EXPRESS COMPUTER | APRIL, 2017
12 | INTERVIEW
Data driven culture can drive the growth of analytics HEADQUARTERED IN RADNOR, Pennsylvania, Qlik is a global provider of business intelligence & visualization software that helps its customers generate better insights and make informed decisions. With a prior experience of working with technology leaders such as Toshiba and Panasonic, Jeremy Sim the director of industry solutions at Qlik, APAC, is responsible for the growth of company's business in the manufacturing and high tech sectors. Qlik has over 40,000 customers globally, across all business sectors ranging from SMB to Fortune 500 companies. In an exclusive interview with Ankush Kumar, Sim talks about how data generated by IoT devices can be effectively used by the industry and the government sector Some edited excerpts: How do you see the combination of IoT and data analytics being used by the industry? Recently, we are seeing an increase in the adoption of IoT. As you can imagine, you need a strong The government infrastructure in should therefore order for IoT to aim to create an be pervasive. However, several IoT industry in organizations India worth USD 15 like the hightech, auto and billion by 2020, telco sectors are based on the already seeing value from IoT approximation data analysis. that India would For example in have a share of 5-6 the auto sector, our customers percent of the analyze the global IoT industry sensor data from automobiles to understand the reliability of the product as well as the driving or usage patterns. These insights drive innovation within the product brand and also help improve after sales service.
Which sectors do you believe will lead in leveraging this combination (IoT and analytics)? In terms of Internet of Things (IoT), we do see the manufacturing and retail sectors at the forefront of leveraging this innovative technology. Manufacturers are empowered to gain greater insights into their production systems with sensor data from their equipment. Additionally, the items produced, especially electronics and automobiles, constantly transmit information about the reliability and usability. This allows the manufacturers to understand the relation between their products and the ecosystem. Such knowledge is valuable for the development of new products and potential upgrades. Retailers can also learn of buying patterns of customers via mobile devices, which results in better marketing activities. Through the installation of sensors in stores, retailers are able to analyze and monitor how customers navigate along the aisles in order to create effective assortment of goods and allocation of products. How is the demand for BI and
analytics solutions from the government? Business Intelligence is now being considered as an important tool for turning measurements into actionable information. With the augment of the ‘Digital India’ initiative, government departments have fast tracked how they want to look at managing, measuring and monitoring data. As government operations are largely information-based, data analysis is playing a critical role. They are also placing a huge focus on aspects such as embedded BI, as well as mobile and social BI. We have been working with various government departments in India and globally, and enabling them to glean actionable intelligence out of vast amounts of data. In India, we work for government agencies dealing with the Department of Information Technology, state governments, as well as departments associated with taxation. How do you think IoT can be effectively used in the government sector? The digital space has witnessed major transformations in the last couple of years. With
IoT industry in India worth USD 15 billion by 2020, based on the approximation that India would have a share of 5-6 percent of the global IoT industry. Capacity building (Human & Technology) programmes should be undertaken for IoT specific skill sets for domestic as well as international markets. The country should also undertake Research & Development for all assisting technologies. The aim should be to develop IoT products customized to Indian needs in all possible domains.
the advent of the government’s ‘Digital India’ initiative in full throttle, IoT would play a very critical role. With IoT, the number of connected sensors will soon reach trillions, working with billions of intelligent systems involving in-numerous applications, which will drive new consumer and business behaviour. This demand for increasingly intelligent industry solutions based on IoT will drive trillions of dollars in opportunity for the IT industry and even more for the companies that take advantage of IoT. The government should therefore aim to create an
How can we make the best use of the data generated by IoT devices? Firstly, there has to be a strong infrastructure to manage the transmission and collection of IoT data. Processes need to be in place to transform and managed the data once collected. Most importantly, the people who analyze the data need to be trained. There has to be a data driven culture within an organization to drive the growth of analytics. Besides increasing the usage of analytics, organizations also need to embrace the analytical results. This is where strong corporate and executive
leadership is needed. How is Qlik making sense of all the data that has been generated? In general, there are 3 types of data in IoT: data in motion, data in use and data at rest. Different technologies are required for each of these. Qlik provides the analytical platform to visualize and analyze data. Hence, what an organization requires is a network of technologies that eventually draws data from the source to the end user where they can start their analysis. Qlik collaborates with numerous technologies in order to create the rich applications where users can make sense of their data. How do you ensure the security of data on your platform? With huge amounts of data transmitting across cyberspace, security can be an issue. Once the data is at rest, Qlik becomes responsible for the governance and usage of the data within the organization. This remains a key strength of Qlik as our analytical platform can both govern the access and usage of the available data, as well as even the way the final analysis is shared.
“We need radical re-thinking to beat cyber criminals” IN THE ERA of ransomware and other targeted attacks, Trend Micro offers security solutions that works and integrates end-to-end with other solutions that customers use, thereby enhancing RoI. In an interaction with Nivedan Prakash, Raimund Genes, CTO, Trend Micro talks about cyber security trends and how the company is working to protect users from emerging threats Please highlight some of the current trends prevailing in the security domain? Till a couple of years ago, everyone in the industry used to talk about APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats). But now discussions have shifted towards modern-day malwares, which includes ransomware. Unlike APTs, ransomware is pure profit for Today, in the era of cyber social media, criminals. As threats every corporate have and individual is diversified and vulnerable to grown in sophistication, cyber attacks. It’s cyber nice to remain criminals have moved on from visible but at the primarily same time, it targeting individuals to opens a window focusing on of bigger where the vulnerability money is i.e. enterprises. Cyber threats reached an alltime high in 2016, with ransomware and Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams gaining increased popularity among
cybercriminals looking to extort enterprises. Throughout last year, we witnessed threat actors extort companies and organizations for the sake of profitability and we don’t anticipate this trend slowing down. The other trend that we are witnessing is that our industry is not a vendor driven market. We have to always react to the behavior of cyber criminals. I believe that our competitors are these fast and dynamic cyber goons and not the likes of Symantec or McAfee, as these people with profit motive keep changing their behavior dramatically. As a vendor, you just can offer one piece of technology as it will sooner or later become irrelevant. For you to survive in this fiercely competitive market, you have to invest in different security solutions; you need a set of different technologies to safeguard your assets. At this point, everyone in the industry is talking about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and the benefits associated with them. But soon you will find the cyber criminals fooling these technologies as well. While we are also witnessing an influx of security startups in the
global market that are focusing on user behavioral analytics, most of them specialize on a single technological area. These kinds of startups won’t survive for long, as the behavior of cyber criminals is changing constantly. Among the modern-day threats, which ones are blown out of proportion? In the past, APTs were blown out of proportion. I used to refer such threats as targeted attacks, as these were nothing but modified malware. There is no point in making a hue and cry of such attacks and giving them some sophisticated nomenclature. In the current scenario, one over-hyped area is ‘end-user IoT’. People are talking about ransomware on IoT devices, but I believe it won’t give them any RoI. Hence, they might use some other tactics to exploit IoT devices. In IoT, it’s all about economy of scale. When we did drone hacking at Trend Micro, the industry looked at it as cool stuff. But people with malicious intent want more and more money. Today, nobody is putting attention towards Industrial IoT, which is more vulnerable than end-user IoT. There are high chances of a power grid or a power generator getting blown up or a smart city getting shut down with
and certainly not from the big security players. While a few small vendors are still trying to cash in by blowing things out of proportion, customers at large are aware of the situation and they easily figure out when it’s overhyped. There is an urgent need for us to realize the reality that we are constantly under attack that is multi-fold and not just one vector. Today, in the era of social media, every corporate and individual is vulnerable to cyber attacks. It’s nice to remain visible but at the same time, it opens a window of bigger vulnerability.
the modern-day threat vectors. To quote an example here, Trend Micro conducted its own analysis of Shodan (an online search engine that scans cyber assets or Internet connected devices looking for any security flaws that could open them up for attacks) data for February 2016 and found that millions of Internet-connected devices in the US, including many in the most sensitive industries, are vulnerable. But luckily, cyber criminals have not yet found a business model of making money by targeting Industrial IoT. However, I don’t see modernday malware getting over-hyped
Looking at these trends, in which areas did Trend Micro invest recently? We have made huge investments in areas like cloud security, next generation endpoint, breach detection system, endpoint detection and response, security information and event management, and identity and access management. Next year, Trend Micro will be completing 30 years in the industry, and unlike most of the players in the market, we have been profitable in this long journey. The reason behind our strong growth and continued success is the diversification of products that we offer to the
customers. A lot of traditional players still rely on consumer revenue but looking the changing dynamics of the market, we understood well in advance that our consumer revenue will decline. Hence, we made good investments in areas like cloud and network security. Although losing consumer revenue in most of the markets was a painful experience, we covered it up by cementing our place in the enterprise security domain. Cyber criminals have always been a step ahead of security vendors. Can we expect the reverse in the near future? We could be ahead of the cyber criminals, as we already have the technology to beat them. But it changes the way we use the computers. If I am appointed as a consultant to your organization, I would ban every BYOD device as well as the usage of Android devices. And I would force you to use the PC connected to the Linux server. PC is considered as the best invention of the mankind but the whole ecosystem has been created in such a manner that we are prone to all sorts of cyber attacks. In order to remain ahead of the cyber criminals, we need to bring a radical change in our approach.