Category - Systems & Data

Cybersecurity experts are in higher demand than ever — and is it any wonder? The vast connectivity of technology these days comes with undeniable opportunities, but also a host of security and privacy concerns that increasingly attract the attention of governments.

Now that our computers are powerful enough and can be networked well enough, we can take the lid off much of this data that industry has always relied on but didn’t always have the means to access or study meaningfully. Now, analytics is a booming industry all its own. It’s made up of connected tools and equipment that gather and organize data, smart algorithms that plot customer demand to help make production decisions and autonomous factories that function on their own and oversee their own maintenance.

With the right strategy and protections in place, analytics can help make everything about doing business smoother, more accurate and less wasteful. It adds up to a powerful, technology-driven competitive advantage.

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A survey conducted by Pew Research, as if we really needed one, indicates at least half of all Americans perceive their online data to be less secure today than it was a few years ago.

America, despite relentless progress on other fronts, and despite being one of the most technology- and data-driven countries on Earth, is a patchwork of privacy and data laws right now. Even net neutrality has failed at the federal level, opening the door for states like California to lead the way.

It’s time to have a serious conversation about the current state, and ideal future, of U.S. data protection and access laws.

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Whether you’ve established a proper system or not, data is flowing in, and it’s ripe for the taking. The problem, however, is that it’s coming from so many different sources, flowing through so many different channels, and involves so many various events that marketers and support teams cannot keep up. This situation has created a need for a proper, comprehensive tool that can be used to organize and manage the data flows, and also integrate the information into existing processes.

Queue the Customer Data Platform or CDP. According to David Raab, Founder of the Customer Data Platform Institute and expert on the subject, a CDP is “a marketer-managed system that creates a persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems.”

Let’s break that definition down into simpler terms, and explore how it can help your business.

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While data security was never a luxury or afterthought — it’s always been a crucial component of digital operations — nearly every business, organization and individual has to worry about it these days, from smartphones and wearable tech to smart home devices and IOT equipment. Just about anything and everything is connected, tapped into a nearby network and both collecting and creating data.

Every day our lives — personal and professional — are spent more and more online, and that amounts to lots of data and digital content. But alongside that, major data breaches and cyber attacks are also commonplace. We need to come up with a better solution for protecting all that information and fast. That’s where blockchain technology fits into the equation.

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Modern technologies have given rise to smarter, more efficient devices. Things like the Amazon Echo, for instance, will allow you to carry out a multitude of actions and interact with a variety of other smart devices. You can control all your smart home gadgets from Alexa with just your voice.

But as devices become smarter, the data they collect becomes both more sensitive and more dangerous. Consider a smart home thermostat, such as Google’s Nest. The smart thermostats have a unique feature that can control the temperature in your home automatically. It learns your preferences and then will adjust the temperatures itself based on your schedule. This is convenient for sure, but for the process to take place, a variety of data is being collected, parsed and processed.

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You may have heard of blockchain linked with Bitcoin, one of the most well-known types of cryptocurrencies. The blockchain is a public record of recorded and confirmed transactions. Management of the blockchain occurs through a decentralized system of distributed nodes that each contains a copy of the whole Blockchain.

People have speculated how blockchain could become valuable outside the cryptocurrency realm — specifically, how blockchain and e-commerce could work together surprisingly well. Let’s take a look at why that’s the case.

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It’s no secret that big data and modern analytics tools can help any brand or business make better decisions. It can also deliver the kind of insights necessary to make accurate predictions for future interactions with customers.

And there’s no time more crucial for this kind of data, than the end of the year during the holidays. Why? Simply because it’s the busiest shopping season of the year, and staying in tune with what your customers want can mean the difference between millions and billions in revenue.

For some retailers, the holidays are so influential, that incoming revenue makes up about 30 percent of their entire annual sales. A flop or sub-optimal performance during the holiday could effectively ruin a business.

Retailers – including you – can make sure that doesn’t happen by tapping into big data systems and modern tracking software.

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Thinking critically is important if your business is starting to dip its toe into the big data pool and tap into the available technologies to promote your company’s growth and allow it to use IT personnel more effectively. However, as many executives try to make sense of big data and gather all the need-to-know information about it, they often overlook a key factor: Big data storage.

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