I had the delight of talking to Val Bercovici, the founder & CEO at Chainkit, a Software-as-a-Service company that assembles cyber security solutions with a corporate assignment to eradicate sightless holes in cyber security and data privacy.

Today, we discuss Chainkit & Data Protection, what is chain of custody, and Blockchains – cases CXOs are far-fetched to have ever encountered in their careers while currently having no option.

#1 – Ransomware incidents and Cyberattacks are constantly increasing

We discuss what is ransomware cyber attack and how these incidents have been increasing significantly. We started with Val presenting his take on the present state of what seems to be a swell of new challenges in cybersecurity incidents and subsequent ransomware incidents, specifically focused on the healthcare industry, which was specified to transpire because the world is haggling with a global pandemic, cybercriminals are never lagging to take the edge of prospect where chinks in the armour emerge in any place they can witness a route to profit from any security vulnerability.

#2 – The massive impact of COVID19 and life before and after 2022

COVID19 has had a tremendous impact but didn’t this problem exist before 2022, so extensively so that I don’t believe anyone would contend that the effect the global pandemic has had is past influential concerning the growth in data security & cybersecurity, be it the evolution to Work From Home for multiple, or the augmented shift to Mobile technology in the likes of infirmaries, retail, and service sectors as a whole. Additionally, cybersecurity threat and ransomware have been around for decades, irrespective of the hazards and impacts around this space. In Val’s perspective, we confer how the existing state of the globe has altered the geography of data security and digital threat and what you witness as you spend time with communities faced with the requirement to respond.

#3 – Are we on the verge now where technology lives to decode this problem

Cybersecurity threats in healthcare, cyberattack, ransomware, data risk and data security aren’t new issues, nor are they new threats. However, they have noticed significant gains due to our pivot to communities being Data-Driven. We reside in an immensely Always On, Always Affiliated world – so the tremendous growth in risks linked to the tremendous growth of the attack surface should come as no lure to anyone, but the query I keep earning in boardrooms is “is there a solution to this, does the technology exist to solve it?” – I question Val to probe into this, we split this into two subparts.

We begin with the first half, and I request Val for his riff on this, i.e., should it be interpreted as snare when it comes to increasing cyber incidents to any bonafide business or tech expert. 

And to the subsequent part, I question Val if the technology exists today to handle and decode the issues of clamping & safeguarding data and, in the subject of prosperous hacks, hold the chain of custody in cyber security, as it’s anointed, to be able to chase and delineate the trespasser.

We again wrap up with little crystal orb goggling, as alliances are now enclosing to steer their way out of 2021 and mitigate into 2022 as we make it through the long and immensely challenging year, safely getting it through the auspicious Christian holiday term Christmas and unexplored waters.

After that, I invited Val to share his view and suggestion around how communities should equip themselves to manage the near future as they scrutinize to improvise business & technology approaches & subsidizing plans for the next 12 to 18 months?

To listen to our detailed conversation, make sure you tune in and enjoy a significant fireside conversation with one of the most ingenious thinkers in cyber security. Certainly, one of the greatest influences in thought administration in the war against cybercrime.

This podcast was made in partnership with Chainkit.

For more information please visit:

Chainkit website: https://bit.ly/chainkit-homepage

My latest podcast show focused on the power of digitisation & automation and the sheer excitement that transformation is causing among network engineers who are building an incredible infrastructure that is already enabling amazing things has just been published.

My featured guest for this topic is Dan Rodriguez, Vice President in Intel’s Data Centre Group and the General Manager of Intel’s Network Compute division. He’s a fellow who, as he puts it, is “accountable” to Intel for driving network transformation in collaboration with their partners. That covers everything from wireless networks to enterprise and it’s one of the fastest growing business units at Intel. 

And it really is a collaboration with some of the world’s leading telecommunication service providers. As you know from my other shows, telcos are dead centre in the middle of digital transformation and now here we are talking about the same thing from the other side of the partnership. I loved hearing the similarities in the journey – it gives me enormous faith in the strength of the collaboration, because partnership is *everything* these days (can you say “open source”?). 

Still, it’s easy to get swept up in the future of what a fully automated, cloud-based digital network will be able to accomplish and brush past the hard work it takes to get there. After all, in a lot of places, we’re still operating cell towers and physical, purpose-built networks. It’ll be a hybrid environment for some time to come.

But, as Dan says, the shift has happened. “The world does believe that this [software defined infrastructures] can be done, and it is already starting to roll out.” The market for virtualised network services is apparently growing at 20%, according to Dan.

What is Open Source Innovation

Intel, of course, are big drivers of open source and The Linux Foundation. One example out of numerous open source contributions is their Data Plan Development Kit that is designed to move data packets very fast on general purpose servers.

The larger plan is to enable customers to more easily transform and to lend strength to the industry wide digital transformation movement. Keep it as feasible as possible, keep costs down, and of course, bring speeds up.  

As per usual, the excitement is greatest when it comes to edge computing. Yes, there are lots of glitzy applications for 5G but edge computing is where the power is.

Dan has this view of thousands upon thousands of customer premises and network central offices, each with their own edge computing operation leveraging the power of digitised networks to an infinite array of real time services. And then – what happens to that data? Do we pull through the key bits to the centre or do we bring the intelligence to the edge? 

The answer (for now at least) is it depends on the requirements of the use case, but Dan had some great insights to share about the new generation of central offices jointly operated by Intel and it’s partners – have a listen to the podcast to hear the full story.

It was a little dizzying thinking across the incredible ecosystem that Intel brings to the table and how they leverage that both very broadly and very narrowly depending on industry, in both urban and rural spaces, at tiny and enormous scales.

I love that Intel is so much more than a CPU company (such a nostalgic term!), that they are so respected and have so much to offer the entire community.  

My thanks to both Dan and Intel for bringing him on the show. I strongly recommend a full listen to our conversation and a side trip into these other descriptions of what Intel is doing in network computing.

Reference links:

• Tune into my full podcast featuring Dan Rodriguez 
• 5G Infrastructure readiness
• Intel Social Hub: Modernising Communications Networks
• Intel, Nokia & Telia Industry 4.0 + 5G trial in Finland
• Intel Social Hub: Network Cloudification Requires a Village, not a Vacuum
• Intel Social Hub: 5G Mobile Core Transformation

I always relish and look forward to the opportunities I get to talk to people on my show. And what a day I recently lived! 

Last week, I had the privilege to talk with excellent Greg Perry, Fluke Accelix’s Capacity Assurance Engineer (Digital Systems division of Fluke Corp). This meet was the second one in the six months, and it was wonderful how profound this discussion went as compared to the first. If you haven’t heard my first conversation with her, I suggest treating it as a series and playing #1 before attending the second instalment.

Greg is an expert system engineer and industrial facilities reliability consultant. He is studying how industrial operations teams operate, how to handle challenges in industrial digitalisation, how the machinery they run works, digitalisation in manufacturing industry, and how ideal it is to involve Fluke’s software and hardware to achieve their desired uptime level. 

It costs a significant amount of money when devices suddenly break, and undoubtedly, it is ALL about productivity in manufacturing. Besides, it also costs big money, not just for returning the machine rather than the part, or even for the cost of labour, but the wasted product that was on the line at the time AND the loss of possible product that could have been created as well as likely fines from regulators and downstream consumers. 

You’d assume #IIoT was an ideal thing ever for this tightly-strung globe – a few strategically placed sensors, and all of a sudden, you have eyes on the plant. However, while explaining pf curve reliability, Greg does mention that there are some problems in the way.

However, it is not wrong to say that most plants are OLD, and the machinery spans various models and ages; and a lot has never been connected. There may not even be an infrastructure to link it to — many industrial environments are physically hostile to traditional cabling (abrasive, corrosive, etc.). They can be so giant and remote that WiFi and even cellular networks are hard to execute. That’s a piece of why even though the #IIoT has been here for a while, it’s taken some time and mindful thinking to execute it.

The additional parts are:

A. Lack of time to do anything more on top of what they are already doing full speed

B. Resistance to change 

Greg’s mission is to utilise his experience with how facilities, people, and machines work and his knowledge of what Fluke’s “connected reliability” framework of software and hardware can do to each client and help them move onwards. 

“You’ll see some companies out there approach reliability from the technology point of view, and they seem not to understand the other two aspects to this, one of which is people and the second is processes. We want to connect equipment, assets and data, and we want to connect that through synergy with processes and people together because that’s where you’re going to get true reliability,” states Greg. 

Especially, Greg utilises a tool known as the P-F Curve (article link below) that reliability engineers have been using for some time to assess what sort of assessment to do on what type of tools when to detect issues. At the same time, they’re still little enough to be easily fixed.

Using his lens of people and processes, he sort of shifted it and came up with a new angle of capacity assurance, maintenance and maintainability — that’s the latest plan. It’s more like a twin sibling to data science – it’s all of the rationale necessary to justify and best utilise the sensors, data and analytics, and it gets right into the lane of the operating engineer. 

In the discourse, you’ll also listen to how Greg explains the different physical and data environments he sees across industrial digitalisation or the several kinds of industrial and commercial facilities he visits and how different the “solutions” have to be based on the condition.

But it concluded well – the resistance to change that Greg and others experienced at the outset of the IoT has lessened as plants have dipped their toe in via pilots and individually connected machines, and there’s a real need to get around all of the data silos in the plant — there’s a broader willingness now to proceed. Exciting times indeed. 

Well, if you found this description interesting, I truly recommend you to attend Greg’s second interview with me. It’s a sneak- peek inside industrial digitalization systems that you don’t get regularly. Moreover, I want to hats off to the Fluke Accelix team for all their work and want to show gratitude for giving me the chance to take such interviews.

For more information on the work Greg discusses, follow these links:

1. Greg’s 1st appearance as my featured guest on Conversations with Dez podcast
2. Greg’s 2nd appearance on Conversations with Dez as my featured guest
3. Recent article by Greg Perry on the P-F Curve & Capacity Assurance
4. Article by Greg Perry on Capacity Assurance Maintenance
5. For more info visit the Connected Reliability page on the Fluke website