Q&A with Cameron Worth, CEO & Founder, SharpEnd

MEDIA 7 | November 28, 2019

Ed Breault, Chief Marketing Officer at Aprimo is a marketer with over 18 years of industry experience. At Aprimo, Ed is responsible for the global brand and growth which includes all Paid/Owned/Earned media, Brand Experience, Product Marketing, Industry Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Strategic Communications, Content Marketing, Analyst Relations, Alliance Marketing, Public Relations, Events, Demand Generation and Account-Based Marketing. MEDIA 7: What’s your superpower? ED BREAULT: I would say it’s applying the full spectrum of art and science that is required in marketing today. Not just left or right brained, but whole-brained strategy. Being human yet data-driven and really understanding numbers and (the right) metrics to make connections to business drivers. Add storytelling to that, so I can effectively communicate to my team, the CEO and CFO as well as my Board of Directors on those metrics, and connecting all that we are doing in marketing to the mission of the business. Then quickly shifting gears to the art and creative aspects of marketing that are required to engage an audience and tell great commercial stories that take complex concepts and craft them in a way that is interesting for people to pay attention to. I have to be the ultimate point of truth for the brand. M7: At Aprimo, how have marketing leadership roles and responsibilities evolved over the past few years? EB: There are so many dimensions needed by marketing leaders today. There are several elements driving this evolution, it’s the new experience battlefront that is emerging and also marketers themselves driving changes. From a market perspective, there is a clear appetite for disruption and consumers are wanting more experiential elements to their buying experience and interactions with brands. Take a few direct to consumer disruptions like trialing products in-home, purchasing directly from a brand or even wanting to ensure that the producer’s trade practices are in line with the buyer’s or even a regulator’s for that matter. Then we want to try before we buy, and we emotionally care about the supply chain of products. Do we TRUST this brand to do business with them? Behind all of this is a story that needs to be told, and it is those marketers who know their audience well and make connections that will win the commercial game. Back to the marketer, there are so many diverse backgrounds that marketers bring now and I’m really intrigued by those who have unconventional backgrounds because they contribute something uniquely new to the field. I love hearing about the marketer’s journey.

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MEDIA 7 | December 5, 2019

Andrea Lechner-Becker, Chief Marketing Officer at LeadMD is an experienced Marketing and Sales Executive with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in Business Process, Marketo, Sales, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and IT Service Management, Andrea is also a strong business development professional and a storyteller. MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into marketing? ANDREA LECHNER: Frankly, not having better options. I originally attended the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse thinking I’d major in Archaeology. I wanted to be Indiana Jones! But, after visiting the archaeology building – i.e. the cold, dark basement of the science building – where a girl sat to piece together pieces of an old Native American vase, I knew archaeology was not going to be the right path for me. And so, without being good at science and a major in art or art history was unlikely to pay my bills, I decided to go into “business”. I originally registered as a management major, but took my first marketing class and thought it was more interesting and switched my sophomore year. That was pretty much it. I’d never been involved in business classes or DECA in high school – I didn’t really know what to do or what jobs in marketing were even possible. I dumb lucked myself into it really. M7: As a storyteller, do you relate the brand to a story or story to the brand? AL: Both? Neither? I think there are stories in every brand, because there are people working on the brand and people engaging with the brand and people using what the brand creates. People, most often a single person, are at the heart of great stories. You can start with the “point” of the story you’re trying to tell. Say you have a software that help accountants better create reports for board meetings. It’s likely you’ll want to tell a success story about an accountant getting promoted to CFO in part because your software helped better communicate their work product to the board. You could have the idea for that and go looking for that story in your customers. OR, you could hear that story, and say, “That’s amazing!” and share it with customers, partners and internal people. Stories are all around us – the most important thing is to keep your ears and eyes open for finding them.

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MEDIA 7 | November 21, 2019

Amy Barzdukas, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Poly is a marketing and communications leader with extensive experience in setting strategy, shifting perceptions, advising customers, digital marketing, revenue marketing, integrated marketing communications, and public relations in highly competitive product arenas. Amy is known for her ability to create and execute winning turnarounds on a global scale. MEDIA 7: What inspired you to get into marketing? AMY BARZDUKAS: I was always destined for marketing, even if I didn’t know it. As a child, I collected promotional brochures. I was fascinated by how the words and pictures were used to drive action. My first job was as an advertising copywriter, and I’ve never looked back. M7: How is Poly redefining the video conferencing experience for modern businesses? AB: We’re in an unprecedented time of change in our industry. Voice and video services are moving to the cloud, and companies are changing how they approach their communications needs. Poly is the largest provider of the devices – video conferencing, audio conferencing, headphones and desk phones – you use to connect to these services so you can collaborate with your colleagues. That uniquely positions us to shape the video conferencing experience, and we’re doing so in four ways. First, Poly has made both the Zoom Rooms and the Microsoft Teams video conferencing experience better than ever with our radically simple Poly Studio X video bars that deliver these experiences with no PC or Mac required. We’ve got decades of experience in understanding what makes meetings more human – for everyone in the room and those dialing in from other locations – and we’ve packed all of that into easy-to-install, easy-to-manage, and easy-to-use all-in-one powerhouses. Second, we are bringing the world of AV and video conferencing into the modern app economy. Our Studio X series and Poly G7500 video conferencing devices run a common platform that can be updated and enhanced through a series of regular software updates. This Poly platform, built on Android, can run applications like a smartphone does today. Third, Poly has introduced innovation that makes any video conference better. Our new Poly MeetingAI features use AI and machine learning to address the distractions that hit your senses in a meeting. We make it easier to hear what’s being said by blocking out the annoying noises that people make while talking, and we make it easier to see what’s going on in the room with the most advanced speaker tracking and framing, and our built-in production rules. Finally, we are pricing our solutions in a way that completely resets the calculations on what it costs to outfit a room. The Studio X30, for huddle room and smaller spaces, costs just about $2,100, including the Poly TC8 touch controller. All you add is the cloud service and a monitor, and you have a room up and running for under $2,500. That’s easily under the cost of other solutions and with better audio and video quality.

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Infrastructure, Industrial IoT

Staff Writer | September 07, 2023

Tuya Smart, an IoT service provider leader, and Amazon Web Services have collaborated to establish an IoT Collaborative Security Lab. This announcement at the re:Inforce China conference aims to enhance security, compliance capabilities, and technological innovation in the IoT industry, focusing on Matter PKI, DevSecOps, privacy computing, and international data compliance. It has prioritized security and compliance in IoT, actively engaging in IoT security initiatives and standards development. Chief Information Security Officer, Joy Liu at Tuya Smart said, Since the first day of its establishment, Tuya has regarded security and compliance as the core of our strategy and has always persisted in long-term construction and investment in security. [Source: Tuya Smart] Tuya Smart and AWS have been cooperating for nearly ten years, added Joy Liu. This has resulted in a deep integration of their cloud security products and a strengthening commitment to IoT security. In product design, Tuya systematically breaks down security requirements into actionable steps, ensuring security measures are integrated throughout the development process. This includes continuous monitoring, Zero Trust Provisioning over-the-air enhancements, user-focused privacy solutions, and vulnerability mitigation to enhance product security and dependability. The Tuya IoT Development Platform has registered over 846,000 developers from over 200 countries and regions as of 30 June 2023. In the ‘2022 Global IoT Security White Paper’ published jointlyby theioXt Alliance (Internet of Secure Things Alliance) andResearch Center for Cyber Governance (RCGCG) in 2022, Tuya Smart was recognized as one of the businesses with the most effective security practices. With the increasing application scenarios and the number of devices in the IoT, security concerns have become increasingly complicated. The 'Collaborative Security Lab,' a joint venture between AWS and Tuya Smart, strengthens both parties for IoT domain cooperation and exploration. This collaborative effort aims to provide industry-wide solutions. About Tuya Smart Tuya Smart is a technology company at the forefront of IoT connectivity solutions. Its cloud platform facilitates seamless device interconnectivity, setting interoperability standards for smart devices across industries. The company empowers partners and customers to enhance product value and consumer convenience. Its expanding Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings prioritize data security. Tuya’s transparent and open information security strategy increases partner and expert participation, thereby consolidating industry standards.

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IoT Security

Cisco | September 14, 2023

Cisco disclosed eight vulnerabilities in the OAS platform’s engine configuration management functionality. Three of the eight detected vulnerabilities were rated as high-severity. The issues detected in OAS platform v18.00.0072 were addressed and, v19 was released. Cisco's Talos security researchers have identified eight vulnerabilities in the Open Automation Software (OAS) Platform that can be exploited to bypass authentication, disclose sensitive information, and overwrite files. The OAS Platform is commonly used to facilitate communication and data transfer between servers, industrial control systems (ICS), IoT devices, and other hardware in industrial and enterprise settings. The OAS Platform is widely deployed in industrial operations, enterprise environments, and cross-platform integrations. It plays a crucial role in facilitating communication and data exchange across various devices and systems, facilitating logging and notifications. The vulnerabilities pose a significant security risk, especially in environments where the OAS Platform is used for critical industrial and enterprise operations. Unauthorized access and data breaches can lead to operational disruptions and potentially compromise sensitive information. Among the eight vulnerabilities, three are rated as high-severity. Cisco's Talos security researchers were responsible for discovering and disclosing these vulnerabilities. The most critical issues are CVE-2023-31242 and CVE-2023-34998, both of which are authentication bypass flaws. CVE-2023-31242 can be triggered through a sequence of requests, while CVE-2023-34998 can be exploited by sniffing network traffic. The identified vulnerabilities in the OAS Platform mainly revolve around authentication bypass, information disclosure, and file manipulation. Attackers could leverage these weaknesses to create new users, gain unauthorized access, decrypt sensitive information, and perform arbitrary file and directory actions. These vulnerabilities essentially allow attackers to gain unauthorized access to the system by loading and saving configurations to a disk and installing them on other devices. The issues were identified in OAS Platform version 18 and have been addressed in the subsequent release, version 19.00.0000, highlighting the importance of keeping software up-to-date to mitigate security risks. These issues stem from the fact that when the OAS engine is deployed, by default, no admin user is defined and no authentication is required to access functionality such as new user creation. Even if an admin user is created, the configuration must be stored prior to restarting the engine, or it will revert to its default state. An attacker can create a new user, save the changes, and thus gain access to the underlying system. Also, the vulnerability enables an attacker to acquire a protobuf containing valid admin credentials and construct their own requests. The perpetrator could then again obtain access to the underlying system by utilizing the user creation and saving functionality. Cisco warns that these authentication bypass flaws could be combined with CVE-2023-34317, an improper input validation flaw in the user creation functionality, to gain access to the underlying system by adding ‘a user with the username field containing an SSH key.’ CVE-2023-34353 is another high-severity authentication bypass that allows an attacker to perform network snooping to acquire the protobuf containing admin credentials and then decrypt sensitive information. While two of the remaining vulnerabilities could result in information disclosure, the other two could be exploited to create or overwrite arbitrary files and create arbitrary directories.

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Security

Gorilla Technology Group | September 15, 2023

Gorilla Technology Group, a global provider of AI-based edge video analytics, IoT technologies, and security convergence, has entered into a partnership with Protactics, a Colombian-based enterprise specializing in integral solutions and technology for state-of-the-art security and defense equipment in Latin America. Juan Arango, the COO of Protactics, expressed confidence in the partnership with Gorilla, stating that Protactics and Gorilla together are well-positioned to redefine security, defense, and smart cities across Latin America. This partnership highlights their unwavering commitment to pioneering solutions, harnessing the full potential of AI and Cybersecurity in the region, and ushering in an era of enhanced safety and technological advancement. The collaboration aims to leverage Gorilla's innovative smart and safe city solutions to expand Protactics' presence in Latin America, focusing on the broader Latin American market. This partnership will accelerate the adoption of AI and cybersecurity solutions in Latin America, enhancing safety and security in the rapidly evolving technological landscape of the region. Established in July 2023, it grants Protactics the rights to offer sales and support for Gorilla's AI-based Video Analytics and Security Convergence solutions in select Latin American markets, including Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. Additionally, Protactics will acquire Gorilla's solutions to conduct customer demonstrations and training for its team of experts. Vice President at EMEA, Gorilla Technology, William Addison, stated, The partnership is a resounding win for both Protactics and Gorilla. We believe this collaboration will expedite the adoption of AI & Cybersecurity solutions in Latin America. With our shared values of providing superior technology to enhance safety and security, we are excited to drive innovation and create a lasting relationship with Protactics to positively impact Latin America's rapidly evolving technological landscape. [Source: GlobeNewswire] Chairman and CEO of Gorilla Technology, Jay Chandan, remarked that their collaboration with Protactics strengthens their determination to expand Gorilla further as part of their global expansion strategy. This partnership extends the reach into markets with significant potential as they embark on digitalization and the implementation of smart and secure city solutions. He extended their thoughts that they are confident about the cooperation of their new partner and that they together will deliver outstanding deployments throughout Latin America, creating sustainable solutions and enhancing community protection and economic growth. About Gorilla Technology Group Gorilla Technology Group is a global solutions provider specializing in security intelligence, network intelligence, business intelligence, and IoT technology. Gorilla offers a diverse range of solutions, including smart city, network, video, security convergence, and IoT services across various sectors. Through relentless technological advancements, ethical practices, and an unwavering dedication to quality, the company aspires to shape a future where every interaction, transaction, and experience is elevated through technology. About Protactics Protactics, based in Bogota, Colombia, specializes in providing unique security and defense equipment. Its product range encompasses cybersecurity solutions, smart law enforcement tools, non-invasive inspection systems, end-to-end encrypted storage and data management, contraband detection technologies, and biometric fever screening devices. Protactics plays a pivotal role in enabling government agencies to elevate their security and defense capabilities.

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