With Big Data analytics solutions increasingly being made available to enterprises in the cloud, more and more companies will be able to afford and use them for agility, efficiency and competitiveness

On 27 September, enterprise software company SAP SE completed the acquisition of Altiscale Inc.—a provider of Big Data as-a-Service (BDaaS). The news came close on the heels of data management and analytics company Cloudera Inc. and data and communication services provider CenturyLink Inc. jointly announcing BDaaS services. Another BDaaS vendor, Qubole Inc., said it would offer a big data service solution for the Oracle Cloud Platform.

These are cases in point of the growing trend to offer big data analytics using a cloud model. Cloud computing allows enterprises to pay for software modules or services used over a network, typically the Internet, on a monthly or periodical basis. It helps firms save relatively larger upfront costs for licences and infrastructure. Big Data analytics solutions enable companies to analyse multiple data sources, especially large data sets, to take more informed decisions.

According to research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), the global big data technology and services market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.1% over 2014-2019, and annual spending is estimated to reach $48.6 billion in 2019.

With Big Data analytics solutions increasingly being made available to enterprises in the cloud, more and more companies will be able to afford and use them for agility, efficiency and competitiveness.

MarketsandMarkets, a research firm, estimates the BDaaS segment will grow from $1.8 billion in 2015 to $7 billion in 2020. There are other, even more optimistic estimates: research firm Technavio, for instance, forecasts this segment to grow at a CAGR of 60% from 2016 to 2020.

Where does this optimism stem from?

For almost 10 years, it was only the biggest of technology firms such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon.com Inc., that used data analytics on a scale that justified the idea of ‘big’ in Big Data. In industry parlance, three key attributes are often used to understand the concept of Big Data. These are volume, velocity and variety of data—collectively called the 3Vs.

Increasingly, not just Google and its rivals, but a much wider swathe of enterprises are storing, accessing and analysing a mountain of structured and unstructured data. The trend is necessitated by growing connectivity, falling cost of storage, proliferation of smartphones and huge popularity of social media platforms—enabling data-intensive interactions not only among ‘social friends’ but also among employers and employees, manufacturers and suppliers, retailers and consumers—virtually all sorts of connected communities of people.

 

A November 2015 IDC report predicts that by 2020, organisations that are able to analyse all relevant data and deliver actionable information will achieve an extra $430 billion in productivity benefits over their less analytically oriented peers.

The nascent nature of BDaaS, however, is causing some confusion in the market. In a 6 September article onNextplatform.com, Prat Moghe, founder and chief executive of Cazena—a services vendor—wrote that there is confusion regarding the availability of “canned analytics or reports”. According to him, vendors (solutions providers) should be carefully evaluated and aspects such as moving data sets between different cloud and on-premises systems, ease of configuration of the platform, etc., need to be kept in mind before making a purchase decision.

“Some BDaaS providers make it easy to move datasets between different engines; others require building your own integrations. Some BDaaS vendors have their own analytics interfaces; others support industry-standard visualization tools (Tableau, Spotfire, etc.) or programming languages like R and Python. BDaaS vendors have different approaches, which should be carefully evaluated,” he wrote.

Nevertheless, the teething troubles are likely to be far outweighed by the benefits that BDaaS brings to the table. The key drivers, according to the IDC report cited above, include digital transformation initiatives being undertaken by a lot of enterprises; the merging of real life with digital identity as all forms of personal data becomes available in the cloud; availability of multiple payment and usage options for BDaaS; and the ability of BDaaS to put more analytics power in the hands of business users.

Another factor that will ensure growth of BDaaS is the scarcity of skills in cloud as well as analytics technologies. Compared to individual enterprises, cloud service providers such as Google, Microsoft Corp., Amazon Web Services and International Businsess Machines Corp. (IBM) can attract and retain talent more easily and for longer durations.

Manish Mittal, managing principal and head of global delivery at Axtria, a medium-sized Big Data analytics solutions provider, says the adoption of BDaaS in India is often driven by business users. While the need is felt by both chief information officers and business leaders, he believes that the latter often drive adoption as they feel more empowered in the organisation.

The potential for BDaaS in India can be gauged from Axtria’s year-on-year business growth of 60% for the past few years—and there are several niche big data analytics vendors currently operating in the country (besides large software companies).

Mittal says that the growth of BDaaS adoption will depend on how quickly companies tackle the issue of improving data quality.

Source: livemint.com, October 10, 2016

 

Chinachem: successful use of SAP software in the Hong Kong property market

According to a January story in the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong has topped the table as the world’s most expensive housing market for the 9th straight year. That sounds like good news for property developers in that area. But, according to the same story, prices of Hong Kong homes also decreased with 7.2% in the last four months.

What the news really shows is that the property market can be volatile. Combined with long construction times running into multiple years and billion dollar capital investments, that makes property development an extremely challenging industry.

Few of Hong Kong’s developers are more aware of that than the Chinachem Group. While Chinachem began its life in agricultural projects and chemicals, Chinachem has developed its presence as one of Hong Kong’s most famous property companies over the year. Tthrough prosperous times and through tough times. Recently Chinachem was able to win a big land parcel in one of Hong Kong’s upmarket suburbs after surveyors cut their valuation by 10 per cent, another sign of softening property prices.

However, in an industry that is often very traditional in its execution, it is not just prices that are putting property businesses under increasing competitive pressure. The digital explosion is also having a huge effect. As Chinachem’s Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Donald Choi, points out: technology is changing how companies in every industry are organized and run. And Chinachem isn’t any different.

Changing times

Hong Kong has been lucky in a way, especially in the property market, which has been a long-term growth market. But complacency can be a killer.

Chinachem’s Head of Group IT, Joseph Cagliarini, believes that the lesson to be learned from a truly global brand like Kodak, which went bankrupt because the world changed from film to digital photography, cannot be overlooked. Instead, he calls for a relentless pursuit of technology to make sure Chinachem is not only listening to its customers, but able to respond appropriately.

Different companies are at different stages of embracing digital transformation and technology. Anticipating what is required and strategizing change, Chinachem has turned its eyes to a new generation of milestones, and embarked on a journey to become an intelligent business.

For the long-time property developer, that change starts with (real-time) data. Like many companies, Chinachem didn’t have a central view of its operations. So, all of its business units operated autonomously to some extent. That created a mountain of manual processes, and many separate systems containing valuable information.

In October 2018, Chinachem selected a comprehensive suite of SAP software and cloud solutions to drive operational efficiency across finance and HR operations for its corporate group and hotels in order to help drive long-term efficiencies and growth. SAP is also providing Chinachem to help drive rapid innovation and increase the strategic value of human resources.

Once the solutions are fully implemented, Chinachem will enjoy a variety of benefits, including real-time updates on financial performance that will optimize their finance processes. This includes everything from planning and analysis to period end close and treasury management.

Long-term plans

Thanks to other key features the group’s long-term objectives, such as enhancing financial planning and analysis, accelerating planning cycles, increasing profitability, and making finance functions more efficient are also supported. Chinachem is now able to accelerate the building and deployment of apps and extensions that engage employees in new ways. This will allow HR to be flexible and innovative without compromising the organization’s core HR process.

In addition, Chinachem’s hotels can personalize their end-to-end HR landscape, creating an outstanding, seamless and secure user experience. The group can also leverage data from SAP solutions to make insightful business decisions that will have lasting impact.

Customers are still king

Chinachem’s journey also involves adapting to changing customers who now live on multiple platforms, both online and offline.

With the right technology and software, Chinachem will be able to monitor customer behavior and, therefore respond to their needs without actually being asked. Executive Director of Chinachem, Donald Choi, believes that advanced data analytics could be the key to this. Not to replace offline experiences, but to be at all the right places at the right time.

In an ever-changing and increasingly digital world, a comprehensive suite of SAP software and cloud solutions may not be the final answer for all of Chinachem’s needs. However, as Donald Choi says, “it is a good starting point for this journey.”

Author: Terence Leung

Source: SAP

• Enabling real-time integration across on-premise and cloud platforms often involves integrating SAP, Salesforce, third-party and legacy systems. 2017 will be a break-out year for real-time integration between SAP, Salesforce, and third party systems in support of Internet of Things and Industrial Analytics.
• McKinsey Global Institute predicts that the Internet of Things (IoT) will generate up to $11T in value to the global economy by 2025
• Predictive and prescriptive maintenance of machines (79%), customer/marketing related analytics (77%) and analysis of product usage in the field (76%) are the top three applications of Industrial Analytics in the next 1 to 3 years.

Real-Time Integration Is the Cornerstone Of Industrial Analytics

Industrial Analytics (IA) describes the collection, analysis and usage of data generated in industrial operations and throughout the entire product lifecycle, applicable to any company that is manufacturing and selling physical products. It involves traditional methods of data capture and statistical modeling. Enabling legacy, third-party and Salesforce, SAP integration is one of the most foundational technologies that Industrial Analytics relies on today and will in the future. Real-time integration is essential for enabling connectivity between Internet of Things (IoT) devices, in addition to enabling improved methods for analyzing and interpreting data. One of the most innovative companies in this area is enosiX, a leading global provider of Salesforce and SAP integration applications and solutions. They’re an interesting startup to watch and have successfully deployed their integration solutions at Bunn, Techtronic Industries, YETI Coolers and other leading companies globally.

A study has recently been published that highlights just how foundational integration will be to Industrial Analytics and IoT. You can download the Industrial-Analytics-Report-2016-2017.pdf. This study was initiated and governed by the Digital Analytics Association e.V. Germany (DAAG), which runs a professional working group on the topic of Industrial Analytics. Research firm IoT Analytics GmbH was selected to conduct the study. Interviews with 151 analytics professionals and decision-makers in industrial companies were completed as part of the study. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, data science service companies Comma Soft and Kiana Systems sponsored the research. All research and analysis related steps required for the study including interviewing respondents, data gathering, data analysis and interpretation, were conducted by IoT Analytics GmbH. Please see page 52 of the study for the methodology.

Key Takeaways:

• With real-time integration, organizations will be able to Increase revenue (33.1%), increase customer satisfaction (22.1%) and increase product quality (11%) using Industrial Analytics. The majority of industrial organizations see Industrial Analytics as a catalyst for future revenue growth, not primarily as a means of cost reduction. Upgrading existing products, changing the business model of existing products, and creating new business models are three typical approaches companies are taking to generate revenue from Industrial Analytics. Integration is the fuel that will drive Industrial Analytics in 2017 and beyond.

• For many manufacturers, the more pervasive their real-time SAP integration is, the more effective their IoT and Industrial Analytics strategies will be. Manufacturers adopting this approach to integration and enabling Industrial Analytics through their operations will be able to attain predictive and prescriptive maintenance of their product machines (79%). This area of preventative maintenance is the most important application of Industrial Analytics in the next 1 – 3 years. Customer/marketing-related analytics (77%) and analysis of product usage in the field (76%) are the second- and third-most important. The following graphic provides an overview of the 13 most important applications of Industrial Analytics.
  

• 68% of decision-makers have a company-wide data analytics strategy, 46% have a dedicated organizational unit and only 30% have completed actual projects, further underscoring the enabling role of integration in their analytics and IoT strategies. The study found that out of the remaining 70% of industrial organizations, the majority of firms have ongoing projects in the prototyping phase.
  
• Business Intelligence (BI) tools, Predictive Analytics tools and Advanced Analytics Platforms will be pivotal to enabling industrial data analysis in the next five years. Business Intelligence Tools such as SAP Business Objects will increase in importance to industrial manufacturing leaders from 39% to 77% in the next five years. Predictive Analytics tools such as HPE Haven Predictive Analytics will increase from 32% to 69%. The role of spreadsheets used for industrial data analytics is expected to decline (i.e., 27% think it is important in 5 years vs. 54% today).

• The Industrial Analytics technology stack is designed to scale based on the integration of legacy systems, industrial automation apps and systems, MES and SCADA systems integration combined with sensor-based data. IoT Analytics GmbH defines the technology stack based on four components inclouding data sources, necessary infrastructure, analytics tools, and applications. The following graphic illustrates the technology stack and underscores how essential integration is to the vision of Industrial Analytics being realized.

• Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 will rely on real-time integration to enable an era of shop-floor smart sensors that can make autonomous decisions and trade-offs regarding manufacturing execution. IoT Analytics GmbH predicts this will lead to smart processes and smart products that communicate within production environments and learn from their decisions, improving performance over time. The study suggests that Manufacturing Execution System (MES) agents will be vertically integrated into higher level enterprise planning and product change management processes so that these organizations can synchronously orchestrate the flow of data, rather than go through each layer individually.
  

Source: business2community.com, 19 december 2016

The global business intelligence market report, an analyst says In the past few years, social media has played critical roles in SMEs and mid-sized organizations. Many SMEs are increasingly embracing this trend and integrating their BI software with social media platforms.

Market outlook of business intelligence market - market research analyst predicts the global business intelligence market to grow at a CAGR of around 10% during the forecast period. The growing adoption of data analytics by organizations worldwide is a key driver for the growth of this market.

The majority of corporate data sources include data generated from enterprise applications along with newly generated cloud-based and social network data. business intelligence tools are useful in the retrieval and analysis of this vast and growing volume of discrete data.

They also help optimize business decisions, discover significant weak signals, and develop indicator patterns to identify opportunities and threats for businesses.

The increased acceptance of cloud BI solutions by SMEs is also boosting the growth of this market. The adoption of cloud services allows end-users to concentrate on core activities rather than managing their IT environment.

Cloud BI solutions enable applications to be scaled quickly, can be easily integrated with easy integration with third-party applications, and provide security at all levels of the enterprise IT architecture so that these applications can be accessed remotely.

Market segmentation by technology of the business intelligence market:

• Traditional BI
• Mobile BI
• Cloud BI
• Social BI

The mobile BI segment accounts for approximately 20% of the global BI market. It enables the mobile workforce to get business insights by data analysis, using applications optimized for mobile and smart devices.

The growing smartphone adoption is likely to emerge as a key growth driver for this segment during the forecast period.

Market segmentation by deployment of the business intelligence market

• Cloud BI
• On-premises BI

The on-premise segment accounted for 86% of the market share during 2015. However, the report anticipates this segment to witness a decline in its shares by the end of the forecast period.

In this segment, the software is purchased and installed on the server of an enterprise. It requires more maintenance but is highly secure and easy to manage.

Geographical segmentation of the BI market

• Americas
• APAC
• EMEA

The Americas dominated the market during 2015, with a market share of around 56%. The high adoption of cloud BI solutions in this region is the major growth contributor for this market.

The US is the market leader in this region as most of the key vendors are based out of here.

Competitive landscape and key vendors

Microsoft is one of the largest BI vendors and offers Power BI, which helps to deliver business-user-oriented, self-service data preparation and analysis needs through Excel 2013 and Office 365. The competitive environment in this market is expected to intensify during the forecast period due to an increase in R&D innovations and mergers.

The market is also expected to witness a growing trend of acquisitions by the leading players. The key players in the market are expected to diversify their geographical presence during the forecast period.

The key vendors of the market are -

• IBM
• Microsoft
• Oracle
• SAP
• SAS Institute

Other prominent vendors in the market include Actuate, Alteryx, Board International, Brist, Datawatch, GoodData, Infor, Information Builders, Logi Analytics, MicroStrategy, Panorama Software, Pentaho, Prognoz, Pyramid Analytics, Qlik, Salient Management Company, Tableau, Targit, Tibco Software, and Yellowfin.

Key questions answered in the report

• What will the market size and the growth rate be in 2020?
• What are the key factors driving the BI market?
• What are the key market trends impacting the growth of the BI market?
• What are the challenges to market growth?
• Who are the key vendors in the global BI market?
• What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the vendors in the BI market?
• Trending factors influencing the market shares of the Americas, APAC, and EMEA?
• What are the key outcomes of the five forces analysis of the BI market?

Source: WhaTech

SAP: A new way of user experience calamity prevention

The old saying goes: the customer is always right. But these days, it’s the user experience that proves how well IT teams are listening. Whether we’re talking about employees or consumers, users of any digital tool don’t hesitate to change how work is done, how goods and services are purchased, and how new technologies are integrated to advance their goals.

Users are steadily expecting more from their technology experiences, ranging from immediacy and personalization to trust and convenience. When one or more of these conditions are missing, users defect as quickly as they encounter the first bad experience. For IT organizations, such user influence is forcing them to consider the level of performance reliability, human interaction and automation needed when deploying a new digital investment, in addition to their current focus on evolving value and simplicity.

Because of this shift in IT demands, SAP was inspired to develop and deliver the SAP EarlyWatch Alert service.

Preventing downtimes by understanding the health of the system landscape

Most digital landscapes grow organically as new business applications, processes, and business models are introduced by a line of business or their IT counterpart. All too often, the presence of duplicated systems, proliferating inconsistent data, makeshift integration, abandoned applications and the like emerge. This brings tremendous complexity in which technical issues hide until it’s too late.

It is key for users to be aware of technical issues before they occur in the system. Fueled by a combination of predictive analytics and machine learning, the  data science behind the SAP EarlyWatch Alert service sheds light on the most critical issues and displays them in full detail on the cloud-based workspace for SAP EarlyWatch Alert. This alert service includes a solution finder tool, with which decision-makers can search alerts and recommendations to quickly find a resolution to the issue they are experiencing.

Ccontinuous quality checks are a critical part of ensuring a digital infrastructure that is resilient enough to handle even the most delicate operations and processes.

Take The Siam Cement Public Company Limited (SCG), for example. The largest cement supplier in Thailand wanted to balance the security of its IT infrastructure with the security of the users and data that served as the core of the business. SAP EarlyWatch Alert highlighted exactly the areas in SCG’s software landscape that required focus with 30% less effort, compared to performing the same tasks manually.

By putting into practice continuous quality check for security optimization, SCG broadened its scope of security 60% to cover business processes and HR data, which dramatically improved its security rating. More importantly, the outlook for future growth and building for SCG’s customers is strong.

Author: Susanne Glaenzer

Source: SAP

SAP: how DevOps can improve your business performance

Software is vital to the success of businesses today. Quite simply, the speed at which you can change your software is the speed at which your business can innovate and compete. If you can’t change as fast as your peers, you’re giving them an opportunity to steal market share and competitive edge. This means there’s enormous pressure on IT teams to deliver applications, infrastructure, and services quicker than ever before.

However, an accelerated pace of delivery brings significant risk if your existing tools and processes don’t adapt at the same speed. In that case outcomes like unplanned downtime, critical application failure and a higher cost of delivery may be just as likely as greater business agility. For many organizations, agile development and/or DevOps (Development Operations) are a solution to this problem. These new approaches provide the means to automatically deliver change at high speed (potentially thousands of times per day for some applications) and crucially, to do so with less risk than traditional processes.

So if that’s the case, you might well ask, why isn’t every firm already doing DevOps? Well, aside from the fact that changing the way you operate can be a very sensitive topic when you’re talking about business-critical systems like SAP, in part it’s simply because change is hard. It’s never easy to shift mindsets that have been entrenched over decades, not least because while the ‘downside’ of change is often relatively clear (particularly in terms of cost), the benefits are not always as clear before you begin.

With that in mind, a solid business case may be essential if you’re going to get the management buy-in and investment you need for the adoption of DevOps for SAP. It might be the difference between adopting a new approach and continuing with the status quo, so here are some key steps that can help you to build a compelling business case and win you the support you need to modernize the way you manage SAP.

1. It's not all about numbers

Qualitative descriptions can be useful in framing your proposal in a way that resonates with the stakeholders involved. DevOps is about modernization. It’s about optimization of resources, de-risking of change and increasing efficiency by employing automation and the principles of lean manufacturing. These terms might seem vague and perhaps irrelevant to the task at hand, but using positive, forward-looking language to position your proposal can help to set the right tone and bring people with you from the very start.

2. Define what you're asking for

Realistically, adopting DevOps in your SAP environments will require some level of investment. That might be a direct cost, like automation software designed to enable DevOps for SAP is essential for success for example, or like training team members in new ways of working – but it could also be the ‘opportunity cost’ of reallocating people away from their normal daily work. Either way, being clear exactly what you are asking for will avoid difficult situations at a later stage and gives a starting point for any calculation of ROI.

3. Identify quantifiable outcomes

The broad principles of DevOps help to set the scene, but they won’t be enough to justify the investment you’re asking for. You need to define some tangible outcomes that you believe are relevant to your business and in particular your SAP landscapes, such as:

• Reducing the cost of downtime. DevOps for SAP can provide more rigorous processes and improve quality, stability, and risk controls, all of which combine to reduce production downtime by up to 70%. This has significant business impact – IDC estimate that critical application failure costs up to $1 million per hour, while Gartner use $5,600 per minute as a benchmark cost for ‘network downtime’.
• Delivering business value early. DevOps can decrease development cycles and enable you to deliver solutions faster, which increases revenue and strengthens your competitive edge. If you can estimate the potential value of a change (e.g. a new feature) then you’ll be able to indicate the additional income (or cost saving) that earlier delivery could generate.
• Eliminating expensive manual effort. DevOps helps to automate the end-to-end development and delivery process. In some cases firms have automated 90% of the SAP development lifecycle cycle. That adds value in numerous ways, such as by reducing errors, increasing volume of change and freeing team members to do additional value-add work.
• Removing rework and waste. Endless loops of QA and development occur when solutions are deployed incorrectly or incompletely, or the requirements are ambiguous. DevOps shifts quality left and massively increases collaboration between teams to increase development and testing efficiency. Unnecessary Work In Progress may also fall into the category of ‘waste’. Do you know how many transports have been created in your SAP landscape but never deployed?

4. Add some data

To really cement your case, supplement these general outcomes with examples of what they might mean for your business. To do so you’ll need to identify appropriate KPIs that contribute to the cost and/or efficiency of your development and delivery processes. This may not be easy. Some data might be available in the tools you use today but much of it probably will be a ‘best estimate’ based on discussion with members of the team. That’s OK. It’s important to remember that this process is not a science. It’s unlikely that anyone is expecting an amazingly precise cost calculation. The goal is to create a credible, understandable view of the outcomes that DevOps could deliver.

Important metrics might include:

• What’s the volume and frequency of deployment (how many changes do you deliver, and how often)?
• What’s your cycle time (how long does it take to deliver a change from requirement to production)?
• How many cycles of rework does a typical change go through (how many loops from dev to QA to dev?)
• How long do approvals take on average?
• What percentage of deployments fail?
• How many critical production issues occur in a typical month/quarter/year?
• How quickly can you recover if something goes wrong?

Once you have this information you can start to quantify the improvement that DevOps may bring, e.g. how many developer hours does a 90% decrease in manual effort actually make available? Ultimately you may even be able to create an estimate of the cost of an ‘average’ change and therefore the overall financial savings that DevOps for SAP can deliver.

5. Be clear on scope and approach

It’s important to set expectations effectively regarding the scope of the project you are proposing. If your intention is to start small and evolve as you prove out the method, make sure that’s clear – you’ll be more likely to secure the approval you need. On the other hand if you’re starting with a large project or making a wholesale change in your team’s approach it’s important to make sure the implications are transparent, including short-term risks that may lead to long-term gains. It’s also worth looking beyond SAP. If there are DevOps initiatives in progress in other parts of your organization, you may benefit from aligning your proposal with those programmes to leverage positive sentiment and maybe even budget and resources that are already available.

Automating your way to success

Following this outline will help you to put together a story that justifies the adoption of DevOps for SAP in terms of business outcomes rather than purely technical benefits. But remember – the amount of work you need to put into your business case will vary. For example if you’re asking to start a small trial project in a company that has already adopted DevOps, maybe you won’t need all that detailed cost analysis to get management buy-in. Tailor your proposal to the people and circumstances you’re dealing with. Once the business case is approved, you’ll be ready to start implementing the new tools and processes that will help you to successfully bring DevOps into your SAP environments.

Author: James Roberts

Source: SAP

The 4 major cybersecurity threats to business intelligence

Everywhere a business looks, there are risks, pitfalls, threats, and potential problems. We live in a world where there’s very little separation between the physical and the digital. While this may be beneficial in some ways, it’s problematic in others. When it comes to cybersecurity, businesses have to account for an array of technical and intensive challenges protecting their intelligence.

4 Major cybersecurity threats

For better or worse, cloud computing, the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning have converged to create a connected environment that businesses must access without exposing themselves to hackers, cyber criminals, and other individuals and groups with unsavory intents. In 2019, it’s the following issues that are most pertinent and pressing:

1. The rise of cryptojacking

As the swift and malicious rise of ransomware has shown, criminal organizations will go to any lengths to employ malware and profit. This year, cryptojacking is a major topic.

“Cryptojacking, otherwise known as “cryptomining malware”, uses both invasive methods of initial access and drive-by scripts on websites to steal resources from unsuspecting victims,” according to SecurityMagazine.comc. “Cryptojacking is a quieter, more insidious means of profit affecting endpoints, mobile devices, and servers: it runs in the background, quietly stealing spare machine resources to make greater profits for less risk.”

2. Lack of confidence in the marketplace

There’s a widespread lack of confidence in cybersecurity among customers and consumers in the marketplace. This limits many of the opportunities businesses have to implement much-needed change.

This lack of confidence stems from highly publicized data breaches and cybersecurity issues. Take the US presidential election in 2016, for example. Despite that no proof of election tampering has been found, the media has led people to believe that there was some sort of breach. In the process, the notion of online voting seems unsafe, despite the fact that it’s something we need.

In the context of business, every time there’s a major data breach, like Target or Experian, consumers lose trust in the ability of companies to protect their data. (Despite the fact that thousands of companies protect billions of pieces of data on a daily basis.)

The challenge moving forward will be for individual businesses to practice data integrity and promote the right cyber security policies to rebuild trust and gain confidence from their customers.

3. Supply chain attacks

As businesses continue to build up their defenses around key aspects of their businesses, cyber criminals are looking for a softer underbelly that’s less fortified. Many of these attackers are finding it in vulnerable supply chains where risks aren’t completely understood (and where there has to be better cooperation between partners who rarely care to be on the same page).

As we move through 2019, businesses would do well to consider what sensitive information they share with vendors. It’s equally important to consider the risk level of each vendor and which ones are worth working with.

4. Insider threats

According to a recent survey by Bricata on the top network security challenges facing businesses in 2019, 44% of respondents identified insider threats as an issue. (The next closest threat was IT infrastructure complexity at 42%.)

In the context of this survey, insider threats aren’t necessarily malicious actions from employees. Instead, it’s often the result of accidental incidents and well-intended actions that go wrong. Businesses can counteract some of these insider threats by using tools like SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance, which allows businesses to use real-time visualizations to monitor and optimize employee access to data and applications.

Better employee education and training is also a wise investment. Far too many employees remain unaware of the risks facing their employers, continuing to make foolish mistakes without realizing they’re making them.

Moving toward a safer digital future

While some would say we’re already living in the future, it’s important for business leaders to remain cognizant of what’s coming down the innovation pipeline so that the right strategic initiatives can be put into place. In doing so, we can all bask in the optimism of a brighter, safer digital future.

Author: Anna Johansson

Source: SAP