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Hospitality Organizations Must Accelerate Digital Transformation to Secure Long-Term Recovery

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As hospitality’s doors finally reopen, the sector is quickly getting a sense of the evolved “digital-first” world in which it’s now operating. The past year has seen a significant step-change in the adoption of technology and digital services, but while some hospitality businesses were able to welcome online models, huge swathes of the industry were forced to remain dormant, leaving many digital advancements relatively untested or stagnating. Now, the whole sector must quickly accelerate its digital transformation to fuel long-term recovery, or risk customer abandonment and falling further behind.

According to research by Aruba, an HPE company, as of last year, the hospitality sector was in a healthy – but not leading – place in its adoption of advanced technologies and moving computing to the Edge. Over half of the hospitality, IT leaders had started to implement trials or applications in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) (55%), Internet of Things (IoT) (70%), and machine learning (57%). However, that compares to figures of up to 75% for AI in the financial services industry, or 77% for IoT in retail, distribution, and transport.

But it was also already struggling significantly with the data these new technologies produce. A quarter (25%) of IT leaders in hospitality said there was too much data for their systems to handle, and that they could not process the data they collected quickly enough to act (25%). With data levels increasing exponentially over the past year, thanks to the Covid-induced rise of smart technologies, IoT sensors, and connected devices the depth of data sprawl will only be greater.

To get a handle on all this data and deliver the type of differentiated customer experiences to guarantee hospitality’s recovery, a new eBook by Aruba, ’Serving Hospitality at the Edge’, lays out three key areas of focus for organizations in the sector – providing a clear roadmap to setting up the right network for future success.

Step 1: Process data efficiency
Organizations must follow data to the Edge of the network to process it more efficiently, capturing it in real-time at its source versus transferring it back to a centralized hub. Aruba’s research showed that 54% of hospitality IT leaders were already using or trialling Edge technologies pre-pandemic, and a further 16% were already computing at the Edge. While this shows a smaller proportion of hospitality businesses are operating at the Edge compared to other industries (28% across all sectors), these pioneers are successfully delivering new outcomes, such as utilizing facial recognition technology (49%), experimenting with live, real-time, multi-language translation (45%), and creating enhanced augmented and virtual reality experiences (43%) as a result.

Step 2: Analyze data intelligently
Capturing all that data is one thing, but being able to act on it, is something else entirely. That is why there is a growing role for AI to not only help enhance customer service, provide personalized guest experiences, and support brand management – but also to aid IT teams with network troubleshooting and issues resolution to avoid any costly downtime or damage the user experience. As AI becomes more sophisticated and machine learning models get access to more and more data, its significance in hospitality will continue to grow.

Step 3: Store data securely
Against the backdrop of rising technology implementation, there’s a growing need to police increasing levels of app and device connectivity. And this is causing a headache for hospitality business, with 67% of decision makers believing that connecting IoT devices at the Edge would make their business more vulnerable. It will be critical for hospitality organizations to put the right solutions in place to ensure they lock down their data enough to reassure customers without freezing out further digital innovation.

Aruba believes a Zero Trust approach to security is part of the answer here, but network visibility and device identification also become key – providing a single-pane-of-glass view of increasingly fragmented networks and giving IT teams the ability to grant differentiated levels of data access according to device or user group (i.e. guests or staff).
 
Morten Illum, VP EMEA of Aruba, concludes, “The pandemic presented endless challenges to the hospitality sector and while there have been pockets of digital innovation and success, many businesses have been unable to test and trial digital advancements, putting them at a disadvantage. Now, they find themselves playing catch up in a new digital-first world. Consumer behaviors, expectations and demands have shifted exponentially, and hospitality organizations must demonstrate that they can respond quickly to these new requirements to tempt them back through their doors.

“They have a tremendous opportunity to make changes now to provide superior services in the future. But to do this successfully they must get a handle on the information flow in and out their systems. That is why it is critical that the sector evolves its network capabilities to ensure it has the infrastructure and solutions in place to support the next-generation technologies and experiences that will define their organization’s digital transformation in 2021 and beyond.”

Expert Speak

Don’t Brush It Off – Plan Your Incident Response Now

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In business, impermanence is the only certainty. An example is how organizations addressed the COVID-19 pandemic. Within a few weeks, many developed a plan to run their businesses remotely.

More than three-quarters of organizations worldwide don’t have an IT incident response plan in place because most believe they have little risk of becoming a cyberattack statistic. Unfortunately, that’s still likely to happen.

According to africanews, in the past year, Kenya has experienced a concerning rise in cyberattacks, with a remarkable 860 million incidents documented in 2022.

As wisely expressed by Benjamin Franklin, “By failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail.” Let’s explore a strategic incident response plan for your organization.

Create a Backup
Business networks are complex and large, and oftentimes, a network outage results in financial and reputational repercussions, including disgruntled clients. It’s imperative to create a backup of critical data and systems that you can’t run your business without, and store it in a safe location. When the inevitable breach occurs, your business will be able to recover as quickly as possible.

Never Say Never
While a workforce continuity plan might seem unimportant and nonurgent, the pandemic prompted IT departments worldwide to quickly realize the importance of being able to rapidly change the way their organizations conducted business.

Here are a few steps to help you draft a business continuity plan to address the next disruption:

  • Form a team with representatives from each department and understand their workflow.
  • Identify critical business functions and find a way to prioritize them.
  • Assess the risks for every process in your organization and record them.
  • Develop a risk mitigation strategy to protect your critical business functions from those risks.
  • Document the entire procedure and keep it up to date.

Train Your Employees
A common hurdle with an incident response plan is ensuring that employees take the plan seriously. To deter the mindset that the plan is “less urgent,” educate employees about its importance and the repercussions that can result from cyber threats and cyber incidents. It’s vital to conduct regular training sessions to address hardware failures, software glitches, network outages, and security breaches so that you efficiently mitigate a cybersecurity incident.

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger
Understand the points of failure in your previous incidents and find a way to rectify them. Single points of failure should be addressed by establishing a backup, not just in terms of network and systems but also in terms of staff allocation. Relying on a single person, especially when it comes to a critical network, is not a great idea. Delegate a second person to reach out and provide assistance in case of an incident.

While incident response might seem insignificant in the larger scheme of things, when a disaster hits, it could potentially devastate your business. Take some time to prioritize incident management and make it part of your organization’s culture by creating a backup, training your employees, drafting a workplace continuity plan, and learning from your past incidents. Learn more about IT incident management for your business.

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Cyber Security

ManageEngine Intros Enhanced SIEM with Dual-Layered System for Better Precision in Threat Detection

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ManageEngine, the enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corporation, today unveiled the industry’s first dual-layered threat detection system in its security information and event management (SIEM) solution, Log360. The new feature, available in Log360’s threat detection, investigation and response (TDIR) component, Vigil IQ, empowers security operations centre (SOC) teams in organizations with improved accuracy and enhanced precision in threat detection.

A quality SOC ensures people, processes, and cutting-edge technology function well. However, enterprise security is made difficult by staffing shortages and solution orchestration complexities. Following recent upgrades to the security analytics module of Log360 designed to facilitate SOC optimization through key performance metric monitoring, the company has focused on addressing pressing challenges in security operations.

“In a recent ManageEngine study, a majority of respondents revealed that their SOCs are understaffed. These resource-constrained SOCs grapple with significant obstacles, such as process silos and manual investigation of alerts, which are often non-threats, low-priority issues or false positives. These lead to extended detection and response times for actual threats. To overcome these challenges, we recognize the imperative adoption of AI & ML for contextual event enrichment and rewiring threat detection logic,” said Manikandan Thangaraj, vice president at ManageEngine.

“We pioneered a dual-layered, ML approach to heighten the precision and consistency of threat detection. First, Vigil IQ ensures genuine threats are discerned from false positives. Second, the system facilitates targeted threat identification and response. This advanced system significantly improves the accuracy of identifying threats, streamlining the detection process and allowing SOC analysts to focus their valuable time on investigating real threats.”

Key Features of the Dual-Layered Threat Detection System of Vigil IQ in Log360:
Smart Alerts: Vigil IQ, the TDIR module of Log360, now combines the power of both accuracy and precision in threat detection. With its dynamic learning capability, Vigil IQ adapts to the changing nature of network behaviour to cover more threat instances accurately. It will spot threats that get overlooked due to manual threshold settings, thereby improving the detection system’s reliability.

Proactive Predictive Analytics: Leveraging predictive analytics based on historical data patterns, Vigil IQ predicts potential security threats, facilitating the implementation of proactive measures before incidents occur. This predictive intelligence drastically reduces the mean time to detect (MTTD) threats.

Contextual Intelligence: Vigil IQ enriches alerts with deep contextual information, providing security analysts with comprehensive threat insights. This enrichment of alerts with non-event context accelerates the mean time to respond (MTTR) by delivering pertinent, precise information.

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Proofpoint Appoints Sumit Dhawan as Chief Executive Officer

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Proofpoint has announced that Sumit Dhawan has been appointed chief executive officer, effective immediately. Rémi Thomas, Proofpoint’s chief financial officer, who has been acting as Proofpoint’s interim CEO since October 25th, will continue to serve as the company’s CFO. “The Proofpoint board of directors could not be more excited to partner with Sumit as he joins Proofpoint to usher in a new stage of growth,” said Seth Boro, managing partner at Thoma Bravo. “Sumit brings a wealth of valuable experience and expertise in building category-leading, scaled companies and businesses. We are confident his customer-centric passion and strong legacy of leadership will continue to carry Proofpoint’s mission forward in providing people-centric cybersecurity solutions that address some of the most challenging risks facing organizations today.”

Dhawan is a highly respected and seasoned technology leader with a proven track record of building market-leading security, cloud, and end-user computing businesses. In his most recent role as president of VMware, Dhawan was responsible for driving over $13B of revenue and led the company’s go-to-market functions including worldwide sales, customer success and experience, strategic ecosystem, industry solutions, marketing, and communications. Before that, he was chief executive officer of Instart, a cybersecurity business delivering innovations in web application security services. He has held senior executive and general management roles at both VMware and Citrix and has successfully established category-leading businesses at scale.

“Over the years, Proofpoint has built an exceptional brand and is trusted by some of the world’s leading organizations as their cybersecurity partner of choice,” said Sumit Dhawan. “I’m honoured to join a leader at the forefront of cybersecurity innovation and to shepherd its continuing and unwavering commitment to helping organizations across the globe protect people and defend data.”

Proofpoint recently announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Tessian, a leader in the use of advanced AI to automatically detect and guard against both accidental data loss and evolving email threats. Tessian’s cloud-native, API-enabled inbound and outbound email protection solution will extend Proofpoint’s award-winning offering to address the most frequent form of data loss including, misdirected email and data exfiltration.

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