By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

BUSINESSES all over the world need to transform their operations with digital technologies.

Francis Prince Thangasamy, the Singapore-based managing director for Asia-Pac of Lumen Technologies said there were many challenges, not least of which is cyber security.

But business leaders need to ‘go digital’ for all sorts of operations. Even during tough economic times.

“Regardless of market conditions, organisations will transform,” Mr Thangasamy told Talking Business.

“Regardless of market conditions, organisations need to enable business and drive efficiency.” 

This could be across many areas, he said.

“Transformation has many purposes. Some of it is to drive efficiency. It could be cost savings or it could enable new features focusing on the business,” Mr Thangasamy said.

“It really depends on how much dependency a business has on digital infrastructure.”

Digital impact is global

Being responsible for Asia-Pacific, Mr Thangasamy’s business works with mainly global businesses specialising in all sorts of areas. We’re talking here about verticals like finance, agriculture, retail, e-commerce, logistics and supply chain management.

He said the biggest challenge for companies transforming through digital technology was prioritisation. What comes first?

“You see companies that depend on IT for different aspects,” he said.

“There are companies depending on IT to enable the business to drive efficiency but also you have organisations which are heavily e-commerce driven and IT is driving the business.

“Those are the challenges of prioritisation of budget, of resources,” Mr Thangasamy said.

“How do you serve your business and at the same time modernise your infrastructure and how you get the skill sets?

“Skill sets [can be] quite a common problem globally.”

He said what a lot of companies do to deal with this is they complement what they have internally while training staff. And they leverage expertise from partners and providers.

At the same time, he said, there needs to be strong internal expertise to work with those third parties. So staff have to be trained.

“You need to have strong management program capabilities, people who can reach external partners and internal business units to solve common business problems,” he said.

Cyber security issues loom

One of the big challenges now, for businesses everywhere, including their boards, he said, is cyber security.

Mr Thangasamy said cyber security will be the major issue and focus for Lumen over the next five years.

“We focus quite a bit on cyber security because of the insights that we have on our networks,” he said.

“With that and our managed security services capabilities, we do help organisation modernise.”

But here’s the problem: so many companies now, he said, have invested in different security tools. It creates ‘blind spots’.

“This becomes an issue for companies where they have invested so much money but they still have blind spots, so how do you bring all of that together,” Mr Thangasamy said.

The other issue, he said, was finding security talent. And that is a global problem. How do businesses deal with that?

“What some companies do is get involved in campus recruiting and training people from internal training programs and competing in the market to identify top talents,” he said.

“But definitely that’s a big priority for companies – finding talent.” 

www.lumentechnologies.com

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness

https://shows.acast.com/talkingbusiness/episodes/talking-business-31-interview-with-francis-prince-thangasamy

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By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

ALL OVER THE WORLD, businesses are reeling from cyberattacks. The most common of these is in the form of ransomware.

What is ransomware? It uses malicious software, otherwise known as malware, which restricts a business computer’s access to files by encrypting them and then the criminal demands a ransom payment.

In other words, crypto criminals using ransomware hold that business hostage until the payment is made.

Bob Huber, chief security officer and head of research at Tenable, said these ransomware attacks were continuing to grow.

“It’s become a business,” Mr Huber told Talking Business. “The effort to start a business, generally considered a learning curve for any enterprise, takes years of effort and expertise. But ransomware, over the course of the last few years, has been an ecosystem that allows you not to have to be an expert to put out ransomware. 

“There are initial access brokers out there and providers and contract services,” he said.

“So I don’t have to be an expert myself to get into the ransomware game. I can actually contract those services out where I don’t have expertise. So, as much as I hate to say it, it’s lowered the barriers for entry to the market for most entities and organisations. It’s just not as difficult as it used to be years ago,” Mr Huber said.

“You can pick and choose the pieces that are already built. So you don’t have to develop the initial access or some novel attack to gain access or foothold to an organisation. They already exist. You can just click and build these things.”

Ransomware drives 38% of attacks

Ransomware has grown so much that Tenable research has found that it’s behind 38% of all cyber attacks.

Mr Huber said the growth of ransomware would continue as there were not that many businesses that are prepared to make the “commensurate investment in defending against ransomware attacks”.

This, he said, often came down to “foundational cyber hygiene”.

“If you think about organisations, whether they be non-profits, charities that don’t have mandates to make the investment … I’m sure they would like to but they compete against other businesses and risks, you know, economic down turn and pandemic, those are risks as well,” he said.

“They have to balance all those risks and determine where cyber fits into their risks and what they’re willing to accept or transfer. And especially for smaller organisations, they can’t make the investment to measure against those types of attacks.”

Remote work facilitates cyber attacks

Mr Huber said much of the growth of ransomware has come with more people working remotely.

“Given the proliferation of remote work… with people working from home and coffee shops and libraries, we found now that people do tend to travel, they still do their work but some of the controls you would traditionally have in an enterprise that [is] tied to certain types of access, through the facility or through a virtual private network, you don’t have that when you move to the coffee shops,” he said.

“There are other technical controls that were developed for a time when we expected folks to be in a facility,” Mr Huber said.

“And as we migrated to a remote workforce, in many cases we’ve had to loosen those controls to afford people to work from wherever to continue operations for the business.” 

www.tenable.com

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness

https://shows.acast.com/talkingbusiness/episodes/talking-business-27-interview-with-bob-huber-from-tenable

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By John Sheridan, myREGION >>

ALL THE FUSS about large language model artificial intelligence (LLM AI) overlooks the much less well publicised existing use of AI in all the major software solutions that Australian businesses use every day.

There are only so many processes and activities that allow an organisation to do what it does – from communication, mobility, data processing, accounting, business management, customer relationship management (CRM), web, security and storage – and all these functions are managed by software.

The software developers that created these tools – for horizontal and vertical markets – continue to develop and update their solutions. Plus they add machine learning (ML) and AI functions into their existing products, as extensions of the functionality the solutions deliver.

This is all relevant and appropriate. 

How do I know?

We have just mapped the major Australian software solutions that serve and support 400 business categories across 19 industry sectors.

Hard work for software

Software developers are not stupid. They understand software. They understand AI and ML and have already used it to extend the value of their business solutions where necessary.

It is not always necessary.

Many have done this directly themselves and some have partnered with specialist AI developers.

LLM AI adds extra value around the edges of these software solutions – delivering ‘business intelligence’ for managers, and help with content creation for sales and marketing.

But LLM AI is not a magic wand, and does not replace any of the existing software solutions. But it can enhance them in some cases.

So LLM AI offers some extra value, but not enough to justify the hullabaloo. Or the often overstated Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Where is the evidence? Not there.

Beyond the hype

LLM AI will not deliver great new advances in productivity for SMEs (small-to-medium enterprises). Those advances have already been delivered by the existing software solutions.

And LLM AI is no threat or challenge to jobs. In fact, there are very few business categories where organisations are still sorting out the challenges – employment services, call centres, banks and financial advisory.

Education and creative industries have a different set of issues to address and government at all levels will also have to work out what to do once it sorts out its legacy systems, finally, and realises that there might be benefit in connecting silos – vertically and horizontally.

That's the good news.

But there are some negative impacts to AI.

Where there is pAIn

AI delivers extra sophistication to the continuing cyberattacks from ‘black hat’ actors and ‘bad State’ actors: Russia, North Korea, Iran, China, and the many criminal entities.

It supports the targeted manipulation of voters during elections by bad state actors and others with a vested interest in particular results.

It supports the constructed exaggeration of anger, hate, bias, political extremism and conspiracy theorists in AI manipulated ‘echo chambers’.

It supports the grooming of children and young people in games and social media, and the manipulation of young people towards ongoing gambling activity through the gamification of games and social media,

And the presentation and acceptance of query results in LLM AI as ‘true’ adds to the confusion, when in many cases results are hallucinations, biased, and always the result of algorithmic choice.

Worry for the young

The use of social media and LLM AI by young people with still developing brains is particularly concerning, with those individuals lacking the experience to judge content with insight, even though they believe they can, of course.

And there are extreme examples of LLM AI promoting negative behaviour and actions including suicide.

So not all good news.

However, AI and ML used by experienced software developers to enhance existing software solutions = largely positive. Australian software developers are doing a good job.

AI, ML and LLM AI present us all with many new things to consider.

But … legislation, regulation, control? That train left the station years ago.

John Sheridan is the CEO of Digital Business insights (DBi) whose latest platform, myREGION, aims to assist regions to connect and develop their local economies while becoming part of the platform’s Australia-wide knowledge diffusion and collaboration process. Digital Business insights has been researching, collecting and measuring data while producing reports and comment on the digital technology channels of the Australian economy for more than 25 years. www.myREGION.au. www.db-insights.com.

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WITH ITS LATEST $4.4 million defence industry order supplied, extended reality systems development company Vection Technologies is steadily extending its growth, expecting another $10m-$21m in additional works and orders being contracted for the new financial year through to 2030.

Vection’s latest supply is to a top 10 global defence contractor using its IntegratedXR arm. It is for mission-critical ICT infrastructure and AI-enabled analytics. Vection entered the Australian market in 2021 with the acquisition of Blank Canvas and its property-focused CGI content capability.

Vection Technologies managing director Gianmarco Biagi said, “Transforming our pilot program into recurring orders within the NATO Tempest supply chain highlights the trust we have built with one of the largest defence contractors in the world. 

“Achieving about $10m in orders strongly validates our technology and is a strong indication that the client will continue with the full program for the additional $21m scheduled for FY26-FY30.”

This supply follows the major defence pilot award announced on March 2, 2023, which flagged that a successful pilot could lead to delivery of a full tender worth up to about $30m.

Vection Technologies is a growing enterprise-focused company that helps businesses – some in defence industries – bridge the physical and digital worlds with strategic fit-for-task technology developments. Vection helps organisations leverage their three-dimensional (3D) data inputs through extended reality (XR) interfaces that foster collaboration and learning, grow sales and add strategic advantages.

This latest solution stack integrates secure ICT infrastructure with Vection’s IntegratedXR platform. As security priorities in Europe become more urgent, Vection’s customer base is expanding these capabilities to oversee and safeguard critical assets.

With the solution stack completed during the pilot phase, Vection is now authorised to complete supply of the solution, as formalised by the order.

Vection Technologies is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) with ticker code VR1, and trades on US over-the-counter (OTC) markets under the symbol VCTNY. Vection has Indo-Pacific regional offices in Perth and Sydney.

www.vection-technologies.com

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