The EPAM Continuum Podcast Network

The cloud may have made business more flexible, but it has made security *complicated.*

According to Jay Parikh, CEO at Lacework and our guest on this #CybersecurityByDesign conversation, the cloud model “introduces a whole new set of risks that I think the industry, we all, are really trying to put our arms around.”

Parikh and Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP his conversational companion, try to figure out how to stretch the arms of cybersecurity to provide an adequate defensive posture.

Part of the answer is starting early. “Ideally you understand risks in your environment before they show up in production and before they impact the business,” says Parikh. “But if there are risks that do creep through into production that you're able to find and remediate them as soon as possible.”

Parikh says it’s important to rethink the way security is done “so that it's part of this move fast, this builder kind of mentality that is there in the cloud.” You need people who can build security naturally into the development process.

Talent is an issue—a big one—here.

“We need more builders in security,” says Rehman. “Constantly just throwing people at it is just not gonna solve it.” Parikh agrees, adding that security “has to be something that is there and it's part of the build process. It's not an after-the-build process.”

Which means, of course, that you need the kind of people with the skills about capabilities for being a builder.

“Finding builders, finding security expertise, is very hard these days,” says Parikh. “The demand just continues to far outstrip the supply of the talent out there.”

And you do manage to bring them on board, you need to provide them with engaging work. “You don't want them to be doing repetitive, mundane things because they're not gonna be happy. Then you have a retention problem.”

Listen to this episode. It’s so relevant and timely and thoughtful that retention won’t be a problem.

Host: Alison Kotin

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

“When I meet with executives at banks, every single one of them tells me that they compete by how customer-centric” they are, says Alex Jimenez, Managing Principal, Financial Services Consulting at EPAM. “They can't really verbalize what that means.”

By contrast, Frank Sorrentino, Chairman and CEO of ConnectOne Bank, our guest on this #TakeItToTheBank conversation, is quite articulate indeed.

Listen as Sorrentino and Jimenez journey into the heart of customer-centric banking.

“When we have a meeting with clients, it's not about what products and services that we have,” says Sorrentino. “It's trying to understand ‘What are they trying to do?’ before we even talk about any particular product or service.”

This kind of customer understanding will be crucial in the upcoming year. Until recently, Sorrentino, says the economy was like a “small town, Little League where everybody gets a trophy…. everybody does well and everybody's rewarded and every decision you make happens to be the right one.” He adds: “We're now moving into an economy where I believe discipline is gonna matter. Intelligent choices are gonna matter. And I think there will be winners and losers.”

They go on to discuss important subjects such as the impact of digital technology and humanizing the digital experience, the role of the branch, how companies can optimize their activities in an uncertain economy, and more.

This episode, it must be added, features only winners.

Host: Kenji Ross

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

Insurance and cybersecurity have a lot in common. They are both highly relevant and profoundly misunderstood and need spokespeople who can explain—clearly—how they function. Fortunately, we have two people on this #CybersecurityByDesign episode of *Silo Busting* who understand the worlds very well: Lynn Rivenburgh, VP of Business Consulting at EPAM, and Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP. “Cyber and insurance are always the same in the sense that people don't care about [them] until something bad happens,” says Rehman.

It’s a tricky time for the insurance industry, says Rivenburgh. Rates have increased significantly. “For the top 25% of companies out there, it's been an increase of more than 80% and that's happening regardless of the industry that those companies are in or the size of the organization,” says Rivenburgh. She says that in order to mitigate risk, companies are “putting in place some parameters and preventive measures that if the companies, if their clients don't abide by those, they're going to see premiums in excess of 300%.”

But that’s not the only challenge insurers face. There are escalating ransomware attacks and the potential of a recession. Insurance has a lot to protect—and they’re not alone. “We're all relying heavily on digital much more than before, which is great,” says Rehman, adding: “The side effect is that we have a much wider attack surface now.”

Rivenburgh says when the insurance industry wrote its initial policies 20 years ago, they weren’t “anticipating some of the activities that we're seeing today.” Soon, she says, “There are gonna be some new regulations, in particular in the EU and UK,” and “companies will be obliged to have independent third-party assessments and infrastructure assessments obtained.”

Together they discuss this complex moment, in which insurers are moving toward a more optimized mode and adopting a more conservative outlook on growth, how legislation and regulation will help assess where risk is, and the challenges regarding insurance’s talent pool.

Much is said about how partnerships can help companies lower their risk profiles. Rehman says: “Partnership is so important because no one single company can really cover” the multiple aspects of cybersecurity and notes that we’re seeing more cyber-savvy boards. The key is “a defensive culture around security.” If that is a central part of your culture, he says, “then everything else would tend to fall in place.”

Want to understand more about the area where insurance and cyber overlap? Listening to *Silo Busting* is the best policy.

Host: Alison Kotin

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

So what’s in your mobile wallet? Questions around digital payments are on the minds of our two guests on this #TakeItToTheBank episode of *Silo Busting.* Chase Petrey, COO of Pi, and Alex Jimenez, Managing Principal, Financial Services Consulting at EPAM, talk—with great gusto—about real-time payments, data complexity and scale, the evolution of fraud risk monitoring, embedded finance, “fast fraud,” and bias in AI and machine learning.

The digital payment world has a fascinating history, one in which India has led the way. The US built a lot of the foundational infrastructure in the 60s and 70s and, according to Petrey: “We're still using those systems today because there's so much process built around those systems that, you know doing a rip and replace is just untenable.” But when it comes to digital payment innovation, he says, some booming BRIC economies are “really able to leapfrog the United States,” because they get to work on a “blue sky blank canvas with the luxury of current-day technology.”

Digital payments, our interlocutors note, require an enormous amount of computing power, even for something as straightforward as mobile check deposits. “The computing power to maintain all those aggregations at every customer level is *insane,*” says Petrey. “It's not just averages across the whole business, but it's averages at the individual member or customer level being computed in that moment.”

If you want to hear some fascinating about talk about financial services risk management and bringing what Petrey calls “the right friction to the right person,” then you’ve in the appropriate place. There is, in fact, nothing average about this conversation. And the transaction costs for listening? Zero!

Host: Alison Kotin

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

Loyalty: It ain’t what it used to be. The customers of 2022 are much (much, much) more demanding than customers used to be. Not only that, when their high expectations aren’t met, they’ll let the world know all about it, which can quickly degrade a brand. Which is why Pierre Kremer, Senior Director, Retail & CPG, Digital Engagement Practice EMEA at EPAM, and Chris Hosmer, our Managing Principal, Experience Consulting, are here—to parse what customer loyalty means *right now.*

Kremer says that customers don’t just want to accumulate points—though there is still interest here—but that they say: “I wanna be part of something. I wanna be part of your brand. I wanna join the community.”

But the nature community itself has changed in our digital age. Hosmer notes that Starbucks' just-launched Odyssey Program is “an extension of their Starbucks Rewards” as well as “the first notable example of Web3 and NFT being integrated with the loyalty program of this size and scale.”

The guys make all kinds of good points: about measuring—*really* measuring—emotional loyalty, the duality of loyalty (experience-based vs score-keeping), airline miles, the peculiar loyalties of cult brands, and more.

And, as a bonus, they’ve included a tantalizing thought experiment into their dialogue. Got your own favorite loyalty program? Join Kremer and Hosmer and ask yourself: *How would that brand do if you removed the loyalty program?*

Tune in to discover their answers on the latest episode of Silo Busting. It’s a conversation that remains loyal to our usual high standards. Listen!

Host: Kenji Ross

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

Home, they used to say, is where the heart is. Now it’s also where people do an enormous amount of shopping. We learned all about this in the most recent installment of our *Consumers Unmasked* report, and our experts—Jen Jones, the Chief Marketing Officer at commercetools, and Mario Crippa, Head of the Physical Experience Practice EMEA at EPAM Continuum—employ these insights to fuel an animated conversation with *Resonance Test* producer Ken Gordon.

The group talks about a number of relevant issues including how small local retailers are transitioning in the post-pandemic world. “Many local retailers built strong relationships with their customers and their communities throughout the pandemic,” says Jones adding that they must be sure to “build on that and extend that relationship into our post-pandemic world” because “We all know that consumers have very short memories.”

This is seconded by Crippa, who says that after the pandemic, “We all need a little a little bit of human touch, some human contact,” and that small local business are well-positioned to reach out. They definitely have the ability “to come up with better propositions or sharper positions,” to “show off their values, what they believe in.”

As an example, Jones talks about a local restaurant that sold curbside family pickup meals during the pandemic: ”They've sort of shifted that to a pick-up-on-your-way-home-from-work [offering] and have a nicely prepared meal with instructions.”

Jones and Crippa think through the falling value of being able to physically view products.

Crippa says “the entire way to create desire has changed,” with the advent of product drops and the continuous digital campaigns consumers encounter. “People just click ‘buy.’ They feel like they're missing out, so they buy. They buy immediately.”

Jones suggests that smart online retailers employ a combination of “emerging technologies, which are continuing to improve and evolve, plus great customer service” and that together this “can basically eliminate the need to see something in person.”

The conversation also looks at how Amazon—“one of the very few companies that is basically a bank of consumers desires,” Crippa says—has been approaching home shopping (“They're testing, testing, testing to see what sticks and then rolling it out to a bigger market,” says Jones).

They even touch on gaming. Says Jones: “people are leaving their houses again doing other things like concerts and travel; that would take you away from being at home gaming.”

So many insights, at no cost to you! Bring them into your home. Just hit “play.”

Host: Alison Kotin

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

When you think of the term “mergers” what comes next? “Acquisitions,” of course! But what follows after that? How about… “cybersecurity”? Does that concept immediately pop to mind when thinking about M&A?

According to the latest #CybersecurityByDesign episode of Silo Busting, it should—but perhaps this isn’t always the case. Listen as Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, interrogates Sobhith Grandhi, our Head of Technology for M&A, and Adam Bishop, our Head of Security Advisory, about cyber in the M&A era.

The conversation centers on explaining to organizations that, as Rehman says, “cyber should be a first-class citizen during your deal flow.”

Grandhi notes how much risk and uncertainty are involved in M&A situations, and how this creates opportunities for cybercriminals.

“You get an e-mail that says, ‘Hey, revised org chart, please review ASAP.’ You're gonna open that attachment,” says Bishop. This is the kind of situation that attackers “prey on and count on.” They use the uncertainty of M&A to “prey on the human as the weakest link in the chain.”

If you and your organization want an expert view on M&A risk factors, what the cybersecurity process looks like, the challenges of integration and evaluation, and more—this is an episode you’ll want to download. The risk, it turns out, is not listening.

Host: Alison Kotin

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

This time, it’s personal. Welcome to the premier installment of #TakeItToTheBank, our new series of financial services conversations on *Silo Busting.* In this episode, Liz High, co-author of *Think like a Brand, Not a Bank: 5 Practical Strategies to Unlock Innovation, Connect with Customers, and Grow,* and Alex Jimenez, Managing Principal, Financial Services Consulting at EPAM, get into how banks do, and should, approach personalization.

High says that banks need to do a better job of understanding that “brands and the customer experiences you build have to feel personal” and that banks shouldn’t be customer-first. “If your decision-making framework is either bank first or customer first, you're never gonna get to [a] fair exchange of value,” she says, “because no [one element is] more important than the other.”

Jimenez notes that even when banks go to market with a customer-first message, “ROI is always going to come first, despite the mission being all about the customer or all about the member.”

Together the note that lifecycle and lifestyle marketing isn’t personalization. When banks try to sell mortgages to 21-year-olds there’s a disconnect because, as Jimenez says: “You're not doing the hard work of really understanding your customer.”

The talk about the importance of using data to look forward rather than backward (“Your rear-view mirror is smaller than your windscreen for a reason,” says High, quoting her co-author) and for managerial purposes: “That mind shift needs to be throughout the organization and not just in marketing and customer service and customer experience, but it also needs to be in the back office,” Jimenez says.

They get into niche banking (did you know there’s a bank dedicated to musicians?) and analyze the evolution of community banking. High says the contemporary idea of community is about “moving away from geography and moving into emotion and moving into brand.”

If you want to spend time learning about neobanks, fintech, and charters (“the most valuable thing in that whole ecosystem is, the bank charters,” says High), then this is the conversation for you.

Now visit the link below, withdraw the conversation, and collect your dividends!

Host: Alison Kotin

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

It’s a weird moment for fashion. Think about refashion, digital fashion, and the challenges of brand loyalty in a complex and increasingly expensive world. What’s a fashion brand to do in the face of all this change?

Well, a smart place to start is the recently published third installment of our *Consumers Unmasked* research. And that’s exactly where our *Resonance Test* guests—Michelle Grant, Director of Strategy and Insights, Retail, and Consumer Goods at Salesforce, and Pierre Kremer, Senior Director, Retail & CPG, Digital Engagement Practice EMEA at EPAM—center their conversation.

Kremer asks about brand loyalty in recessionary times and how niche companies like Allbirds can have a slightly higher price point, compared to legacy shoe companies, and still compete.

Grant points to materials as key element of innovation. She talks about cutting water usage in making denim or replicating leather with mushrooms.

“Sustainability is a really important value to Gen Z in particular, so that material innovation, where you're being as careful about environmental resources as possible, will read as it resonate with that generation,” she says.

Grant and Kremer consider many important topics: the resilience of physical retail in hybrid shopping (“Stores are well positioned you to be fulfillment centers… They're essentially mini-fulfillment centers, and in some cases,” says Grant), the current state of hyper-localization, the fashionable topic of NFTs, and more. Pull up a chair and listen as they walk their ideas down the virtual runway.

Host: Macy Donaway

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon

*Cloudy with a strong chance of organizational change.* That’s the forecast for just about every business right now.

The cloud brings both great promise and the potential for disruption. Sadly, few companies understand how to prepare their IT ecosystems for such a storm of transformation. Luckily for them, our guests on Silo Busting, Miha Kralj, EPAM’s VP of Cloud Strategy, and Sandra Loughlin, our Chief Learning Scientist, are here to speak about what takes to master cloud operating models.

Loughlin defines a cloud operating model as “a mental checklist of all of the things that need to be considered and addressed when making substantive changes to how your organization operates. So this is, very simply put: people, process, tools, and data.”

Kralj, who tells Loughlin he prefers “real operating systems instead of buggy human operating systems that you are expert in,” says an operating model is “the way how you run IT. It's a definition of business of IT inside an enterprise.”

Together they put the idea of the cloud operating model through its paces. They call about how cloud has brought IT back in-house… and about the complexity of factoring human employees into the equation. They talk about matching new skills to business needs and growing and training cloud-era IT talent.

“How are we helping organizations to go from front-of-the-conveyor belt, blue-collar workers, to become actual knowledge workers in this new IT operator model?” asks Kralj.

Loughlin responds by talking about automation, employees, skills and skill gaps, career paths, and more.

This episode will instruct you about two-speed IT (“It might be easy to think in terms of that dichotomy, but in terms of an actual application and real-world practice, it's not a good thing at all,” says Loughlin) and the challenges of helping companies manage the transition from legacy to cloud systems.

Stick around until the end you’ll hear our duo’s best practical tips for dealing with what Kralj calls the “never-ending continuous change cycle that is ahead of us.”

Host: Macy Donaway

Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Producer: Ken Gordon