ease of doing business by gaining more data insights from the market. This will also help them to get a competitive advantage over the others to drive business much better.

Cyber security

Security is an important thing for any business or profession to lead a good and long life. Cyber security is the most important field that safeguards computer systems and networks from cyber-attacks or outside threats.

Cyber-attacks take place with the intention to access, alter, or destroy the sensitive or secret information stored on computers or networks. Cyber Security will increase customer confidence, protect crucial data, improve productivity, and much more.

Today, cyber-attacks are more common and much harmful for any business entity or an individual. Therefore, the demand for CS professionals & experts is highly growing.

Further, learning this in-demand tech skill can help you to launch a better career such as a Cyber Security Analyst, Network Engineer, IS Analyst, etc.

However, the cyber security field is already observing good growth. So, it is clear to say that in the upcoming years, we can see more cyber security jobs. For this, the CS aspirants need to be ready with the relevant skills with good training.

Artificial Intelligence

AI is one of the most in-demand tech skills that enable a machine to think like a human. The AI professionals focus on developing such types of machines that need programming to behave like humans and use intelligence to work. Further, these machines will work on different tasks with human intelligence and complete them without error.

AI is highly in-demand in the areas where repetition takes place, high productivity is required with faster decision making and less prone to errors. Experts with AI skills will have a better future looking at the increasing demand.

However, the global market expectations of AI are to grow by 42% by the year 2027. And also it will create more job opportunities.

Skill representation, problem-solving, reasoning, and intelligence are the associated skills with this profession. The AI experts will develop all the qualities in a machine to make them work much better.

Blockchain

Its a distributed ledger technology that stores digital transactions and distributes them over the network of thousands of computers. Blockchain is also known as the future technology which is currently trending with the popular word Cryptocurrency. Crypto is a digital currency based on blockchain technology and runs on digital platforms.

Moreover, blockchain helps in providing security, efficiency, and productivity with reduced costs.

It is an emerging field of technology and the demand for blockchain developers and professionals is ever-increasing. Learning the right tools and skills in blockchain can help you to get into a bright career. The expectation is that there will be around 67% growth in blockchains global market size by the coming years.

IoT (Internet of Things)

The term IoT simply defines everything connected to the internet like smart devices, where they connect with each other. IoT is made up of smart devices that connect with each other through sensors like smartphones, wearables, etc. They simply exchange data with each other over the internet using all the functions.

Depending upon the industrys needs various IoT apps can be created with different verticals. To become an IoT engineer there are different tech skills to learn including programming, security skills, cloud computing, and many more. Training in these skills will enhance your chances to become an IoT professional.

IoT technology is the fastest-growing field and expands to many sectors. There is an expectation that the IoT global market size will reach $ 1 Trillion by 2026 as per internet news. Therefore, the demand for IoT experts with good salaries will highly increase in the coming days.

Robotics (RPA)

The term refers to an automation process that helps to automate the most repetitive business processes. RPA or Robotic Process Automation is one of the emerging fields of technology that helps in developing software robots. These robots help in automating any desk job within any industry which requires repetition.

The program that RPA professionals develop for robots will actively perform all the repetitive tasks with automation. Also, it reduces industry costs and enhances productivity by engaging RPA professionals.

Therefore, Robotics is a great in-demand tech skill that can produce many opportunities in the coming years. Learning these skills will help the tech aspirants to grow with the changing trends.

Hence, there are many other in-demand tech skills apart from the above but these are the most important.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

A Guide to Digitizing Your Business – Analytics Insight

March 21, 2022 | Author: admin

Business owners who fail to adapt and adjust to the many new changes may be at risk of being left behind.

The business world is continually evolving, and best practices from just a few decades ago are no longer always considered relevant. Business owners who fail to adapt and adjust to the many new changes may be at risk of being left behind.

If youve heard of business digitization or digital transformation, but youre not sure how this relates to your business or whether its even relevant, consider paying it some attention. Digitization can drive your business forward, and you can learn whats involved below.

When you search for, What Are The Different Types of MBA Specialisations? in search engines, you may see an MBA in information and knowledge management mentioned. A specialist in this line of work manages digital enterprises, provides strategic knowledge management, and executes digitization initiatives.

They work hard to convert previously analog information in your business into a digital form and combine it with electronic devices to process, store, and transmit information through networks, equipment, and digital circuits. Any typically manual processes in your workplace are identified and upgraded to digital methods to enhance business practices and meet customer demand.

When youre looking to utilize new technology to automate and streamline your current business processes and practices, you might be wondering what those new processes would look like. There are three that might prove relevant in your line of work: operational, management, and support.

Operational processes are an organized set of activities related to a product, service, or methodology in your business. Management processes involve leading the company, setting goals, and performing tasks and activities. Supporting processes are equally as important as they support the fundamental functions of your business.

It may seem complicated, but the process of digitization in all three of these areas is both advancing and simplifying industries.

Your current processes may not be broken, but they also may not be as efficient as others that now exist with updated technology. There are many benefits associated with digitization, including these below.

Servers and filing cabinets used to be the most effective and efficient way to store business and customer information. However, cloud storage has become an even better option for many businesses.

All business-related information can be stored in a cloud server, not on-site, which means youre able to access all the data you need from anywhere in the world, not just your own office. Cloud storage is known to be more affordable than many traditional storage methods while also being scalable to suit your up-to-the-minute storage needs.

While hiring someone with an MBA specialization in digitization initiatives may cost money, as does the initial setup and new technology, you may be able to save money over time when digitizing your business.

Labor-intensive business practices can often cost a lot of money, especially when you consider the time factor without automation. Even filling out forms can be an expensive exercise when you factor in printing and postage. When you digitize these practices, youre ultimately streamlining your processes while cutting costs simultaneously.

Increasing productivity goes hand in hand with saving money. When tasks take less time to complete, you can achieve more in the working day. Arm your team with the technology they need to streamline their daily processes, and you may be surprised at how many more tasks they can focus on in the average day.

When you realize just how many benefits there are associated with going digital, you may be ready to make the first step. It can be as easy as doing some of the following things.

If you havent updated your business practices before now, fear and lack of knowledge about new technology might be to blame. Hiring an expert to identify areas of improvement and guide you through changes may be one of the best decisions you make for your business.

Think about why you want to welcome technology into your business in the first place. Identify what your perfect business model would look like and the problems you want to solve, such as increased productivity.

For example, you might be beginning to realize that filling out forms for customers takes a long time and want to allow this process to happen online, giving control to the customers. You might look at digital programs and website additions for all customers to fill out and send forms digitally, rather than having to work through them with you in person.

Even if your team is entirely onboard with digitization, that doesnt mean you and them will not be overwhelmed by all the new changes. Make a plan for successful integration to keep disruption to a minimum. This plan might include making one small change at a time and welcoming everyone to attend training sessions.

Digitization can be daunting, but it can also be worth it. If youre ready to transform your business practices, now might be the right time to consider who can help and which changes youd like to make first.

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Internet of Things is the way for technological innovation – The Standard

March 21, 2022 | Author: admin

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers. They have the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

Research firm MarketsandMarkets forecasts the global IoT market size to reach $561 billion (Sh64 trillion) by 2022 from $170.6 billion (Sh19.4 trillion) in 2017, rising at a compound annual growth rate of 26.9 per cent during the forecast period.

With digital transformation accelerating, the benefits that IoT can give organisations, especially those reliant on data collected from Edge devices, are substantial. IoT can be better integrated into existing systems while remaining scalable for growth opportunities.

Africa being a developing continent has shown great promise in the past decade that can be seen in the continents eagerness to transcend into the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The industrial revolution that global markets are experiencing today, commonly referred to as Industry 4.0, is powered by technological advancements that include IoT, smart manufacturing, robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI), to name a few.

IoT, supervisory control and data acquisition and industrial IoT are transforming manufacturing by allowing for a connected experience that has streamlined and simplified many manufacturing processes.

This will become a critical technology to enable the continent to embrace a digitally transformed landscape.

Industry leaders and government policymakers need to be open-minded and embrace the fast-paced change of digital technology for IoT to be implemented correctly. These include laws and legal frameworks to support data-driven technologies and innovation-driven growth. With the right mix of policies, technology experts can reap the benefits of IoT and AI in years to come.

An IoT environment delivers more intelligence on the assembly line or in the manufacturing process. Furthermore, it allows for data analytics to be captured and used to provide feedback, advanced notifications, state of health and other forms of reporting to improve the process throughout manufacturing operations.

All these elements become vital enablers in developing economies across the continent.

So, technology companies must therefore take the time to integrate IoT into existing technology roadmaps. There are several challenges to the adoption of IoT, which include:

Security

One of the key concerns over the future of IoT devices is security. As more devices become interconnected, unless they are well-secured, it could cause enormous security issues, especially for businesses. Hackers could easily gain entry into an entire network if just one of the devices isnt adequately protected. This means companies will need to spend a lot of money securing their IoT devices. The problem becomes even more concerning when you take into account that there is no concrete law thatcovers the numerous layers of IoT.

Speed and accessibility

The more devices are connected to a network, the slower it could become. Work will need to be done to improve speeds and businesses may want to consider switching to a wired, rather than a wireless network. Cloud architecture will also need to be upgraded. As it stands, the Cloud architecture can manage thousands, if not millions of devices. However, in future, they could end up having to support billions of devices.

Having so many devices connected at one time will prove problematic for existing servers. This also raises concerns over power supply and businesses will need to ensure they have a reliable source.

Compatibility

When it comes to actually connecting IoT devices, there are also likely to be issues with compatibility. This is because IoT is currently growing in so many different directions, so additional software and hardware will be needed to connect future devices. Issues could also be caused by diversity within operating systems, not enough standardised M2M protocols and non-unified cloud servers.

One of the area where IoT has grown in popularity over the past few years is financial technology (fintech). Companies here utilise the Internet, algorithms and software technologies to offer financial services to consumers.

Fintech organisations provide services that would usually be typically available within a traditional banking branch. Therefore, services such as loans, payments, investments and wealth management are now available through this industry vertical with the assistance of IoT. In addition, the other verticals that IoT will impact are agriculture and healthcare. By combining IoT with AI, the agriculture sector can benefit from optimal harvests to get advice on the best time to sow depending on weather conditions, soil and other indicators.

Agriculture can use these technologies to identify healthy and unhealthy crops, thereby triggering when pesticides should be sprayed with accuracy.

Adopting IoT technology can enable businesses to enhance their productivity and performance.

IoT devices streamline activities, collect data, monitor activities and provide useful insights.

IoT enables businesses to streamline their operations and utilise their resources effectively while gathering real-time information, allowing companies to explore and pursue new opportunities. While IoT adoption in Africa faces many hurdles with Internet penetration rates still low, there are some countries that are leading the way.

These include Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, Mauritius and Seychelles, which have been addressing IoT as a priority. If IoT is to be successful, especially in rural areas, four issues must be addressed. These are; a more extended range for rural access; cost of hardware and services; limit dependency on proprietary infrastructures, and; provide local interaction models.

Looking ahead, IoT will impact the future of virtually every industry and every human being not only in Africa, but globally. IoT technology will continue to work as a technological innovator for the foreseeable future in Africa.

The writer is the chairman of BTN, an ICT provider in East Africa. ([emailprotected])

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Internet of Things is the way for technological innovation - The Standard

Altcoins Primed for Heavy Rallies As Crypto Markets Target $2 Trillion Valuation: Analyst Justin Bennett – The Daily Hodl

March 21, 2022 | Author: admin

A popular crypto strategist is predicting heavy rallies for altcoins as the broader crypto markets show signs of strength.

Analyst Justin Bennett tells his 98,600 Twitter followers that hes looking at the total valuation of all crypto assets (TOTAL).

According to Bennett, the TOTAL chart has broken out of its diagonal resistance that has kept the market bearish for about four months.

Thats more like it. TOTAL.

Based on the analysts chart, the breakout could send the valuation of all crypto assets above the $2 trillion level.

As the TOTAL chart breaks out, Bennett highlights that the market cap of all altcoins appears to be bouncing from its diagonal support.

Probably not the best time to be bearish.

Altcoin market cap linear view The bottom line is that it makes zero sense to be bearish while markets are above macro support.

Bennett also highlights that the Bitcoin Dominance index (BTC.D), which tracks the percentage of BTCs market cap relative to all other crypto assets, has broken down from its diagonal support.

According to Bennett, the move signals the beginning of a fresh altcoin season or a period where altcoins significantly outperform Bitcoin.

BTC.D (Bitcoin dominance) is starting to break down.

Likely back to 39.5% in the next few weeks.

Enter AltSeason2022.

Featured Image: Shutterstock/Tithi Luadthong/Natalia Siiatovskaia

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Altcoins Primed for Heavy Rallies As Crypto Markets Target $2 Trillion Valuation: Analyst Justin Bennett - The Daily Hodl

Altcoin Psycho, a famous name in the crypto space, is trending on twitter – News Live

March 21, 2022 | Author: admin

His trading expertise over the crypto space has earned him a commendable position in the industry today.

Crypto-mania is gaining popularity across the globe, with many investors stepping into this zone as its potential has been realized on a global scale. This ever-rising trend has introduced many industry experts who have mastered the art of crypto trading and are spreading their knowledge or the benefit of those who want to take up this opportunity. Altcoin Psycho is one such expert who has grasped the art of crypto trading and is today known to use the most profitable strategies backed by automated technology to trade in cryptocurrencies.

Altcoin Psycho has been around the scene since 2013, doing extremely well on popular social media platform Twitter. He says that he has always been passionate about digital currencies ever since it debuted and has been a keen observer of this space, having gained enough knowledge about crypto trading with time. He occupies the position of an advisor at Sino Global Capital, which is a network that helps portfolio companies to enter one of the most distinctive but essential markets in the blockchain sphere in Asia.

The popular trader began his rise to popularity after correctly predicting the exact bottom of the previous bear market in 2019:

Furthermore, he is the mind behind the creation of PsychoBot, which is a fully automated price action trend bot. The bot made big splashes in the automated trading scene after claiming the #1 spot on the trading bot PnLleaderboard, making it the most profitable bot in the scene. The bot works on a breakout strategy and uses high time frames like the 1D and 3D for trend confirmation.

The bot is no longer for sale as he switches focuses from retail algorithms to institutional algorithms. The crypto analyst has more than 16,000 subscribers on YouTube, and he is also trending on Twitter with over 420K follower

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Altcoin Psycho, a famous name in the crypto space, is trending on twitter - News Live

Cloud Hosting

Countless App Developers Have Unsecured Cloud Databases, And Its Putting Consumers at Risk – Digital Information World

Slazzer launches the first ever on premise image background removal Platform As A Service (PaaS) – Gulf News

Why Ransomware Attacks Steer Clear of the Cloud – Business Wire

Datadog: Sorting Through The Rubble – Seeking Alpha

Digital Cleanup Day: It’s time to take out the digital trash – ComputerWeekly.com

Key important tech skills that can shape your future – Times of India

A Guide to Digitizing Your Business – Analytics Insight

Internet of Things is the way for technological innovation – The Standard

Altcoins Primed for Heavy Rallies As Crypto Markets Target $2 Trillion Valuation: Analyst Justin Bennett – The Daily Hodl

Altcoin Psycho, a famous name in the crypto space, is trending on twitter – News Live

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