The work of the World Economic Forum is a good gauge of the most prevalent themes finding their way on to the global agenda.
Always notable on its positioning, it focused heavily earlier this year on the fourth industrial revolution, a technological wave that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another, where it also outlined that business innovation is key.
Since, the focus has shifted to Cybercrime and its Global Risks Report demonstrated
Joachim Mason, Head of Datacentre, Cisco UKI.
how cyberattacks are expected to feature highly as an issue across the globe for the next 10 years. These two issues demonstrate the varying, and potentially conflicting pressures technology is putting on business today. To put it simply, organisations today face a secure innovation paradox.
Fundamentally, the severity of threats is on the rise, but so is the expectation of valuable business insight and innovation, and one without the other can significantly hamper organisational competitiveness. Yet this need not be a dilemma for businesses; they can have the best of both worlds. The two priorities in fact complement one another.
For organisations to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution, the next-generation data centre plays a key role in delivering a successful digital transformation. Whilst often perceived as just a vast store of data, the next-generation data centre is in fact the linchpin that underlies the ability for organisations to digitally evolve.
There isn’t just a surge in the traffic flow as you connect more; there is an increase in the amount of data now readily available. If collected and analysed correctly, this level of data can provide businesses with a profound advantage and the comprehensive ability to address operational issues. It should be no surprise that securing this data can pose an incredible challenge. But if done properly, it can provide businesses with valuable opportunities.
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Cisco Tetration allows data centre visibility at a level that’s never been achieved before. This open platform collects data in real time – 1M events per second – storing those real-time events for up to a year, thus providing organisations with an ample time period to fully capture their multiple business cycles. With its advanced analytics, it is able to analyse and deliver information critical for successful data centre operations and provides actionable insight as and when it happens.
Ultimately, analysing the information provided by a next-generation data centre is like giving a business a sixth sense. By recognising the trends, peaks and troughs shown in data we are moving one step closer to machines supporting the making of important decisions when it matters the most.
By extracting meaningful contextual information, businesses are able to detect security vulnerabilities for example, and support the decision making for the implementation of security changes as they have greater visibility into their networks, further reducing the attack surface.
This unprecedented level of insight enhances enterprise security, as well as offering valuable business intelligence to enable innovation.
Security and innovation ultimately go hand in hand when it comes to organisational efficiency and growth. One is at its most potent with the other, enabling effective data driven actions to be implemented. It is thanks to technological advancements such as these that the secure innovation paradox can be conquered.
