Futurum Tech Webcast

On this episode of the Futurum Tech Podcast – Interview Series I am joined by Esam Elashmawi, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer for Lattice Semiconductor. Lattice is a leader in building small, powerful, efficient FPGAs that are used across all end markets and critical infrastructure.

Our discussion centered on their recent Investor Day and the impressive announcements that are defining the future of the company.

Lattice Semiconductor's Investor Day

My conversation with Esam also revolved around the following:

• The promises Lattice made in 2019 and everything that the accomplished in that two year span

• A quick look into the quarterly growth the company is seeing

• A teaser of a new product launch coming this June

• A recap of the announcements that were made including Avant

Lattice Semiconductor has had an impressive growth in the last two years and after their Investor Day it's clear they have no signs of slowing down. If you'd like to learn more about their products or more about the company, be sure to check out their website. And while you're at it be sure to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode of the podcast.

Disclaimer: This show is for information and entertainment purposes only. While we will discuss publicly traded companies on this show, the contents of this show should not be taken as investment advice.

Futurum's Fred McClimans and Ron Westfall analyze the ongoing crisis in the global semiconductor supply chain and its impact across key industries such as the automotive, telecommunications, and medical equipment verticals. They discussed the reasons for the constraints in the chip supply and what actions the U.S. government is taking in response to the crisis. Plus, they address the moves being made by the major semiconductor supplies to stabilize long-term supply chains and the challenges involved in building out new foundries.

Futurum's Ron Westfall and Shelly Kramer examine the value assigned by CSP decision makers to cloud design principles in fulfilling their cloud BSS journey goals. We discussed the top three cloud design principles and how each of the principles are integral to advancing CSP BSS-to-cloud journeys.

We discuss key takeaways from our recent survey and research report, 'The BSS-to-cloud journey: Powering innovation across the digital value chain" done in partnership with Ericsson. We discussed the strategic commitment of CSPs to a multi-cloud strategy, the competitive advantages that each of the major cloud providers offer, and which cloud design principles are CSPs identifying as the most important. Plus, we address the AWS announcement that extends its long-term partnership with Ericsson by certifying Ericsson's Telecom BSS on AWS and why it is a high impact move across the telco industry.

Download the report today: report The BSS-to-cloud journey: Powering innovation across the digital value chain.

Colonial Pipeline rapidly paid ransomware provider DarkSide $5 billion Bitcoin to unlock and restore its IT systems, but this ransomware attack exposed a glaring weakness in critical infrastructure security: the IT/OT issue.

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The US Department of Justice recently revealed it had completed an operation, authorized under a court order, where the FBI electronically accessed privately-owned Microsoft Exchange servers to fix vulnerabilities exploited by Hafnium, a suspected state-sponsored group operating out of China.

Futurum is an independent research, analysis, and advisory firm focused on digital innovation, market-disrupting technologies, and industry trends. Every day our analysts, researchers, and advisors help business leaders from around the world anticipate tectonic shifts in their industries and leverage disruptive innovation to either gain or maintain a competitive advantage in their markets.

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There has been yet another DarkSide attack, this time on a subsidiary of Toshiba's European operations. The company reported that as a result of the attack, they shut down network connections between Europe and Japan to mitigate potential risk as the hack is being investigated, and the scope of the cyberattack is not yet known.

Futurum is an independent research, analysis, and advisory firm focused on digital innovation, market-disrupting technologies, and industry trends. Every day our analysts, researchers, and advisors help business leaders from around the world anticipate tectonic shifts in their industries and leverage disruptive innovation to either gain or maintain a competitive advantage in their markets.

Get the latest tech news and opinions on: http://wwwfuturumresearch.com/

Follow Futurum Research on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/futurumxyz

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The News: Reuters reported on May 13, 2020 that Ireland's health service announced it was completely shutting down all IT after experiencing a "significant" ransomware attack. This attack was blamed on threat actors targeting healthcare records. This attack has completely shut down COVID-19 testing, has forced hospitals to cancel not urgent appointments, and shut down diagnostic services. More from Reuters.

Ireland's Health System Victim of Ransomware Attack, Completely Shuts Down

Analyst Take: Ireland's Health Service system made the decision to shut down all IT systems to protect from the attack and also to allow the thorough assessment of the extent of the damage. In what is a 'zero day' attack, meaning the software maker has zero days to be aware of and remedy a problem, threat actors exploited a previously unknown software vulnerability.

The attack targeted computers storing patient records. HSE reported that patient data hadn't been compromised and that equipment was operating as needed, except for radiography services. The hospital quickly made the switch to paper records, but as of the initial reporting hospitals shared they were unable to access lists of patients scheduled for appointments in the coming week and operations might continue to be limited and/or in some instances shut down. Hospitals all over the country are affected by this ransomware attack, including a hospital in Dublin that was reported limiting admissions to pregnant women who are at least 36 weeks pregnant and emergency cases only.

This on the heels of the attack on Belgium last week shows that cyber threats are everywhere.

The News: The Biden administration signed an executive order on Wednesday, May 12, 2020 aimed at hardening the Federal government's cybersecurity cybersecurity defenses following the Colonial Pipeline hack. More at CNBC.

Biden Administration Signs Executive Order Aimed at Hardening Fed Cybersecurity Defenses

Analyst Take: The executive order signed by President Biden directs the Commerce Department to create new standards for software vendors supplying the federal government. While this executive order immediately followed the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and the fallout from that, no doubt the recent SolarWinds attack, along with the Microsoft Exchange server attacks play a role in the government stepping in.

The Executive Order addresses the fact that the incremental improvements that have heretofore been made along the way are not effective at providing the security the Federal government needs and that "bold changes and significant investments" are needed to defend the many institutions that are a necessary part of American life. It finally seems clear that cybersecurity is and must be a top priority for the Federal government and, more importantly, that the Feds intend to lead by example as it relates to standards and requirements.

Under the executive order, the standard for software vendors supplying to the federal government will essentially be a rating system that mandates multi-factor user verification to new technology, and also requires added encryption.

Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) remarked on this in a podcast on CBS this last week saying that this action by Biden is a "dramatic game change" and showed a commitment by the administration of prioritizing cybersecurity concerns. He also mentioned that establishing these kinds of standards will have a "cascading effect" for products sold to others, not only impacting government entities.

Now is a great time to be in the business of selling solutions that provide enhanced security, like IBM's Confidential Computing and AWS's Nitro Enclave, both of which we've written about before here.

This order establishes a Cybersecurity Safety Review Board that is modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board and which includes members from both private and public sectors. Equally as important, it also clearly shows the administration's intent to move the federal government to cloud systems that are more secure.

My colleague Fred McClimans and I covered this Executive Order in our Cybersecurity Shorts series of the Futurum Tech Webcast this last week. You'll find our discussion on that topic here:

You can find the full text of the Executive Order on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity here.

In this episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast, Cybersecurity Shorts series, my colleague Fred McClimans and I cover major happenings in the world of cybersecurity over the course of the past week. Our discussion centered on:

• The Colonial Pipeline cyberattack and the targeting by threat actor DarkSide of the IT system housing Colonial's corporate and business data. This is a prime example of how targeting the weakest link can take down the whole system.
• DarkSide's Ransomware-as-a-Service offering and why that's so attractive for the hacker community.
• The surprise shut down of DarkSide's servers, which caused the group to lose access to its blog, payment processing capability, and denial of service (DoS) operations.
• The Biden Administration signing of a new executive order aimed at strengthening the Federal government's cybersecurity defenses.
• The FBI's court-ordered effort to disrupt exploitation from Microsoft Exchange Servers.