Tech Talks Daily

Banks, retailers, and healthcare institutions have been some of the biggest targets for hackers for years. With large networks, hackers can breach platforms and access financial institutions' data, retailers' customer payment information, and patient files. With this looming threat continually growing in complexity, cybersecurity organizations need to share threat information to develop a roadmap to defeat malicious actors.

This is best done through Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs), where cybersecurity professionals can anonymously share these details about threat vectors for others to be on the prowl for. So why are organizations so hesitant to do so?

Neal Dennis, Threat Intelligence Specialist at Cyware, discusses why it's imperative for the cybersecurity industry to share threat information (hackers do it, so shouldn't we?) and how this could help prevent the next Capital One Marriott breach. He also debunks the misconceptions of threat sharing and ISACs that many organizations may have.

Cyware Labs is a product-based cybersecurity provider headquartered in New York, USA. Cyware offers a full-stack of innovative cyber fusion solutions for all-source strategic, tactical, technical, and operational threat intelligence sharing & threat response automation. Cyware's Enterprise Solutions are designed to promote secure collaboration, inculcate cyber resilience, enhance threat visibility and deliver needed control by providing organizations with automated context-rich analysis of threats for a proactive response without losing the element of human judgment.

Cyware solutions are pushing the boundaries of current security paradigms by utilizing advances in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Security Automation & Orchestration technologies to empower enterprises in adapting to the evolving threat landscape. Cyware's clients include Fortune500 financial, healthcare, energy and defense organizations, multinational retail corporations, trade associations, industry groups (including ISACs and ISAOs), non-profits and government agencies.

Paul Palmieri is the Co-Founder & CEO of Tradeswell, the first real-time trading platform for e-commerce brands that helps them sell more successfully across digital platforms. Paul helped define the mobile advertising industry and led Millennial Media to IPO. He's now taking a similar approach to help brands scale and take advantage of a $3T e-commerce opportunity.

As CEO of Tradeswell, Paul now works with brands like McCormick's Spices, Frank's Red Hot, and Rare Beauty Brands, using AI to improve sales and margins and empowering them with valuable customer insights to grow their business.

Paul recently launched the company with backing from leading venture capital firms like SignalFire, and he shares his journey, from entrepreneur to investor, where he saw hundreds of DTC companies and passed on investing in them because margins were too thin, and some of the early results he's seeing from brands using the platform.

I learn how they help bridge the gap between humans and machines, giving them the insights they need that have traditionally been left in silos and behind walled gardens. Paul also shares details of the solution that provides synchronous optimization across key functions, including marketing, assortment, inventory, forecasting, promotion, and pricing, all in real-time.

Paul is a visionary, leader, and investor who helped define the mobile advertising industry and the app economy business model. As co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Millennial Media, Paul built an industry-defining team and platform and oversaw its $1.4 billion IPO. As Managing Partner of Grit Capital Partners, he is a successful investor in early-stage technology companies, leading a high performing early-stage venture capital fund.

Paul previously led consumer mobile data for Verizon in the early stages of mobile internet growth, where he and his team struck deals with some of the world's largest technology, brand, and entertainment companies, building a 4.5bn business in just five years. Early in his career, he led one of the earliest outsourced e-commerce logistics businesses that combined technology platforms with consumer distribution in the telecommunications space

Next Pathway is the automated cloud migration company that the Globe and Mail recently named one of the hottest cloud start-ups. Today I am joined by Chetan Mathur and Clara Angotti in a conversation about the importance of cloud migration and how the cloud can provide a competitive advantage.

We also discuss why companies with the agility of the cloud will be set up for long term success and how businesses are using the cloud to reduce cost and increase operational efficiency.

Chetan Mathur is the Chief Executive Officer of Next Pathway Inc., the Automated Cloud Migration company, named Canada's hottest cloud start-up by the Globe and Mail in 2019. Mr. Mathur is responsible for providing senior leadership and counsel to ensure the company is at the forefront of the ever-changing technology landscape.

In addition to Next Pathway, Mr. Mathur has established and grown two other information technology firms. He founded Sage Information Consultants in 1992, an international technology integrator that specialized in complex financial services software. Mr. Mathur oversaw Sage's growth to become a leading supplier of IT consulting services for global banking and financial institutions. He negotiated the sale of Sage in June 2000 to a NASDAQ listed company.

Clara Angotti, President, and Founder of Next Pathway Inc. has been named a recipient of the prestigious Canada's Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award by the Women's Executive Network. She received her award in the "Entrepreneur" category. This is the second time Clara has been recognized as a Top 100 Award Winner; Clara received this award previously in 2011.

Railsbank is the pioneer and innovator in the global Banking as a Platform (BaaP) sector, enabling banks, businesses, and brands to define the future of consumer and SME finance. Currently, Railsbank is live and enabling customers in the UK, Europe, SE Asia, and the US.

The Railsbank platform enables marketers, product managers, developers to take their financial product vision and rapidly prototype, launch and scale their vision using its open finance platform, financial operations, regulatory licensing, and rich set of APIs.

Dov Marmor joins me on the podcast to talk about banking as a service and its next frontier, credit as a service. We discuss the difficulties of building credit cards for fintechs and new use cases that credit card as a service could unlock. We also talk about why building on a platform is a faster way to test ideas, get market feedback, and build a unique value proposition using a standardized set of tools.

Dov Marmor has led two of the top FinTech platform businesses in banking and international payments. Formerly GM and Head of BaaS at Green Dot, Dov grew that business 3X over 2.5 years, launching enterprise programs including Intuit TurboCard, Uber Debit/Money, Stash Banking, Wealthfront Debit, and many others. Prior to that, he launched the US business of Currencycloud, building over 20 new programs and expanding the teams and operational processes for scale.

Viasat is a global communications company that believes everyone and everything in the world can be connected. For more than 30 years, Viasat has helped shape how consumers, businesses, governments, and militaries around the world communicate. Today, the Company is developing the ultimate global communications network to power high-quality, secure, affordable, fast connections to impact people's lives anywhere they are—on the ground, in the air, or at sea. Viasat recently expanded its operations in Europe and setting a foundation for its upcoming ViaSat-3 satellites by purchasing the remaining 51% share of Euro Broadband Infrastructure (EBI), the wholesale broadband services business created as part of Viasat's former partnering arrangement with Eutelsat Communications.

In today's episode, Rick Baldridge shares Viasat's plans for KA-SAT, as well as Viasat's broader commitment to Europe and its road-map to ensuring ViaSat-3 his supporting a full suite of offerings to consumers and businesses. I also learn how Delta recently selected Viasat's in-flight connectivity to revolutionize the customer experience.

Rick Baldridge is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Viasat, Inc. He is responsible for the executive and operational leadership of the Company, with a focus on building and growing a customer-centric organization that will continue to deliver compelling global services and products.

Rick oversees the corporate strategy and operations for the organization, guiding and evaluating the Company's three operating segments (Broadband Services, Government Systems and Space & Commercial Networks) and cultivating and maintaining relations with the investor community.

DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) helps global companies run their mission-critical systems and operations while modernizing IT, optimizing data architectures, and ensuring security and scalability across public, private, and hybrid clouds.

With decades of driving innovation, the world's largest companies trust DXC to deploy the Enterprise Technology Stack to deliver new levels of performance, competitiveness, and customer experiences. Learn more about the DXC story and our focus on people, customers, and operational execution

However, what put them on my radar was the recent news that DXC Technology and Microsoft are collaborating to power a more personalized, intelligent, secure, and modern workplace experience for global enterprises.

I wanted to learn more about how DXC and Microsoft were joining forces to deliver a solution and suite of services called DXC MyWorkStyle™. Michael McDaniel shares how they enable employees to work, connect and collaborate — with a more consumer-like, end-to-end digital workplace experience.

Michael McDaniel is vice president and general manager of Modern Workplace at DXC Technology. He is responsible for DXC's Modern Workplace business, leading innovation and growth, managing all activities and global staff, and achieving customers' expectations.

GSD&M are the agency behind work for brands that include the United States Air Force, Capital One, Southwest, the Great Chicken Sandwich War of 2019 - remember the chicken wars started by Popeyes - oh yeah, it was GSD&M that came up with it. They were recently tasked to launch the first-ever brand and recruitment campaign for SPACE FORCE.

Maria D'Amato made a name for herself as a brilliant creative mind and smart technologist. A formative partner to clients like Southwest Airlines, Capital One, Pizza Hut, United States Air Force, and others, she has created or been integral in the creation of some of GSD&M's smartest work. For instance, this year's creation of an enormous virtual jigsaw puzzle, the 'Million Piece Mission'. It even made it made into the Guinness Book of World Records!

Perhaps her biggest achievement at the agency so far is her leadership role in helping to establish experience design as a discipline. The formalization of the XD practice—now immersed across all work streams —has fundamentally altered the way the agency approaches problem-solving. GSD&M's XDs fuse a deep understanding of users' behaviors with technical expertise and pursue innovation to the traditional creative workflow.

Maria joins me on the podcast today to share her story and how they are using technology to help brands come alive across every single touchpoint.

Matthew O'Connor is the CEO and co-founder of AdQuick. This first online platform allows brands, agencies, and individuals to complete the entire process of planning, buying, executing, and measuring out-of-home (OOH) advertising campaigns anywhere in the world.

Out-of-home advertising includes billboards, bus benches, transit stations, vehicle wraps, as well as spaces on cartops, rooftops, and bike-share kiosks, to name a few.

In the past, OOH campaign planning has been a painfully tedious process, requiring dozens of phone calls, comparing prices and inventory, multiple copies of cumbersome spreadsheets and hundreds of back and forth emails, and the like. Technology changed all that.

The out-of-home advertising industry has made significant advancements with technologies, particularly workflow automation, to eliminate up to 90% of the back and forth to execute a campaign. This saves B2B and B2C organizations significant time and money while making it easy to incorporate out-of-home ads into their overall marketing campaigns.

I learn more about how AdQuick is leveraging technology to reshape the out-of-home (OOH) advertising industry and bring it into modern times. We also discuss what role outdoor media will be playing in 2021 when things open back up in the UK, US, and around the world.

The ongoing trend toward Industry 4.0, coupled with the pressures of 2020's climate have accelerated the urgency of AI. Industrial organizations lack AI expertise, but it's become a matter of survival. This is driving the creation of a new category, "Industrial AI," with startups like C3 and legacy industrial players like Aveva and AspenTech (NASDAQ: AZPN) racing to win.

In Aug., Aveva acquired an AI company to get a leg up, and AspenTech launched an entirely new business unit, AIoT Hub, to pivot its business focus entirely toward Industrial AI.

AspenTech took on the approach of operationalizing Industrial AI – including (un)supervised and reinforcement learning – for industrial customers. Their aim is to accelerate time to ROI by creating a centralized AI Hub to simplify data management and build a self-optimizing plant of the future without the traditionally needed AI technical skillset. It's still early days for Industrial AI, and there's much to be learned.

Frédéric Bastien discusses the challenges of this Industrial AI category, the different players (startups vs. legacy), and the specific AI technical approaches required for Industry 4.0.

Boson Protocol aims to change the world of commerce by enabling enterprises, organizations, and customers to bridge the divide between decentralized digital technologies and the transfer and trade of physical goods.

Creating the de facto infrastructure to achieve this with minimized arbitration, cost, and trust, Boson Protocol is taking eCommerce to the next level with use cases including; loyalty and rewards, crypto exchanges, games, and tokenized networks, amongst others.

Leading the charge at Boson Protocol is serial entrepreneur Justin Banon. Justin previously spearheaded the Travel Experiences Division of Collinson, where he managed a group of global loyalty rewards platforms, including LoungeKey, Mastercard Airport Experiences, and Priority Pass. The latter of which he scaled twenty-fold from $50m to $1bn per annum revenue during his tenure.

Boson Protocol recently closed an oversubscribed SAFE fundraising round, which saw the investment of 8 Outlier Ventures partners, among other notable investors.

Justin shares how the use of eCommerce is compromised due to the industry's centralized, monopolistic nature. We also discuss exactly what 'dCommerce' is and how a decentralized approach to eCommerce can allow parties to engage in online commercial activity in a trusted, safe and fair environment.