For many years, when it comes to e-commerce, there has been one undisputed leader — Amazon. However, as consumers began changing their buying behaviour, newer brands began to pop up to upend the online shopping juggernaut. Take Shein for instance, the Chinese company that only recently took the world by a storm for its ultra fast fashion approach has overthrown Amazon, topping the chart as one of the most downloaded shopping apps in the world in 2021.

In fact, Shein is not the only one. According to the newest data from Apptopia, two other e-commerce companies leapfrogged Amazon in the global rankings: Shopee, based in Singapore, which serves Southeast Asia and Latin America; and Meesho, based in India, which specializes in social e-commerce for categories including fashion and home products.

All data is iOS + Google Play combined, except for data from China which is iOS only. Source: Apptopia

The US e-commerce giant came in fourth place overall in global shopping app installation last year. Just the year before, Amazon had the most app installs worldwide. It is fair to note though that Amazon is still first in Apptopia’s US rankings for shopping app installs in 2021. This is given considering data from Statista that shows the Seattle-based company holds 41% of the US e-commerce market in 2021.

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Singapore-based Shopee came in first with a total 203 million downloads while China-based Shein came in second with 190 million downloads and the company has been a growing force in the fast fashion market. India-based Meesho took the third spot with 153 million downloads.

Amazon, Shein, Shopee vs social commerce

At this point, online is growing at a torrid pace. New data from fintech and payments research specialists Kaleido Intelligence has found that B2B and B2C e-commerce spend on physical goods and digital services will reach US$6 trillion this year, up from US$4.8 trillion in 2020. 

But it is shopping on social media platforms that will top the chart as it is currently growing three times faster than traditional e-commerce platforms. In fact, it is on pace to reach US$1.2 trillion globally by 2025, according to a study by Accenture. Most of that growth (62%) will be driven by Gen Z and millennial shoppers.

“The social commerce opportunity will nearly triple by 2025. Growing at a CAGR of 26%, the social commerce opportunity will reach $1.2 trillion by 2025. This accounts for 16.7% of the US$7 trillion e-commerce total spend,” Accenture said in a separate report.

The report also believes that China will remain the most advanced market both in size and maturity, yet the highest growth will be seen in developing markets such as India and Brazil. As for the US, social commerce is expected to more than double, reaching US$99 billion by 2025.

The post Shein, Shopee and Meesho overtake Amazon in 2021 appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

In 2020 alone, some 1.7mb of data was created every second by every person. To top it off, a whopping 90% of the world’s data was created in the last two years alone. In short, energy use by data centers and IT will only continue to rise–ultimately speeding up the development of green data centers.

Vertiv, a global provider of digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, in its recently released annual list of the key data center trends to watch in 2022, also emphasized on a dramatic acceleration in actions to address sustainability and navigate the climate crisis. “As we move into 2022, data center operators and suppliers will actively pursue strategies that can make a real difference in addressing the climate crisis,” Vertiv CEO Rob Johnson said.

Now, as we near the new year, we look at possible data center trends we may see in 2022 and beyond, as highlighted by experts.

Green data centers: tackling sustainability and the climate crisis

According to Vertiv, the data center industry has taken steps toward more climate-friendly practices in recent years, but operators will join the climate effort more purposefully in 2022. On the operational front, Vertiv experts predict some organizations will embrace sustainable energy strategies that utilize a digital solution that matches energy use with 100% renewable energy and ultimately operates on 24/7 sustainable energy. 

“Such hybrid distributed energy systems can provide both AC and DC power, which adds options to improve efficiencies and eventually allows data centers to operate carbon-free. Fuel cells, renewable assets, and long-duration energy storage systems, including battery energy storage systems (BESS) and lithium-ion batteries*,all will play a vital role in providing sustainable, resilient, and reliable outcomes,” the report added. 

On lithium-ion batteries, Vertiv experts expect the lithium battery recycling infrastructure to expand in 2022 and eliminate one of the few remaining barriers to widespread adoption of lithium-ion batteries in the data center. In a more immediate term, extreme weather events related to climate change will influence decisions around where and how to build new data centers and telecommunications networks, Vertic predicts. 

“Other factors, including the reliability and affordability of the grid, regional temperatures, availability of water and renewable and locally generated sustainable energy, and regulations that ration utility power and limit the amount of power afforded to data centers, play a part in the decision-making as well,” it added.

Artificial Intelligences in data centers gets real

The need for real-time computing and decision-making are becoming more critical, given how today’s networks get more complex and more distributed. To top it off, the augmented and virtual reality demands of the metaverse too are becoming more prominent. 

“This real-time need is sensitive to latencies, and under the increasingly common hybrid model of enterprise, public and private clouds, colocation, and edge, full-time manual management is impractical, if not impossible,” the report states.

That said, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will be critical to optimizing the performance of these networks, Vertiv said. “It will take focus and time to collect the right data, build the right models, and train the network platform to make the right decisions. 

Even smaller companies are embracing AI, according to the report, given the availability of AI hardware from established vendors, cloud options for the same, a simplified toolchain, and an educational focus on data science. “It all adds up to accelerated AI adoption in 2022,” Vertiv noted.

The post-pandemic data center will take stage

According to Vertiv’s data, some 2.9 gigawatts worth of new data center construction is underway globally. “Those data centers will be the first built specifically to meet the needs of a post-COVID world. More activity will be focused at the edge, where VMware projects a dramatic shift in workload distribution – from 5% currently to 30% over the next five years,” it added.

While availability will remain the top priority, even at the edge, Vertiv noted that lower latency is a rising need to support healthy buildings, smart cities, distributed energy resources, and 5G. “[Overall]2022 will see increased investment in the edge to support this new normal (remote work, increased reliance on ecommerce and telehealth, video streaming) and the continuing rollout of 5G,” it concluded.

The post 2022: Green is the color of data centers appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Exponential data growth would mean an increase in both structured and unstructured data, which in turn can be complicated when businesses are trying are to get insights from them.

While there are several data management and analytics tools for the process, developers are wanting simplicity and flexibility when working with data.

This includes having simpler environments that require less administrative work and maintenance, and immediate access to the data they need.

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According to Geoff Soon, Managing Director for South Asia at Snowflake, businesses in Asia are experiencing hyper-growth as compared to the rest of the world. With this growth, data scientists, data engineers, and application developers who use Python will find SaaS that natively integrates Python within their ecosystem.

SQL is the most common language in the entire world and the most understood when it comes to data analytics. But in the last three years, there has been increased adoption of AI and ML. When it comes to ML, the most popular language is Python, shared Soon.

“We are now allowing customers to interact with Snowflake using their choice of Python, Java, etc which extends the user base, through Snowpark”, he added.

For the data analytics process, Soon said that Snowflake has always made it secure and easy to aggregate and store data in a single place with a high level of governance and control. The traditional way of doing that is through SQL, but now there are different languages to do this, making it an exciting offering to the market.

Overcoming data silos in the data analytics process

Soon pointed out two key problems that have led to data silos among organizations today.

“Firstly, if you look at Southeast Asia, the business ecosystem is influenced by conglomerates. They go through a lot of mergers, acquisitions, and such.

“However, the IT systems are still different. The data are still in silos. Secondly, what creates more silos is that if businesses have not digitized in the past 24 months, they’re out of business.

“The rapid move to the cloud has made businesses realize that the process is not as easy as they initially thought. As such, businesses buy applications or partner with some sort of provider.

“However, by taking in all these cloud services, businesses have created another data silo, he mused.

Soon recommends that businesses look towards aggregating data from cloud or SaaS services or even hyperscalers and pull them together for the data analytics process.

However, with data increases come increased costs of data management. Security is also of paramount importance to organizations in order to get the most value they can from this information.

“Almost every traditional segment in the last two years is being disrupted by up and coming upstarts without legacy baggage.

“In Malaysia for example, there is going to be an explosion of digital banks, and we are seeing some fintechs specializing in remittance and certain segments. I think they need to start to look at how these modern technologies can reduce their management overheads,” explained Soon.

Snowpark for Python counts multi-national healthcare company Novartis among its users.  According to Soon, Novartis needed a way to empower its global team of analysts and data scientists with an efficient data platform that would reduce data preparation time and provide self-service capabilities for building models and running analytics, on a native system that’s fitted with security features.

“2022 is where we move from being beyond a data platform to being a data cloud. More businesses are going to be sharing data securely between each other to drive analytics as they have never experienced before,” concluded Soon.

The post 2022: Simplifying the data analytics process appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

AI is so pervasive in China, that it’s used in everything from online shopping to… let’s just call it Big Brother activities.

Now, Chinese scientists have developed an AI “prosecutor” that can charge people with crimes. It was developed by a team led by Professor Shi Yong, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ big data and knowledge management laboratory. 

Professor Shi claims the machine is able to file a charge with a whopping 97% accuracy based on a verbal description of the case.

Theoretically, the machine would be able to reduce the workloads of prosecutors, so they can focus their time and efforts on more difficult tasks. 

“The system can replace prosecutors in the decision-making process to a certain extent,” said Shi and his colleagues in a paper published this December in the domestic peer-reviewed journal Management Review.

We know it sounds like an android judge fitted with a wig and robes will be banging a gavel, calling silence in the courtroom, but that’s not really how it works — it’s really just an AI machine on a desktop computer, processing cases.

Not the first time China has used AI in the judiciary

Despite the aplomb with which the news broke, this isn’t actually China’s first foray into using AI in legislation. AI was introduced into the court process as early as 2016, through a tool known as System 206, according to SCMP.

System 206 can evaluate the strength of evidence, conditions for arrests, and the level of a suspect’s danger to society.

Nevertheless, the limitations of existing AI tools such as System 206 were that they were not designed to be a part of the decision-making process of filing charges and suggesting sentences, according to Shi.

Such higher-level decision-making requires the AI machine to identify and sort details of a case file and remove data that are extraneous or irrelevant to the crime whilst still keeping pertinent information. 

Furthermore, it would need to ‘convert complex, ever-changing human language into a standard mathematical or geometric format that a computer could understand.”

According to SCMP, charges can be meted out to suspects based on 1,000 traits (or variables) pulled from the human-generated case description text. The evidence would then be left to System 206 for assessment.

The machine was fed with over 17,000 cases from between 2015 and 2020 in order for it to learn how to recognize, sort, and include or exclude pertinent information.

It is so far able to prosecute eight of the most common crimes with a 97% accuracy. They include credit card fraud, illegal gambling operations, reckless driving, intentional injury, obstruction of official duties, theft, and fraud.

In typical China fashion, “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” are also criminal offenses — which the AI is able to recognize too… obviously. 

Shi and colleagues expect the AI prosecutor to, over time and with improvements, increase in accuracy and scope of function. Examples include recognizing uncommon crimes and filing multiple charges against a single suspect.

China not the first to use AI in sentencing

This is not the first instance of the use of AI in the judiciary system. 

In February 2020, Malaysia made history as its judiciary was the first to use AI in sentencing. 

Local reports said the AI would analyze a database of cases between 2014 and 2019 in the Eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak prior to recommending actions to the court.

Currently, the AI system the in East Malaysian judiciary is used for crimes such as drug possession and rape. 

The danger of AI biases

Importantly, when it comes to machine learning, AI bias plays a massive role in determining the outcome of things. Feed the machine with the wrong kind of information, and you’d get screwed-up results that can maim, kill or put the wrong people behind bars for life. 

AI bias can be so pervasive, silent, and invisible — many do not even notice that it exists in not just the information fed to the machine, but also how the entire machine is designed, and who designs it. 

Human beings by default, are already biased to begin with — especially when bias is deeply entrenched systemically in societies.

This makes engineering a bias-free machine learning system that doesn’t cause destruction to lives rather difficult.

Tech companies are quickly realizing this, and some have even embarked on programs to weed out AI biases, such as Twitter.

We’ve already seen how AI bias has caused deaths from autonomous cars, affected healthcare provision on the basis of race, and also discriminated against female job applicants, among a litany of other problematic issues. 

In Wisconsin, an AI risk assessment software called COMPAS was used in sentencing. The AI in COMPAS estimates the likelihood of criminals re-offending based on their responses to 137 survey questions. 

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However, a study found discrimination in how it assessed criminals based on their ethnicity. 

Black criminals were often labeled as higher-risk re-offenders even when they do not re-offend. 

Conversely, it produced the opposite results for white criminals by labeling them as lower-risk re-offenders even when they re-offend. 

There still remain important questions when it comes to its use in cases impacting actual human lives — AI bias is one, but ultimately, there is the question of who eventually takes responsibility.

In the case of China, will it be the prosecutors, AI machine, or the algorithm designer(s)?

The post China has developed an… AI prosecutor? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

China is not slowing down its crackdown on Big Tech — if anything, it keeps widening.

After recent back and forth over regulatory loopholes, the country’s internet watchdog finally unveiled draft rules to regulate how domestic firms can list overseas.

The move by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) is seen as a step to govern companies in China applying for overseas IPOs “without complete restriction.”

The draft rule, released over the weekend, is basically an upgraded regulatory framework based on the overseas listing rule drawn up in 1994.

The changes were triggered mainly by the New York IPO by ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc., which went ahead to list, in defiance of Beijing’s orders to halt. 

Following that, authorities have moved to halt the flood of firms seeking to go public in the US over the last six months.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), however, emphasized that the draft rules aren’t meant to tighten policies for overseas listings.

According to Beijing, these rules are to ensure companies comply with domestic laws governing foreign investment, cybersecurity, and data security.

Laws Chinese companies have to comply with before foreign IPOs

For starters, businesses holding information of over a million users in China must undergo a regulatory review after applying for an overseas IPO.

Given the countless internet platforms in China that have stored information of over 10 million or even 100 million users, this means almost all platforms operating in China that aspire to sell shares abroad need to go through a cybersecurity review.

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Additionally, firms whose overseas listings could threaten national security will be barred from listing abroad.

Details of what Beijing deems as a “threat to national security”, however, vary widely and are detailed in various domestic laws, including the new data security law. 

To top it off, companies whose activities raise cybersecurity concerns would have to go through security reviews.

“Improving the oversight of firms listing abroad comes against the backdrop of opening capital markets, and the regulations are to facilitate more healthy, sustainable and longer-term development,” the CSRC said, according to Bloomberg.

Firms involved in major domestic disputes over assets or core technology will also have their IPOs banned, added the regulator.

The CSRC would also require firms in certain sectors to obtain approval from industry watchdogs before registering with the securities regulator — “The direction of opening up remains intact,” CSRC added.

Debunking rumors, CSRC also noted that companies in China using the so-called variable interest entities (VIE) structure would still be allowed to pursue IPOs overseas after meeting compliance requirements.

The VIE structure has been used since the early 2000s by virtually every Chinese internet company to get around China’s tight restrictions on foreign investments in domestic businesses. 

Overall, the rules are applicable to those companies that are seeking to sell shares abroad and will be also applied to those seeking secondary listings, backdoor listings, or listings via special-purpose acquisition companies.

For those that have already been listed overseas, there will be a grace period of an unspecified duration to comply with local regulations, the CSRC said.

The new rules also raise the cost of violations in the wake of Didi’s delisting. Companies that don’t comply with registration rules could face fines of up to 10 million yuan (US$1.57 million), or face a suspension of the business and/or license.

Currently, regulators are seeking public consultation on the draft rules until January 23, 2021. 

The post China to tighten screws on all foreign IPOs appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The Technology Young Talent Programme @ OCBC is a curated, year-long internship for final-year students of NP’s Diploma in Information Technology course, fusing IT with financial knowledge and training to serve the growing sector for fintech jobs. 

The co-designed course comes with opportunities for full-time employment with the bank post-graduation as the Bank seeks to improve its technological innovation. 

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The program is double the time of a typical internship and aims to equip IT students with industry-relevant fintech skills and knowledge and work experience for direct preparation for the workplace post-graduation.

According to a statement, OCBC and NP will collaborate to curate each student’s internship plan according to their area of study, which could include Data Visualisation, Machine Learning, Cloud Technologies or Mobile App Development. 

The student’s final-year core curriculum will be incorporated into internship projects and day-to-day work, which ensures that each student’s learning objectives are met. Grades will be jointly determined by both institutions as part of this industry-in-curriculum pathway. 

Specialist training for fintech jobs

An estimated 2,500 to 3,500 technology-related jobs are expected to be created yearly over the medium term in the financial sector. As such, the Technology Young Talent Programme @ OCBC will accelerate the development of a next-generation tech workforce to meet this rising demand. 

Lim Kok Kiang, Principal & CEO, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, said, “At Ngee Ann Polytechnic, we are intentional in keeping industry at the core of our curriculum. We do this by bringing industry into our campus, as well as taking our classroom to the industry. This is critical for the rapidly-evolving technology sector, where the fastest way to pick up the latest skills is for learners to be immersed in industry. 

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With this industry-in-curriculum pathway that we are pioneering with OCBC, students will have an earlier start and a longer runway to deepen their core skills and explore the latest web technologies in real-world settings. Essentially, they will be on the fast track to seize career opportunities in the dynamic technology field.” 

To do so, the Programme will give students hands-on experience with Web 3.0 technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, and they will gain exposure to banking fields like wealth management, trade finance or cash management. Students will also deepen their understanding of regulatory and banking security requirements. 

 OCBC bank will also provide dedicated career guidance in mapping out students’ career paths by matching them to mentors to help them develop their skills and grow their knowledge. 

20 students will begin their internships with the Bank’s Operations and Technology division in March 2022, when the third and final year of their course commences. 

Praveen Raina, Head of Group Operations and Technology, OCBC Bank, said, “As more companies accelerate their digital transformation efforts, the tech talent crunch has become a significant challenge. 

“We deeply value the partnership with Ngee Ann Polytechnic on this very meaningful programme which will contribute significantly towards tackling this issue. 

“Every internship under the programme is customised according to a student’s strengths and area of study – which is time-consuming to do – but we feel that this is worthwhile in order to develop the right tech talent. We look forward to welcoming our first batch of interns next year and hope to subsequently grow the pool of students under the programme.”, he added. 

Most of these students will be selected from a currently ongoing hackathon organised by NP in close partnership with the bank. Incorporated into the core curriculum of Year 2 students in the Information Technology course, the hackathon features problem statements from the Bank, as well as its tech experts on the judging panel, giving students early exposure to industry challenges and insights to potential solutions. 

 The Programme complements OCBC Bank’s existing line-up of technology talent initiatives including the Professional Conversion Programme (PCP), Technology in Finance Programme (TFIP), and the OCBC Graduate Talent Programme.

These are all part of the bank’s digital transformation strategy which will also see the bank ramp up its investments in technology, beef up its workforce capabilities and create more agile and collaborative processes.

The post OCBC’s new industry program preps S’porean students for fintech jobs appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

It’s portable, sleek, fast and secure as heck. The KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD is the latest solid-state drive series from the innovators who brought flash memory to the world.

Designed for gamers, content creators and those on the go, the EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD is easy on the eyes and easy on the move, with its smooth, rounded and shock-proof aluminium housing that fits in your palm.

Sleek and Stylish Metallic Body

Its metallic body is easy-to-grip and pocket-sized. Not only does this elegant portable SSD series offer compact, handy storage for users who seek out timeless design in their mobile lifestyle, but it also packs up to 2TB of data in its BiCS FLASH™ 3D memory technology.

That’s the technology KIOXIA invented to store large amounts of digital data in ultra-thin products thanks to its vertically stacked cell structure. The EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD weighs 76 grammes and has no moving parts, making it light, durable, and able to handle high-density storage.

The aluminium casing isn’t just pretty to look at – it enables effective heat dissipation during heavy workloads. It is the latest invention in technology, and it is the new and best external hard disk to store your giant data in.

Source: KIOXIA

Design meets performance

Windows, Mac, iPad, Android, PS4, PS4 Pro, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S – whether it’s current or legacy system – the EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD comes with both Type-C to A and Type-C to C cables for universal compatibility.

For example, transferring 4K videos and high-res photos to and from an Android phone is a breeze with its USB 3.2 Gen2 interface delivering a read speed of up to 1,050MB/s.

There are three storage capacities to choose from – 500GB, 1TB or 2TB – each inclusive with a three-year manufacturer’s warranty. Each EXCERIA SSD is built with BiCS FLASH™ and a vertically stacked cell structure, delivering a cutting-edge storage experience.

KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD redefines high-performance storage for enthusiasts and hardcore gamers feeling held back by commodity storage hardware. It is suitable for on-the-go users and content creators seeking high-speed transfer of large data files.

Source: KIOXIA

Data security with password protection

That’s data storage and transfer speeds taken care of, but how about data security? No problem. The elegant EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD comes with password protection courtesy of KIOXIA’s SSD Utility management software for your peace of mind.

KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD is where design meets performance for everyday users on the go. Capture and transfer data with low latency to desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and game consoles wherever you are quickly, safely and in style. This portable SSD lives up to its name by exceeding all expectations, giving your workstation and gaming life a definite boost in performance. Check it out for yourself!

The post KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS Portable SSD appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

As remote and hybrid working appears to continue through 2022, one of the biggest problems workers face is how to go about with the recovery of deleted data — especially when it’s accidental.

Indeed, accidental deletion of data can and will happen when working on various devices.

And thus, a key question on the minds of a lot of people is — how can you recover accidentally deleted data?

In fact, the need for recovery of accidental data deletion is so great that a global study from Veritas Technologies showed that 57% of office workers have accidentally deleted vital data from cloud apps such as Office 365, with 14% doing so multiple times per week.

What’s more concerning is that almost all respondents (92%) incorrectly assume that their cloud provider would be able to restore deleted files for them. Also, 44% incorrectly think data in the cloud is safe from ransomware.

Accidental data deletion has also caused strong emotional distress among employees, especially when they realize their lost data is gone forever. The stress is made worse by a culture of punishment incorporating shame and fear.

As such, almost one-third of employees lied to cover up the fact they had accidentally deleted office data and 26% said they kept quiet because they were ashamed. Another 25% said they would either do nothing or pretend nothing had happened in a ransomware incident—making it difficult for businesses to limit the impact of the breach.

In today’s fast-paced environment, speed is essential, especially when it comes to data. Any delays to data access or recovery, be it by accidental deletion, or being locked out by ransomware, can lead to huge problems for an organization. Backup service providers continue to advocate the importance of having sufficient backup and recovery tools for such incidences.

To understand better about deleted data recovery, Tech Wire Asia spoke to Andy Ng, Vice President and Managing Director for Asia South and Pacific Region at Veritas Technologies. Andy explains how accidentally deleting data may not be the end of the world for employees, provided they have the right data recovery programs in place.

(source – Shutterstock)

Is it possible to recover deleted work data?

Most cloud storage services will allow users to recover deleted files within a certain time window, for example, 30 days. However, recovery is not guaranteed and varies across different cloud service providers. In general, cloud storage services will automatically clear your trash after a stipulated period to free up space. Depending on how much storage has been used up, some files might be deleted sooner than expected. Additionally, the deleted files will also be erased from the cloud the next time your system syncs.

Not all backup and recovery solutions are created equal, so organizations need to identify what they actually need. For organizations that are looking at enterprise-grade backup and recovery capabilities beyond the built-in cloud protection, they would require a comprehensive toolset that provides full-coverage backup with flexible recovery options, plus a high level of performance and scalability.

This would enable organizations to protect, recover and archive their data, including deleted work data. For example, a backup and archive solution that uses immutable storage would help to protect data against unwanted deletion and modification.

What are the biggest concerns around the recovery of deleted data?

It is disturbing that nearly all the Singapore employees (92%) polled in the Veritas study thought their cloud provider would be able to restore their files for them. This false confidence in cloud data protection is causing businesses to lose critical data.

Unknown to some, a bad deletion – either accidental or malicious – could go unnoticed past the prescribed expiry date. There is no backup copy available for these expired items. Similarly, there is no option for recovery for items that have been deleted permanently.

The challenge is further compounded by the accelerated adoption of the cloud, which leaves organizations exposed to ransomware vulnerabilities as more cybercriminals are looking to exploit proprietary data stored in cloud services due to the integral role they play in today’s business environment.

According to the latest Veritas research, many employees are not forthcoming with ransomware incidents, with just 31% in Singapore saying they would immediately admit introducing ransomware into their organizations, and another 25% saying they would either do nothing or pretend nothing had happened.

As such, without knowing the full details of a ransomware attack, it is harder for businesses to take swift remedial action to limit its impact. With the surge in ransomware attacks, this is a security gap that companies must quickly address or risk disruption and downtime for their businesses.

How can businesses ensure employees take responsibility?

Businesses should set clear retention policies to determine how long data should be retained for operational and compliance needs, who has access to the data, and classify data storage according to tiers.

Employees should be fully trained on the policies and tools that are being deployed – this will help to reduce accidental policy breaches including data deletion, and ensure employees know how to access and retrieve data that is lost or corrupted promptly.

Companies should also eliminate the culture of shame and punishment, and instead foster one where employees are encouraged, rather than blamed, for coming forward when they report data loss incidents.

Changing the dynamics of incident reporting would also help to empower businesses to take prompt remedial action in the event of data loss or ransomware incidents.

Some programs can autosave files or warn users before a file or data is deleted. Should this process be enhanced so employees understand it better?

Such features can be beneficial, but human error or malicious deletion and system downtime would still lead to data loss. Employees could potentially be the weakest link and it pays for organizations to educate employees on the importance of adopting sound data hygiene habits.

It is also important to realize that cloud service providers operate on a shared responsibility model – they provide the applications, but it is up to businesses to protect their application data. It is every business’s responsibility to protect their own data, whether in the cloud or stored on their own devices. If businesses can get that right and make it easy for workers to restore lost files, then they can take the pressure off their employees.

What does help, therefore, is deploying comprehensive SaaS data protection tools to back up data across all cloud applications. This allows businesses to recover from all data loss scenarios while also eliminating threats such as ransomware and accidental or malicious data deletion.

The post Singaporean workers distressed by accidentally deleted cloud data appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Nevertheless, most businesses have now accepted the reality. Hybrid work and remote work is the future and there is nothing much they can do about it but embrace it. Organizations are opening up their imaginations to new and unexpected ways of solving workplace challenges, and it is currently an opportune moment for leaders to commit to data-driven strategies for greater agility.

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According to Accenture’s Future of Work Study 2021 study, 83% of workers surveyed around the world say a hybrid working model would be optimal. In fact, 63% of high-growth organizations have enabled productivity anywhere in workforce models. And this model can only work if the organization believes and practices a data-first culture.

For JY Pook, Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Asia Pacific and Japan at Tableau, the data culture is something that will be determining the future. And in 2022, Pook believes the most successful businesses in a work-from-anywhere world will be the ones that have adapted quickly to change.  Here are his predictions for businesses in 2022.

Businesses that will emerge stronger in a work-from-anywhere world are the ones that are adaptable to change.

Adapting to new ways of working and communicating with a remote workforce has opened up organizations’ imaginations to new and unexpected ways of solving workplace challenges. A recent YouGov survey commissioned by Tableau revealed that business leaders in the region (Australia, Japan, and Singapore) who were deliberate in increasing their data use during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, were more than twice as likely to report positive changes in workplace decision making and communication than those that hadn’t. The intentional use of data can help organizations stay agile and connect with today’s distributed workforce.

Data-driven conversations will deliver business outcomes in today’s digital headquarters  

Offices have shifted online to become digital HQs of their own. Yet even as working environments transition online, they need to be seamlessly integrated to support the way people naturally collaborate. This is why Tableau recently embedded powerful analytics capabilities directly into workplace collaboration tool Slack to make data more actionable, accessible, and intelligent. As more businesses embrace the digital HQ model, Tableau foresees increased innovation around how analytics is integrated into everyday work tools to help people engage with data.

Building a data culture will become a business imperative

The uncertainty created by the Covid-19 pandemic has created an opportune moment for leaders to commit to data-driven strategies for greater agility. This is why an organization-wide data culture is important – it is about the behaviors of people who value, practice, and encourage the use of data. It requires organizations to have a culture underpinned by data – an understanding that data needs to be in the hands of everyone in the organization. Businesses need to have the following elements in place:

• Commitment – where data is treated as a key strategic asset and people are committed to realizing value from that asset. Leaders need to take the first step and lead by example
• Trust – having both trusts from leadership and transparent access to governed, accurate data, results in greater employee responsibility and accountability for the information used and needed
• Talent – recognize and value data skills as part of how organizations recruit, develop, and retain talent
• Sharing – creating environments such as internal communities, where people share and support one another to achieve common goals
• Mindset – encouraging curiosity through exploration and even failure with data

With that said, the business outlook for 2022 is still very broad and open. But one thing is for certain, organizations have already had two years to experience change and get used to hybrid and remote working models. If they are still uncertain about it, they really need to start rethinking their business strategies.

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Regardless of your take on cryptocurrencies, the fact remains that these digital assets are gradually becoming a significant part of the payments world. Simply put, cash will not remain king forever and that is what Mastercard –a leader in global payments– believes in. In fact, Mastercard has begun offering its customers access to crypto-linked debit, credit cards and digital wallets, as well as cryptocurrency-based loyalty rewards programs.

Earlier this month, the American-based multinational financial services corporation teamed up with three leading cryptocurrency service providers in Asia Pacific and launched crypto-funded Mastercard payment cards for the first time in the region. The digital asset service providers — Hong Kong’s crypto finance firm Amber Group, , Bitkub in Thailand, and CoinJar in Australia — have all begun allowing consumers and businesses in their respective market within the region to apply for crypto-linked Mastercard credit, debit or prepaid cards. Those cards will then enable them to instantly convert their cryptocurrencies into traditional fiat currency.

In a conversation with Tech Wire Asia (TWA), Mastercard Asia Pacific’s executive vice president, digital & emerging partnerships and new payment flows Rama Sridhar shared the company’s strategy in the digital assets space especially with its take on cryptocurrencies and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

Mastercard tapped into the western market first in offering cryptocurrency products and services. How has the acceptance been and how do you foresee it to be for the Asia Pacific markets?

From a global perspective, adoption rates for emerging payment options have always been better within the Asian region. There are however, a few reasons as to why Asia leads the world in this. Firstly, based on Mastercard’s New Payments Index conducted across 18 markets globally last year, 94% of consumers in the Asia Pacific region are considering using emerging payment methods this year. 

Mastercard sees the emerging payment methods are QR code, digital wallet, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) payment, cryptocurrencies and biometric among others. That said, the desire and enthusiasm to adopt a new payment method in this part of the world is very strong. The second thing is a high population of Asians that completely operates across borders, whether via online purchases or physical travel. Therefore, there is a higher expectation for a more global, seamless, interoperable framework within Asia than most of the developed Western economies. Right. 

Which country within the Asia Pacific region would Mastercard reckon to be the most accepting of cryptocurrencies?

There are more consumers in Thailand and India that are very comfortable in using cryptocurrencies as compared to a very developed market like Australia. Even Vietnam and Indonesia are expanding at double digit rates at this point so putting these factors together only spells out well for emerging payment methods.

MASTERCARD CRYSTAL-GAZES HOW THE FUTURE OF PAYMENTS IN APAC WILL PLAY OUT

Dashveenjit Kaur | 10 June, 2021

That itself tells a story of Asia’s developing economies, where the cash runway is very high. Not forgetting how, according to the United Nations, over 60% of the world’s youth live in Asia-Pacific, which translates into more than 750 million young women and men aged 15 to 24 years. 

Now when crypto matures over the next three to four years, a lot of these play people would either be learning adults or have started their careers. In short, Asia Pacific is demographically set up for higher adoption rates and that is probably the best way to think about it. As it is, almost 30% of the global value of crypto transactions is happening in Asia so it is inevitable for the region to be global leaders when it comes to the future of money.

What was the tipping point when Mastercard realized it was time to accept cryptocurrencies into the payment network?

Mastercard’s philosophy on cryptocurrencies is pretty straightforward: It’s about choice. We are not here to recommend you start using cryptocurrencies. But we are here to enable customers, merchants and businesses to move digital value – traditional or crypto – however they want. It should be your choice, it’s your money.

Within the Mastercard network itself, we noticed a large volume of people using cards to buy crypto assets, especially during Bitcoin’s recent surge in value. We are also seeing users increasingly take advantage of crypto cards to access these assets and convert them to traditional currencies for spending.

Above all, we have and will continue to be very thoughtful about which assets we support based on our principles for digital currencies, which focus on consumer protections and compliance. Currently, we have over 30 crypto card program partnership and to be completely clear, not all of today’s cryptocurrencies are and will be supported on our network. 

But if you look at the stablecoins, which are either backed by a basket of fiats, or a single fiat, those are gaining significant acceptance. To top it off, stablecoins are more regulated and reliable than in the recent past and it’s those very same stablecoins that we expect to bring into our network.

Tell us more about your take on CBDC and  the “safe space” Mastercard provides for governments and private sector banks to figure out how those work?

Around last year, we announced this proprietary testing platform for central banks which basically allows for central banks to engage in a simulated environment where they can issue the currency and distribute it between banks, financial institutions and consumers in a virtual world to fathom how it could and would work in a real world. In doing so, it will allow banks to identify and strategize how to launch central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and how to create the ideal regulatory environment. 

Truth be told, today, almost every central bank is actually exploring CDBC not just because they want to issue it immediately, but because it is leading to be a necessary part of the ecosystem. With that, creating the framework, the rules, and evaluating what is the best way to do it is just a timely move. And for Mastercard, anything the central bank does as principles, will automatically be the principles that we will assume. That is how we move on with our partnerships.

Across all of the developing economies, and in Asia in particular, going cashless is the main agenda for central banks. With that, many central bankers believe that CBDCs offer great potential to bring people into the digital financial system. 

The other other real agenda on central banks’ radar is transparency. Hence why every government and regulators are moving towards this direction. Yes, it’s not the only way to do it, but it is a good way to do it and it facilitates fast access to the currency for the populations, where the circulation of physical cash may be limited.

Do you think a CBDC future will dawn upon us sooner than later?

To aid digital transformation, financial and digital inclusion as well as remove cash, CBDCs are the way forward. Will it happen over the next two year or five years? Unfortunately, I can’t predict but I think there is a lot of framework and work that needs to be done. There will no doubt be a lot of debates between central banks — on the good and the bad of how things need to be managed. They will have to ensure that other existing payment ecosystems sit harmoniously alongside CBDCs.

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