The EPAM Continuum Podcast Network

The bad guys don’t necessarily want your apps. What interests them? Your APIs. In our latest #CybersecurityByDesign conversation David Stewart, CEO of Approov, tells Sam Rehman, our Chief Information Security Officer and SVP: “The majority of attacks that we see are not done by modified apps but they’re done by scripts which have studied the app to the extent of being able to impersonate traffic and transactions that look like they’re coming from a genuine app instance.” This allows the nefarious actors out there to bypass apps completely. Scary stuff. Stewart and Rehman focus their talk on subtleties of API protection and attribute-based access control in the context of zero trust. Now, for you, keeping the mobile experience safe is important, but it’s Stewart’s *raison d'être.*“The reason we exist is to tell the back end that the API request is coming from a genuine app instance, and to do that on a very fast refresh so that it makes it impossible for the bad guys to get hold of anything they can use.” Download this conversation and you'll soon be thinking about shifting left while shielding right.

Host: Alison Kotin

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

When we engage with an organization, they typically seek to help their customers “be more effective with their products and solutions,” says Keth Crotty, a Director of Business Development at EPAM. Crotty’s talking about something called “partner enablement”—and in this episode of *Silo Busting* Crotty, he and Jonathan Lupo, our VP of Experience Design, gently unbox the concept. In the course of Lupo’s genial cross-examination, Crotty says it’s all about asking, and answering, these questions: “What does that user need to know?” and “How do they get to it a very easy, intuitive way?” It’s very much about interoperability: “These systems need to be able to talk,” says Crotty. “They need to be able to share data with one another, so that this journey is not disconnected and interrupted.” Crotty also reminds us that a partner’s teams may well be siloed (a perfect topic for our podcast): “The team working on training information is not necessarily the same team working on product documentation and that’s not necessarily the same team working to support end users.” Click through and learn about the importance of having a unified content strategy, assembling the right professional services team, and more.

Host: Kenji Ross

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

As the world prepares to hang an open-for-business sign on our collective door, we’re at a threshold moment, one Albert Rees, VP and Head of Business Consulting at EPAM Continuum, has dubbed “Pre-Post-COVID.” In this episode of *Silo Busting,* he discusses the concept with Jason Peterson, EPAM’s Chief Financial Officer, and Larry Solomon, our SVP and Chief People Officer. The trio look at the current talent market, data’s role in pre-post-COVID, and what it all means in the complicated context of acquisitions. Peterson nicely sums up our transitional situation by noting that during the pandemic our leaders paired “modern data technologies” and Microsoft Teams meetings so they could “quickly interpret the data and then make decisions. And so we were *way* more nimble than we were previously and I think you’ll continue to see us [become even] more nimble in this post-COVID world.”

Host: Albert Rees

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

Risk management has become a brave new digital world… though not every executive or organization recognizes this. Blake Brannon, CTO of One Trust, does. He recently spoke with Boris Khazin, our Global Head of DRM Services, and their conversation dug deep into risk-management’s unique new territory. “You move from this compliance-driven exercise that traditionally did GRC,” said Brannon, “to this operational, organization-wide initiative that you have to embed that risk-management program into.” In this #CybersecurityByDesign conversation, these two informed gentlemen address key topics in Digital Risk Management, or DRM, including: data governance, digital platforms, automated tooling, regulatory requirements, privacy, consumer expectations. Will you listen? Good. Ignorance is always a risky proposition.

Host: Alison Kotin

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

The world is finally, *cautiously,* about to reopen. This is much-needed good news for the beleaguered retail industry. Question is: How can retailers design a shopping experience that will truly work for this brave new world? According to Buck Sleeper, leader of our Restaurants and Retail Vertical, the answer is Blend Space, a recent proof-of-concept project about “not just brick-and-mortar shopping but how we shop online, emerging trends in edge retail distribution, and what this space is going to look like in the future when we are fully recovered from this global pandemic and enter our new normal.” In this conversation with producer Ken Gordon, we learn how Blend Space is *not* omnichannel, where the outlines of Blend Space’s geography reside, what happens when cloud floats onto the scene, and how companies can start blending. Ultimately, says Sleeper, Blend Space gets to the point where “You can have your shopping experience and I can have mine, both within the same brand but on our own terms.”

Host: Alison Kotin

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

Layering biometrics on top of zero trust, says Bobby Varma, CEO and Co-Founder of Princeton Identity, is the way of the future. In the latest #CyberSecurityByDesign conversation, Varma and Boris Khazin, our Global Head of DRM Services, zoom in on this intriguing topic, one that’s extremely relevant in our current work-from-home world. Our *Silo Busting* conversationalists talk about how biometrics can create confidence for firms that the correct person—and only the correct person—is accessing sensitive data. But Varma also notes that biometrics is good for the user: “Authentication steps should not be cumbersome and should not impact user experience or diminish [user] productivity.” If you want to hear some informed thoughts on security in our increasingly hybrid work environments, all you have to do is hit the “play” button.

Host: Alison Kotin

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

It’s tough to build trust in the digital age. Customers seek the kind of high-quality experiences one gets with, say, Amazon—and this means that many non-Amazonian industries need to rethink their operations. Brad Scrivner, President and CEO of Vast Bank and our guest on *The Resonance Test,* gets at this when he says, “Changing is a challenge” and admits that financial services “may be slower to adapt... than some other industries have been.” In this episode, Scrivner and Jim Kearney, Managing Principal in the Financial Services Consulting Practice at EPAM, deposit some worthwhile thoughts about how the pandemic changed Vast Bank’s approach to customer experience, conversational commerce, and how family banking has evolved. Scrivner talks about the influence *Unlocking the Customer Value Chain* had on him and explains how he get customers comfortable with the notion of digital assets. “Vast Bank owns the digital wallet, which would be the equivalent of the safety deposit box,” he says. When customers purchase cryptocurrency, it will “sit inside that digital wallet and the banking infrastructure and all of our partners are going to protect that asset for you.” Listen to Scrivner and you’ll learn a vast amount about what it means to lead a financial services organization today. Bank on it!

Host: Kenji Ross

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

“Having come out of months and months *starved* of human connection… our need and desire and *demand* for shared, in-person experience with others is going to really rise.”

This is one of the many true remarks Noreena Hertz makes, in speaking with producer Ken Gordon, on the latest episode of *The Resonance Test.*

Hertz, a British economist and bestselling author of *The Lonely Century: How to Restore Human Connection in a World That's Pulling Apart,* effortlessly spins out stories and data and insights about the job loneliness is doing on us.

In her book Hertz writes: “A lonely body is not a healthy one” and in conversation she adds: “When we’re lonely our blood pressure goes up. Our heart rate goes up. Our levels of cortisol, our stress levels in our body, go up. All of these essentially signaling to our body: ‘Stop being lonely. Go and find people to hunt and gather with. Go and find your tribe.’”

But loneliness isn’t merely bad for our health; it’s bad for business. “Lonely workers are less productive, less motivated, less efficient, more likely to quit a company than workers who are not,” says Hertz.

Hertz draws our attention to what she calls the loneliness economy and says it can be a win-win for us all: “If you can sell people authentic communities that speak to their needs to connect with others, you’re gonna have a significant customer base.”

Ultimately, Hertz hopes we will use our experience as lonely people to create a more relational form of capitalism. Let's hope she gets many readers. Humanity can use the help.

Host: Kenji Ross

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

“We all know as consumers that we want more, better, faster—for less money,” says Rick Champagne, AVP and Talent Advisor at Liberty Mutual Insurance. The question is: “How do we as an organization deliver those capabilities to our internal partners and then our external partners?” Well, this is one of *several* big questions Champagne takes up, with Sandra Loughlin, the Managing Principal of EPAM’s Learning Practice, in our latest edition of *The Resonance Test.* Together our dynamic duo hashes out the challenges in aligning skills with digital and tech strategy, creating a growth mindset in a big organization, and designing proper educational incentives. It’s an honest conversation about what it really takes to get people to learn. Says Loughlin: “We like to think, as adults, that we’re very different from little kids, but in some ways all of us like those gold stars.” We won’t promise a gold star if you listen… only that you’ll get smarter about educating your workforce.

Host: Kenji Ross

Editor: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

The world of mobile applications is insecure by default. That’s what you learn when you talk with Roel Caers, CEO of Guardsquare. In the latest edition of our #CybersecurityByDesign series, he tells Sam Rehman, our Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, why he’s always taken a zero-trust approach to mobile. Caers says that developers must become “aware of everything that is possible and can be done to mobile applications.” He adds that 2-3% of sensitive apps “run on malicious devices, jailbroken or something else done to the device, and that’s a lot.” As Rehman reminds us: One jailbroken device is all you need to cause major mayhem, “because it can tap into the app store.” “The fact that these applications are not protected—it creates a huge attraction to hackers,” notes Caers. “It’s not only about data—it’s also about piracy or cloning or IP theft.” Our conversationalists also talk about reverse engineering, lookalike code, the integrity of apps, and static and dynamic protection, among other salient topics. Much to learn here for anyone who uses apps (which is to say: pretty much everyone). Listen up!

Host: Alison Kotin

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon