Ready to Transform Your Business With Technology? 5 Challenges to Overcome

by nurazaliah | Mar 9, 2020 | HowTo

Technology, the change agent of our generation, is transforming the business landscape by enabling small and midsize businesses to streamline processes, improve productivity and get ahead of competitors.

In a recent study conducted by SMB Group and my team at Vistage, 218 CEOs from small and midsize businesses shared their approach to digital transformation. Nine-out-of-ten CEOs reported that technology is changing their business in significant ways: reshaping their industry, evolving their business practices, transforming their workplace and culture, and ensuring their survival and growth.

Despite this, only half (51 per cent) of CEOs have a digital business strategy underway.

Why is this a problem? Without a well-defined strategy, CEOs end up learning lessons about the digital transformation the hard way. This is especially true when it comes to technology integration, which many CEOs are ill-equipped to handle; only 37 per cent of respondents said they have dedicated IT staff.

Spare yourself the pain. Follow these five technology truths shared in our latest report.

1. Get used to this pace.
Technological advancements won’t ever slow down. They’ll just continue to get faster. Blockchain, artificial intelligence and 5G networks are already here, ushering in the next seismic wave of change. The reality is, you’ll always be under pressure to keep up with the next best thing — but a clear strategy will help you know where to direct your investments.

2. Expect to spend.
It’s not a good idea to short-change investments on infrastructure, applications and IT talent that are critical to your business. Technology isn’t cheap and will usually cost more than you think. Accept the fact that quality comes with a cost, and the alternative is automating chaos.

3. Realize that transformation is hard.
IT projects will always take longer, cost more and be more difficult to complete than you originally thought. The combination of shifting to digital-first thinking and transforming ingrained processes will test you, your team and your employees in ways you never considered.

4. Tighten up your cybersecurity.
The benefits of using data to manage your customers, employees, operations and financials carry significant risk in the form of cyber threats. Every day, cybercriminals are working to exploit vulnerabilities in your digital security, and they’ll never let up. If you have digital IP, your business is all about your data, so you need to protect it as vigilantly as your cash and investments.

5. Remember that it’s still about people.
Technology can do amazing things. But it’s only powerful when it empowers leaders, managers and workers to make better decisions, and when it provides information that improves productivity. It’s how customers use technology to engage with you — and how your people use technology to get closer to your customers — that propels a digital-first company into the future.

Remember, digital transformation is not an IT project; it is a leadership initiative. It will only succeed if you can create the behavioural change required to embrace and fully capitalize on digital-first processes and systems. You can measure adoption by looking at logins or usage statistics. But the true potential of technology is only realized when everyone adopts and embraces it.

Planning to Use A.I. in 2020? You Need to Make These Resolutions First

by nurazaliah | Mar 2, 2020 | HowTo

At the start of each year, my kids and I discuss our resolutions for the year ahead. It’s a tradition that keeps us close, holds us accountable, and gives us perspective on what’s important.

I believe business leaders owe ourselves, our customers, and our industries the same. The company I co-founded, Affectiva, is in the A.I. space, and 2019 was an exciting year of growth for the industry. But as with any emerging technology, there’s still much progress to be made, and it’s important for us as leaders to spearhead that charge.

Here are three resolutions for founders working with and building A.I. in 2020.

Consider the human before the artificial when developing or deploying A.I.
This year has shown a range of exciting A.I. applications across industries like health and wellness, advertising, automotive, and customer service. That shows no signs of slowing down — in fact, a recent survey from found that 80 percent of CIOs plan to increase their use of A.I. in 2020. But as A.I. becomes more ingrained in our lives, we need to take a human-centric approach to how it’s developed and deployed.

Today A.I. has a lot of IQ, but no EQ, no emotional intelligence, and that’s an issue. Emotion is such an important part of who we are, and yet for all that A.I. can do, our devices are emotion-blind. So in 2020, any business leader developing or deploying A.I. will need to consider how the technology can better communicate with people in a way that’s more relational, and not just transactional.

Take voice assistants for example. Beyond the rapid growth of assistants like Alexa in our homes, automakers are beginning to introduce voice assistants in cars. But it can be incredibly frustrating when the assistant doesn’t understand our request, and in an automotive setting, that can become distracting, even dangerous. These assistants need to be able to understand the nuances of our communication — how we’re feeling, the context of the interaction, and other signals beyond the words we say — and respond accordingly. This is crucial to not only improve the user experience, but to ensure A.I. is effective.

Do your part to accelerate progress for women in tech and beyond
As a female, Egyptian-American CEO of an A.I. start-up, I’m definitely in the minority. The tech industry (like many others) has struggled with diversity and inclusion, and the stats on women in tech are especially dismal. Women make up fewer than 20 percent of tech jobs, and female-founded companies receive significantly less VC funding than their male counterparts.

That said, I’ve been heartened to see that start to shift. VC funding for female-founded companies doubled last year. Anecdotally, the topic of diversity and women in tech is coming up in nearly every conversation I’m a part of, regardless of whether it’s with men, women, investors, other start-ups, or customers. There are also organizations such as the nonprofit All Raise, and Melinda Gates’s fund, Pivotal Ventures, that are making strides in empowering women and people from diverse backgrounds.

Now, as business leaders, we need to build on these foundational elements to support a full ecosystem of women and diverse leaders. At a macro-level, our resolution should be to continue to improve representation for female founders and funders. And at a micro-level, we need to give young girls more role models to look up to–stepping up to the plate and helping elevate others.

Lead the conversation on actionable, thoughtful regulations
There are so many ways that A.I. can improve our lives. But as with any technology, A.I.’s impact — positive or negative — will depend on how it’s used.

Unfortunately, over the past few years, we’ve seen examples of A.I. deployed in ways that are harmful or violate people’s privacy, including A.I. systems that are biased against minority groups, and use cases like government surveillance that many would agree are unethical.

While we’ve started to see some consensus on ethical principles for A.I., the next step needs to be thoughtful regulation to enforce and uphold those ethical standards. As business leaders, we can’t wait or rely on regulators to make this happen — we need to be partners in providing the necessary expertise that will drive that movement forward.

Industry luminaries need to lead the conversation on thoughtful regulation, meaning structures that prevent use cases that may be harmful, while still leaving room for the use cases that will truly benefit people’s health and wellbeing, their productivity and their relationships.

If leaders can stay true to these resolutions, I truly believe that 2020 will be another banner year for A.I. — and our businesses will be better as a result.

What Nearly Every Leader Forgets to Say During a Crisis

by nurazaliah | Mar 1, 2020 | HowTo

In normal times, leadership is defined by a series of small moments: Suggestions. Corrections. Advice. Instructions. A quiet word here, a gentle nudge there.

Because the best leaders walk beside, and sometimes even behind, the people they lead. Not in front.

Except in times of crisis. That’s when people not only expect but desire leadership that is calm yet determined, collaborative yet decisive, humble yet inspiring.

Hold that thought.

I have a fairly big network, so when the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread bosses, there are CEOs, startup founders, etc. communicated with their teams and customers with the rallying cries. The “business not as usual” speeches. The “here’s how we will respond to the crisis” emails.

Most were terrible. Not because they were insincere.

But because they lacked the power of little voice.

In movies, little voice is what happens onscreen. Take the scene where Andy tries to fight off the Sisters in Shawshank Redemption. What happens onscreen is little voice.

Big Voice is Red’s voiceover. Big voice is Red saying, “I wish I could tell you that Andy fought the good fight, and the Sisters let him be. I wish I could tell you that… but prison is no fairy-tale world.”

Little voice in action. Big voice is a commentary that provides perspective, interpretation, and meaning.

Nearly all of the forty-plus leadership rallying cries I saw stayed almost exclusively in big voice: Expressing concern, stating a commitment to safety, describing the commitment to minimize the impact on employees, customers, suppliers, etc.

In short, saying all the right things.

The problem is, during a crisis the “right things” tend to sound even more boilerplate than usual. Declaring determination, commitment, and resolve in the face of a crisis? Those things are a given.

For example, one email included the line, “We will do everything we possibly can to keep work hour reductions to a minimum and avoid layoffs.”

Imagine you’re an employee. Does that sentence provide reassurance? Nope. You’re worried, justifiably so… and platitudes, no matter how well-meaning, won’t make you feel any less anxious.

At that moment, you also need to hear a little voice. You also need to hear about action.

You need, “We’re going to re-assign five employees to three projects we’re pulling up from the third quarter. We’re offering some of our services at cost to two of our biggest customers to boost cash flow. We’re going to…”

You get the point. Big voice creates perspective, but in a time of crisis, your employees already have plenty of perspectives. The last thing they need is more perspective.

They need plans. They need to know what you will do. They need to know what they can do.

Big voice is great for declaring a mission or describing a vision.

Big voice is great when you’re Steve Jobs saying, “Here’s to the crazy ones… because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

But words alone, no matter how inspiring, won’t change the world. Action changes the world.

During times of crisis, people already know theirs why. What they want to know — what they need to know — is how.

What You Need to Know About E-Skimming

by nurazaliah | Feb 20, 2020 | HowTo

While ransomware and leaky or completely unprotected databases dominated headlines in 2019, e-skimmers quietly made a killing. A major e-skimming compromise was discovered on Macy’s website at the start of the holiday season in which hackers captured the payment information of several online shoppers. The retailer wasn’t alone. American Outdoor Brands, Puma, Ticketmaster UK, British Airways, Vision Direct, Newegg, and many, many others were also infected by e-skimmers.

The best way to avoid getting skinned by e-skimming is standard issue: We all need to monitor our accounts, avoid using debit cards (because they are a direct money funnel), keep our password games strong, and generally practise good cyber hygiene. On the business side of things, it’s crucial that software patches are applied as soon as they’re released, and that employees are trained to recognize the signs of compromise.

As with many cyber threats, the best solutions are cultural. We need to get in the habit of putting security–which includes constant vigilance–first, second, and third in our online activities.

But while this is all perfectly sound advice, it’s not going to solve the e-skimming problem, which is that e-commerce sites are increasingly complex and because of that more difficult to defend. They have an ever-expanding attackable surface in an environment where reducing that surface is the watchword.

E-Skimming 101: Cyber Pilot Fish

E-skimming is a hack. A small piece of code is added to an e-commerce website that intercepts payment information. The code can be added by compromising a website’s server, via a phishing attack, exploiting a known software vulnerability, or luring a developer into using what seems like a legitimate plug-in or module for a website that includes the malicious code.

It doesn’t matter if the site is encrypted or you see the green padlock by a URL. E-skimming doesn’t intercept information in transit. It lives on the targeted website and records payment information and other sensitive identifying information as it is entered by the consumer during the checkout process.

Typically, the e-skimming software just sits there accumulating payment information and transmitting it to the hacker who put it there until it is discovered–something that often takes months. From there, the hacker can sell the stolen information in bulk or cherry-pick a few payment cards to turn a profit.

In the high-turn world of online shopping, e-skimmers are like pilot fish getting a good meal by hitching a ride on super-predators at the top of the retail food chain.

Too Many Coders in the Kitchen

E-commerce websites are composed of huge shoals of code written and developed by hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

The Magento open-source shopping cart served as the namesake for the e-skimming group (or groups) known as MageCart. It has more than 4.5 million lines of code with edits and additions made by more than 500 developers. WooCommerce, another open-source solution, has a less unwieldy 175,000 lines of code, but still plenty for a hacker who wants to hide something.

That is just the dorsal fin. The core code of these platforms, while sprawling, is at least maintained by companies constantly searching for new vulnerabilities and patching them. The bigger problem is that e-commerce sites often implement a wide variety of plug-ins, extensions, widgets, and added bits of software, all of it introducing more code and expanding the site’s attackable surface.

A single line of code added to a Magento extension infected at least 200 online e-commerce sites with e-skimming software last year. Inconspicuous, it was added via an account on a Microsoft-owned code repository. A quick search shows sites are still running the compromised version of the extension months after it was identified.

The issue isn’t unique to Magento or WooCommerce. Other e-commerce platforms, including OpenCart, OsCommerce, and Shopify, have been targeted and compromised by similar attacks. While poor data hygiene is the cause of some attacks, many are detected by accident, or because a hacker gets greedy and a credit card company zeroes in on an affected site.

The solution is to be had not in a lab or working group. It is cultural. E-skimming is a double threat: to consumers and businesses, and they are both parts of the solution. A vigilant retail environment reduces everyone’s attackable surface.