Avsnitt
-
Can today’s companies afford to be luddites?
This is one of the big questions that Elaina Shekhter, EPAM’s Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer and SVP, puts to today’s *Resonance Test* guest, Rowan Curran, Senior Analyst at Forrester.
In the case of generative AI, both answer: No. Why? Shekhter notes that whatever your competitive edge in 2022, today everyone is encountering a different mode of operations. The positioning around the success or failure of your AI efforts must be “accelerating along the vector of AI, because the opportunity to get away from the competition, faster, is much greater now than it ever has been.”
In a lively and informed session of back-and-forth, they parse what is real and what is a hallucination in GenAI *at this moment.*
Curran says that lately there has been an “ebullient explosion” of work on tools and approaches to manage system outputs. “Are we there yet in terms of having these be optimized architectures and things like that? Absolutely not. But is there tons of work being done there or are we approaching reasonable solutions to those problems? Yes, absolutely.”
What should companies be doing to ensure they're ready to benefit and succeed with AI?
“Right now, everybody's building the gen one of enterprise generative AI applications,” says Curran, and this will make them ubiquitous. But if your organization fails to adopt them, he adds: “You are going to be falling behind everybody else who is actually building with this stuff today.”
Listen closely and learn what will the currency of the future be, the commercial and economic models of successful GenAI, the nature of productivity gains: “Somebody saving 30 minutes per day who makes $60K a year is going to have a very different economic impact on the company versus somebody who makes $200K a year and saves 30 minutes per day,” Curran says. They also discuss how this new tech will transform the shape of work and what companies will be focusing on this year: “2023 is the year of excitement and experimentation, and 2024 is the year of optimization and efficiency,” says Curran.
Oh… and it might also transform the future of fun! “I do think we could use the new technology to make work more fun for people,” says Shekhter, who sees in the soaring advance of multimodal LLMs an opportunity for people “to develop in an enlightened way.”
Enlighten yourself first. Smash that play button.
Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
“There’s been an incident,” is a sentence no one wants to hear… except for people like Ron Konigsberg, Co-Founder and CTO of Gem, and our guest on *Silo Busting,* whose business is cloud incident response (IR).
We know what you’re thinking: What makes cloud IR different from all other forms of IR?
Let’s let Konigsberg explain: “The challenge is that the cloud is technically simply different.” If you’re using legacy tools, “you're going to protect probably 20% of the cloud.”
Konigsberg is joined in conversation by Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, and the pair are pelted with questions by Aviv Srour, our Head of Cyber Innovation.
Konigsberg says that incident responders need to “adapt from network and agents to services and APIs, and constantly learn about new services and stay up to date and up to speed” with what the bad guys are picking up.
Oh, those bad guys! Regarding attackers, Konigsberg says: “They adopt innovation faster than defenders.” They can do so because they have fewer dependencies “and they care less [than defenders do] about breaking things.”
To illustrate, he asks us to think about migrating to the cloud: Imagine you’re an attacker and you simply never worry about any legacy systems from your previous environments. “They have much more liberty and they move faster.”
“They adopt techniques about new services that each cloud provider is releasing *tomorrow,*” says Konigsberg.
So it is, in some ways, about playing catch-up. CISOs have had to adopt a new mindset and posture. “You can only block so many punches until you have to figure out [that] you need to move around, you need to counter, and so on,” says Rehman.
Rehman adds that CISOs have finally understood the “shared responsibility between you and the cloud provider.” But that’s not the only issue with the cloud. “It's much flatter than what you’re used to on prem,” he says. “Which means a lateral attack is a lot quicker, moving things around a lot easier, and the *simplicity* of people actually moving things around and infecting a large area is substantially higher.”
So how can an organization properly respond to, and learn to prioritize within, the cloud conundrum? One answer, says Rehman, is culture.
“We have to adopt a learning culture in security,” he says. “They’re always gonna be one step ahead of us, but at least we're one step behind, not ten.” Pick up the pace of your learning and listen to the experts speak. Hit play!
Host: Lisa Kocian
Editor: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
Saknas det avsnitt?
-
Sam Rehman—a frequent voice on this podcast network and EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP—was in the classroom recently, teaching students, and in the process was “surprised by the density of PII that's in in the system.”
This led Rehman to realize that “at least here in California,” higher education’s investment in cybersecurity is “substantially behind.”
Catching up is a theme of today’s conversation about privacy, education, and artificial intelligence.
Speaking for the (cyber)defense, with Rehman, is today’s guest on *The Resonance Test,* Scott Loughlin, Partner and Global Co-Lead of the Privacy & Cybersecurity Practice at the law firm Hogan Lovells.
“It took a long time to get people to understand that the easiest thing to do is not always the right thing to do to protect the company’s interest and protect the company’s data,” says Loughlin. “And that is an experience that we'll all have with respect to generative AI tools.”
Loughlin and Rehman are put through their conversational paces from questions by Brian Imholte, our Head of Education & Learning Services.
They have much to say about data governance (“Data is not by itself anymore, it's broken up in pieces, combined, massaged, and then pulled out from a model,” says Rehman), data pedigree, the laws—and lack thereof—regarding privacy and generative AI. They also kick around the role that FERPA assumes here. “You’re trying to deploy this old framework against this new technology, which is difficult,” says Loughlin, adding: “There are some key areas of tension that will come up with using generative AI with student data.”
So where might an educational publisher or school begin?
“Focus on your value first,” says Rehman. Do your experiments, but do them in small pieces, he says: "And then within those small pieces, know what you're putting into the model.”
This informative and spirited conversation is even occasionally funny. Loughlin brings up a court case about whether or not a selfie-taking monkey selfie would own the copyright to the photo. “The court said no,” notes Loughlin, adding that US Copyright laws are “designed to protect the authorship of humans, not of monkeys, and in this case not of generative AI tools.”
Download now: It’s sure to generate some new thoughts.
Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
Going mobile: It’s going to create vulnerabilities. That’s the way things work with apps. They aren’t just friendly pieces of software that help you beat traffic or bring your favorite tunes into your eardrums… they are opportunities, rich ones, for the bad guys.
Andrew Whaley, the Senior Technical Director (UK) at Promon and our guest on *Silo Busting,* says that with an app, “You have to be able to trust the security model that you've got around it.”
Whaley talks with Sam Rehman, our Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, about how apps operate on a client-server model, but “all the client code is distributed outside of your enterprise.” Some of these users could well be criminals who, once gaining access to that code, could "reverse engineer it and come up with ways to attack that.”
And the code in those apps can be a bit suspect. Whaley says that most apps are made up of 80% open-source software. “You know how many of those app developers go and build that source themselves from source and read over it before they compile?” he asks and then answers: “Probably close to zero.”
Speaking of putting the work in… Rehman talks about calibrating “the level of effort that the attacker would have to go through versus the yield.” The trick is, he says, layering on cybersecurity techniques “so that the yield is not worth it for them.”
Whaley replies that “once you layer obfuscation on, you then have this impenetrable forest” and that the “immediately accessible ways of attacking [an application] are taken off the table.”
Together they chat about supply chain attacks, nonlinear programming, and more. Tune in and be safe(r)!
Host: Glenn Gruber
Editor: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
In this special edition of *Silo Busting,* Elaina Shekhter, EPAM’s Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer, interviews Stepan Mitish, VP and Head of Ukraine, about how his role shifted from being a leader navigating war-time crises to a leader embracing the challenges of the business world. Mitish says that the year 2022 was so filled with extreme challenges that he and his team can count it as “three or five years of experience.”He says the experience truly seasoned his team: “We understood what a great team means, not just in theory.” In hindsight, Mitish says, the experience puts COVID in perspective: “At that time, it was something catastrophical… but now you recall it with a smile on your face."Mitish talks about how he and his team started preparation for a potential war before it actually took place, creating a very solid business continuity plan (BCP). But if you ask whether he believed it would happen: “I didn't, and even now, for me it's hard to accept how could anybody in the 21st century do what actually was done.”He tells the harrowing story of how it began very early one morning. Lots of messages pouring in from areas under attack. After that, “It was very loud night and morning,” he says, adding that he was focused on the quiet evacuation of our people to so-called shelters in the western part of Ukraine. Vinnytsia. Lviv. Ivano-Frankivsk. Uzhhorod.At the beginning of the war, he was orchestrating 15,000 employees but they were working as one. He says that after a week, “I was afraid to start hearing a lot of complaints from our clients about failed delivery, non-delivery in services.” Instead, he received emails from clients “who were praising our teams for working days and nights and even delivering planned releases.”By the second or third week, everyone understood that Russia could not do a “so-called blitzkrieg in three days” and that it wasn’t “possible to break Ukrainians and to break EPAM in Ukraine.” He says: “Despite all the challenges, all the craziness that was going on,” he and his team continued to deliver. Relentlessly. “People were doing incredible, heroic things on the ground, but also doing delivery from bomb shelters and various faraway locations where people ended up moving to in order to avoid actually being in the midst of ongoing attacks,” says Shekhter. “From your point of view, why do you think they did it?”Mitish says it was a combination of two things: (a) “Probably it's part of Ukrainian values or DNA to be very much focused on results”; and (b) “We don't have any other home and we understand that we fight for our lives, for our workplaces, for our families. And if not me, then who's going to do that?”So where are we now in Ukraine?“I believe that the worst, worst days are already behind us,” says Mitish who wants to encourage our clients and future clients to support Ukraine and bring more business there. “I strongly believe that once this war is over and Ukraine wins, there will be a huge queue of those companies’ investors… and if you're going to be on the end of the queue, probably it will be much harder to find the best talent for you and your business.”You’ll want to listen to our resilient colleague tell his amazing story. Do so! Host: Alison KotinEngineer: Kyp PilalasProducer: Ken Gordon
-
Equity is not easy. It’s tough enough to talk honestly about equity in US healthcare, and troublingly difficult to create solutions that can, and will, be implemented.
But trouble—good trouble, as Representative John Lewis once put it—is precisely what interests the people on the latest episode of *The Resonance Test.*
Dr. Djinge Lindsay, MD, MPH, and Arianne Graham are here to talk about their stalwart attempts to solve for equity. Johnathon Swersey, Senior Director of Innovation at EPAM, creates all kinds of necessary trouble by putting tough questions to our two guests.
Swersey begins by addressing the idea that given the less-than-optimal state of US healthcare, why are we focusing on equity?
“If we don't fix the health disparities in our country, those will spread to the rest of the population and it becomes not just a public health issue, but frankly, a national security issue,” says Graham.
Or conversationalists agree that there has been much talk about equity but that talk is far too insufficient.
“There has been a lot of verbal acknowledgement of the fact that structural racism is pervasive and all of our systems, including healthcare, but that verbal acknowledgement hasn't necessarily been followed with action,” says Dr. Lindsay.
To move things forward, we need to align our moral imperatives with proper levels of funding. Dr. Lindsay asks us to consider the history of social change: “There have been few successful social change movements that haven't been aligned with some financial incentive for those who hold power.”
One such alignment must just be possible with the new Health Equity Index that's being introduced to Medicare Advantage. Healthcare players, says Dr. Lindsay, will now be required to not only “look at their data, not only stratify their data but to action on closing disparity gaps. Closing differences in health outcomes for people based on their race.”
Ultimately, it’s about beginning from what Graham calls “an asset- as opposed to a deficit-based approach.” She says that understanding the history, pain, and ramifications of structural racism is important but also “there is space to celebrate what makes different cultures unique and use that as a leverage point to engage folks in conversation about health. To tap into the trusted messengers, trusted leaders, and representative figures within communities that are delivering messages of self-actualization and self-efficacy in managing our health.”
Let’s hope we can manage to take a step in a healthier direction. Begin by listening.
Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon -
Financial inclusion is one of those topics that banks are often eager to discuss. After all, their efforts here can have profound impacts on their customers and the communities in which they operate and can generate positive PR spins that showcase the brand in a different light. However, it’s rare to see true innovation in the realm of financial inclusion that profoundly alters things for customers and their communities.
Enter Briana Marbury, CEO at Interledger Foundation, who aims to reshape the payments and remittance space as a way to drive major positive changes for communities across the globe. Briana sat with EPAM’s Alex Jimenez to discuss how innovations in payments technology and the proliferation of the Interledger Protocol are rewriting the financial inclusion story.
“Financial inclusion means accessible and equitable access to…accounts and other financial services banks offer like access to credit and housing loans,” says Marbury. In the past, banks have been hesitant to invest in infrastructure in poorer communities as they don’t view such areas as a good return on investment in the delivery of those services. As a consequence, millions of low-income people found themselves with limited access to bank accounts and services. “This lack of infrastructure led to the adoption of mobile money and underbanked consumers moving money digitally among their peers.”
When viewed on a global scale, this lack of access to banking infrastructure is a massive issue. The World Bank reports that there are 1.4 billion adults without access to banks. To which Marbury says: “One thing many of [unbanked adults] do have access to is mobile phones.” As a result, there have been a number of payments apps that have been adopted around the world to help these individuals transfer money via mobile transactions. But many of these apps are powered by payments remittance systems that are siloed regionally or geographically.
“What we’re trying to do is expand on the work that’s already being done to create interoperability among systems… and create more opportunities for people to participate in their digital financial world,” Marbury says, explaining how the goal of her work with Interledger is to increase the global adoption of a more transparent remittance system. And if her work is successful, it has the potential to have a very real and positive impact on communities around the world.
Right now, it’s time to enrich your understanding with the complete *Silo Busting* conversation. Get clicking!
Host: Mo Banjoko
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Scott MacAllister
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon -
The hype around generative AI remains strong. Right now, we’re nestled (un)comfortably atop the peak of this hype, wondering what in the world might come next. We’ve seen generative AI beat the bar exam. We’ve also, more recently, seen it fail to answer simple math equations.Regardless of some of its failings, there’s no denying that these extremely rapid advancements in generative AI *and* its adoption trajectory are akin to the advent of the internet and the smartphone.Big things are surely on the horizon.Still, the path ahead is fuzzy, and many companies aren’t sure how to move forward. The biggest question that’s holding them back: “Is our data going to be safe?”Our own Sam Rehman, SVP, Chief Information Security Officer, and Val Tsitlik, VP, Head of Data & Analytics, convened to acknowledge this mass consensus and how modern enterprises *should* be reframing this question. When companies start thinking through AI data security, “You can get pretty deep down [a] rabbit hole and start thinking about very, very complex scenarios and very complex attack vectors,” says Tsitlik. “Really, the best place to start is with the fundamentals, before you go ahead and start building applications.”And the discussion doesn’t stop there. Adoption is going to require a monumental culture shift and, “to change an entire organization to be comfortable to embrace working with some form of computer assistant; that’s a whole different ball game,” says Rehman.Slowly crawling toward exploration and experimentation is futile. Change is knocking at your door, now.And let’s get one thing straight, folks—things are going to be messy. But that’s all part of disruption, isn’t it? The curious innovators who embrace the messy unknown are the ones who come out stronger on the other side.“If you don’t start now, I don’t know how much time you’ll need to catch up… Do it and try to embrace it in small chunks,” says Rehman.Now let’s hear more about what Sam and Val have to say on the fundamentals of data security in an AI-first world.Host: Alison KotinEngineer: Kyp PilalasProducer: Hillary TieneExecutive Producer: Ken Gordon
-
The cloud creates “cloud cowboys,” says Yinon Costica, VP of Product and Co-Founder of Wiz.
This creates, as you might imagine, security issues.
“Cloud allows people to really own their stuff end-to-end. They can basically create whatever they want,” says Costica. But he says that security professionals need to ensure that the cowboys can “govern their environments in a way that is secured while they continue to build.”
These issues set the theme for this #CyberesecurityByDesign conversation between Costica, Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, and Aviv Srour, our Head of Cyber Innovation.
Rehman notes that the frequency of change in cloud is “great for software engineering,” but adds: “It also makes it very, very difficult for you to actually find your baseline, your footing,” regarding security.
One of the most useful things we learn in this episode is how cloud might help spread the responsibility for security. In the past, security was solely the problem of the security team but with cloud and its self-serve nature, Costica says: “Security now should be democratized to those who are actually managing the environments, running the resources, have the right context.”
As a group, the guys talk about the differences between on-prem and cloud security, the role of visibility plays in cloud, the pragmatism cloud brings to security, and more.
Understanding the manifold nature of cloud is critical, and it will require a lot more education than many organizations realize. Says Rehman: “If you don't have a good understanding of what your cloud looks like, which is majority of people out there, then you still have a huge problem.”
Be part of the solution: Listen.
Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
When it comes to financial literacy, many banks and financial institutions claim it’s something they actively prioritize for their customers. In reality, this often tends to be lip service. “Banks like to think they’re doing something in this space….They’ll write a long blog that will sit in a resource page on their website. But if you look at the analytics behind those pages, generally they have very few views. They’re not teaching anything to anyone, and this content is just not visible.” This is the claim of Alex Jimenez, EPAM’s Managing Principal of Financial Services Consulting, as he and Theodora Lau, Founder of Unconventional Ventures, discuss the shortcomings of retail banks when it comes to providing customers with financial literacy and guidance.
“What is their [the bank’s] intention for putting this information out there? Is it just to check a box? Or are they doing it because they genuinely want to help?” asks Lau. If it’s truly the latter, then their efforts are genuinely falling short, especially in this time of unprecedented technological innovation. Worse yet, the one-size-fits-all approach—like an online resource center—fails to address the unique and varied needs of a large swathe of customers. “In the data from a recent survey we conducted, we found that Gen Zers were using physical branches at nearly the same rates as Boomers. It’s because mainly they want to have someone in person to talk to them. And part of that is because we have not done a great job to give young people an understanding of finance,” says Jimenez .
To that extent, banks also need to be cognizant of how they’re training their frontline staff to have financial literacy conversations. Jimenez touches on this, saying, “From a banking side, we also don’t tool our customer-facing employees to be able to do some of this. The philosophy has been, ‘Consumers know us as a bank and therefore will come to us because they trust us and that’s when we can give them guidance about managing their money.’” However, this shortsighted approach can actually leave banks vulnerable to their FinTech and big tech competitors, providing an opening for them to take away market share.
The good news is, there are plenty of opportunities for banks to close this gap with technology. Jimenez says:, “My credit card gives me an alert every time I make a purchase. I love that. But every once in a while, I want that alert to be more than just an alert saying, ‘You just spent $100 on Amazon.’ Give me some contextual advice specific to that transaction. That’s the sort of thing that we in the industry could do if we had the wherewithal to do it.”
Right now, it’s time to familiarize yourself with the full *Silo Busting* conversation. Get clicking!
Host: Mo Banjoko
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Scott MacAllister
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon -
The era of generative AI needs humans… not just the data sets they create. Now and going forward, companies will need to depend on perceptive, intelligent, creative humans who can evaluate and, when necessary, stand up to the black box output AI throws at them. What kind of traits do such people embody? Where might we find them? What might they teach the rest of us? That’s what this episode of *Silo Busting* is all about. Tariq King, our VP and Head of Product-Service Systems, and Ira Livshits, Senior Data Scientist at EPAM, meet the test-based questions of Producer Ken Gordon with knowledge and aplomb.
King, who spent much of his career hiring testers, says he looks for “the way that someone actually approaches solving problems and thinking perhaps in a different way or from a different perspective.”
Livshits notes that with testing in generative AI, “sometimes there is no right or wrong” and that a tester will “have to act or decide based on his or her understanding of the field and maybe intuition.” In short, she says, testing has become much less of a black-and-white job.
Together King and Livshits create a model conversation. They talk about how explainability fits in here, why musicians and liberal arts people make for good testers, the importance of being able to relate findings to a given audience (“[if] I have a PhD focused on machine learning, probably I can understand certain things in a different way than someone who may not have that degree,” says King), and how generative AI is bringing the role of testing closer to the fore.
Go on, give it a test-listen.
Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
When it comes to empowering women—truly empowering them—The Estée Lauder Companies is doing something different. We know this because Michael Smith, CIO of ELC, recently dropped by *The Resonance Test* to talk about the extensive success they’ve had in this area.
In a conversation with Regina Viadro, EPAM’s VP and Co-Head of North American Business, and *Resonance Test* Producer Ken Gordon, Smith details how his organization promotes women’s leadership and diversity within the company and in the broader community.
When your company serves people, whether colleagues or consumers, Smith says: “Your organization should reflect that and be representative of the people you serve.”
One way they do this is through their Open Doors program which is, in Smith’s words, “a learning community. It's a movement that develops talent and it's focused on building culture.”
The program features a weeklong leadership intensive, a year of coaching support, and access to an online interactive learning community. It's an impressive approach to creating a talent ecosystem, and the effects of the Open Doors initiatives are undeniable.
• Nearly 90% of the intensive participants are still with the company.
• 52% have been promoted.
• 100% of the Open Doors participants self-report, Smith says, “an increase in their growth mindset.”
When it comes to women in tech, ELC is doing well. “The tech industry is at 28% women. We're sitting today at 34%,” Smith says. “I'm not satisfied with that number. We know that we can do better.”
Smith notes that his organization is interested in professional development at every layer. “We've doubled and tripled our internship program over the last few years, and we have a strong focus on recruiting women,” he says, adding: “We're seeing great success in people continuing to be promoted, continuing to grow into new roles.”
Speaking of growth: ELC has a wonderful dual career path initiative in place. “In a traditional organization, people hit that manager level and the only way they can continue to grow is to get bigger jobs,” he notes that his organization has another, attractive option: “They don't want to lead large teams, they want to be experts and make an impact with their subject matter expertise.” (We know all about such a path!)
Finally, Smith talks about The Tech Day of Pink, an initiative with a great mission: aiming to end breast cancer within our lifetime.
All in all, it’s a fine, instructional conversation. Open your mind by listening to the stories of all the doors ELC has opened.
Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
The reason we don’t think of insurance as an industry on the cutting edge of technological innovation is that, well, it’s *not.* Not today anyway. Nonetheless, insurance’s brightest thinkers know a change is overdue and are making the transformation to digital a reality. Doing so involves the incorporation of robust data and analytics programs, and that’s precisely what we’re talking about on this episode of *The Resonance Test.*
Lynn Rivenburgh, VP of Business Consulting at EPAM, joins Harini Wilkinson, SVP & Head of Data & Analytics for Protector Plans, a subsidiary of Brown & Brown Insurance, and Sirat Chhabra, our Director of Insurance Data & Analytics Consulting, for an appraisal of the role data and analytics currently (and ideally should play) in the insurance business.
Wilkinson says that more and more insurance companies are investing in “data analytics strategies, in the road map to really use this to move forward.” She adds that the industry as a whole has been talking about the topic for some time but that the pandemic really escalated the need to act.
“We're seeing that data analytics and becoming an insight-driven organization has been one of the top three priorities for our clients,” says Chhabra.
Chhabra details the saga of becoming a data analytics-driven organization in three stages: data collection, data preparation, and product creation for data analysis.
And, of course, clients are all at different stages of data maturity.
“In my current organization, where we're at the beginning, we've never really used data to drive our business forward,” says Wilkinson. They are at “the beginning stages of really understanding what data is there and how do we structure it in a way that we can use it.”
Our three insurance-minded speakers get into the issues of data governance (a little silo-busting, please!), legacy systems, and the nuances of measuring success.
If you’re thinking about insurance, this conversation will certainly carry your interest!
Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
If a bank releases a new digital product, but it’s not intuitive enough to resonate with customers, does it make a noise? When a bank undergoes a major digital transformation, what steps can they take to help ensure the experience they’ve painstakingly crafted resonates with customers and makes the right kind of noise in the marketplace? These are the sorts of questions Alex Jimenez, EPAM’s Managing Principal of Financial Services Consulting, is asking of John Findlay, CEO of LemonadeLXP, in this #TakeItToTheBank conversation.
For many years now, Findlay and LemonadeLXP have introduced gamification to the onboarding process to improve the adoption rates of new digital products as banks roll these experiences out to their customers. “Inherently, we all want to believe we build software that’s intuitive, that people will easily understand and get up to speed on quickly,” says Findlay. “I think that optimism is born out of seeing amazing products like the iPhone and the iPad, but what’s forgotten is Apple had trillions to invest in UX.”
So how can banks make customers feel comfortable with their new tech following a major digital transformation? Findlay says: “The best way to drive adoption is through your frontline. But what we’ve learned is that at about 70% of financial institutions, staff don’t bank with their employer. So, if they don’t bank with you, they don’t use your tech and if they don’t use your tech, there’s no way they can have customer conversations about it.”
Given the current state of the global economy, providing customers with a satisfying digital experience is more important than ever. “We want to keep [customers] happy,” Jimenez says, “And not just customers but employees…because at the end of the day… if you’re not supporting people, there’s no point in putting more technology out there.” Findlay agrees. After all, it’s people who are the drivers of ROI when it comes to tech investments. And when customers embrace a bank’s tech and transition away from branch use to these digital transactions, the banks stand to see a major reduction in the costs of processing those transactions.
But the responsibility for effective digital transformation shouldn’t fall solely on frontline employees. Leaders within the organization need to be the driving force behind adoption. And that’s where gamification can have a major impact on motivating leaders to embrace and model the use of new digital products. Jimenez says, “Gamification can take someone [in leadership] who’s not interested in the topic, who doesn’t see it as impactful to their job because they’re the head of mortgage, for instance, and then suddenly they’re a champion of the system and really understand how it works.” That kind of top-down embracing of a product, a piece of software or a particular user experience can greatly drive literacy throughout the organization.
And that literacy has a direct impact on the bottom line. Findlay explains this notion through the lens of an agent in the contact center. Improved literacy means that agent is better equipped to walk customers through transactions, shortening talk time, improving the customer experience, and ultimately making the agent experience much less stressful (which can limit employee attrition).
Right now, it’s time to familiarize yourself with the full Silo Busting conversation. Get clicking!
Host: Mo Banjoko
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Scott MacAllister
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon -
On the latest #CybersecurityByDesign conversation, we’ve got our minds set on… hacking. Bruce Schneier, author of the recently published *A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules and How to Bend Them Back Again,* chats with Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, about the hacking mindset and what it means for security in the age of generative AI.
Schneier gets the conversation rolling by defining a hacker as “Someone who finds a bug or vulnerability, a loophole in a set of rules, and exploits it to their advantage.”
He talks about hacking not just computers but tax systems, hockey, tax codes, and Formula 1 racing. Rehman mentions that he appreciated a couple of Schneider’s examples and Schneier replies: “There are a couple? There are dozens of examples! Examples are what makes the book fun!” (Reader: The book is fun indeed.)
Schneier notes that “hacking isn't necessarily good nor bad,” which might surprise some who live outside the perimeter of the cybersecurity world. “Hacking is how systems evolve. If I figure a clever way to use a system, to subvert a system that no one thought of before, there are benefits as well as costs.”
The guys then get into the inevitable topic of 2023: The costs and benefits of hacking in the context of AI.
“I think it's gonna be a big arms race in AI and security,” says Schneier, adding that in the near term, AI will benefit the defender. “The attacker is already attacking at computer speeds. Being able to defend at computer speeds will be an enormous benefit.”
While he’s generally optimistic that AI will be good for the good guys, Schneier says “The transition period will be very chaotic.”
This chaos will come from the idea of AI has a hacker. He points to the idea of accountants—human ones—poring through tax code looking for loopholes to exploit: “That feels like something that you can train an AI to do,” he says. “And what happens when AI finds vulnerabilities in tax codes or financial regulations or other sets of laws? How will that work? How fast will they be? How clever will they be? Will they find things that are just so complicated that humans would never have found them?”
Schneier says that AI will increase the speed, scale, sophistication, and scope of hacking and wonders if these differences in degree will make a difference in kind. Then he answers: “The advances in AI in the past six months have been enormous. The next six months will be even bigger. Conversations we have today aren't going to be true in six months.”
What won’t change, however, is the hacker’s essential mind, which Reman admits has always been part of him: “I have always looked at everything as: ‘What else can I do with this?’”
“That’s totally the hacker mindset,” replies Schneier. “I don't think you can train that. I think that is something you either are or are not.”
Host: Macy Donaway
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
When it comes to artificial intelligence, how responsible is the financial services industry? How responsible must it be? And how what steps should it take to get there? These are the sort of questions Alex Jimenez, EPAM’s Managing Principal of Financial Services Consulting, is asking of Kathryn “Kate” Hughes, our Director of LegalTech and ERM Business Consulting, in this #TakeItToTheBank conversation.
Hughes says that many financial firms have long invested in AI and they’re “starting to see a level of incremental benefit from AI.” She mentions a tool called ChatGPT—you might have heard about it—and says that people have been looking for a “sweet spot of a scenario or a use case” and that ChatGPT “hit it out of the park.”
Jimenez notes that while it’s good to invest in AI, it’s important to view it realistically. “ChatGPT is not built to be to be replacing a call center,” he says. “It's not built to replace the advice from your licensed advisor or from your banker or from your accountant.”
The pair have both tested ChatGPT, and quickly found some limits. Jimenez recently asked it about himself. “It invented a whole biography, he says. “It talked about my life and how I lived in San Francisco and how I did all these things, which are not real. And then when I asked for the sources, the sources were made-up as well.” Hughes recently asked the AI about her pension. “It gave me a really good overview of the United States pension system but did not in any way actually answer my question.”
Hughes wisely argues for a measured approach to AI. “I think we have to be *adults* when engaging this technology,” she says. “One of the finest ways to engage AI is to think about it as a co-collaborator… rather than think of it as some, you know, alien other, and to sort of bring it into the mix.”
Risk is, obviously, a big issue here. “Banks need to start thinking about how they manage the risks around AI,” says Jimenez, and he warns against the danger of “digital redlining,” which is when “the data that we're using is biased and now the decisions that the AI is doing are biased as well.”
Hughes speaks about the guidelines proposed by the Wolfsberg Group and the proposed legislation for the EU harmonization of AI regulation, which call for things like ensuring that there is a legitimate purpose, making sure that there is accountability and oversight, openness and transparency built in.
Guidelines are great but the big question remains: How to move FS toward AI responsibility?
Hughes says there are two paths. The first involves insuring “that the organization has its own governance and policy, brand reputation and ethic.”
The second path involves education. Hughes recommends reading about the proposal for harmonized rules for AI across the EU, the Algorithmic Accountability Act, and the AI Bill of Rights and notes organizations should start familiarizing themselves “with the actual content of these proposed legislative items.”
Right now, it’s time to familiarize yourself with the full *Silo Busting* conversation. Get clicking!
Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
Not *soccer* teams: SOC teams. When we say SOC, we’re talking, of course, about the Security Operation Center, a group charged with monitoring, detecting, preventing, and responding to cybert threats. In this #CybersecurityByDesign conversation Michael Mumcuoglu, CEO and Founder of CardinalOps, Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, and Aviv Srour, our Head of Cyber Innovation, illustrate the term with vivid examples and relevant, up-to-the-minute details.
The big challenge is the ever-increasing complexity of our digital systems. “The rate of tech adoption in the business and the evolving threat landscape are basically outpacing the SOC,” says Mumcuoglu. He says that SOC teams are involved in “a constant chase trying to catch up with all that change.”
Education is a constant for the SOC team. “With every new tool and with every new technology, that team needs to have now subject matter experts in really have a huge range of technologies,” Mumcuoglu says.
Part of the issue involves rules. “I have seen many incidents which could have been easily prevented with the proper rules,” says Srour.
The three cyber experts talk about collecting logs, blind spots, staying up-to-date and handling the burden of false positives.
Rehman says that for most CISOs, “the abundance of white noise” would not just cause a capacity problem, but would “numb the system down, meaning your teams would now no longer have the right awareness of what is really an anomaly, what is really odd, what is really something that requires investigation. That abundance of white noise actually would kill your system.”
In other words: SOC today is anything but a game. It’s serious business. Learn what it takes to train your team from some veteran players.
Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
There's value—business value—lodged in the cloud! But to begin releasing this value, a shift in mindset is required. Organizations need to understand that cloud isn't just for IT people but for business leaders seeking to create an adaptive organization and apply the idea of composable business.
Cloud is essential for creating composable business, and all it promises. In this *Silo Busting* conversation, Eli Feldman, EPAM's CTO of Advanced Technology, says: "Cloud service providers are API providers and this is fundamental in understanding... new ways of working." He talks about how cloud can help business "evolve its capabilities very rapidly, repackage them constantly to meet customer demand and IT technology."
Feldman says the cloud can enable a wide variety of services and endpoints through APIs that can integrate within an overall business platform capability.
His conversational partner Miha Kralj, EPAM’s VP of Cloud Strategy, notes that cloud can give the "illusion of global omnipresence," in which business "can reach to every corner of the world, not just because cloud is everywhere, but also reach of the internet and also digital savviness of all of the modern consumers that are out there."
Listen as these two experts talk about how the new cloudiness is changing the craft of modern engineering and introducing change management challenges to leadership everywhere (say Kralj: "The cheese is moving again, right?").
You don't want to just move to the cloud; you want, as Feldman says, to *become* the cloud. The episode will provide instructions on beginning to do so.
Host: Glen Gruber
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
Everybody's talking about generative AI and ChatGPT… but few are doing so with the clear-eyed intelligence and honesty of Sandra Loughlin, EPAM's Chief Learning Scientist, and Alexandra Diening, our Head of Research & Insights for EMEA. In this episode of *Silo Busting,* our conversationalists think about how to optimize this new tech and the unique environment it is creating.
Loughlin says that, regarding ChatGPT, there are "people out there who wish they could turn back the clock and just bury their heads in the sand and pretend that doesn't exist. But generative AI is here, and we need to find ways to live with it and… benefit from it."
She approaches the subject, she says, from three perspectives—from that of her clients, from her practice as a consultant, and as a learning scientist thinking broadly about education.
Diening addresses the hype, and compares it to the speculation surrounding, say, crypto and NFTs, saying of the former: ChatGPT is already delivering tangible value.
Loughlin says she was recently asked to write an article for publication, entered a query into ChatGPT, "and within, you know, 30 seconds it had come out with a full article." She found the draft wanting, of course, and then dove into editing.
Diening notes that the software's output "lacks the nuance of critical and ethical thinking," which means that people are still very much necessary, no matter how hot the hype.
She adds that this might lead to a labor market shift. "I always talk about the death of generalists when it comes to generative AI." ChatGPT could take care of the dull and repetitive work that any general practitioner can do and allow specialists to shine. Could this be a force in the return to craft? Perhaps.
Of course, they both worry about generative AI feeding on polluted data sets. Loughlin says that ChatGPT might, like social media, creating echo chambers “for things that are not true but are very attractive for a lot of people.”
But that’s not the only issue. Diening notes that becoming a specialist requires one to experience the "tedious task of aggregating data" and that, traditionally, one must "go through a certain amount of dull work"—like drafting and redrafting one's words, unassisted—to "sharpen yourself as a specialist." She reminds us that ChatGPT is a tool, comparing it to a calculator, saying that it "doesn't take the job away from mathematicians" but helps them crunch their complex numbers. The smart way is to look to partner with this technology rather than rival it.
And that tool, Loughlin says, will ultimately be beneficial for consultants because it will optimize their work. "It's a tool… to help us shape our offerings, get more precise, and create, frankly, more value for our customers."
Curious how it might help *your* customers? Tune in!
Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon -
Now is an odd time to be a Chief Digital Officer at a financial services organization. The Fed is fighting inflation while watching unemployment numbers. Consumer spending is in flux. Banks are still—still!—trying to figure out their budgets.
With all this going on, how’s a CDO going to proceed with a big digital transformation project? That’s exactly the topic Alex Jimenez, Managing Principal, Financial Services Consulting at EPAM, is covering with our guest, Tom Novak, VP/CDO of Visions Federal Credit Union, on *Silo Busting.* On the latest #TakeItToTheBank dialogue, Novak is all about adhering to his central principles.
“If we stick to our digital transformation objectives, this whole play of humanizing digital as we look to scale our business, there will be short-, medium- and long-term benefits to doing that, and [they] will help us navigate some of these headwinds that are happening from a macroeconomic perspective.”
Jimenez notes the irony that some firms are suddenly shifting away from their digital transformation efforts to focus on creating efficiencies. “It's funny to hear some organizations that say, 'We're gonna stop doing digital transformation because we gotta be more efficient.'” The two ideas should have been part of the conversation together all along.
Novak says his org will “continue to invest in digital transformation efforts and leveraging the data and insights that we get from those” because that's how “we can really propel ourselves out of the doldrums of this, let's call it a mild recession.”
The conversion is centrally about cost optimization in the present and preparing for growth going forward. The insights gained from the digital transformation work, Novak says, will provide “a lot of our insights to move the business forward in the future.”
Novak and Jimenez also tackle Visions' venture into crypto wallets, the importance of getting business intelligence in order, of digital account openings, and of AI and ML and personalization.
Yes, people are opening more digital accounts but, says Novak: “We’re still missing out on how we can form a real relationship with that member as opposed to more of a transactional relationship.”
Episode 53 is what it sounds like when two financial services pros who have, in fact, a real relationship, speak honestly and well about our current moment.
Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon - Visa fler
