Archive for August 29, 2023

Guest Post: Google Cloud announces new customer, partner and product offerings at Next ‘23

Posted in Commentary with tags on August 29, 2023 by itnerd

Today at Google Cloud Next ‘23, Google was announcing new customers, partners, solutions and products that showcase how Google Cloud is bringing generative AI across its product stack and helping businesses build new AI-powered services and businesses.

Google Cloud also made a number of product announcements across 4 key pillars: 

  • Modern Infrastructure Cloud: Our AI-optimized infrastructure is the leading platform for training and serving generative AI models – with competitive advantages for training performance & scale, model serving price performance, and not to mention support for the latest ML software compilers – like OpenXLA. We’re continuing to deliver workload optimized infrastructure by announcing GKE Enterprise, updating our Google Distributed Cloud portfolio, launching Cross-Cloud Network while expanding our networking offerings with new enhancements, previewing TPU v5e with soon-to-be GA of A3 VMs, and introducing C3A, C3D, and new SAP workload support.
  • Collaboration Cloud: We’re announcing significant updates to Google Workspace that build on recent momentum around incorporating AI as a collaborative partner across our tools. These announcements include:
    • General availability of Duet AI in Google Workspace: Since its launch, thousands of companies and more than a million trusted testers have used Duet AI as a powerful collaboration partner that can act as a coach, source of inspiration, and productivity booster—all while ensuring every user and organization has control over their data. Now, we’re introducing more of what’s coming next, including the general availability of Duet AI for Google Workspace, available everywhere Workspace is sold. [Blog post] 
    • Duet AI in Meet: We’re embedding generative AI across the full spectrum of meetings to help them become less fatiguing and more fulfilling.Updates include the new take notes for me and attend for me features; studio look, lighting & sound; dynamic tiles and face detection; and automatic translated captions.
    • The new Google Chat: We’re unveiling an enhanced Chat experience with powerful new features, including Duet AI in Google Chat, a new home view, redesigned search, smart chips, and much more.Chat is not only great at the basics, now with AI built-in, it’s ready for the future. [Blog post]
  • Developer, Data and AI Cloud: 
    • A variety of announcements that expand Vertex AI’s capabilities and further empower our customers to easily experiment and build with foundation models, customize them with enterprise data, and smoothly integrate and deploy them into applications with built-in privacy, safety features, and responsible AI. This includes updates to our first party models of PaLM 2, Imagen and Codey, and new third party models with Meta’s Llama 2, TII’s Falcon and pre-announcing Anthropic’s Claude 2. A new digital watermarking functionality for Imagen powered by Google DeepMind’s SynthID. New tools to help enterprises get more value out of our models. This includes Vertex AI Extensions and Vertex AI data connectors. And expanded availability for Vertex AI Search and Vertex AI Conversation. 
    • Expanded preview of Duet AI in Google Cloud with general availability coming with General Availability coming later this year. Duet AI can now provide AI assistance across a wide range of Google Cloud products and services to serve more cloud users — spanning developers, operators, data practitioners, and cybersecurity professionals. 
    • We’re announcing several major product innovations to our Data and AI Cloud portfolios to help customers activate AI with a strong data foundation. We’re extending Duet AI capabilities to databases and data analytics with Duet AI in Database Migration Service to assist with the  journey from Oracle to AlloyDB, and Duet AI in BigQuery and Duet AI in Looker, which lets you use natural language and auto-generate SQL, Python, and LOOKML to access and analyze your data. To help developers build performant and scalable gen AI applications using their operational data, we’re announcing AlloyDB AI, an integrated set of capabilities built into AlloyDB for PostgreSQL, available in preview through our downloadable version of AlloyDB, AlloyDB Omni (moving from technology concept to preview at Next). Additionally, to interconnect data and workloads, we’re announcing BigQuery Studio, a single interface for data engineering, analytics, and predictive analysis to simplify end-to-end data workflows. Lastly, we’re announcing Spanner Data Boost,  which allows customers to analyze their Spanner data via services like BigQuery, Dataflow and more, and delivers high-performance, workload-isolated, on-demand processing of operational data to support analytics, reporting and more.
    • We announced three new APIs to help businesses create climate impact at scale and adapt to a changing world. The APIs apply AI and machine learning to environmental data to give businesses helpful information about rooftop solar potential, air quality and pollen. These APIs can help companies make solar a reality for millions of people, and allow businesses to provide environmental information to people in websites and apps, as poor air quality and increasing pollen affects a growing number of people with climate change.
  • Security Cloud: We’re announcing Duet AI in Security across three solution areas for cybersecurity professionals (now in preview): Duet AI in Mandiant Threat Intelligence, Duet AI in Chronicle Security Operations, and Duet AI in Security Command Center. We’re also introducing Mandiant Hunt for Chronicle Security Operations (now in preview), a new managed threat hunting service that integrates Mandiant’s frontline intelligence and expertise with Google Cloud technology to proactively search for undetected attacks. 

You can also read more about our news announcements from CEO Thomas Kurian here. 

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Veridas Voice Biometrics Now Available on Genesys AppFoundry

Posted in Commentary with tags on August 29, 2023 by itnerd

Veridas, a Spanish technology company specializing in digital identity and biometrics, today announces its Voice Biometrics Solution is now available on the Genesys AppFoundry™, a marketplace of solutions offering a curated selection of applications and integrations that elevate customer and employee experiences. 

With Veridas Voice Biometrics, Genesys customers can easily identify their users in as little as 3 seconds. No questions. No friction. 

As a 100% proprietary solution, Veridas Voice Biometric revolutionizes call center authentication with real-time voice recognition. Swift and secure, and powered by top-class NIST-rated algorithms, Veridas replaces lengthy knowledge-based verification methods with passive identity verification, utilizing a text and language-independent solution that provides a seamless customer experience. 

Veridas developed an integration of its Voice Biometrics solution in Genesys Cloud CX to provide customers with a secure and streamlined authentication experience while reducing fraud and improving operational efficiency in contact centers, both in IVR and live-agent interactions. In 2021, BBVA, a global financial giant, successfully integrated Veridas voice biometrics through Genesys to authenticate customers.

Veridas application is now available with Genesys Cloud CX, an all-in-one composable solution that helps organizations offer frictionless and connected customer and employee experiences. As a modern, API-first experience orchestration platform, Genesys Cloud CX enables organizations to coordinate every interaction and touchpoint through a full suite of omnichannel options, built-in employee experience, turnkey AI and end-to-end journey optimization.

To learn more about the specific features and benefits of Veridas Voice Biometrics solution, visit our AppFoundry listing. 

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Flashpoint Releases H1 Cyber Threat Intelligence Index 

Posted in Commentary with tags on August 29, 2023 by itnerd

Flashpoint has released its H1 Cyber Threat Intelligence Index. Here are just a few of the points in the report:  

Flashpoint digs into the activity from ransomware groups over the past 12 months. Regarding ransomware, Flashpoint found:

  • The most headline-grabbing cyber extortion event in the first half of 2023 was (and continues to be) the impact of the Clop ransomware group, which began exploiting the MOVEit zero-day vulnerability in May to gain illegal access to a wide range of victims.
  • As of August 9, the total number of victims—those posted on Clop’s ransomware blog combined with data from Flashpoint’s Cyber Risk Analytics (CRA) platform—totaled more than 650. This number includes companies that were directly attacked by Clop as well as third-party victims.  

Regarding Vulnerabilities over the past 6 months:

  • 14,201 new vulnerabilities were reported in H1 2023, and 2,189 of them were missed by the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) and National Vulnerability Database (NVD). 
  • Over 36 percent of H1’s disclosed vulnerabilities have a working proof-of-concept or a known public exploit, giving low-level attackers an opportunity to compromise vulnerable systems.  

Regarding Data Breaches over the past 6 months, Flashpoint found:

  • In H1 2023, Flashpoint analysts identified 2,893 data breach events, resulting in the loss of 5.94B records.
  • The highest number of breaches were recorded in the US.  

Flashpoint’s H1 2023 report also digs into Malware IOCs and Insider Threats. 

You can read the report here.

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Hybrid Workers in Canada Are Losing Nearly Three Hours a Week due to IT Issues: CDW

Posted in Commentary with tags on August 29, 2023 by itnerd

CDW Canada, a leading provider of technology solutions and services for Canadian organizations, today released new research about the barriers Canadian workers are facing in the digital workspace. The Digital Workspace Survey hosted on the Angus Reid Forum, surveyed over 1,000 hybrid workers across Canada.

Proper IT can increase productivity

The survey found that Canadian hybrid workers who experience IT issues reported losing an average of three hours a week dealing with IT issues. This indicates a massive loss of productivity from hardware and software that isn’t optimized for hybrid work, as well as an opportunity for employers to increase productivity through proper IT investments.

Most hybrid workers cited network connectivity (loss of 2.6 hours) and VPN connectivity (loss of 2.2 hours) as key IT issues. Other issues included lack of IT technical support, trouble sharing documents with team members, disruptions and connection issues on video calls and lack of additional monitors.

How investing in IT for hybrid work can benefit small businesses

Financial barriers can pose a threat when investing in the right IT for hybrid work, however, not investing comes with heightened cybersecurity risks. Investing in technology without considering security can cause greater financial and reputational impacts in the event of a security incident. This situation is most prevalent with small businesses (organizations with less than 100 employees) as employees are more likely to face financial barriers in a hybrid work environment. The survey

found that more than one third (37 percent) of respondents reported having to choose and pay for their own IT equipment. This lies in contrast to one-in-ten employees (13 percent) working at large businesses who must do the same.

A lack of IT investment impacts personal device usage and security posture. Nearly half (49 percent) of respondents working at a small business reported using a personal device to access work related files or perform work tasks more than once a day.

Security concerns impact IT decision-makers’ ability to work from home

IT decision-makers were less comfortable working from home due to their increased awareness of cybersecurity and understanding of the risks when working in a hybrid model.

The survey found that nearly one-in-five (18 percent) IT decision-makers reported data security and privacy reasons preventing them from working from home compared to only three percent of non-IT decision-makers.

Concerns over cybersecurity for IT decision-makers are echoed in CDW Canada’s 2023 Security Study, which surveyed 553 IT security and risk & compliance professionals. The study found that two-in-five (40 percent) respondents that store their organization’s data in the cloud – an essential tool for hybrid work – said they experienced a security incident in the cloud during the past year. Further, only one third (30 percent) of respondents said a policy exists in their organizations for monitoring and detecting threats within data, assets, applications and services. These findings can speak to the elevated concerns of IT decision-makers found in the Digital Workspace Survey.

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