There are some things businesses simply have no control over.

They can’t control inflation, or how aggressively central banks respond to it. They can do little about rising costs, which are pushing their expenses higher while squeezing their customers’ budgets. They also have little control over disruptions to global supply chains.  While some businesses may be able to find a new supplier for that vital but hard-to-get part, there’s a good chance they’ll face delays getting it.

They can, however, hedge against challenging times by taking advantage of the tectonic shift to borderless e-commerce and the international opportunities it presents. Why should they limit their business to one market when they can sell to the world?

Turbulent times ahead, best to be prepared    

Crystal-ball gazing is always a little hazardous, but there’s a consensus among key global institutions that growth is likely to be more constrained in the year ahead. Global real GDP growth, according to IMF, will slow to 3.2% in 2022 and contract further under the impact of tighter monetary policy. While inflation has been a little subdued in Asia than in the west, it’s been challenging enough to prompt central banks to react in a number of markets.

An environment with higher inflation and slower growth, coupled with the sting of sluggish supply chains, is posing a threat to many businesses.

But it’s not all bad news. After two years of restrictions brought on by the pandemic, many countries have reopened their borders, with revenge travel seeing tourists flocking to beaches and malls. More significantly, the pandemic created a boom in e-commerce, which is expected to continue as people become more comfortable shopping at online stores and beyond their borders. This massive shift to e-commerce presents new opportunities for businesses, who now have easier access to international markets than they have ever had before.

PAYPAL WANTS TO HELP SMES FUTURE PROOF THEIR DIGITAL BUSINESS

Aaron Raj | 25 October, 2021

Borderless e-commerce to the rescue

For many businesses – the future is digital and global. It’s not just easier to be online and sell internationally, it’s a rapidly growing market for businesses of all kinds.

Statistics show that online retail sales around the world are expected to grow by 50%, reaching a staggering US$7.4 trillion by 2025. PayPal’s 2022 Borderless Commerce Report found that e-commerce is growing by double digits in every market we surveyed in Asia. The sole exception was China where China’s e-commerce market is larger than the next 10 markets combined, and shopping innovations like livestreaming e-commerce are trends that the rest of the world is still catching up to.

Across Asia, customers are more willing than ever to buy from overseas. In fact, 42% of online shoppers surveyed said they were more comfortable with shopping cross-border than they were in 2020. In Japan, there is a growing trend to buy internationally, with the rate of cross-border e-commerce rising 10% from previous year.

Also, consumers across the region are getting more comfortable shopping not just from home, but on-the-go from their mobile devices. Laptop and large screens are getting replaced rapidly by smart devices. In China, an astonishing 96% of respondents said they shop via smartphone. The number is 85% in Hong Kong SAR and 84% in Singapore. Even for Japan, where conventional shopping experiences remain popular, 77% shop on their phones. The message to merchants is clear: for those looking to succeed in Asia, the mobile experience is paramount. Businesses need to think how they can tie the offline and online mobile experience to create a seamless and personalized purchase journey.

Social media is equally important as a marketing channel for cross-border transactions. In Hong Kong SAR, for example, 47% of online shoppers surveyed who shop cross-border find an international site via social media, predominantly through Facebook or Instagram. How businesses leverage these channels and adopt influencer marketing strategies will likely make a difference to their bottom line.

Interestingly, out of all Asian markets we surveyed, consumers were in every case likely to buy from other Asian markets including Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, China. The reason is pretty simple: they think they can get a better deal. Price is even taking precedence over instant gratification, with 61% of surveyed shoppers saying they will endure longer shipping times for a lower price.

But price isn’t everything. There has also been a clear trend towards ethical considerations when consumers make a purchase. In China, including the Hong Kong SAR, shoppers are increasingly conscious about a brand’s value and are willing to pay a premium for those who demonstrate integrity in how they do business.

Samba Natarajan, SVP, Growth Markets, PayPal

Curating seamless digital experience

As e-commerce becomes more ingrained in our daily lives, businesses are using novel shopping experiences like livestream commerce, voice commerce, or shopping through augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) apps to stand out – and shoppers are noticing.

What remains unchanged on a shopper’s mind, though, is security, convenience, and overall experience.

Undoubtedly, customers in the global e-commerce wave want a seamless digital experience. Profound changes in consumer shopping behaviors today require brands to be creative when they upgrade their checkout experience online. Thankfully, setting up payments for a global business is easier than ever.

Retailers can seek out partnerships that will help them elevate their digital experience  for customers and keep up with the trends. Partnering with PayPal, for example, can enable Asian businesses to leverage one of the best cross-border payment solutions. That, in turn, will help them reach customers beyond their borders.

The views of this article is that of the author and may not represent the views of Tech Wire Asia. 

The post Reaching customers beyond borders is key to thriving in turbulent times appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

With multitudes of applications and information sources all creating mountains of data, ensuring the data is managed and delivered to the right team at the right time can be overwhelming. Organizations must find a better, simpler way to access and analyze their data efficiently – doing so is key to making better data-driven decisions and winning in a saturated market.

In the recent Demystifying Data Integration: Automation Hacks Every IT Professional Should Know webinar hosted by SnapLogic, a leader in intelligent integration and enterprise automation; SnapLogic industry experts Jeremiah Stone, Chief Technology Officer, and David Wilmer, Principal Product Marketing Manager, broke down data integration.

From data integration challenges, the pros and cons of modern data integration methods, the benefits of automation and API management, and how enterprise automation makes organizations more competitive in a cut-throat landscape; it’s a must-watch for any leader who wants to drive success for his/her organization.

AUSTRALIAN CENSUS DATA SHOWS TECH IS CHANGING THE LABOR FORCE

Joe Devanesan | 13 October, 2022

Data integration is critical to the success of organizations today

“Organizations know that integrated data instills data trust and that trust is critical in basing important business decisions on analytics,” Wilmer says. “But regardless of data integration’s importance, many organizations are still finding it difficult.”

In fact, according to recent SnapLogic research in partnership with Vanson Bourne, 83% of ITDMs (IT decision-makers) are not completely satisfied with the performance and output of their data management and data warehousing solutions. This dissatisfaction stems from issues relating to data formatting, regulations, and speed of data movement and accessibility within the organization.

On average, enterprises have approximately 254 applications, and 40-60 tools per team, and more than half (56%) of SaaS applications are not owned or managed by a company IT department. As app sprawl increases, data from each app gets siloed and becomes inaccessible to other parts of the organizations, teams, and apps.

James Campbell, Regional Manager Australia & New Zealand, SnapLogic

The data trust divide

According to the same SnapLogic research, more than half (53%) of respondents say they do not entirely trust their data for decision-making. Wilmer says this isn’t surprising, considering the number of disconnected data sources organizations typically have.

“At the same time, 40% don’t completely trust their data for decision-making because poor integration means data is missing or incomplete,” he points out. “Disparate data sources increase data silos. That means your data can’t flow between systems, which lowers the confidence in data.”

No data integration means no data insights, which leads to impaired decision-making – it’s an equation that adds up to adverse business outcomes and poor user experience. In fact, the average organization reports losing more than AU$1.45 million each year due to poor data management. To remedy this and leverage the power of SaaS, data must be integrated.

Breaking down modern data integration methods

To drive automation and better user experiences, data needs to be integrated across a variety of applications and systems within an enterprise. There are a number of ways to achieve that integration. However, many are complex and less than user-friendly.  Let’s take a look at some modern data integration methods.

Data Federation: An integration and access layer that sits atop disparate and distributed data sources and enables them to be accessed as if they were a single source.

Pros:

• Data stays in original sources
• No need to migrate data
• Lower cost

Cons:

• Latency delays when querying
• Data and apps remain separate

Data Virtualisation: A virtual database that serves as a data access layer to applications and requires similarly formatted data or strict data models.

Pros:

• Querying is faster than federated

Cons:

• Data needs to be formatted
• May require data modeling
• Not as fast as more modern ways

Data Lakes: Storage repository that becomes a destination for disparate data sources. Data is moved to the lake, which can be small or extremely large. Handles a wide variety of data formats.

Pros:

• Deploy on-premise or in the cloud
• Can serve as a central data repository
• Data is easily accessible

Cons:

• Special skills required to manage
• Data professionals must handle data
• Slower query results
• Can become data dumping ground

Modern Cloud Data Warehouses: Data warehouses perform all the heavy lifting to transform non-relational data files into a relational structure that makes it easier and faster to extract and analyze data.

Pros:

• Supports multiple formats
• Uses column formatting
• Faster access and analysis
• Separates storage from compute
• Can integrate with data lakes

Cons:

• May be better to separate out data lakes
• Limits org to the same data warehouse
• Slower query results
• Can become a data dumping ground

(Source – Shutterstock)

Hacks to streamline and simplify your data

Leveraging modern tools and technology is the ultimate hack organizations can implement to streamline and simplify complex integration processes. The first way to do this is by eliminating manual coding. “Manual coding is tedious,” Wilmer says. “It’s prone to errors. It requires specialized skills. So you want to look for a modern platform that provides low/no code solutions.”

Low/no code solutions benefit entire organizations because they can be used by everyone, regardless of profession. These easy-to-use solutions empower staff to solve complex problems without relying on IT engineers to make sense of the data first.

“Everyone from tech-savvy engineers to business-savvy analysts needs to have access to data when and where they need it,” Wilmer stresses. “It should no longer be the bottleneck to business success.”

Stone agrees, adding that while he loves expressive development, code-centric integrations reduce the accessibility of the business rules that are codified into those integrations.

“Organizations reap tonnes of benefits by taking a visual, no/low code approach to integration,” Stone explains. “For one, it’s accessible to people with business knowledge. But also, customer after customer that I’ve worked with finds that it reduces the risk of management and maintenance of those integrations because they’re actually easier to hand off between team members.

“Integration is a clever way to solve a difficult, persistent problem,” he continues. “The combination of seeing how you can empower different skill sets to participate in the integration process and using a model-driven or visual way to create, support, and maintain the integration is a powerful approach to solving any problem.”

Another way to simplify the complex is to focus on event-driven circumstances. Wilmer says there’s still a time and place for ‘bulk and batch’ processing, but an agile business needs real-time insights, which can only be achieved through streaming and API event-based data movement. “Modern applications need to be connected to share data,” he explains. “Event-driven data sharing powers enterprise automation.”

Beyond that, it’s important to scale with the cloud. “Obviously, when batch and the high-volume process is necessary — and it will be — we want to scale with the cloud,” Wilmer adds. “Cloud computing has brought a seemingly limitless ability to reach peak performance and data processing.

“A data integration platform cannot be the bottleneck to achieving this agility. Look for a data platform that is born on the cloud and has the same ability to automatically scale with the cloud to maintain the desired performance.”

Finally, when it comes to simplification, think: about consolidating integration. “It shouldn’t take four separate tools that specialize in only one or two methods of data integration to achieve business goals and objectives,” Wilmer insists. “Look for a complete integration platform that can do all four simultaneously to achieve integration, application integration, API management and governance.”

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Muhammad Zulhusni | 10 October, 2022

Winning with intelligent integration and automation

The enterprises that will win in the data economy are those that can harness data from every source and turn it into powerful insights. With data as the driving force of the future, it’s imperative to have an integration platform that can seamlessly integrate, automate and mobilize data to any data warehouse with a simple, powerful solution.

Successful integration leads to positive business outcomes and desirable user experiences. That’s why data-driven organizations integrate data to build a single source of truth. “This takes blending operational data with historical data, which involves data warehousing, capturing real-time data and streamlining data for analytics — all things that deliver immediate and tailored customer experiences,” Wilmer says.

“The more automated this becomes, the quicker you can achieve these outcomes. Enterprise automation drives efficiencies in technology, so you can deliver the goals and promises of your business.”

Stone adds, “Think of it this way, everyone always wants to eat the ice cream first. But you have to eat your broccoli first. Integration is like eating your broccoli to get strong and get those payoffs and benefits.”

Watch the full, on-demand webinar here.

The views in this article is that of the author and may not represent the views of Tech Wire Asia. 

[About the Author]

James Campbell, Regional Manager, Australia New Zealand at SnapLogic

James Campbell is Regional Manager, Australia New Zealand at SnapLogic. With nearly two decades of experience, James is a seasoned B2B tech leader with a strong track record of managing high-performance teams while consistently delivering against key business objectives. James thrives on helping customers derive immense value from SnapLogic technology.

About SnapLogic
SnapLogic powers the automated enterprise. The company’s self-service, AI-powered integration platform helps organizations connect applications and data sources, automate common workflows and business processes, and deliver exceptional experiences for customers, partners, and employees. Thousands of enterprises around the world rely on the SnapLogic platform to integrate, automate, and transform their business. Learn more at snaplogic.com.

Connect with SnapLogic via its Blog, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

The post SnapLogic experts discuss the superpower of great data integration   appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Intelligent automation (IA) has a role to play in bringing this reality to life. An astonishing 81% of oil and gas global executives agree that a digital-first workforce needs to be developed over the next 10 years. A similar sentiment was noted in a recent Asian Power and SS&C Blue Prism-hosted webinar, which observed that the global industry is beginning to apply IA and artificial intelligence (AI) to almost every aspect of sustainable energy production and distribution, and large organizations have begun adopting automation platforms to deliver real change.

DEMAND FOR INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA DRIVES ENDAVA EXPANSION PLANS

Aaron Raj | 24 August, 2022

As such, the offshore oil and gas industry has been catching on to the notion, with 18.6%  of the total industrial automation jobs being made up by the APAC region, an increase from 15.1% in the same quarter last year.

IA can help by driving innovation, filling some of the skills gap for engineers, and enhancing data usage and operational efficiency. Much of this sector is process-driven, yet many of these tasks are still operated manually and with legacy systems. This creates value-obstructing data siloes, which IA can help break down, offering insights and analysis to inform progress promoting decision-making. Together, these outcomes enhance cash flows while helping meet emerging sustainability objectives and requirements.

What is the role of oil and gas in today’s regional economy?

Asia has accounted for over 70% of the world’s total oil demand since 1985, and will soon surpass North America.  Alternative energy sources have not yet advanced to the point where we can effectively use them to replace all the world’s oil and gas demands. Furthermore, as we move forward, we must remember, developing economies are going to struggle to facilitate their industrial needs without oil and gas as they have not had the capacity of developed countries to invest in clean energies and technologies.

Although we are not at the point where we can say goodbye to oil and gas, this does not absolve us of the responsibility to transition to a renewable energy supply. The O&G industry in Southeast Asia has a large role to play in bringing forward a global net-zero economy, which is estimated to need US$2 trillion in infrastructure investment through 2030.

The industry is working to make progress when it comes to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, as doing so has become an economic, moral, and reputational imperative. A number of oil and gas companies have established net-zero-emissions targets and are persevering with decarboniatzion efforts despite the economic volatility of the past few years. This includes Petronas, the Malaysian oil and gas giant that announced its aim to hit net zero by 2050 driven by its need to build a more sustainable business amidst the global energy transition.

(Source – Shutterstock)

How is IA helping the industry reach its ESG targets?

The sector’s efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change center around three primary areas: reducing CO₂ emissions, reducing methane emissions, and recycling CO₂. IA can support in replacing manual tasks with automation, relieving people to unleash efficiency and focus on value-adding transformative work.

Any movement in this space will require substantial research and development, combined with innovation. This requires effective and complete data usage, which is impossible with outdated IT infrastructures and siloed information. By connecting legacy systems with IA, unstructured and structured data can easily be consolidated, and actionable insights can be uncovered organization-wide – speeding up decision-making, promoting fast problem-solving, and assisting with meeting future compliance and regulatory standards.

Employing IA can free workers to focus on experimentation, innovation, and processes for detecting, measuring, and mitigating emissions levels. It can be used to measure progress and success in reaching emissions targets through impact analytics and help businesses ensure they’re operating in line with regulations, which can be costly and cumbersome.

We don’t know what the solutions are going to be in 20 years, but the faster we test and adapt different solutions – whether hydrogen, electric, or something else entirely – the closer we’ll be to a long-term answer.

Looking to the future

As the oil and gas industry works to bring this reality to the fore, we’re seeing lines between this sector, the energy sector, and the telecommunications sector begin to blur. The business model is evolving –  O&G businesses are diversifying and expanding to adjacent areas, such as hydrogen and carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). They’re working to establish their leadership and expertise in the renewable space for a greener future.

It is a necessary transformation if we are to leave the world a livable place for our children and grandchildren. There is still time for progress on this issue and this is an empowering reality – but innovation, research, and development will be critical on this journey to clean energy, which is where IA can help.

Article by Saranjit Singh, V.P. Telecommunications and Utilities APAC, SS&C Blue Prism

The post How intelligent automation is helping the oil and gas industry drive sustainability goals appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

One of the latest buzzwords in the cyber security industry is a ‘Zero Trust’ security model. In short, a zero-trust model basically means you do not leave any room for errors at all and do not trust anyone or anything.

Owing to a hybrid workplace led by the after-effects of the pandemic and several emerging technologies such as the Metaverse, Web 3.0, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, the cybersecurity industry is working hard as usual to be as future-ready as possible. But since we are yet to see the evolution of these technologies and its impact, we need to tread carefully when using these technologies.

BREAKING THE MYTHS OF ZERO TRUST MODEL AND UNDERSTANDING HOW IT CAN PROTECT YOUR ORGANIZATION

Correspondents | 30 September, 2022

So, what exactly is Zero trust? Is it a new product? Is it a certification or a mere buzzword within the cybersecurity industry?

Some organizations are mistaking zero-trust for an actual product or certification. A zero-trust model is not an actual product or new certification in the cyber security industry. A zero trust security model is deployed to ensure end to end cyber and cloud security. It is deployed for the security of our internal as well as external stakeholders. One of the most important concepts it lives by is ‘never trust, always verify’. It also includes enabling of multi-factor authentication in order to grant access to any application or platform. Additionally, it is also about embracing micro-segmentation of security perimeters to avoid any security breach.

Dave Russell, Vice President of Enterprise Strategy, Veeam

Any new security features or model is not completely risk-free without building compliance and good habits among the employees. Similarly, zero trust is all about building good habits within your employees. It is also about ensuring that your employees enable multi-factor authentication when accessing any apps or platforms. It is an added form of compliance layer which shouldn’t be bypassed by the IT Admin, someone at the top level or even the deployer. There should be a top to bottom approach and a must for all employees to authenticated and validated continuously to build a better security posture within the organization.

A zero-trust model isn’t just about multi-factor authentication. It also requires all the users to be authenticated, authorized and have their security configurations continuously validated to access any kind of application or data. This is done as an additional layer of security. This model does have various benefits such as remote authentication and verification by your employees. This will allow them to work peacefully in a remote or a hybrid situation.

So, can you adopt the zero-trust model whenever you want?

Before deploying any new security model, we need to understand the return on investment. We need to know whether we really need it. We need to understand that while zero trust is an approach to secure the most important assets of the business, it’s equally as important to know whether the ‘juice is worth the squeeze’.

You already need to be a digital organization as you decide to deploy zero-trust security. For you to apply the zero-trust model within your organization, you need to be an already digital organization that has digital assets that need cloud and cyber protection. Your employees should have digital assets on which they can verify themselves.

We don’t need to jump into every bandwagon, deploy every new technology that is just launched. We need to understand our security needs first and then act accordingly. Your cyber security investments will only be worthwhile if you and your employees are willing to commit to it on a long-term basis and build good habits in order to ensure complete cyber security.

The views in this article is that of the author and may not represent the views of Tech Wire Asia 

The post Breaking the myths of Zero Trust model and understanding how it can protect your organization appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

With the frequent usage of antibiotics to treat a wide range of common bacterial infections, from urinary tract infections to sepsis and more, bacteria are becoming more resistant to treatment. This is a global phenomenon on the rise which requires urgent attention. Failing to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will result in at least 10 million extra deaths globally by 2050 – more than the number of people who currently die from cancer.

Pharmaceutical companies worldwide urgently need to strengthen their investment in antibiotics development, but they all face the problem of high costs and long development cycles. A quick look at the numbers confirms this. According to industry groups PhRMA and BIO, on average it takes more than US$1 billion and over 10 years to put a new drug on the market, from development to approval. But even with all that investment, 90% of clinical drug development fails. A faster, more effective approach to drug development is needed. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can play an important role in the research part of drug R&D, readying more candidate drugs for clinical trials, cheaper and faster, contributing to the digital transformation of pharmaceutical companies and shorter waits by patients.

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In 2021, a survey of biopharma professionals by GlobalData revealed that AI was expected to have the greatest impact on the pharma. It is perhaps not surprising that since 2015 there have been over 100 partnerships between AI vendors and major pharma companies. AI has significant application potential in the drug discovery field as it can speed up the time needed to research and develop new drug compounds in drug discovery, helping researchers to discover novel chronic disease treatments in months as opposed to years. It can also vastly reduce the research and development costs, by up to as much as 70% in some cases.

As AI can help identify specific compounds likely to be more successful in drug trials it also helps increase the success rate of drugs in trials. This is part of the reason why all of the world’s top ten drug makers such as GSK, Novartis, Pfizer, and Sanofi, are now investing in AI either via collaborations or technology acquisition. The market size for ‘artificial intelligence for drug discovery and development was valued at US$520 million in 2019 and according to Grand View Research is expected to reach US$4,815 million by 2027, registering a CAGR of 31.6% from 2020 to 2027.

A major challenge in new drug discovery lies in the screening of hundreds of millions of existing drug molecules. Traditionally, drug screening performed by experts in labs is costly, slow, and has a high failure rate. Recognizing the potential of AI, Huawei Cloud is taking an ongoing, long-term approach to investment in the healthcare industry, including AI-Aided drug design research. One such effort is in drug discovery. Huawei Cloud Pangu Drug Molecule Model jointly developed with Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica can assist pharmaceutical companies to design small molecule drugs.

(Source – Huawei)

The model has been trained using the data of 1.7 billion compounds and can predict the physicochemical properties of drug compounds that are known to work and be safe and score them based on their ‘druglikeness’. Researchers can then do targeted experiments to verify drug compounds that have the highest scores. Moreover, the Pangu Drug Molecule Model’s molecule optimizer can be used to optimize the structure of lead compounds, minimizing the potential side effects of the new drugs on humans.

This model is the basis for the Huawei Cloud AI-Aided Drug Design Service, the first commercial AI-assisted pharmaceutical SaaS platform in China. With the service, pharmaceutical companies can reduce the costs of trial and error, accelerating the discovery of lead compounds from several years to just one month. Starting with the APAC region, then the Middle East, this service will be made available overseas.

More than 1.2 million people died in 2019 as a direct result of antimicrobial-resistant bacterial (AMR) infections. This figure is higher than the number of deaths caused by HIV in the same year. The WHO estimates that an expected US$ 1.2 trillion in expenditure per year is expected by 2050 due to the rise of AMR. Using Huawei Cloud AI-Aided Drug Design Services, Dr. Liu Bing of the First Affiliated Hospital of the Medical School at Xi’an Jiaotong University led his team to develop Drug X, a drug used to target antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR is a growing and expensive problem. The discovery of lead compounds was accelerated to just one month, and R&D costs were slashed by 70%.

Research on super antimicrobial drugs has never been more urgent. Drug X has been verified by animal experiments and is undergoing preclinical research for an Investigational New Drug (IND) application. Patent applications for Drug X have been filed in multiple countries. If successful, Drug X has the potential to solve the severe challenge posed by patients facing antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) bacterial infections with no available effective drugs.

(Source – Huawei)

Using the platform, Dr. Liu and his team were able to screen potentially viable compounds from a large-scale database of billions of small molecules that are easy to synthesize. The super-high computing power provided by Huawei Cloud has resulted in a tenfold improvement in drug screening efficiency.

The Pangu Drug Molecule Model has effectively supported commercial services or drug pipeline development cooperation between many pharmaceutical companies and research institutes. But this is just the beginning. With continuous progress and breakthroughs in our independent R&D to address these challenging issues, Huawei Cloud will continue to support and upgrade the medical industry at home and abroad, and work with practitioners in the medical industry to improve human health.

Beyond molecule design and testing, AI algorithms mean that the number of physical tests can be reduced so that they are only necessary to validate results. This is a saving on time and money. However, at this stage, it must be acknowledged that the application of AI in drug discovery is not without challenges. For example, the need for data and samples; the lack of interoperability as layers become more complex; and the translation of traditional research into machine learning.

For the moment, traditional pharma companies still maintain an advantage in terms of regulatory understanding and experience; drug development know-how and experience, and fundamental scientific expertise. The initial success of Pangu Drug Molecule Model is therefore encouraging and exciting for the industry. As the pharma industry faces a revolutionary paradigm shift, safety and efficacy remain the priority.

The views in this article is that of the author and may not reflect the views of Tech Wire Asia. 

The post AI-Assisted Drug Design: Benefits of the Pharma Industry Paradigm Shift  appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

With networks more complex and distributed, threat detection and response are more difficult than ever. As a consequence, organizations are deploying more and more security solutions across their networks. However, this exacerbates security sprawl, giving rise to an untenable situation marked by a lack of centralized management which raises complexity, fragments visibility, and limits incident response.

According to Kearney, more than 25% of organizations in Southeast Asia have more than 10 cybersecurity vendors, while 36% say they deploy more than 10 cybersecurity solutions. A large number of security products in organizations increases complexity, integration costs, and staffing requirements. Furthermore, a joint report by Microsoft and Marsh found that Asian organizations experienced far more breaches than global peers, while over a third of respondents from the region only re-evaluated cybersecurity deployments after an incident.

At the same time, an acute skills gap afflicts the region. Findings from the “2021(ISC)² Cybersecurity Workforce Study” indicate that the region’s workforce gap stands at 1.42 million — the largest globally. Exacerbating the security sprawl, the skills shortage poses yet another risk that threatens to jeopardize the cyber resilience and competitiveness of regional organizations.

CAN THE OPEN CYBERSECURITY SCHEME FRAMEWORK IMPROVE CYBERSECURITY COMPLICATIONS?

Aaron Raj | 17 August, 2022

With these risks in tandem with rapidly expanding digital attack surfaces, organizations will find it increasingly difficult to protect against advanced threats. An assortment of point security products creates silos and aggravate the disconnect between IT and SecOps, raising the risk of cyber events and breach. IT and security professionals are facing challenges in managing assets, visibility, and integrating multiple security vendors.

A cohesive and reliable solution with clear visibility and consistent control will then be nigh on impossible. Simply put, if tools are not designed to natively work together, IT teams are forced into bolting together solutions through complicated workarounds. The troubleshooting required for maintenance means that such workarounds consume a considerable amount of IT overhead and risk logistical efficiency.

Integration is Imperative

Daniel Kwong, Field Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for South East Asia and the Hong Kong region, Fortinet

Amid these myriad risks, organizations need the ability to securely introduce digital innovation, so that digitization does not run the risk of compromising their ability to shield against cyber threats. However, complex and fragmented infrastructures from assorted point security products obscure network and security operations as they typically operate in silos.

In a survey earlier this year, we found that more than 80% of organizations are either actively planning to work with cybersecurity vendors for a consolidation strategy or are looking forward to doing so in the not-too-distant future.

Providing improved integration, and consolidating security reduce functional gaps, enabling organizations to reap considerable savings and efficiencies around costs and resource allocations. In turn, this frees up organizations to shore up their cyber resilience.

Using a single, central set of tools, procedures, and systems removes siloes through a centralized network. However, for this management model to be successful, eliminating complexity and simplifying network operations are critical. Centralized management needs to span all distributed branch environments so that configurations and policies can be delivered and orchestrated to enable swift identification and correction of weaknesses.

Through centralized network security management, organizations wrestle back control of all security features via a single server. In practical terms, handling data streams to and from a single server ensures organizations unify visibility to beef up data security, while removing redundancies.

Realizing Real Comprehensive Integration

With the emergence of more and more sophisticated threats, organizations need to be able to keep up with a highly dynamic cybersecurity threat landscape.

Here is where integrating advanced threat intelligence into threat response processes is crucial. Doing so immediately evolves the security posture of organizations, ensuring preparedness against the latest threats and trends. To be on the ball and take the sting out of impending threats, organizations need to be able to integrate different security products and modules, by coupling to each other through standardized interfaces that are combined with unique framework design.

To address security sprawl, organizations must prioritize solutions that allow increased visibility into the threat landscape. Standardized threat intelligence across the digital architecture allows insights from security tools to be quickly leveraged, enabling coordinated and automated responses.

Adopting broad, integrated, and automated platforms is vital to achieving interoperability across a vast ecosystem of network environments and third-party solutions; providing centralized management and visibility and end-to-end automation by adapting to changing network environments.

Through a cohesive, fully integrated security infrastructure, organizations arm themselves with unified protection, actionable threat intelligence, and automated real-time advanced detection across the threat surface. As a result, organizations not only reduce the effort needed for managing the IT infrastructure but also keep their networks and can confidently manage their entire security infrastructure.

The views in this article is that of the author and may not reflect the views of Tech Wire Asia. 

The post Simplifying the adoption of security tools for increased cybersecurity protection appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

FinOps is a bit of a double-edged sword. It is about maximizing value by improving efficiency throughout the business. With the Cloud, it is possible to look at efficiency hour by hour or minute by minute. In these challenging times, it is important for companies to continue to innovate, not only on their products and services but also on how they allocate their resources. Reducing portfolio clutter and redirecting resources to opportunities can reap the highest returns. The right investments can accelerate the digital transformation journey and create new revenue streams while ensuring the foundation stays intact.

In the 13th edition of BFSI IT Summit 2022, I shared an example of a company’s database that may be heavily used during the day, but dormant during the nighttime, which could actively incur costs without delivering value. So, you can look at that component and not only go to the cloud, but you can utilize the best parts of the cloud so, at two o’clock in the morning, you’re not paying anything because it’s pay-as-you-use, and there’s no usage.

Proponents will point to potential savings of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Organizations love to hear that, it’s a great headline, and they start to get really excited. But that is actually getting caught in what I call the waste cycle.

Waste in the cloud is paid for thrice

Nathan Besh, Senior Director, Product Management and Technical Evangelism, Apptio

Waste in the cloud is expensive because, in effect, you are paying for it three times: when it is created, when it is analyzed and identified as waste, and when it is removed. The cost of achieving the potential savings may not be insignificant. It could consume some or even outweigh the potential savings.

Just trying to fully understand your cloud costs & usage can take a lot of time and effort.

Just looking for redundancies and unused components takes a lot of effort. Similarly, removing the waste is usually far from simple. In order to extract the real value from FinOps you need to get out of the waste cycle and stop believing that a reactive approach is doing FinOps. Ultimately, understanding what needs to be done to stop it from happening again is by far the most important challenge.

It’s about business insights, and asking the tough questions like “Why is this waste here, how did it get here, and how did we allow it to continue?”.

MALAYSIA HAS A NEW GOVERNMENT HYBRID CLOUD SERVICE

Aaron Raj | 9 May, 2022

FinOps provides insight and clarity

There is a temptation to say FinOps enables organizations to understand the costs in the cloud. But I prefer to think of it as providing insight and clarity to improve efficiency. It is the way that you extract maximum business value from your actual investments.

Before it can be fully utilized, the tools need to be configured correctly, and users need to be trained. For large organizations, the size and scale of the operations mean there are challenges with the tools you want to use.

We are talking at least hundreds of thousands, millions of lines of information that need to be processed multiple times a day. On top of that, the data needs to be enriched. Things like your organizational information, your account structure, and things like tagging, so that you can ask it a business question and get a meaningful business answer back.

Changing perception of hybrid cloud

Another subtopic the panel discussed was the trend of moving to a hybrid cloud. I think the perception of hybrid really needs to change. It is interesting to see over the last five years, the change in messaging, and also the change in investment.

Vendors and the industry are putting a lot of effort into making hybrid clouds work, resulting in a streamlining in its implementation, including tools that now span the cloud and on-premise. It’s very feasible from an operational perspective to operate in a hybrid model, but also much more feature-rich. Any innovation that happens in the cloud, all that good stuff is instantly in hybrid as well. A unified view of your hybrid IT investments—whether on-premise or in the cloud—as well as consumption across business units helps identify excess or duplicative consumption and optimize your investments.

FinOps solutions turn your raw data into powerful, actionable insights that CIOs and CFOs can use to communicate with other business leaders to modify behavior and alter consumption.

Ultimately, what is important is that companies get started with FinOps. As long as those first steps are taken, then you will receive immense benefits and returns from FinOps, and will continue to build your FinOps capability and evolve your FinOps journey.

The post The double edge of FinOps: Avoiding the waste cycle to gain meaningful insight appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Data: the key that unlocks success across APAC

A key finding in the Sisense report reveals that data is, essentially, ‘gold’ for boosting product price and customer loyalty. Nearly half (45%) of respondents agree that offering personalized, customized data and analytics to customers could allow them to increase the average selling price of their products or services. At the same time, 43% of respondents also agree that data and analytics would help build loyalty and retain customers.

For a fintech company like Credit Clear, Jason agrees that embracing data analytics is key to a brighter business future. He’s seen it firsthand at Credit Clear. “Data has been key to our success,” he says.

Credit Clear, an advanced customer accounts receivables platform, providing financial wellbeing through frictionless repayments, manages more than 835,000 active customer accounts across a range of industries, including transport, financial services, insurance, government, and utilities.

Thinking back to Credit Clear just three years ago when he joined, Jason shares that they were “a scrappy fintech” getting great results. Credit Clear had incredible talent, a disruptive product in the market, and many early adopters on the platform, ranging from financial services to progressive collectors. There was one problem though — it wasn’t sharing this success story with customers

“We were doing great. But we weren’t great at telling our clients about it and engaging them on that story,” he recalls.

Discovering new business frontiers with data

Jason Serafino, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Credit Clear

The debt collection space is a conservative space. In trying to move the dial, Credit Clear had an “aha!” moment. “We were sitting on this really interesting data, but it was kind of locked up at the moment in the system,” Jason explains. “So, we started this journey of developing analytics offerings and engaging with our clients, showing them what we were doing and talking to them about the results.”

In just over a handful of years, the company has made massive strides in the debt-collection space. A true pioneer, Credit Clear is setting an industry benchmark by demonstrating how critical a data-driven approach is to succeed in a competitive and increasingly uncertain landscape.

The outcome was amazing. “We immediately saw a dramatic shift in our engagement with clients,” he says. “Suddenly, they were very engaged with what we were doing. I credit analytics and the extraction of value, that monetization, to our growth.”

As a hybrid, end-to-end provider of debt collections services led by award-winning artificial intelligence (AI), Credit Clear has been disrupting the traditional debt collections industry with enhanced collection rates and an improved customer engagement and experience. The company has grown rapidly in the past year, increasing revenue through a string of material new client wins; several of which the company expects to become top-ten clients by revenue, as well as achieving significant growth through existing clients giving the company more business.

With a team of 200 staff, including data scientists and software engineers, the company has set new revenue records each quarter and is currently on a revenue run rate of $37.44 million.

How Credit Clear leveraged the power of data democratization

Rohan Persaud, Director of Channels and Alliances APAC at Sisense

Interestingly, Sisense’s report reveals that when it comes to rating their organization’s ability to maximize the value of its data, respondents across the APAC region gave, on average, only a six out of 10 rating. For Credit Clear, clearing that hurdle was all about data democratization — the accessibility of information.

“We wanted to unlock that data and make it available to both our internal teams and our external customers in a way that would enable them to ‘slice and dice’ and find insights in it,” Jason says.

“It sounds simple, but it can be really difficult to do. But that’s the essence of it. If you have all this data locked up that’s only accessible by one very technical person, you’re shortening your window of opportunity.”

That’s because data is, in a way, perishable. It has a shelf life. Organizations have to use it before it’s not relevant anymore. Especially, Jason says, that data has to have meaning. And that’s achieved by getting it into more people’s hands.

DATA BEST PRACTICE ACROSS APAC NEEDS ‘LESS TALK, MORE ACTION,’ EXPERTS SAY

Aaron Raj | 18 August, 2022

Navigating risk

According to the report, data transmission, analysis, and risk management remain top concerns with almost two-thirds (61%) of respondents saying they are concerned about data transmission. Furthermore, respondents also shared that effective analysis of data (58%) and inadequate systems in place to manage risk (58%) are also a concern.

Jason concurs, saying those challenges resonate with Credit Clear as well. But it’s something they’ve navigated well. “Risk management and security management are things I’m very committed to simply because of the nature of our platform,” he says.

“My best advice to others is to keep it simple. In fintech, there are benefits in simplifying the infrastructure. If you can simplify, then everything gets easier.”

Credit Clear leveraged Sisense in its platform to provide access to internal and external analysts. “Since it’s all on one simplified platform, governance controls and risk management have become so much easier,” Jason says.

Future-proofing businesses in APAC: challenges and opportunities

When it comes to business resilience, Sisense’s report finds that 59% of APAC data professionals say leveraging data future-proofs business performance. However, 15% are fearful of change, risk-averse, say change is too risky, and would prefer to keep the status quo.

Jason admits he’s not entirely surprised. To an extent, he saw a similar aversion when trying to get Credit Clear customers to embrace digital solutions. “In the beginning, our customers were naturally reluctant to change the way they were working and had always worked,” he says. “But what really moved the needle was proof. We used data to produce proof points via case studies. That was a game changer. It was enough to actually move the market in our favor.”

In summary, advanced analytics is one of the most powerful tools for business. There’s a treasure trove of information available to any company that’s willing to cast any and all fears aside and unlock it. That’s information that can provide a clear path to growth and profitability.

Read the full Sisense Future of Data Analytics Report 2022 – Asia Pacific Edition here.

The views express in this article is that of the author and may not reflect the views of Tech Wire Asia 

Sisense goes beyond traditional business intelligence by providing organizations with the ability to infuse analytics everywhere, embedded in both customer and employee applications and workflows. Sisense customers are breaking through the barriers of analytics adoption by going beyond the dashboard with Sisense Fusion – the highly customizable, AI-driven analytics cloud platform, that infuses intelligence at the right place and the right time, every time. More than 2,000 global companies rely on Sisense to innovate, disrupt markets and drive meaningful change in the world. Ranked as the No. 1 Business Intelligence company in terms of customer success, Sisense has also been named one of the Forbes’ Cloud 100, The World’s Best Cloud Companies, six years in a row. Visit us at www.sisense.com and connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

The post Credit Clear and Sisense experts unveil how data drives growth across APAC appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Today, developers can use low-code to enhance their digital capabilities and move away from legacy systems. For many organizations, reliance on outdated systems has not only enslaved their business but also stifle digital innovation and compounded technical debt over time. Interestingly, with applications requiring little to no coding experience through low-code, the platform market is forecasted to amount up to US$65 billion by 2027

While low-code enables faster digital transformation, the reality is over time, some legacy systems may just simply no longer be able to support or integrate with modern systems. As businesses continue to become more data-driven and embrace digitalization, one of the biggest challenges they would have to overcome is moving on from their legacy systems.

WHY LOW-CODE IS THE AGILE DEVELOPMENT SOLUTION BUSINESSES NEED RIGHT NOW

Jia Jen Low | 22 April, 2020

According to Suresh Sambandam, CEO of Kissflow, legacy systems can be challenging for a variety of reasons. This includes businesses having outdated or unsupported pieces of equipment and facilities and a shortage of the talent pool needed to keep the applications running is dwindling.

At the same time, most legacy systems today are incapable of supporting the evolving business process and may have even grown unstable or may have performance or scalability difficulties due to years of ad-hoc adjustment and growing numbers. There is also the challenge of ensuring security, patching, and compliance with new rules and regulations.

For Sambandam, since legacy systems face several problems there is a clear need to migrate them to modernized settings intended for the future. And the solution is simply to transform the old system into a low-code platform.

“Low-code platforms efficiently transform the way by which you build software. Furthermore, because low-code platforms provide easy-to-use tools, citizen developers may participate in the migration process. Overall, using a customer-focused, and test-and-learn strategy, low code helps you provide better solutions to your users,” said Sambandam.

Key things to consider while migrating from a legacy system to a low-code platform

Suresh Sambandam, CEO of Kissflow

For businesses hoping to migrate their legacy systems to a low-code platform, Sambandam explained that they needed to start by moving their basic (non-business essential) apps and work their way up to more sophisticated applications while migrating legacy systems.

“It gives you valuable experience, which you can use for more important projects to reduce the chances of costly mistakes. It’s also a good idea to start moving sections of your program that don’t satisfy your end users’ business requirements. It will allow you to show a quick return on investment and will most likely result in management buy-in, allowing you to proceed on your migration route,” said Sambandam.

Sambandam also pointed out that migrating a system to a low-code platform in stages is the best approach to breaking legacy applications monolith. The idea of bimodal IT is another important paradigm to consider while migrating legacy systems. A simple concept, bimodal IT simply means dividing the software development team into two groups. The old application environment (legacy system) will be maintained by one team, while the new software system will be developed by the other.

From there, in a step-by-step migration, the two teams will work closely together to ensure that the old system does not break while the new environment is being built.

Apart from that, it is important to see how low code can be integrated with legacy systems. Sambandam highlighted that many organizations want to take advantage of the latest technology while migrating legacy systems, but sometimes neglect those that can disrupt current systems and services.

“Low-code platforms allow you to keep your legacy system alive for a bit longer by making its functionality available to many other systems. While your core system may be what you wish to maintain, a low-code platform allows you to develop add-ons or new apps on top of it. Consider developing an Android and iOS mobile application on top of your existing CRM system,” he said.

Also, Sambandam mentioned that the reusability of the existing data model is another major benefit of moving to a low-code platform. Organizations may simply utilize the data model that is already in place for a seamless transition since they may begin designing a new user interface while still using the same data model.

Another consideration for businesses when migrating legacy systems is that they must create a solution that is both flexible and adaptable to future needs. Sambandam states that IT staff do not want the new system to become a relic in the future, but the good news is that moving a legacy system to a low-code platform will ensure a smooth transition.

Challenges in migrating 

(Source – Shutterstock)

With that said, Sambandam also underlines the key challenges businesses have when it comes to migrating from a legacy system to a low-code platform. They are as follows:

Tomorrow’s legacy is created by a lack of flexibility – Legacy migrations need the creation of a flexible system that can adjust to changes. The last thing IT wants is for the new system to become a legacy system in the future. Low-code platforms enable companies to use a contemporary app architecture that leverages microservices to improve agility. Look for a platform that makes it simple to create self-contained apps and services that can be integrated and shared, as well as one that allows for quick, frequent change cycles so the system can adapt to changing business demands. To avoid building an unmaintainable set of apps or heaps of machine-generated code, it’s important to choose a future-proof framework.

Apps that are mission-critical fail to deliver at scale –  Many fundamental legacy systems are unable to grow and offer the needed performance. Look for the new solution’s robustness and high availability for mission-critical applications. Automatic failover for continuous operation of business-critical apps is enabled by a low-code platform with a cloud-native design, guaranteeing that they do not have the same performance difficulties as legacy systems.

Inadequate quality assurance – Because most legacy transfer solutions are large and complicated, there is typically insufficient monitoring of the app’s quality. To avoid technological debt and enhance long-term maintainability, it’s critical to be able to proactively monitor and resolve application quality. Look for a low-code platform that includes automated testing, quality assurance, and performance monitoring as part of the development process.

Usability is a last-minute consideration – Usability is frequently an afterthought with this sort of application, lowering ROI. When developing the new solution, employ low-code development to take a user-centric, design-thinking strategy. A better knowledge of the users and the business context may assist remove process gaps in the legacy system, resulting in an end-to-end solution that boosts productivity significantly.

“The scenarios above demonstrate how low-code may be a feasible and advantageous option for legacy modernization. Is it, however, right for you? It solely depends. As with any digital transformation, it’s a great idea to consider all of the choices, along with their advantages and drawbacks,” commented Sambandam.

While businesses may be tempted with fancy sales brochures and business demos, he believes what is most important is that also must examine the system’s competency and compliance, the lifespan, and creditworthiness of a seller, the expense of licensing, and the company’s strategic alignment.

“Application, component, deployment style, organization size, geography, and business – are all segments of the low-code development platform market. With the expanding demand for business applications and the IT industry on a worldwide scale, quick application development is critical to ensuring customer satisfaction and facilitating rapid digitization,” Sambandam concluded.

The post Surmounting legacy systems with low-code   appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

You don’t need me to tell you what a ransomware attack could do to your business. We’ve all read the stories. Even the largest multinational businesses have been brought to a halt by malware encrypting or stealing sensitive data. The result is a Hobson’s choice for IT managers: pay a cyber criminal the demanded ransom or face costly downtime, reputational damage, and regulatory scrutiny.

Just last month, a cybersecurity team discovered that a Malaysian point of sale (POS) and management software provider experienced a data leak. The server located in Singapore was not secured with passwords or encryption, which exposed data belonging to 1 million Malaysian customers. The failure to proactively stop these threats continues to prove costly. As the old saying goes, time is money, and over half of Asia’s organizations agree that downtime in the wake of attacks has tremendous consequences and would rather pay the ransom than halt operations. According to estimates, the impact on revenue per hour was revealed to run from anywhere between US$100,000 to US$5,000,000.

Thankfully, the fate of your business is in your control. Ransomware attacks aren’t always random. Like many crimes, perpetrators deliberately target the vulnerable. Your job is to make sure that your organization’s data is immutable and should the worst happen, you’re well prepared to withstand even the most sophisticated cyber attack.

RANSOMWARE SECURITY BREACHES CAN BE STOPPED WITH CLARITY AND PRIORITIZATION

Muhammad Zulhusni | 24 August, 2022

What not to do

Don’t let disaster recovery planning become a once-a-year checkbox event. Recovery plans need to be current and agile. Cybercriminals are constantly evolving their methods and innovating their attack strategies. Old plans that aren’t revisited can leave you at risk. The question that needs to be asked is: “do you have an up-to-date data security plan in place for when a ransomware attack happens?”  Threat actors will jump at any sign of weakness to plant their code, and coming up with a plan to defend against it is only half the battle. The plan needs to be regularly updated and thoroughly tested to ensure you are in a fit state to combat ransomware.

5 steps to a rock-solid ransomware plan

Calvin Hoon, Regional VP, Asia at Rubrik

Draft a plan – Don’t wait for conditions to be just right to create your plan. Perhaps you’re waiting for a stakeholder to free up time or a digital transformation program to dedicate more resources to the project. It’s easy to find reasons to delay a plan, but all of these reasons give cybercriminals more time and more opportunity to find a way into your valuable data.

Effective ransomware plans should always be a work in progress, evolving and adapting with your business.

Document and communicate – In 2021, organizations across the Asia Pacific were attacked at an alarming rate. In India, 80% of organizations had their data encrypted by cyber threat actors and were locked out from business operations. This number stood at 65 percent among Singaporean organizations, according to the same survey. The need to have an effective plan is critical, but a plan cannot work if it cannot be implemented. That means it must be written down, shared with the right people and teams, and stored somewhere easily accessible. Once you have put pen to paper on a plan, talk it through with internal stakeholders, listen to their feedback, secure necessary approvals, and then ensure everyone understands their role in the event of an attack.

Once the plan is approved, make sure you keep an easily accessible copy of it somewhere safe. There’s no sense in having a ransomware recovery plan if it’s encrypted by the same malware it’s supposed to help you recover from. An online storage service is your friend here, or a secure server housed somewhere off-site.

RANSOMWARE SECURITY BREACHES CAN BE STOPPED WITH CLARITY AND PRIORITIZATION

Muhammad Zulhusni | 24 August, 2022

Prioritize your assets – An essential part of planning involves prioritization. What are the most important applications? Do they depend on other parts of your IT estate? Which data is most sensitive and how will you manage stakeholder relations in the event of a breach?

When it comes to ransomware recovery, it pays to act fast. The Ministry of Communication and Information of Singapore has issued advisories for businesses as they are aware that ransomware attacks are on the rise. Through the Singapore Computer Emergency Response Team (SingCERT), there is an emphasis for businesses to better prepare themselves so they are able to recover and resume business operations quickly.   In order to recover quickly, your business should identify business-critical assets and create backups of your data and operating systems. The faster you can restore business-critical applications, the sooner your  business will be up and running again. This is a key period where the organizations’ reputation can be won or lost during the crisis.

Road-test your recovery – Traditional disaster recovery exercises rely heavily on role play and theoretical scenarios, but oftentimes fail to factor in real life variables. A healthy dose of imagination is needed to appreciate the urgency of a ransom attack. These exercises are unlikely to prepare you for the stress of an attack, nor provide actionable insights into where your plan needs a tweak, or how you can train your team to respond to unanticipated events.

Thankfully, it’s now possible to simulate a ransomware event in a live environment. Using sample data sets, you can put your recovery orchestration plan through its paces, get a better view of how unexpected variables might affect recovery times, and ensure your plan is bomb-proof.

Start preparing now – With the ever-growing threat of ransomware attacks constantly looming, organizations must prioritize creating a dynamic plan to keep their operations up and running in the event of an attack. Devise a plan, work with stakeholders to get approval, and don’t let feedback cycles or competing priorities slow down the implementation process.

The best-prepared IT and security departments understand the importance of this and adopt a nimble approach. They start small, iterate, and improve. The plan is tested and amended at regular intervals and presented anywhere in the business that may be affected by a breach. In the event of an attack, the team is well trained and prepared to respond.

Ransomware attacks are a sad fact of corporate life. But with the right preparation and tools in place, IT security leaders can manage the threat and ensure a swift recovery.

The views in this article is that of the author and may not reflect the views of Tech Wire Asia. 

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