Poste Italiane and Microsoft: a digital alliance to support the sustainable growth of the Group

Press release 29 gennaio 2019

Expanded collaboration with Microsoft to evolve the customer experience through a digital platform, which enables a more integrated and tailored Customer Relationship Management and turns information into strategic insights.

Poste Italiane Group expands its collaboration with Microsoft to support its Digital Transformation plan – both in the Retail and Business space - and adopts Microsoft's Customer Relationship Management cloud platform with the aim of improving their customer experience. Consistently with Poste’s attention towards the integration of the physical and digital channels, the project aims at the unification of the CRM platform for the enterprise, SMB and retail areas and merges with the broader plan Deliver 2022 in order to maximize the value of the largest Italian distribution network for a sustainable growth.
In order to strengthen its positioning in an increasingly competitive and constantly evolving market, Poste Italiane aims at offering a better service to customers, thanks to a more integrated and customized relationship management, regardless of the branch of activity, whether it is mail and parcel delivery, financial and insurance services, payment systems and mobile telephony. Poste Italiane has developed a broad digital transformation project and, thanks to the strategic partnership with Microsoft, which primarily leverages the flexibility of the Dynamics 365 cloud platform, it will address a complete and always up-to-date view of users and in progress activities, in order to improve the experience and offer more and more integrated services.
Therefore, with the CRM solution Dynamics 365, Poste Italiane will leverage advanced business applications and intuitive graphical reports, all with maximum security and privacy guarantees compliant with the highest international standards and GDPR. Thanks to smarter processes and ability to turn information into strategic insights, the Group aims not only at increasing penetration and cross-selling opportunities, but also to streamline the work organization, with the ultimate goal of improving the customer experience.
Very attentive in exploiting the entire potential of Digital, Poste Italiane is looking with interest also at Artificial Intelligence developments and, in the future, the project in collaboration with Microsoft will evolve including the development of a chatbot as a further communication channel addressed to customers, in order to answer their requests in a more efficient and timely manner. 
“We’re going to play an important role in Italy’s digital transformation and we want to be equipped with solutions that enable us to enhance our physical network, bringing it even closer to the needs and demands of our 34 million customers. The collaboration with Microsoft is therefore fully in line with our Deliver 2022 strategic plan because by optimizing the relationship with our customers we can better understand the changing needs of consumers and businesses, building on and consolidating our leadership and positioning for the country’s growth”, Matteo Del Fante, CEO and GM at Poste Italiane, stated.
"Poste Italiane is a key part of the social and productive fabric of the Country and we are proud to put our expertise at the service of their digital transformation path. This is the largest cloud adoption project of Customer Relationship Management on Microsoft technology in Italy and we are sure it will contribute to the efficiency and sustainable growth of the Group, with a positive impact on the 13,000 post offices, 134,000 Employees and 34 million customers on the territory. Thanks to new technologies, it will be possible to improve the work organization, streamline processes and manage the relationship with customers in an effective way, in order to offer a service more tailored to citizens. In the future, artificial intelligence will also play a key role in this scenario”, Silvia Candiani, CEO at Microsoft Italia, claimed.


https://www.posteitaliane.it/en/press-releases/posteitalianeandm-1476489782680.html

Northrop Grumman Launches New Research Consortium for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Press release

The research consortium, known as Research in Applications for Learning Machines (REALM), was established to foster collaboration between leading universities with strong machine learning and artificial intelligence programs. 

BALTIMORE – April 30, 2019 – Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) launched a new research consortium with universities to advance machine learning and artificial intelligence programs. The REALM consortium is an industry-academia partnership to advance research, foster collaboration and address technological challenges due to advances in machine learning, cognition and artificial intelligence.

As part of the consortium, Northrop Grumman has selected three research teams to collaborate on applied research that addresses key customer applications including multiple sensor track classification, identification and correlation; situational knowledge on demand; and quantitative dynamic adaptive planning.

Each team is comprised of multiple universities. All three teams, including researchers from Carnegie Mellon University; Johns Hopkins University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University; Stanford University; University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Maryland, College Park received a total of $1.2 million research funding from Northrop Grumman.

“In today’s environment, machine learning, cognition and artificial intelligence are dramatically reshaping the way machines support customers in their mission,” said Eric Reinke, vice president and chief scientist, mission systems, Northrop Grumman. “The highly complex and dynamic nature of the mission demands an integrated set of technologies and we are excited to partner with academia to enhance our customers mission.”

Northrop Grumman is a leading global security company providing innovative systems, products and solutions in autonomous systems, cyber, C4ISR, space, strike, and logistics and modernization to customers worldwide. Please visit news.northropgrumman.com and follow us on Twitter, @NGCNews, for more information.

Palo Alto Networks Introduces Prisma: The Secure Way to Cloud

Press release
By PR Newswire,  May 29, 2019, 08:00:00 AM EDT 

The Industry's Most Complete and Comprehensive Cloud Security Suite

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW) today announced Prisma™, a new cloud security suite designed to help its customers lead a more secure digital life. The world needs cloud security that is simpler, more secure, and more complete than ever before. It's the new benchmark in cloud security, transforming the cloud journey by simplifying access, data protection, and application security. Prisma builds on the tremendous success of Palo Alto Networks cloud security products and delivers new experiences only possible with the Prisma suite. With approximately 9,000 enterprise customers, Prisma has quickly become the largest cloud security business in the world.

 "Our approach to cloud security is aimed at delivering the best security while embracing the unique needs of the cloud. We provide customers with complete visibility as well as recommended configurations across their entire cloud environment to ensure a strong security posture from the start and consistently prevent attacks," said Lee Klarich, chief product officer at Palo Alto Networks. "With Prisma, organizations can securely connect office branches and mobile users to the cloud, confidently embrace the use of SaaS applications, and rapidly develop and deploy cloud applications."

Prisma Delivers What Customers Need

Prisma gives customers what they need to consistently govern access, protect data, and secure applications. The suite consists of four key components:

• Prisma Access¹ secures access to the cloud for branch offices and mobile users anywhere in the world with a scalable, cloud-native architecture, blending enterprise-grade security with a globally scalable network. It will soon run on Google Cloud Platform (GCP™), extending the service to more than 100 locations for an even faster and more localized experience. Customers will also have access to a streamlined cloud management user interface (UI) that enables rapid onboarding of branches and users. In addition, Prisma Access will include capabilities specifically designed for service providers to enable the rapid provisioning of secure outbound internet connectivity for their customers.
• Prisma Public Cloud² provides continuous visibility, security, and compliance monitoring across public multi-cloud deployments. Powered by machine learning, it correlates data and assesses risk across the cloud environment. Starting today, customers can further reduce their attack surface early in the development cycle through a "shift left" approach to security. With the ability to detect vulnerabilities and fix improper configurations in customers' infrastructure-as-code templates, developers can reduce risk without sacrificing agility. 
• Prisma SaaS³ is a multi-mode cloud access security broker (CASB) service that safely enables SaaS application adoption. It provides advanced capabilities in risk discovery, adaptive access control, data loss prevention, compliance assurance, data governance, user behavior monitoring, and advanced threat prevention. New integrations will bring improved administration experience across IT-sanctioned and IT-unsanctioned SaaS applications with unified visibility and management.
• VM-Series is the virtualized form factor of the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall that can be deployed in private and public cloud computing environments, including Amazon Web Services (AWS^®), GCP, Microsoft Azure^®, Oracle Cloud^®, Alibaba Cloud^®, and VMware NSX^®. The VM-Series is also enhanced through infrastructure-as-code automation for deployment and configuration, which reduces complexity for customers.

Prisma Access, Prisma Public Cloud, Prisma SaaS, and the VM-Series are all available now. For organizations interested in learning more about accelerating their cloud journey with Prisma, please visit www.paloaltonetworks.com/prisma.

Booz Allen named NVIDIA Partner Network Consulting Partner of 2018

Press release

SAN JOSE, CA–March 19, 2019–Artificial Intelligence (AI) has wide-ranging applications across government and is increasingly seen as a strategic priority for federal agencies. Booz Allen Hamilton—a leading provider of machine learning services to the U.S. Federal Government—helps organizations design and implement strategic and ethical uses of AI. Today, Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) was recognized with the Americas 2018 NVIDIA Partner Network (NPN) Consulting Partner of the Year Award. For the second year in a row, Booz Allen Hamilton was presented with this award at the NPN Reception and Awards Ceremony held during the 2019 NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC).

The NVIDIA Partner Network honored Booz Allen Hamilton for continuing to grow awareness around graphics processing unit (GPU) in the artificial intelligence (AI) market through their leadership, co-marketing, and key strategic wins.

“We are quickly moving from artificial intelligence breakthroughs to AI implementations that are accelerating the adoption of this critical technology across the private sector, Federal Government, and at the tactical edge,” said Dr. Josh Sullivan, a Booz Allen senior vice president and leader of the firm’s analytics and AI practice. “Our work with NVIDIA empowers clients to tackle data analysis at a scale out of reach for traditional computing solutions. In turn, new insights are driving operational efficiencies and other real results for our clients, delivering the long-promised benefits of AI today.”

“There has been no technology transformation which offers as much value to the Federal Government as AI,” said Anthony Robbins, vice president, North America Public Sector at NVIDIA. “Partners like Booz Allen Hamilton, who have been serving this market for more than 100 years, are critical to both the adoption and implementation of AI.”

The NVIDIA Partner Network hosts an annual awards ceremony during GTC in Silicon Valley honoring its top North American partners that have shown growth in their GPU business through their leadership and investments they have made throughout the year.

To learn more about Booz Allen’s work in artificial intelligence, visit BoozAllen.com/AI.

KnowBe4 Acquires CLTRe; Shines Spotlight on Security Culture Measurement

Press Release

Acquisition further demonstrates importance of managing the human risk and cements KnowBe4’s presence in Europe

KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training (SAT) and simulated phishing platform, today announced the acquisition of CLTRe —pronounced “Culture”— a Norwegian company focused on helping organizations assess, build, maintain and measure a strong security posture. CLTRe will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary of KnowBe4, and service customers globally. CLTRe’s Toolkit and Security Culture Framework will be available to all KnowBe4 customers later this year.

According to The 2018 Cybersecurity Culture Report, 95 percent of organizations see a gap between their current and desired organizational cybersecurity culture. With 94 percent of malware being delivered via email (2019 DBIR), it’s clear that working with users to minimize cyber risk and improve security culture is key.

The 2018 Security Culture Report shows the value of being able to measure culture, helping organizations to demonstrate the effectiveness of their organizational security controls, as required by GDPR, CCPA and other regulations. Interestingly, the finance industry demonstrated an overall healthy improvement in culture from 2017 while the real estate industry showed a decline.

CLTRe created the CLTRe Toolkit and the Security Culture Framework, which work in tandem to help organizations gather evidence about their current security culture and how it changes over time. The acquisition of CLTRe is advantageous for both KnowBe4 and CLTRe clients; KnowBe4 users will gain access to a research-driven measurement platform to show how their security culture program matures over time. And CLTRe clients will be introduced to the industry’s most progressive and easiest-to-use SAT and simulated phishing platform to help educate users and change their behavior.

CLTRe measures the seven dimensions of security culture: behavior, responsibilities, cognition, norms, compliance, communication and attitudes.

PwC and CyLon launch Scale | Cyber programme

Press Release

PwC is collaborating with CyLon to launch its first Scale | Cyber programme to support high potential scale-up businesses focused on building a more secure and innovative digital economy.

Eight of the brightest international scale-ups disrupting the cyber security industry have been identified to undertake the 10-week programme, helping them to raise their profiles, identify commercial opportunities and prepare for growth. The programme, taking place in London, will introduce the companies to potential customers, decision makers, and thought leaders in their field who could advise, mentor, or partner with their business.

Participants in the programme will undertake a business development curriculum and receive advice from entrepreneurs and experts on topics such as leadership, operational growth, investor readiness, sales and marketing, as well as how boards view and strategise around cyber security.

The programme will culminate in an Executive Evening, the programme’s corporate pitching event, where the cohort will present to PwC and CyLon’s network of senior executives, industry thought leaders and decision makers.

Since launching in 2017, PwC’s Scale programmes have supported over 240 scale-ups to grow through various sector/regional focused groups. These programmes presented opportunities for scale-ups to connect with over 2000 corporate executives to enable over 3000 introductions.

Richard Horne, cyber security partner at PwC, said:

“Cyber security risk continues to rank highly amongst CEOs’ top threats to their organisation. We need innovative new businesses like our cohort to help tackle the latest cyber threats and build a more secure digital society.

“This programme will support these high growth scale-ups on their journey and help generate mutually beneficial commercial opportunities and relationships with established organisations.”

Grace Cassy, co-founder of CyLon, added:

“CyLon's experience supporting the growth of over 80 international cyber security companies gives us unique insights into what makes a successful cyber business. We will draw on this experience and our unique combination of security, investment and business expertise to provide support and guidance to the Scale | Cyber companies, alongside some outstanding CyLon mentors. We are excited to collaborate with PwC as we continue to support cyber talent and innovation driving the global digital economy."

The first Scale | Cyber cohort of businesses are:

• Applied Blockchain builds blockchain applications that work cross-chain to manage supply chains and product life cycles of high value goods;
• Censornet consolidates critical security services within a single cloud platform;
• Cloud Conformity provides a consolidated view of all AWS infrastructure and associated compliance level, making it easier to identify issues/risks as they occur via a threat monitoring dashboard;
• Dispel gives teams simple, rapid, secure remote access to industrial control systems, sensitive datasets, or vulnerable legacy assets;
• EverCompliant is a cyber intelligence tool that stops transaction laundering by mining numerous data sources and cross referencing them across millions of data points to allow organisations to understand the legitimacy of companies they are engaging with;
• Hazy is a data synthesisation tool to help companies unlock data innovation and improve fraud detection and risk models;
• Oneclick is a cloud platform with all the necessary components for application provisioning, including extensive security measures. Applications and data can be delivered to any device, at any time, to the right location and in the right format via encrypted streaming;
• Semperis delivers identity-driven cyber resilience for the keys to the kingdom - Active Directory. Organisations leverage Semperis to improve visibility into their hybrid identity environment, instantly roll back unwanted changes, and fully automate the forest recovery process.

https://www.pwc.co.uk/press-room/press-releases/scale-cyber-first-cohort.html