Month: March 2022

After all, EA AND AGILE ARE NOT EXCLUSIVE!

Posted on by Marbenz Antonio

By The Open Group

Every company has to be agile to deal with a variety of pressures and changes both inside and outside the company. Enterprise Architecture provides the framework and overall picture of an organization that organizations require. The TOGAF® standard, for example, is a standard developed by The Open Group. Both Lean and Enterprise Architecture may help organizations become more agile, but they do it from distinct, complementary perspectives. Many firms are leveraging the strengths of both methodologies by combining EA and Lean knowledge, tactics, and people.

We’ve been watching the progress of agile and, in particular, what it implies in the context of Enterprise Architecture, at The Open Group. We’ve put together a series of seminars that look at how Lean and EA techniques may be utilized to complement one another and benefit a company as a whole,

1. Agile Enterprise Architecture: Opposites Attract!

In software development, agile methodologies have become the standard. However, genuine business agility demands more than a wide array of agile teams. Also, if you solely concentrate on the agility of your development processes, you may miss the forest for the trees: why do you want to be agile as a company and what does it entail?

In smaller companies, a few agile/DevOps teams may coordinate change between themselves, and management lines are short enough that strategic direction can be communicated directly to teams. However, in bigger businesses, there may be hundreds of agile teams, each working on a different area of the huge “enterprise machine,” necessitating additional collaboration. Even if agile teams create agile silos that ignore their surroundings, the outcome will not be adaptable or flexible. However, future transformation may become much more difficult, emphasizing the need for good architecture.

And a business is more than just software. This is where Enterprise Architecture’s “big picture” perspective comes in useful, as it includes more stakeholders than just software users, such as desired (and unwanted!) business outcomes, capabilities to be developed or improved, resources needed, business processes, IT and physical infrastructure to be realized, and more.

This webinar will cover how true business agility necessitates agility in both methods and products, as well as several use-cases for combining Enterprise Architecture, agile, and DevOps, and how an agile approach like the Scaled Agile Framework® can be fruitfully combined with an Enterprise Architecture framework like the TOGAF® standard.

2. Becoming more Agile with Lean and Enterprise Architecture

While Lean and EA have different scopes and approaches, they may complement each other quite well. All have the same aim in mind: to improve the performance of the company.

This should come as no surprise, given that many companies run concurrent Lean and EA projects. It’s only natural to search for synergy when you have a common purpose. We concluded that many EA projects should be leaner and that leaner initiatives can have a greater impact when driven by EA. In this webinar, we’ll look at how Lean and EA may work together to achieve great results.

3. Agile Scale: Architecture in the Age of Complex

Without a question, the agile movement is having a significant impact on software development processes, as well as IT department organizations and beyond. Antoine Lonjon describes how the EA discipline is being seriously challenged by this agile manifesto, and how it exhibits a shift in focus from the conventional command and control organization of work to the organization of purposes in this webinar offered by The Open Group.

This webinar explores the paradigm change from conventional Enterprise Architecture to Agile-Lean Enterprise Architecture, as well as the transition from traditional Enterprise Architecture to the Digital Enterprise Architecture eco-system.

4. Architecture in Agile Environments – Challenges and Solutions to Maximize Value

While agile development has become the de facto standard for software development, genuine business agility necessitates more than scrum teams producing functional solutions. However, if you merely concentrate on the small-scale agility offered by agile software development, you may miss the forest for the trees: why do you want to be agile as an organization, and what does it entail?

An organization is more than a collection of small-scale projects. The puzzle pieces that these teams are working on must somehow come together. And, preferably, there is a future vision that is in line with the company’s strategy, as well as a set of objectives that the business aspires to. Enterprise Architecture enters the picture at this point.

Both systems have advantages and disadvantages. Only having a horde of scrum teams without some integrative, overarching approach may lead to a disconnected landscape consisting of agile silos. EA without agile may lead to slow and bureaucratic organizations that do not respond quickly enough to changes and trends, and only having a horde of scrum teams without some integrative, overarching approach may lead to a disconnected landscape consisting of agile silos. However, by combining the characteristics of both models, we may create organizations that operate as a cohesive unit without the need for a central, command-and-control management system that stifles local development and innovation.

5. IT4IT™ Applied: Case Studies for Agile IT4IT (Part One)

We live in a society where everyone appears to desire everything now more than before. While this is difficult, it is also driving new habits and delivery methods. Who would have guessed that when The Open Group’s IT4IT Reference Architecture was released in October 2015, there would already be a desire for rapid implementation methods and a shorter time to value?

Fortunately, HPE Software Services has already developed a strategy called Agile IT4IT, which they have utilized with some clients across the world.

This Session:

  • Explains how an agile methodology may be utilized to increase value realization in the context of the IT4T Reference Architecture.
  • This article provides some actual insight into the benefits and problems that this technique has proven, particularly challenges linked to:
    • The term “agile” refers to a notion.
    • Concerns about people and culture
    • When it comes to topics like operating models, there is a general lack of maturity in IT.
    • The various issues that exist in different regions of the world, as well as the willingness to use a single reference design to manage the IT company
  • Provides practical recommendations to the audience on how to decide if they are ready to adopt the IT4IT standard in such a targeted, value-based manner.

6. IT4IT™ Applied: Case Studies for Agile IT4IT (Part Two)

We live in a society where everyone appears to desire everything now more than before. While this is difficult, it is also driving new habits and delivery methods. Joshua presented a strategy he adopted with a few customers in “Case Studies for Agile IT4ITTM Part One” (Ref. D175), which is geared at providing durable outcomes with the IT4IT Reference Architecture quickly.

The adoption of both the method and the deliverables is a requirement for this approach. One of the most important components is getting stakeholders to accept change and adapt to outcomes.

As part of Agile IT4IT, this presentation provides some genuine insight into the benefits and pitfalls of a Management of Organizational Change (MOC) strategy, including:

  • Within Agile IT4IT, MOC is a concept.
  • The cultural, people, and adoption difficulties, as well as how to spot and address them
  • Provide practical advice to the audience on how to use MOC for Agile IT4IT.
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WITH A TOGAF® BASED ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE, PROVIDING CUSTOMER-DRIVEN VALUE

Posted on by Marbenz Antonio

The Enterprise Architecture domain of business architecture is about more than simply business capabilities and procedures. It’s all about maximizing value for your customers and contributing to the development of a more customer-centric business.

The Importance of Value in Enterprise Architecture

Business processes have traditionally been Enterprise Architects’ primary means of communication with business stakeholders. The concept of business capability, on the other hand, is a relatively contemporary term that is frequently employed in Enterprise Architecture. As shown in this video titled “TOGAF® Business Architecture: Company Capability Guide,” business capabilities enable a clearer knowledge of how software applications assist the business. Some new business capabilities have no accompanying apps, whilst others have an excessive number. Both concepts alone fall short of capturing the value that an agile customer-driven organization must deliver to maintain and grow its market share in the face of increasingly rapid and continuous innovative changes, as well as more informed customers who force them to adopt more fluid business strategies.

In a customer-driven business, enterprise architects must comprehend and apply the idea of value, as demonstrated in Figure 1. A company often offers many value propositions to its various customer groups (or personas) and partners, which are provided via value streams comprised of multiple value phases. Internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, and, in many cases, the customer are all involved in the value phases. Customer journey steps are enabled by value stages, which are enabled by capabilities and operationalized by procedures (level 2 or 3 usually). If you wish to learn more, the TOGAF® Business Architecture: Value Stream Guide video gives a very clear and easy explanation. Customer journeys aren’t technically part of business architecture, but they may be highly beneficial when interacting with business stakeholders.

These value streams/stages aren’t going to appear anywhere. A business must be able to accomplish a specified goal, which is to offer value to the triggering stakeholder, which in this case is the customer. This ability serves as a business enabler. The organization will be unable to give value to its stakeholders without this capacity (customers). A business process operationalizes a capacity that allows a value stage. It’s also owned by one or more business units or divisions inside an organization, and it’s utilized by one or more of them. At least one application, system, or IT service is usually required to provide a capacity.

Value propositions, value streams, and value phases are the reasons why a project or effort should be undertaken. A stakeholder is the “Whom” who must participate for value to be created. The business process describes “How” a company might generate value. Finally, business competency is “What” the company must manage or perform to generate value.

Important Definitions

Using the TOGAF Standard definitions as a guide, each element in Figure 1 may be defined as follows:

Business Process. A business process is a collection of connected and organized operations carried out by people or machines in a certain order to generate a service or a product (or serves a business goal or objective).

Business Capability. A business capability is a specialized ability that a company can have or trade to attain a certain goal. Applications, systems, and/or IT services must support a business capability.

Customer. A person who buys a product or service.

Customer Journey. The customer journey encompasses all of the experiences that customers have while interacting with an organization in a series of progressive phases before and after acquiring a product or service. Instead of focusing on a single aspect of a transaction or event, the customer journey will capture the entire customer experience. A customer journey is made up of many stages.

Product. A thing, an idea, a technique, information, an object, or service supplied by an organization is developed as a consequence of a process and serves a need or satisfies a want of a consumer. A product is frequently included in a value proposition.

Stakeholder. A person, group, organization, or class of people who are interested in a system.

Service. A repeated activity is a distinct behavior that may be requested or otherwise activated by a building block. A product is frequently included in a value proposition.

Value Proposition. A value proposition is a promise to provide value to the triggering stakeholder (typically a customer) who believes that at least one benefit will be received as a result of their purchase.

Value Stream. A representation of a customer, stakeholder, or end-total user’s result created by an end-to-end collection of value-adding actions. A value stream is made up of numerous value phases that each include at least one identified stakeholder.

Enterprise Architecture and the 5 Phases of Agile Strategy Execution

Let’s now place each of the pieces in Figure 1 above to choose which of the 5 phases to implement an organizational agile strategy to take, as shown in Figure 2 below. The book “Practical Guide to Agile Strategy Execution: Design, Architect, Prioritize, and Deliver your Corporate Future Successfully” explains these steps in-depth.

Throughout the five phases of an organization’s agile strategy execution, customers (segments and/or personas) and partners are involved. All phases include business stakeholders, except for the fourth, which is the agile delivery and execution phase. Stakeholders in IT are primarily involved in initiative planning (step 3) as well as agile delivery and execution (step 4).

To satisfy particular strategies and goals, value propositions, goods, and services are generally defined in business design and strategy (step 1). Typically, customer journeys, value streams, and value stages are analyzed at the start of your architecting change (step 2). In both architecting change and planning initiatives, business capabilities are investigated (steps 2 and 3). Business processes are mostly handled in the agile delivery and execution phase (step 4) at the operational and tactical levels, where business process experts and agile experts must fulfill explicit targets while using tactics to measure progress.

Enterprise architects must realize that business architecture is more than simply business capabilities and procedures if they are to add value to their organizations. Enterprise architects should not restrict themselves to architecting their organization’s transformation and initiative planning. Enterprise architects may also help their company’s clients and partners get the most out of their investments. Including all parts of business architecture in your enterprise architecture practice will increase the value of your team to business stakeholders during the initial business design and strategy phase, as well as to IT stakeholders throughout the agile delivery and execution phase.

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WHY IS ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE A “MUST-HAVE” NOW MORE THAN EVER BEFORE?

Posted on by Marbenz Antonio

A master’s degree in business administration aids students in better understanding corporate dynamics. In today’s world, They feel it is critical to be able to perceive business as a whole. Students must use the Enterprise Architect lens and break down silos to perceive the business as one entity. Understanding that business does not operate in silos, as some of our MBA courses may lead us to believe, is critical. An organization must function cooperatively to be efficient and effective, which means that all of the enterprise’s core parts must advance in lockstep.

“A company is just as good as its weakest link.”

Let’s use the human body as an example. A human body needs an objective and goal, as well as food as fuel, sleep as rejuvenation, and a family as a support system, to function successfully.

Similarly, an organization needs a strategic goal, business alignment to that vision, applications to carry out the business plan, data to fuel growth, and technology to keep the organization working at all times. When we can perceive the stages of the business – business, application, data, and technology – as a linked whole, business management is guaranteed to succeed. Enterprise Architecture binds these phases together into a single, easily accessible entity. As a result, this topic provides an excellent chance for MBA graduates to link their knowledge from multiple disciplines and use it to get the business engine rolling.

Similarly, an organization needs a strategic goal, business alignment to that vision, applications to carry out the business plan, data to fuel growth, and technology to keep the organization working at all times. When we can perceive the stages of the business – business, application, data, and technology – as a linked whole, business management is guaranteed to succeed. Enterprise Architecture binds these phases together into a single, easily accessible entity. As a result, this topic provides an excellent chance for MBA graduates to link their knowledge from multiple disciplines and use it to get the business engine rolling.

Enterprise architecture as a subject and familiarity with reference architectures such as IT4ITTM would aid EA aspirants in appreciating tools for managing a digital enterprise. As students, we are aware that many businesses are undergoing digital transformations. However, if we are left to our own devices, we are unlikely to know where to begin the trip or how to proceed with the digital transformation. To address the above-mentioned issue, familiarity with the TOGAF® Architecture Development Method (ADM) would be a great place to start. A realistic beginning point may be an as-is evaluation followed by a to-be assessment spanning business, data, application, and technology. The phase “Opportunities and Solutions” will assist in developing a roadmap of numerous digital transformation projects that a company may pick from.

Enterprise Architecture as a b-school subject would span across other areas and provide students with a comprehensive perspective. In a business analytics class, for example, students study statistical modeling and how to make data-driven business choices. Now that Enterprise Architecture is a subject, they will begin to value ideas such as:

  • The maturity of an organization’s analytics capacity
  • In a multi-application context, the importance of a single source of truth cannot be overstated.
  • Maintaining a data catalog with all data pieces and building matrices such as the application-data matrix is critical.
  • Is the business analytics application supported by technology — is it on the cloud, for example?

There are several advantages to having Enterprise Architecture as a “must-have” subject. We are certain that MBA graduates who have the capacity to perceive the enterprise as a whole can help their companies navigate through shifting business conditions. And, while they’re steering the ship, they’ll have the know-how to make adjustments rapidly enough to keep up with the shifting commercial landscape. As a result, EA as a topic will assist MBA graduates in growing their business in a sustainable and resilient manner.

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Who is Creating Businesses on the Backs of Free and Open Source Software?

Posted on by Marbenz Antonio

As a commodity and a business, free and open-source software holds a unique position. The program has zero marginal cost (to use an economics phrase) and is infinitely repeatable and easy to distribute (for those with decent Internet connection), but it needs some knowledge to build and significant expertise to successfully maintain.

This article looks at various businesses that make money by promoting free software. Let’s start with a sobering observation: detractors of free software have long said that you can’t make a living selling free software, and this is true. A community, not a firm, should own free and open-source software. Thousands of individual programmers, on the other hand, make a career by giving free all of their code, and open-source may even be used to build profitable enterprises.

From CD Stacks to VM Stacks

Every business has discovered how difficult it is to transform a concept into a finished product. One historical example is Dava Sobel’s book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, which chronicles the creation of the chronometer in the 18th century. We don’t know if Sobel picked the subtitle, but the book’s main takeaway is that the inventor did not solve the problem on his own. He was never able to create a durable version of his invention that could be mass-produced and marketed at a reasonable cost; that task was left to a later engineer.

When it comes to transitioning from source code to production-ready deployment, free and open-source software has its own set of obstacles. Cygnus Solutions, which helped build several programming tools for the GNU project, was one of the first firms to bridge the divide. Despite serving a small niche of programmers interested in the GNU platform, the firm was an essential element of the computer infrastructure in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

“We were setting a market price for all the preparation that needed to be done to find, collect, configure, test, document, distribute, and maintain packages of free software competitive with proprietary software,” said Michael Tiemann, the creator of Cygnus, years later.

Cygnus went on to create Cygwin, a free Unix-like environment that can be installed on Microsoft Windows. This package of tools was installed by many Windows users who valued the advantages of the Unix shell and utilities. Cygwin was the forerunner to Microsoft’s Windows Subsystem for Linux, which was introduced in 2019.

Red Hat was a more prominent and successful proponent of the two-phase concept of packaging a solid distribution of free software and following up with support. Tiemann revealed at a presentation about Red Hat that he saw the potential in the little company right away and attempted to buy it, but the Cygnus board and management refused. Red Hat, on the other hand, finally purchased Cygnus. Since then, Tiemann has held several leadership positions at Red Hat.

Transparency, inclusiveness, flexibility, collaboration, and community are the essential values of open organizations, according to Jim Whitehurst (currently President of IBM), who served as Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat.

Red Hat contributes to free software groups, such as the Java Spring framework, and produces its free software. Because a group of hackers named the CentOS project re-engineered Red Hat methods, anybody could operate a GNU/Linux system using the same versions of software present in Red Hat’s commercial edition, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for a long period. CentOS was taken over by Red Hat after many years, and it currently exists as a form of test release for Red Hat, sitting between the more experimental Fedora project and the stable RHEL.

They declared that they would be going “up the stack,” concentrating on frameworks like Spring and other tools for today’s hot computing jobs, such as Web development. They’ve followed the computer industry into virtual machines and cloud computing, and they’re currently concentrating their efforts on their OpenShift container-based platform.

They occupied a relatively secure niche when it came to offering GNU/Linux systems to their clients, with just a few rivals such as Canonical (which maintains the extremely popular Ubuntu distribution) and SUSE. By abandoning this niche in favor of virtualization and the cloud, Red Hat and Canonical join a market dominated by genuine behemoths like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, as well as VMWare and even IBM, who acquired Red Hat in 2019.

Companies that founded their strategy on something else created and shared the software. Alternatively, they may work in a field unrelated to computing, such as automotive, but design software to satisfy a personal need and then strive to establish a community around it.

Current open-source business

James Vasile and Karl Fogel, two very skilled free software programmers, manage Open Tech Strategies. They make the majority of their money by developing free software for clients. They also provide consultancy services to companies looking to develop an open-source strategy. Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project was written by Fogel, and their firm created a list of archetypes for open source development for Mozilla.

One of LeadingBit’s main services is assisting companies in establishing an Open Source Program Office (OSPO). OSPOs are becoming a more beneficial investment for both companies and institutions. At opensource.com, a key news and debate site for the open-source movement, some of the tools and methods that might assist construct an effective OSPO are outlined.

An OSPO’s initial responsibility is to locate and record all of the free software that the corporation or college is employing. Because programmers smuggle it in without alerting management for some reason, many managers are unaware that they are using and even distributing free software. This is both unfair and dangerous, especially if the programmer includes code with a restricted license (essentially the GPL) in the company’s exclusive product. The masquerade can sometimes come to an end when a proprietary product generates an error message that alerts free software developers to the fact that their code has been stolen. Such embarrassments might occur if there is no openness and responsibility inside the firm.

Some other tasks of an OSPO include:

  • Creating and enforcing regulations for the use and creation of free software
  • Providing staff with time off to participate in free software groups outside of the company
  • Creating incentives for people to participate in and contribute to these communities
  • Creating a general framework for the usage of free software in the company

Bonewald is dedicated to improving the maturity of free software through strengthening open source communities and products. Accountability, contributor stability and maintenance, support availability, security checks, and gathering metrics to support all of those attributes are some of the features that move towards maturity.

Bonewald has also been working on a platform called IEEE SA OPEN for the past year, arguing that open source communities can learn a lot from standards creation. Well-known organizations such as the Apache Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, the Linux Foundation, and the Savannah project of the GNU project fulfill this function.

The CLA Linux Institute is a non-profit organization that operates in numerous companies and is now online. 4Linux is a Brazilian firm that focuses on open-source software classes for teenagers, focusing on unique, engaging training techniques and resources.

By launching LPI testing in Brazil, 4Linux spearheaded the first campaign to offer certifications for free and open-source software to the country. They may also brag about being the world’s first firm to provide a Linux online education. They used to perform more coding, but now they only conduct testing and bug fixes. 4Linux shows interest in open source from start-ups and tech-based businesses, in addition to government.

Conclusion

Open source has shown to be not just long-lasting, but also essential to modern life. Big data, artificial intelligence, and encryption are examples of hot new software projects that are released as open-source. Even in the cloud, the majority of these cutting-edge services are open source, which consumers like since they know they can study the technology without being tied to a specific cloud vendor.

Free software is produced and maintained by the world’s largest computing corporations, including IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and others. These businesses rely on free software to support their proprietary operations. Thousands of professionals will be able to live out their dreams as free software programmers as a result of their efforts.

However, as this essay has demonstrated, businesses may profit while sticking to open source. Many customers demand free software and will pay you to create it. Money may also be generated by supporting the open-source community and activities.

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The Internet Archive, Open Knowledge, and the History of Everything

Posted on by Marbenz Antonio

Digital storage is both the most sensitive and the most strong media ever devised. On a hard drive, a change in the magnetization of a few tiny bits can wipe out content indefinitely. Furthermore, anyone who causes trouble on their website or through social media may easily delete the humiliating proof with a few keystrokes. However, the ability to produce digital copies at a minimal cost allows the material to be duplicated and kept in secure locations. The Internet Archive uses this second characteristic of digital material to preserve the history of the web—and more.

When the Internet Archive was founded in 1996, most individuals had only had access to the internet for a few years. Already, computer expert Brewster Kahle could see that historical material was being destroyed, so he founded the Internet Archive. The archive’s engines presently crawl roughly 750 million pages every day, with each site holding possibly hundreds or thousands of distinct web pages. The archive’s content is believed to be 552 billion web pages at the time of writing. It contains a lot more than just websites. This article looks at the Internet Archive’s accomplishments and what it has to offer both scholars and regular computer users.

Another facet of free information is online sites that provide unique content, which writers frequently use while researching pieces like this one. Wikipedia, which celebrated its 20th anniversary on January 15 of this year, is the superhero of these free sites. Although Wikipedia material is unique, it makes extensive use of references and cautions readers against using it as the main source. Furthermore, Wikipedia’s content and pictures are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, the GNU Free Documentation License, or both. As a result, the information frequently appears on other websites.

Lost in the Mists of Time

The internet’s key characteristic is its ease of use. The United States of America The Supreme Court has not learned this lesson, as the justices and their staff often reference websites in their decisions. Nearly half of these links are broken, resulting in the normal 404 error response, according to researchers. That means we won’t be able to learn about the evidence used by judges to make such important decisions.

News sites, academic research, and anybody else who makes use of the web’s core feature: the simplicity with which they may link to other sites face the same risk of losing responsibility. The issue isn’t limited to sites that have gone 404. (disappeared). It also applies to sites that update their material after you’ve made a point based on the previous content. As a result, when clever commentators use other people’s site material or social media posts to make a point, they upload screenshots of the current content.

Amber, a project of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, offers a more organized approach to archiving the past. Amber allows saving a copy of a web page while you’re viewing it simply. Amber, on the other hand, has a basic requirement: a web server on which to keep the material. The majority of us utilize third-party online services and do not have the necessary permissions to save a page. Harvard offers Perma.cc, a form of “Amber as a Service,” where anybody may store a website in its present state and create a URL that others can refer to later. Drupal.org also allows you to save pages using Amber, which is a plus. The Internet Archive maintains a copy of Perma.cc. To see how common the problem of broken links is, then searched through one of these articles, picking one that was very substantial and published four years before the study for this Internet Archive article. Only four years after having written it, my essay was published with 43 links, seven of which were broken.

The Internet Archive is a great place to start. Because they don’t throw anything away, you may access a website at any time. Let’s look at ways to get old pages back. This may be done using the Wayback Machine, an Internet Archive search interface.

Assume that one of the links on this page has become 404. The following link will take you to the content.

  1. To discover the original URL you wish to visit, look at the source code of this web page.
  2. Use the Wayback Machine to go back in time.
  3. In the search box, type the URL.
  4. The dates on which the Wayback Machine archived this page are displayed on the page retrieved by the Wayback Machine. You may access the page as it appeared on any of those dates by clicking on it. Please be patient while the site loads slowly. An archive has the luxury of waiting.

You may alternatively forgo the visual interface and manually search for the page, but this is a more complex issue that users won’t go into here. You may use the save-page-now functionality to ensure that a web page is saved in its present state. There’s also a file upload option.

More than 250 of my articles and blog posts have vanished from various websites, according to our estimates. Some articles might be recreated from preserved drafts, while others were discovered through searches in unusual locations like mailing list archives. However, the Internet Archive is certain to have them all. You recover it and post it on your website whenever you determine it’s worth keeping.

You probably don’t agree with everything on the internet, therefore you won’t agree with everything on the Internet Archive. Remember that everything people publish on the internet, no matter how offensive, might be useful to historians and scholars. To comply with material take-down legislation, the Internet Archive has a copyright policy comparable to those of social networking sites.

When evaluating this article, Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive’s Founder and Digital Librarian, said:

The pandemic and disinformation operations have demonstrated how reliant we are on reliable and high-quality information available online. These are the functions of a library, and we are pleased to assist in any way possible.

In Praise of Brute Force Computer Algorithms

How can the Internet Archive maintain the current condition of a medium that is several orders of magnitude larger than anything that has come before it regularly?

The solution is straightforward: they apply the same brute-force strategies as search engines. The Internet Archive goes page by page through the web, trying to find everything it can. To save everything it discovers, the archive has leased huge storage space.

Programmers are always looking for new ways to avoid brute force approaches, which have an optimization level of O(n) and can only be scaled up by spending a similar amount of computing power. However, there are situations when using raw force is the best option.

Graphical processing, for example, involves reading a large amount of data about the graphic and applying algorithms to each pixel. This is why, before affordable hardware was designed to suit the specific demands of these applications, few programs could conduct graphical processing: the now-ubiquitous graphics processing unit or GPU.

Modern machine learning is another area where raw force prevails. The underlying concept dates back to 1949 when digital computing was still in its infancy. For decades, artificial intelligence experts were enthralled by the neural network, but after much research and sweat, it was branded a failure. Then processors (including GPUs) became fast enough to perform the algorithms in a reasonable length of time, and virtual computing and the cloud made compute power almost infinite. Machine learning is now being used to solve classification and categorization difficulties all around the world.

A word about limitations: web crawling misses a lot of what we view on the internet every day. The Internet Archive will not go behind paywalls, which hide a lot of journalistic and scholarly information. Because the crawler is unable to submit forms, it is unable to detect what users view on dynamically produced web pages such as those seen on retail websites.

Beyond the Web

The history of lost culture is woven into the fabric of history. The following are some of the disasters that we still mourn:

  • After Spain defeated the Mayans in Central America in the 1500s, a single Spanish bishop ordered the destruction of all Mayan cultural and religious documents. The few codices that have survived reflect a complex philosophical investigation that we will never be able to fully understand.
  • Invading Mongols burned Baghdad’s library in 1258, an act of gratuitous hedonism that accompanied their conquest of the city. This shattered a fruitful legacy on which medieval Europe’s intellectual revival was built.
  • The destruction of Alexandria’s old library appears to have occurred over several centuries. The Internet Archive was founded as a result of Kahle’s inspiration from this resource.

Add to these tragic events the destruction of ancient architecture (often dismantled by local residents looking for cheap building materials), the extinction of entire languages (each losing not only a culture but also a unique worldview), and the disappearance of poems and plays by Sappho, Sophocles, and others that shaped modern literature.

Many megabytes of data were entrenched in corporate data centers long before the internet. Their owners must have recognized that when organizations transitioned to new computers, databases, and formats, data may be lost. Customers are caught with the material in opaque and proprietary forms when software suppliers go out of business. People today have priceless memories stored on tangible media for which there are few technologies available. As a result, our data is slipping from our grasp.

Although the Internet Archive’s terms of service emphasize their importance to scholars, they provide fantastic tools that anybody may access. They have a book lending service that looks to be similar to what is available now at other libraries. They provide a section for youngsters with instructional materials, as well as unique repositories for music, photos, videos, video games, and historic radio broadcasts.

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Linux Professional Institute Releases Web Development Essentials

Posted on by Marbenz Antonio

The Web Development Essentials training is now available from the Linux Professional Institute (LPI). The curriculum gives students an overview of web-based software development. The program consists of learning goals, Learning Materials, a test, and a certificate granted upon successful completion of the exam.

Learners who are just getting started with software development can benefit from Web Development Essentials. It’s meant to be taught in a one-semester class or something similar. The program’s material covers the core ideas needed to create web-based apps. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js, and SQL are all included. At a fundamental level, all of these technologies are covered. The course is designed to cover a sufficient quantity of information in a sufficient length of time so that the student can grasp the fundamental concepts of web development and apply the necessary technology to simple projects. Taken together, the program’s curriculum enables students to create a small web application on their own.

“The goal of Web Development Essentials is to provide a basic understanding of software development. It covers all of the fundamentals, but with just enough content to get started constructing a small app right away,” explains Fabian Thorns, LPI’s Director of Product Development. Thorns says, “The combination of learning goals, Learning Materials, a test, and a certificate is a comprehensive package that gives both learners and teachers everything they need to get started.”

“The objective of LPI is to assist everyone working with open technology.” Software development is an important aspect of professional IT and one of the most visible aspects of open source technology. We give an introduction to software development using an open-source stack that is available to anybody on any platform with Web Development Essentials,” explains Matthew Rice, Executive Director of LPI.

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10 things Microsoft has learned from users about using AI to enhance their businesses

Posted on by Marbenz Antonio

Artificial intelligence can make a huge difference in a company, from fixing large challenges to fundamentally changing a business model, there’s no doubt about it. That’s why, two years ago, Microsoft established AI Business School to advise important decision-makers across sectors on strategy, culture, responsibility, and other vital themes.

It’s no easy task to use AI comprehensively and successfully, and we certainly don’t have all the answers. However, through our work with company leaders through AI Business School and in customer interactions, we’ve come across a few companies that have set the standard for what an AI-powered organization can be.

That’s why we developed Best of Business AI 2021: to highlight clients that have demonstrated how to develop a complete plan and execute it across the company to generate business value and momentum via digital transformation. Best of Business AI 2021 is based on the AI Business School principles and showcases ten clients that are advancing their AI journey by aligning their business goals and technological capabilities via great leadership.

Involve everyone in your organization

AI is not simply an issue for technical teams or leadership, according to companies that have effectively used it. They undertake in-depth discussions with workers to determine how each department of the company might benefit and how it can be harmed. Outokumpu has been involving workers from the start, and it now offers them access to data and AI models so they may make the best decisions possible in their daily job.

“You have to get trust from the leadership team, talk to people about the rollout, and get everyone on board,” says Stefan Erdmann, Chief Technology Officer of Outokumpu.

Use AI to increase business value

AI may assist you in solving complex challenges, but it also has the potential to open up new avenues for development and success. HOCHTIEF is monetizing its new AI competence by providing AI applications as a service to consumers.

“We’ll bring all of these solutions to market, and we’ll have a new business model,” says David Koch, HOCHTIEF’s Chief Risk, Organization, and Innovation Officer.

Choose a strategic starting point

Begin by identifying the best use case for AI, and then make sure you’re sharing your findings regularly. At CES 2019, Bell demonstrated its vision for AI and how it may impact the business and industry through an augmented reality experience. The firm and the IT world were both enthralled by the event, and the company has continued to build on that enthusiasm by making steady progress toward its big goals.

“Highly iterative, incremental proofs of concept—demonstrating something every three to six months—are the greatest approach to get and maintain the attention and endorsements from senior leadership,” explains Matt Holvey, Senior Manager of Intelligent Systems at Bell.

Bring business and technology together

Everyone in your company is there because of their knowledge and experience. Empower them to collaborate, invent, and contribute to the development of innovative AI solutions. For the biggest effect, AI specialists and product experts collaborated with Mondelez International.

“On one side, we have our data science, modeling, and simulation expertise,” explains Rob Hargrove, Executive Vice President of Research, Development, and Quality at Mondelz International. In our product teams, we have professionals in biscuit, chocolate, gum, and candy creation. Neither side has a complete understanding of the other’s role. So they understand that they can’t function in silos because neither side will succeed.”

Put values into action

The usage of AI, like other major technical advancements, might have unexpected effects, such as privacy concerns and security vulnerabilities. Implement principles, practices, tools, and governance to assist your business in anticipating and minimizing risk, as well as ensuring that the outcome is consistent with your values. Developing governance tools and procedures at AXA was not only the proper thing to do, but it also allowed the organization to learn more about their business and how they might best serve their consumers.

“It is our job to appropriately manage the data that our customers choose to share with us,” says Jerome Lafon, AXA’s Head of Connected Car Business Domain, Data and Tech Innovation.

Work with other entities

Responsible AI implementation frequently requires collaboration with other enterprises, connection with end-users, and coordination with government agencies. Seek advice from others and apply what you’ve learned to help others when you can. OceanMind is a non-profit organization that collaborates with other organizations to better understand the effects of human activities on the seas.

“We can utilize AI to assist enforce fisheries legislation and to help authorities make better judgments,” says Kanit Naksung, Director of Fish Quarantine and Fishing Vessels Inspection Division at the Thailand Department of Fisheries, which is cooperating with OceanMind.

Prove it, then scale it

Once you’ve shown that something works, invest in spreading it throughout your company. Invest time and money in analyzing AI technologies and creating ways to expand their reach. At DHL, this included putting in place the necessary infrastructure, as well as providing assistance and communication as the project progressed from proof of concept through productization.

“We are adopting such mature digital solutions in practically every one of our sites,” says Markus Voss, CIO, and COO of DHL Supply Chain. Every client, every facility, and every one of our staff should be aware that the world of the supply chain is changing.”

Prioritize for the most impact

You won’t be able to tackle all of your problems at once, so prioritize your efforts by weighing the costs and advantages before establishing how you’ll measure progress. You may discover, as CSIRO did, that AI is in high demand worldwide, but it’s critical to pick it properly so that your work has genuine benefit.

“Everyone wants to work with our AI experts, both within the organization and outside CSIRO,” says Jon Whittle, Director of CSIRO’s Data61. “The danger is that you get pulled in too many different directions, and you are no longer able to make a difference in any area because you tried to do too many things.”

Empower everyone

Good ideas may occur from everywhere, which is why Grab’s “AI everywhere” strategy is working so well. Non-technical personnel collaborates with experts to transform concepts into reality.

“You truly unleash the potential of AI when people accept and have belief in what you’re trying to achieve with it,” says Wui Ngiap Foo, Grab’s Head of Technology.

Put your data to work

Data may be utilized in unexpected ways to enable human skills to be enhanced and scaled. For WPP’s designers and marketers, data generated inspiration and new ideas, allowing them to be even more creative.

“Data isn’t dull; it can inspire and amaze,” says Di Mayze, WPP’s Global Head of Data & AI. And that’s exactly what we want: data and creativity to collaborate and celebrate together! ”

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Microsoft discusses 4 challenges in data security and how to solve them

Posted on by Marbenz Antonio

When you consider data loss, stock price damage, and enforced fines from violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and other rules, data breaches are incredibly costly for businesses. They also have the potential to erode the faith of individuals who are victims of identity theft, credit card fraud, or other harmful behaviors as a result of the breaches. In 2021, the number of data breaches increased by 68 percent to 1,862 (the most in 17 years), with an average cost of USD4.24 million per breach. Healthcare data breaches alone affected 45 million individuals, more than double the number affected only three years before.

Sensitive data is secret information gathered from consumers, prospects, partners, and workers by businesses. Credit card numbers, personally identifiable information (PII) such as a home address and date of birth, Social Security Numbers (SSNs), corporate intellectual property (IP) such as product schematics, protected health information (PHI), and medical record information that could be used to identify an individual are all examples of sensitive data.

A data breach might influence every level of a business, from IT operations to red and blue teams to the board of directors. How do companies identify sensitive data at scale and prevent it from being accidentally exposed? Let’s take a look at four of the most serious threats to sensitive data and how to safeguard it.

1. Discovering where sensitive data lives

Organizations might be surprised by the data discovery process, which can be unpleasant at times. Within your business, sensitive data might be found in unexpected locations. For example, without your knowledge, an employee may have saved a customer’s SSN on an unprotected Microsoft 365 site or third-party cloud. Data exposure events, which occur when sensitive data is left unprotected online, put around 164 million individuals at risk out of an expected 294 million persons attacked in 2021.

A robust data discovery procedure is the only way to verify that your sensitive data is appropriately preserved. Data scans will reveal those unexpected storage sites. Handling it manually, on the other hand, is nearly impossible.

2. Classifying data to learn what’s most important

This leads to the classification of data. Once you’ve found the data, you’ll need to give it value to use as a starting point for governance. The data classification process entails identifying the sensitivity and business effect of data so that you can analyze risks with confidence. This will make it simpler to manage sensitive data in ways that prevent it from being stolen or lost.

The following are the categories used by Microsoft:

  • Non-business: Personal information that does not belong to Microsoft.
  • Public: Data from the business world is readily available and has been cleared for public consumption.
  • General: Data from the business world should not be shared with the general public.
  • Confidential: Data about Microsoft’s business that, if disclosed too widely, may hurt the company.
  • Highly confidential: Business data that, if released too widely, might be disastrous for Microsoft.

Identifying data at scale is a major challenge, as is enforcing a process so employees manually mark documents as sensitive. Leveraging security products that enable auto-labeling of sensitive data across an enterprise is one method, among several that help overcome these data challenges.

3. Protecting important data

You must protect material that has been classified as confidential or highly sensitive from malicious actors once it has been classified as such. The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Chief Data Officer are ultimately responsible for preventing inadvertent data disclosure. They are in charge of safeguarding information and exchanging data through policies and routines that allow for security while not impeding workplace efficiency.

Data leakage protection is becoming increasingly important in the industry. The Allianz Risk Barometer is an annual analysis that analyzes the most significant risks facing businesses in the coming year. Allianz gathered information from 2,650 risk management specialists from 89 countries and territories for the 2022 research. For only the second time in the survey’s history, cyber events came out on top. Business disruptions scored 42 percent, natural disasters 25 percent, and pandemic breakouts 22 percent, while cyber events placed higher at 44 percent.

4. Governing data to reduce unnecessary data risks

Data governance guarantees that your information is discoverable, accurate, reliable, and secure. To successfully manage the data lifecycle, you must store data for the appropriate time. You don’t want to keep data for any longer than is required since it increases the quantity of data that might be exposed in a data breach. You also don’t want to erase data too rapidly, since this might put your company in jeopardy of regulatory penalties. Personal data is sometimes collected by businesses to deliver better services or other economic value. Customers who wish to learn more about your services, for example, may provide you with personal information. When data no longer serves a function, it must be removed by the data minimization principle.

How to approach sensitive data

The consequences of failing to address these issues can be severe. Violations of rules or standards can have serious financial and legal consequences for businesses. In 2021, for example, a few well-known businesses were fined hundreds of millions of euros. One of the fines was for failing to comply with the GDPR’s personal data processing obligations. Another reason was that customers were not given enough information about data processing procedures in a privacy policy. Since January 28, 2021, the data protection authorities have fined a total of $1.25 billion for GDPR violations.

How do you safeguard sensitive data in light of the potentially severe consequences? As previously said, data discovery entails discovering all of the locations where your sensitive data is kept. Support for sensitive data types, which may identify data using built-in or custom regular expressions or functions, makes this considerably easier. We propose searching for a multi-cloud, multi-platform solution that allows you to use automation because critical data is everywhere.

We recommend establishing a plan through technology rather than depending on humans when it comes to data classification. People, after all, are busy, and they are prone to overlooking details or making mistakes. Additionally, because businesses might have hundreds of sensitive documents, manual data categorization and identification is impractical because the procedure is too slow and imprecise. Look for data categorization software that allows for auto-labeling, auto-classification, and classification enforcement throughout an organization. Using data examples, trainable classifiers detect sensitive data.

Some solution suppliers separate productivity and compliance and try to include data protection as an afterthought. To secure sensitive data, we offer a method that incorporates data protection into your existing procedures. When thinking about plan security, think about who has access to the data. Where should data be stored, and where should it not be stored? What can be done with the information?

Microsoft products provide auditing capabilities, allowing data to be observed and monitored without being stopped. It can also be overridden so that it does not obstruct commerce. Also, think about if you want to protect data or have standing access (identity governance). Data leakage prevention software helps safeguard sensitive records, which is critical since laws and regulations hold businesses accountable.

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Why do you think decentralization is the way of the future for digital identities?

Posted on by Marbenz Antonio

Our identity is being more computerized, with more of our paper credentials being converted to digital versions. These digital credentials are used every day to work, learn, play, socialize, shop, and consume services both online and offline. It’s so handy and expected to have these facets of life at our fingertips these days. More than half of the world’s economy is digitally based or influenced.1 Digital data becomes fluid and integrated across services. Individually, we may not always be able to control it.

Digital identity is about to undergo a huge transition that will make it more safe, private, and portable. Because the internet was not designed with identity in mind, businesses have developed unique connections with each of us. The proliferation of these distinct accounts, each of which is housed in a central database controlled by a different company, has raised the possibility of security and privacy breaches. These dangers are not mitigated by just digitizing a business process or a physical ID. We require an identification system that unifies our identities, which are owned by individuals, and makes digital identities transferable in a trustworthy and safe manner.

Two phones displaying a woman's driver license. First image shares all information on the card. Second image only shares the name and age.

Consider a plastic driver’s license as an example. Digitizing a driving license, for example, substitutes a physical card with a digital card that can be stored in your smartphone wallet. A digital license makes it easy to share your license with stores and service providers to confirm your age, but it also makes it easier for firms to access all of the information written on your IDs, such as your birthday and gender, which opens the door to monitoring and privacy issues. When done correctly, however, it may enhance privacy and security. Instead of simply digitizing your driver’s license and transferring all of the information printed on it to an image on your phone, a decentralized approach in which you own the identity and can prove the information was verified allows you to share the information from your driver’s license that you need and revoke it when necessary.

Let’s look at some of the contrasts between credential digitalization and decentralization.

Security and your digital identity

Digitizing an identity merely creates a digital version of an asset; nevertheless, this does not indicate that it has the same level of assurance as the original file or document. While it may have been digitized and provided by an official source, the verifier may generate a digital copy and keep it without your permission. Apps frequently rely on credential attributes, which are equally vulnerable to data breaches. We’ve relied on authentication mechanisms like usernames and passwords to prove the individual is who they claim they are. When a person’s account gets hacked, they must rely on the firm to retrieve their account and personal information that is legitimately theirs. You may authenticate a person’s true ownership of a real-world identity with decentralization by checking their digitally signed credentials. Individuals may save their identifying data in a safe, encrypted wallet and simply manage access to it. A decentralized identity might eliminate the need for usernames and passwords, focusing instead on alternative means of verification to give the necessary degree of assurance.

Privacy and data protection

With the rise of technology, privacy issues have become more prominent. People are becoming more aware of the number of data organizations collect and profit from, prompting some to use VPNs or share false information to reduce the value of the data collected from them.2 Data protection laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), aim to give users more control over how they see and manage their data, but they don’t completely solve the problem. Rather than making copies of your identification data, organizations might get permission from you to obtain the information you need and verify it digitally without storing it. Zero-knowledge proofs, where one party may show to another party that a particular assertion is true or untrue, such as verifying your age or citizenship, are among the new standardized ideas being created. This keeps the amount of data shared to a minimum. It can help enterprises manage personally identifiable information (PII) by giving users total choice over what they share and empowering them to be stewards of their data. Selective disclosure and data minimization are important needs for decentralizing identification, according to us.

Portability and visibility

Before you could keep documents on the cloud, you had to share copies of papers via email. It made numerous copies of the same document, making it difficult to keep track of changes and determine which was the most current. People can save the original piece of identification data on their device as a credential, cryptographically signed with their private key, and share the record with any organization thanks to decentralization. The company may then use a basic ledger check to confirm that it comes from a reliable source. The user gets visibility into how the data was utilized and how long the organization has access to it. The adoption of open standards specifications, such as the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) verified credentials, makes it simple for people and businesses to acquire and display credentials across platforms and services. It enables people to form mutually beneficial partnerships with organizations.

Next Steps

While converting credentials to digital form isn’t new, decentralizing identity is. It allows people to verify their credentials once and then use them as evidence of attestation wherever. Users have more power now that the nexus of control has shifted to them. They can choose what they want to share and for how long, and they can keep their data safe in their digital wallet.

Although decentralization standards are still being developed and tested, it is not too early to begin investigating use cases. Consider how decentralization can assist your company with things like efficiently onboarding workers and contractors, providing extra confidence when allowing access to high-value apps, or retrieving an account. We see a decentralized identification system as a critical component to enable trust and security in the future, given the momentum around decentralization of the internet, currency, assets, and more.

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Microsoft expands its cybersecurity efforts to 23 nations to bridge the cybersecurity skills gap

Posted on by Marbenz Antonio

Employees working in cybersecurity center

Cybersecurity is still a major concern for governments, corporations, and individuals all across the world. Cybercriminals have become more skilled, and the threat environment has become more diversified, ranging from supply chain disruptions to ransomware attacks. These issues are compounded by a labor shortage; there simply aren’t enough people with the necessary cybersecurity skills to fill unfilled positions.

This is a worldwide issue. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, there will be 3.5 million cybersecurity positions open globally by 2025, a 350% growth over the last eight years. In the United States, we just announced a nationwide skilling drive, since one out of every two cybersecurity positions is now vacant. We’re collaborating with community institutions to help reduce the gap and broaden the profession’s diversity. Microsoft announced today that our cybersecurity skills program will now be available in an additional 23 countries.

Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom will all benefit from the growth. These nations have a considerable cyber threat risk, as well as a significant gap in their cybersecurity workforces, both in terms of the number of cybersecurity experts employed vs. demand and in terms of diversity.

We’ve produced a Power BI dashboard based on our data to highlight the cybersecurity skills gap in these countries:

Open photo

One of its objectives, as with our U.S. program, is to guarantee that traditionally underrepresented groups, like women, have access to the cybersecurity workforce. The global cybersecurity workforce is critically short in diversity: just 17% of the cybersecurity workforce is female in the nations where we are growing our campaign. Women are underrepresented in the cybersecurity field, which leaves talent on the table and impedes our ability to address the skills gap. This isn’t just about equality; there’s also a commercial argument to be made: organizations with a diverse workforce perform better.

Gender disparity chart

Global-scale, meeting local needs

There are a few fundamental characteristics that are required throughout the world to overcome the cybersecurity skills gap:

To begin, you must first have a deeper understanding of the skills gap and exchange best practices. Users can’t solve a problem we don’t fully understand as a community, which is why Microsoft is forming a new partnership with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to not only conduct a detailed study on the skills gap in selected countries but also to improve the ability to grow cybersecurity workforces through postsecondary education and training. We will make this data publicly available, in collaboration with the OECD, to help policymakers and companies make better decisions, and we will assemble member nations to exchange lessons learned and best practices.

Second, everyone interested in pursuing cybersecurity as a career — whether students, career changers, or current IT professionals – must have access to industry-aligned skilling information to prepare for these vital jobs. As part of this expansion, we’re providing free cybersecurity training on our LinkedIn Learning platform, including courses like “The Cybersecurity Threat Landscape” and “Cybersecurity Foundations,” as well as free security courses on our Microsoft Learn platform, which has 47 Learning Paths and hundreds of hours of content.

Third, more instructors who are capable and prepared to educate cybersecurity students are needed, which is why we are collaborating with educational institutions to develop curricula. We offer free curriculum, educator training, and teaching tools to all higher education institutions through our Microsoft Learn for Educators program, which includes courses like Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals, Microsoft Azure Security Technologies certification, and more. We also give extra tools to instructors at all of these schools, such as free practice and certification examinations, curriculum integration help, and more. More than 1,000 higher education institutions from around the world have joined the initiative thus far.

Fourth, we must assist job applicants who are diverse and underprivileged. That’s why, using peer-to-peer learning and gamification, we’re partnering with Ecole 42, a tuition-free global computer science training program with a mission to educate the next generation of software engineers, to make Microsoft cybersecurity content available to its 15,000 learners around the world. We’re also partnering with Women in Cybersecurity, a charity dedicated to recruiting, retaining, and promoting women in the field of cybersecurity, to develop their student chapters in these 23 nations, assisting in the retention and promotion of women in the field.

Finally, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the cybersecurity skills gap. Microsoft will work with local education institutions, nonprofits, governments, and businesses in each of the countries where we are expanding our campaign to develop a cybersecurity skills program that fits the unique needs of their market, based on data about the cybersecurity skills gap in each country. That said, we’re constructing the framework around a shared set of requirements and ensuring that current technologies are made more accessible.

Global expansion

Work is already underway. Here are just a few examples, and we’ll share more details about countries’ plans in the coming weeks and months:

Colombia’s government has launched a national cybersecurity capacity-building plan, which includes the deployment of professional training programs in areas such as digital security, information security, cybersecurity, and critical infrastructure. Our cybersecurity skills work in Colombia will contribute to this endeavor by assisting people in acquiring cybersecurity and digital skills that are in high demand. That’s why we’re partnering with the Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (SENA), a Colombian public institution that provides free vocational training to millions of Colombians, the Universidad de Los Andes, a major private university in Colombia, and local nongovernmental organizations to offer a “train the trainers” program that will equip over 68,000 Colombians, including 20,000 women, with the skills they need to help fill the many open cybersecurity jobs.

They’re expanding our current CyberShikshaa initiative in India, which is helping to bridge the gender gap in the cybersecurity profession. Since 2018, we’ve provided technical cybersecurity training to young women, as well as mentorship from industry professionals, particularly women leaders in the sector, and job placement aid with major firms. India’s cybersecurity sector is expected to have 1.5 million employment openings by 2025. According to India’s Labor Bureau, this reflects a 42 percent skill shortfall, although cybersecurity employment growth is expected to expand by 32 percent by 2028. The need is there, but more has to be done to accommodate it; most colleges and technical schools do not offer cybersecurity courses.

That’s why we’ve teamed up with ICT Academy, an Indian NGO, to provide cybersecurity training programs for professors and students at 100 institutions across five states, with a focus on rural universities. We’ll help more professors become cybersecurity trainers through our project, CyberShikshaa for Educators, and then give students with cybersecurity training and job placement aid to help them find new employment. We plan to teach around 6,000 students in the first phase, after which we will work with our partner network to link students to career opportunities and internships.

A look at our U.S. progress – and a look to the future

We’ve made progress in the five months since we introduced our cybersecurity skills for jobs campaign in the U.S. We now partner with 135 community colleges around the United States to provide free curriculum, educator training, and teaching tools. Through the American Association of Community Colleges, we’re sharing cybersecurity best practices with schools, the first of three cohorts for which we’re offering funds to finance technical assistance to help them accelerate their cybersecurity programs. Finally, we’re awarding scholarships to individuals pursuing a cybersecurity degree or certification. We’re learning a lot and will provide more information in the coming months.

Every day, the number of cybersecurity assaults increases throughout the world, and the sophistication of these attacks grows as cybercriminals ramp up their activity. No matter where they reside, everyone will be affected. We must invest in the cybersecurity workforce to guarantee that there are enough people with the necessary skills to counter these assaults and preserve the digital ecosystem, ensuring that enterprises and individuals are safe.

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