TECHNOLOGICAL change is happening as such a pace that business leaders can rarely keep pace – yet they must do so in order to make vital decisions on company futures.

Global advisory firm PwC has prepared a report on the ‘megatrends’ of technological breakthroughs and identified eight essential aspects business leaders must get their head around.

For its report, Tech breakthroughs megatrend, PwC evaluated more than 150 technologies globally and developed a methodology for identifying those which were most pertinent to individual companies and whole industries. 

The result is a guide to the ‘Essential Eight’ technologies PwC advisors believe will be the most influential on businesses worldwide in the very near future: artificial intelligence,  augmented reality, blockchain, drones, the internet of things (IoT), robots, virtual reality and 3D printing.

The specific technologies that will have the biggest impact on each industry will vary, but PwC believes the list of eight comprises technologies with the most cross-industry and global impact over the coming years.

To arrive at the Essential Eight, PwC filtered technologies based on business impact and commercial viability over the next five to seven years – shortened to three-to-five years in developed economies.

The specific criteria included a technology’s relevance to companies and industries; global reach; technical viability, including the potential to become mainstream; market size and growth potential; and the pace of public and private investment.

“Most companies have laid a foundation for emerging technology, investing in areas such as social, mobile, analytics and cloud,” PwC’s global new business leader, Vicki Huff Eckert said.

“Now it’s time for executives to take a broader view of more advanced technologies that will have a greater impact on the business.”

NEXT BIG THING 

Ms Huff Eckert said companies continually waited for the “next big thing,” believing that a particular technology trend either would not amount to much, or that it would not affect their industries for years to come.

However, she said, disruption is happening today at a faster rate and higher volume than ever before.

“Innovations throughout history have tipped the balance in favour of the innovators. In that sense, technological breakthroughs are the original megatrend,” she said.

“The ubiquity of technology, with increased accessibility, reach, depth, and impact are what will expedite adoption of the Essential Eight.”

PwC believes the Essential Eight technologies will shake up companies’ business models in both beneficial and quite challenging ways. Across industries and regions, the emerging technology megatrend will influence strategy, customer engagement, operations and compliance.

As a result, the report outlines, leadership teams should find effective answers to three fundamental questions:

Do we have a sustainable innovation strategy and process?

Have we quantified the impact of new technologies? If not, how can we do that—and how soon?

Do we have an emerging-technologies road map? If so, are we keeping it up to date?

According to PwC’s report, executives should not treat the Essential Eight technologies as a sort of checklist to delegate to the chief information officer (CIO) or chief technology officer (CTO).

Rather, exploring and quantifying emerging technologies — and planning for them — should be a core part of a company’s corporate strategy, involving all levels.

Ms Ms Huff Eckert said before developing an innovation strategy and exploring and quantifying emerging technologies, executives “should educate – or re-familiarise – themselves with these technologies and what they can do”.

www.pwc.com/TechMegatrend

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THE Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation, Angus Taylor has launched a Digital Marketplace platform, which aims to make it easier for businesses to work with the Federal Government on technology projects.

Mr Taylor said the Digital Marketplace would provide "a richer and simpler environment for technology procurement and for businesses to provide specialist digital services to government".

"Government buyers can now publish briefs for requirements, suppliers can respond to those briefs and two-way collaboration can take place," Mr Taylor said. 

RECENT cases of computer hackers gaining access to, and exploiting, sensitive business systems by discovering ‘default’ passwords are a chilling development, according to Surety IT technology director Geoff Stewart.

“I’ve heard some horror stories about devices being hacked that had default passwords on them but none as bad as the one I heard last week,” Mr Stewart said. “It has always been best practice to change default passwords on all computing devices to secure them and make them less likely to be hacked.

“A colleague who works in the manufacturing industry made a bee-line for me at an event when he saw me to get my advice.  He told me that their phone system had been hacked and they were being billed for over $40,000 by their telco in call charges.” 

After hours on a Friday the hackers called every direct number in the business and tried the usual default password for a phone system extension ‘0000’ and tried to get access to the admin/set-up of that extension.  When they found an extension with a default password they diverted the phone to a foreign premium rate number, which belonged to them, and set-up an autodial to continuously call the number. On Monday morning, before hours, the hackers logged back in and removed the divert.

Employees came into work on the Monday and were totally oblivious to what had been going on over the weekend. 

“It was only when they got a call from their telco who said about the suspicious number of calls to the foreign number that they knew something had happened,” Mr Stewart said. “The telco asked did they want to block foreign call-outs and the business said ‘yes’. 

“There was no indication at this stage that the system had been hacked.  For whatever reason the hackers were able to still make foreign calls on the extension and the overall damage in phone charges was over $40k.”

Mr Stewart advised businesses to immediately change default username and passwords for all network connected devices.

“This is becoming more and more of a risk with the Internet of Things and also why doesn’t Telstra have something in place that will spot patterns of suspicious behavior and put a block on it temporarily until the owner can confirm that it is legitimate, a bit like banks and credit cards?” he asked.

“The business in question reported the incident to ACORN and the telecommunications ombudsman but as yet neither have been of much help, so they not sure what to do next.”

Mr Stewart said he heard the very next day of a very similar incident happening to another business, with the same outcome, “a bill of $5k from their telco from a hacked phone system”.

www.suretyit.com.au

Surety IT has developed a checklist for business leaders to protect phone networks and head off phone hackers:

• Read your contract and know what you’ve signed up for.
• Find out from you provider what kind of fraud protection it offers.  If it doesn’t offer any, it’s probably best to move on.
• Make sure your PBX is sitting behind a firewall.
• Make sure every user on the phone network uses a complex password, if possible.
• Tell you provider to switch off international calls, if you don’t need them.
• Consider placing limits with your provider on the dollar amount you’re willing to have spent each day on international calls.
• Create a whitelist of IP addresses that are allowed to make phone calls.

Best password policies for devices:

• If you can, change the default username to something different.
• Don’t use a shared administrator password across devices.
• Make your device passwords strong with a minimum of 9 characters.
• If you can use passphrases instead of passwords.
• Store the passwords securely.
• If you are in any doubt, contact your trusted IT partner.

About Geoff Stewart

Geoff Stewart is a highly experienced and skilled technology director at Surety IT. His knowledge is based on years of industry experience having created customised, stable, well performing systems both for multi-national companies in the UK and Australia and Surety IT customers.

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COMPUTER and internet security specialists Surety IT are warning of sophisticated new ransomware coming through internet channels that have caught many companies out – and cost them a lot of money in make-goods.

Ransomware is a type of malware that blocks access to computer files and forces the user to pay a ransom in order to release them, according to Surety IT technology director Geoff Stewart. 

Mr Stewart said the FBI is investigating a particularly nasty version of ransomware known as Samas that attempts to encrypt files on computers across an entire network, rather than just individual computers.

“As reported by Reuters, the FBI has warned businesses that the group behind Samas was utilising an automatic tool to find servers using an out of date version of popular software,” Mr Stewart said.

“They would then take advantage of a weakness in the software to install the ransomware remotely on computers connected to the network. The ransomware is also thought to delete backup files.

“Computer users are advised not to click on links or open attachments in uninvited or unexpected emails and be wary about the websites they visit as security researchers identify hazardous new versions of ransomware,” Mr Stewart said.

“They should keep regular backups of important files and store the backups in a location away from a network.”

Mr Stewart said he had also come across an attack system recently known as Petya. It is an email with a link to an infected file claiming to be a resume.

“Once downloaded and implemented, the malware crashes Windows and overwrites systems on the computer,” Mr Stewart said. “A payment is demanded upon reboot.  The ransom amount is doubled if the user does not pay by the deadline set by the criminals.

“If your computer has been infected by ransomware, you should update your system and restore the affected files from backup.  I would suggest seeking technical advice if you are unsure about the next steps.

“I don’t recommend paying any ransom demanded to decrypt files. There is no guarantee the attackers will give you a working decryption tool, and you are also not protected against future attacks.”

Mr Stewart said affected businesses should also change all passwords and usernames on all computers, choosing strong passwords. 

Surety IT is an Industry Expert member of Queensland Leaders, Victorian Leaders and NSW Leaders, the organisations helping to foster the next generation of leading Australian companies.

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