According to a scientist who published a key textbook on artificial intelligence, specialists are “spooked” by their success in the field. This is equating AI advancement to the development of the atomic bomb. Prof Stuart Russell is the founder of the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley. He stated that most experts believed machines more intelligent than humans would be developed this century. He advocated for international treaties to govern the technology’s development.
Today, sales teams depend on technology to gain and close sales. The better coordinated your other departments are with your sales team, the faster and more efficient your business will be. Let’s take a look at some of the essential technology sales departments use to keep business moving.
Maintaining Security While there are many automated precautions that can help defend your business, your real weaknesses are likely derived from your users. Cybercriminals are aware of this and will not hesitate to use it to their advantage. To help counter these efforts, you need to make sure that your employees are aware of the many varieties of threats that might darken your business’ analogous doors. Not only that, your team should be able to recognize these threats as they encounter them and know how to respond appropriately. This means that you need to educate your employees about the threats they should look out for and evaluate their preparedness through testing processes. Basic IT Capabilities On the topic, your entire team should have some basic awareness of best practices, with access to written documentation to help support them. For instance, they should know what is expected of the passwords they create for themselves and how to best use the tools that they are provided, taking backups, and other very important processes. Seeking Out Assistance Of course, should assistance be required (or even if it just makes the employee more comfortable to have a professional watching over them) your team should also know the protocols for reaching their IT support resource to report their given issue, as well as the best means of doing so. At some point, you’re going to have to place your trust into your team. To do that, however, you also need to ensure that they are trustworthy by training them to be. We can help by giving you the technology to support your operations. Find out what else we have to offer by calling us at (831) 758-3636.
What Divides IT and OT? Nowadays, the difference between these two categories has become slim, largely thanks to the Internet of Things. IT is the technology used to manage any of the business’ collected data, while OT is the technology that facilitates the business’ operability. As the two have merged, it has become critical to protect both from the threats to businesses out there. Now, IT and OT work in tandem to keep a business effective and operational, which can put decision makers in a tough spot. With both sides needing protection, costs have swelled and now their technology demands more of their focus. Let’s go over a few reasons why: Targeted Attacks While the IoT can be increasingly useful as innovation moves technology forward, it can be equally problematic to attach additional devices to your IT network. As the typical IT department often doesn’t think of OT systems when considering your endpoints, they are left vulnerable to cyberattacks directed towards them—including ransomware attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, and others. To avoid downtime in your OT, you need to include protections for these technologies in your security strategy. Complex Compliance Attacks also aren’t the only thing that modern businesses need to worry about. Various government bodies, industry authorities, and local regulations have set constraints and standards for businesses that fall under certain industries must follow. Of course, this leads to expensive equipment maintenance and other challenges for businesses to deal with. To help alleviate these costs, many IT solutions are now used to automate tasks, but in doing so, sometimes exposing their OT to greater risk. Growing Security Issues The Internet of Things is actively being innovated upon, which businesses see as an opportunity to improve some aspect of their operations. Unfortunately, many don’t consider the fact that each device added to their processes adds another potential access point for a threat. How to Better Protect Your IT and OT We have assembled a brief list of activities that will help you ready yourself against the risks that the merging of IT and OT is causing. If you want or need assistance with any of these considerations, don’t hesitate to reach out to SRS Networks: Hardware inventory controls Software inventory controls Ongoing vulnerability management Measured use of admin privileges Secure hardware and software configurations Audit analysis and maintenance Our team can help you keep your business secure, while still boosting its operational effectiveness. To learn more, give us a call at (831) 758-3636.
Innovation Through IT It’s not a secret that lots of businesses rely on their information technology systems to run their entire business. IT fuels efficient data storage, use of stored data, and collaborative interfacing with said data. Even as that’s happening, businesses have to constantly monitor and maintain their IT systems. After all, if you depend on technology, and the technology goes down, your business isn’t going to get anything done. That is why innovations that make technology more reliable, and new tools that turn traditional business resources on its head, are moving business, and society, forward. Since this simple notion has been very difficult to put into practice, thought leaders and industry professionals are now trying to determine how to transform applications and infrastructure architectures, service delivery, DEVOps, production operations, security, and compliance. They are doing this, more than ever, by assessing what is needed and developing solutions. This is leading to the development of new solutions that will take IT out from a support capacity and make it more active in the day-to-day administration of key business tasks. Investment in Cognitive Computing Cognitive computing is the act of using powerful computing resources machine learning and artificial intelligence to continuously process data that is received in the course of doing business. These systems include pattern recognition, language processing, and data mining to create an efficiency that isn’t possible without these technologies. As more information comes in, these technologies are being used to improve the business’ ability to shift their business in ways that can: Enhance business agility by quickening decision making. Be able to consistently scale processes to meet budgetary and operational demands. Improve the overall efficiency and performance of a business. These technologies can also be used to support several different internal and external aspects of your business. They can help build a more robust operational structure, while also automating several of your business’ customer retention initiatives. By investing in the tools needed to create a more effective business, the “smart” business is sure to stay a step ahead of their direct competitors, and in some cases will be able to help the business to explore new avenues of revenue generation. Information Security A data breach can be a really terrible situation for any business, especially when clients’ and employees’ personal information is stolen. Today, threats are numerous and consistent, so technologies have been developed to help organizations weed out threats. There are several innovative tools designed to improve an organization’s data security initiatives. Many of these tools also use machine learning and artificial intelligence to actively adjust a cybersecurity policy to the threats the individual business faces. Since both sides have access to these tools, it becomes essential that companies get proficient at identifying the risks that their essential information systems present. These include: Remote access – With many businesses using workers that access data and applications from outside of their network, security solutions need to be able to secure these connections. IoT – With most businesses having dozens of unsecured endpoints in the way of IoT devices, having a strategy to keep them from becoming vulnerabilities is important. Regulatory demands – Some businesses have certain regulations they have to comply with and have certain conditions they need to meet in order to do so. Hackers – […]