Information Is Currency

I took a hiatus from posting for the past few days, so there are a plethora of links to keep you busy for the weekend.

Study: Social Media Making People Anti-Social, Jealous

A recent global study conducted by Kasperksy Lab reveals that social media users are interacting less face-to-face than in the past because of this newfound ability to constantly communicate and stay in touch online. In the study, researchers found that about one-third of people communicate less with their parents (31%), partners (23%), children (33%) and friends (35%) because they can simply follow them on social media. This may be doing more harm than good, in a world where editing one’s life to make it appear perfect is more appealing than naturally existing.

Federal workers turn to encryption to thwart Trump

Federal employees worried that President Donald Trump will gut their agencies are creating new email addresses, signing up for encrypted messaging apps and looking for other, protected ways to push back against the new administration’s agenda.

Whether inside the Environmental Protection Agency, within the Foreign Service, on the edges of the Labor Department or beyond, employees are using new technology as well as more old-fashioned approaches — such as private face-to-face meetings — to organize letters, talk strategy, or contact media outlets and other groups to express their dissent.

The goal is to get their message across while not violating any rules covering workplace communications, which can be monitored by the government and could potentially get them fired.

Law Firm Hogan Lovells Learns to Grapple with Blockchain Contracts

A blockchain distributed ledger may not replace all lawyers, but one firm is studying how the technology could eliminate many of the manual steps typically needed to execute contracts.

Law firm Hogan Lovells is experimenting with so called smart contracts and exploring the legal and organizational issues raised by the agreements executed automatically using blockchain.

Smart contracts, a key application facilitated by the blockchain technology, are software that can automatically execute a contract with no human intervention once coded conditions are met. After one company pays another for a product, for example, a shipper may be notified to pick up the package, after which it would then be paid. A blockchain distributed ledger can electronically verify the parties and payments, keeping a secure record of each step.

One sign of analytical maturity is the effectiveness of cross-functional problem solving. IT likely has the data, the data team needs to surface insights for the business, and the business has to be confident that the decisions they make advance their objectives. In today’s rapidly changing business environment, cross-functional teams are necessary because their collective knowledge and skills enables more effective problem solving, faster.

In our experience, a breach can go from initial entry to full compromise in just a half hour. “Full compromise” means that you cannot get the hackers out without taking extreme measures like taking your system offline or wiping everything. From there, hackers can exfiltrate data undetected within one to three hours.

Disparate customer data is actually a customer experience killer.

Without a timely and comprehensive view of the customer, businesses are unable to tailor relevant offers, resolve issues quickly and optimize customers’ experience across channels and throughout the customer life cycle.

Creating this comprehensive view of customer should be a seamless, integrated and largely automated process and not an ad-hoc exercise. Then only will be the businesses be able to unleash the true power of customer data.