The roundtable one was conducted to discuss about the changing face of security and IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AI Ops
The CIO roundtable which was successfully conducted by CIO News was powered by Crayon and IBM. The panellists included Khushbu Soni, Editor Chief at CIO News, the host and the moderator for the roundtable discussion, Vijay Kanal, National Product Manager at Crayon, Tushar Haralkar, Technical Sales Lead at IBM, Pooja Chatrath, CIO at Cryoviva India, Amit Mitra, Executive Director at Broadridge, Ashish Bajaj, Segmentation Leader – AI, OPS & Integration at IBM and Mukesh Sethi, Sr. Technical Manager at IBM. Also, the roundtable includes participation from companies like Sutherland Global Services, ASPL Info Services Private Limited, Allengers Medical Systems Limited, AGS healthcare services, Aditya Birla Insurance Group, Value Momentum Software Services Pvt. Ltd., In-Solutions Global, Persistent Systems Ltd, Sigma Electric, Onward Technologies, Intelleve and Standard Chartered Bank.
The intent of the agenda was to have a detailed and a brain storming discussion about the challenges faced by companies during the 2020 pandemic and the measures to be taken to overcome these challenges in 2021 and going forward. Also, the discussion is on how organisations can unlock the value of data in ways and accelerate the journey of AI.
Kanal started by talking about his company’s journey. He spoke about the expansion plans of his company which were successful by acquiring the Chennai-based Kryptos in 2014, by starting operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Dubai in the subsequent year and by acquiring the US-based Anglepoint in 2015. He said that his company is in the field of software business and cloud advisory since 19 years and has presence in 35 countries globally, where it works with almost 10,000 customers from SMBs to largest enterprises, which makes it present in 80 per cent of the global market, having more than 600 technology solution architects available worldwide. The company also helps organisations sizing their overall software investments and help them in moving towards the cloud journey.
Haralkar started by talking about his company’s challenge of data being spread across on-prem and cloud. To solve the problem, as a part of your next-generation software strategy, an effective SIEM should be in place, for which its four pillars including complete visibility, prioritized threat detection, automated investigations and integrated response are needed.
Adding his thoughts about unprecedented challenges faced in 2020 and how pandemic affect the way of thinking about security overall, Sanjay Chandiramani said that the hackers are two steps ahead of you even if you have all possible security aspects, which makes security a very important part. He also explained about the measures taken while employees were working from home and said most of our infrastructure was well secured with all possible end points securities.
Chatrath spoke about the challenges faced and the key security priorities for 2021 from cyber-security perspective by saying that making data available to users was the biggest challenge, but sales team and the backend users were having their laptops that reduced the problems related to infrastructure, still accessing data was a problem. A digital platform that we had rolled out last to last year helped the sales team in in getting the access through web, but backend users had to make calls as customers were facing a problem. So, as a healthcare organisation, encryption of data and data protection is required for us. She also said that cloud adoption has started and the mobile applications as well as our website are already on cloud.
Mitra spoke about the top three key trends in terms of security for 2021 and as cloud has been a heavy adoption across segments of SMEs and large enterprises. He said that the pandemic has accelerated one particular trend that is the push towards digital transformation. So, we are also investing in digital transformation and moving lot of our workloads in to cloud, as we are in a hybrid-cloud and also a multi-cloud environment. He also said that cyber risks are a priority and cyber-security is going to be a significant threat for now and the coming future.
Bajaj said there have been challenges on IT operations since IT and data centres have taken the precedence for running the business. So, IBM’s intent is to simplify operations for organisations, for which organisations need a system that can identify, isolate, detect and diagnose the problems faster. He spoke about about the challenges that CIOs face in incident management and resolution, explained the incident management workflow and impact of AIOps. Further, he explained about the difference between IBM and other organisations which helps IBM in overcoming the challenges and said that this system is running for a largest network NOC for one of the telecom operators based out of India.
Sethi spoke about the skills required to mature this AIOps system for delivering benefits. As data is three kinds – unstructured, semi-structured and structured, the data needs to be processed, for which this data needs to be fed into the system through a specified format. He also explained about how the AI efficiency can be monitored and the four key pillars of algorithms in AI.
The roundtable two was conducted to discuss about the changing face of security.
The CIO roundtable which was successfully conducted on March 17 2021 by CIO News was powered by CIO by Crayon and IBM. The panellists included Khushbu Soni, Editor Chief at CIO News, the host and the moderator for the roundtable discussion, Vijay Kanal, National Product Manager at Crayon, Tushar Haralkar, Technical Sales Lead at IBM and CIOs from companies like Sutherland Global Services, Cryoviva India, Broadridge, ASPL Info Services Private Limited, Allengers Medical Systems Limited, AGS healthcare services and Aditya Birla Insurance Group.
The intent of the agenda was to have a detailed and a brain storming discussion about the challenges faced by companies during the 2020 pandemic and the measures to be taken to overcome these challenges in 2021 and going forward.
Kanal started his presentation by talking about his company’s journey which started in the year 2002, based in Norway and was in the European region until 2014. He said, we started planning for expansion and entered India in 2014 by acquiring the Chennai-based Kryptos. In the subsequent year we started operations in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Dubai. We entered the US by acquiring Anglepoint in the year 2015. Having 19 years of experience in software business and in cloud advisory, we have a presence in 35 countries globally. Also, globally we work with almost 10,000 customers from SMBs to largest enterprises. We are present in 80 per cent of the global market and have more than 600 technology solution architects available worldwide. Being a publicly listed company in the Oslo Stock Exchange, we have the strongest partnership alliances with the largest enterprises. Our growth has been organic and in-organic. The company’s value proposition is that we have always looked back at customers, where we are vendor-agnostic and we give an advisory in terms of solutions and why the given solution should be looked at. We work very closely on an approach where the risk in terms of overall investment is reduced and the reward is something which the customer should gain from the overall investment they are making in the technology space. We help the organisations sizing their overall software investments and help them in moving towards the cloud journey.
Haralkar started his presentation by saying the problem is that we have enough data spread across on-prem and cloud, but not enough insights and with a recent research 44 per cent alerts are not investigated, 54 per cent legitimate alerts are not remediated and 36 per cent on-going operational issue of “keeping up with the alerts” is the top concern. To solve the problem, as a part of your next-generation software strategy, you would have an effective SIEM, for which you need to have its four pillars that include complete visibility, prioritized threat detection, automated investigations and integrated response.
When asked about the unprecedented challenges faced in 2020 and how did pandemic affect the way you think about security overall, Sanjay Chandiramani said, since last one year, with the changing needs, even if you have all possible security aspects, the hackers are still two steps ahead of you. So, security is a very important part when users have moved away from secured environments. There are various challenges and all three – people, processes and technology are playing very big role.
When asked about the measures taken while employees were working from home, he said, most of our infrastructure was well secured with all possible end points securities. So, moving users from out of office to work from anywhere was just a scale about which we started talking suddenly as our environment was well geared up during the pandemic.
When asked about the challenges faced and the key security priorities for 2021, overall from cyber-security perspective, Pooja Chatrath, CIO Cryoviva India said, the biggest challenge during the last year was to make the data available to all the users. The best part was that our sales team and the backend users were having their laptops because of which there were not more problems related to infrastructure, but the problem was that how should they access the data. The good thing was that the sales team was on a digital platform that we had rolled out last to last year, which helped us in getting them the access through web. But the backend users who had to make CRM calls and dial up and fix up the calls with the patients as well as the customers were facing a problem. Going forward, as we are a healthcare organisation, we have to do the encryption of data and data protection.
When asked if cloud adoption has started, she said, our mobile applications as well as our website are already on cloud, which was the benefit we had, as because of it we were able to give access to the sales team through the app directly.
When asked about the top three key trends in terms of security for 2021 and as cloud has been a heavy adoption across segments of SMEs and large enterprises, Amit Mitra, Executive Director at Broadridge said, the pandemic has not only opened up all our systems and data for our associates to access from outside, but the other part that has also happened is that the pandemic has accelerated one particular trend that is the push towards digital transformation. So, we are also investing in digital transformation.
We are moving lot of our workloads in to cloud. We are in a hybrid-cloud and also a multi-cloud environment that means we have on-prem and multiple cloud vendors. So, creating a security environment between all our workloads residing in multiple locations is a huge priority for us. Solutions are also extremely important for us as we need a greater visibility, he said.
When asked about the allocation of sufficient resources and budgets address the issues of cyber risks, he said, absolutely as it is the number one priority at this point at the board. Cyber-security is going to be a significant threat for now and the coming future.
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