As the cybersecurity industry works to address a shortage of skilled workers, an advertisement backed by the UK government may provide an example of what not to do.

The ad, which encouraged people working in the arts to retrain in cybersecurity, has been abandoned amid backlash online and even within the government, according to reports from The Guardian, The Washington Post and MarketWatch.

Although pulled from the official website, the ad was still easily viewable after going viral on social media with the hashtag “#SavetheArts.” The image displays a ballet dancer tying her shoes. The caption reads, “Fatima’s next job could be in cyber (she just doesn’t know it yet),” followed by the tagline “Rethink. Reskill. Reboot.”

Posted on the website of training firm QA, the ad was part of the UK cybersecurity agency’s Cyber First campaign, which promotes tech training for young people. Oliver Dowden, the British culture secretary, tweeted that the ad was “crass” and did not come from his agency. A spokesperson for the prime minister said, “This particular piece of content was not appropriate and has been removed from the campaign.”

The UK government’s volte-face followed widespread criticism that the ad showed disrespect toward the culture sector, which has been suffering catastrophic job losses. The author Caitlin Moran tweeted: “I don’t know if the government know they appear to have recently created a ‘Hopes & Dreams Crushing Department,’ but for a country already depressed and anxious, I would suggest it’s a bit of a ‘Not now, dudes’ moment?" The shadow health minister, Rosena Allin-Khan, chimed in: “Fatima, you be you. Don’t let anyone else tell you that you aren’t good enough because you don’t conform to their preconceived social norms.”

Meanwhile, a recent survey finds that most people say a career in cybersecurity isn’t for them, despite the sector’s demand for talent. Among 2,500 U.S. and UK workers surveyed by (ISC)2, 69% said that while cybersecurity seems like a good career path, it isn’t the right personal fit.

The world of analytics is changing.  Self-Service Analytical tools like Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI are enabling business users to perform reporting and analytics on their own with little to no support from the IT organization. This trend has evolved due to several factors including:

1)    Organizations are flooded with data and IT organizations are not able to keep up
2)    Easier to use Business Intelligence tools make it more efficient for business users to directly create their reports rather than go through IT for a project
3)    IT organizations analytical projects can take several months when a business needs this information in weeks

This trend has caused the efforts of IT Business Intelligence (BI) teams to spending most of their energy gathering, cleaning, and structuring data for the business to perform their own analytics through a self-service model. In special cases, they provide industrial strength reporting that can scale to thousands of users where trusted verified data is needed.  However, they are still being shown the door when it comes to some of the more interesting work.

What can IT BI teams do to stay relevant and valuable to the business? We have several suggestions that relate to embracing self-service analytics as the new reality and transitioning core competencies of the Business Intelligence team away from purely descriptive reporting and moving to diagnostic & predictive analytics.

Let’s explain that last concept before prescribing several solutions. The current state of most analytics is descriptive in nature and helps answer questions of, “what occurred?” Diagnostic and Predictive Analytics help answer the questions of, “Why did it occur?” and sets the stage to answer, “What can I do about it?”  Diagnostic Analytics helps organizations to not only understand what, but also why and what decisions and actions can be taken to solve for the issue. This type of analytics is more valuable to the business and requires competencies that IT BI teams are uniquely qualified to bring from their years of building analytical solutions.

To enable IT Business Intelligence teams to move up the value chain from providing commodity reports to business driving analytics, we recommend adding these four components:

1. Build out a Data Science capability– Data Scientists are starting to appear in analytical groups within companies. However, they are still not pervasive and the function is understaffed. In addition, most groups within a company cannot justify the cost of a full-time data scientist. By adding data scientists to the IT BI organization, you are creating a centralized team that can provide analytics to underserved parts of the organization.  This team is already focused on creating analytical data structures and reports and adding the ability to derive insights from the data is a natural extension.   
2. Make it about the Decision– In your requirements process, add Decision Architecture Methodology as a capability. Most methodologies for capturing analytical requirements focus on the questions asked of the data to surmise the Dimensions and Facts.  While this gives us great descriptive analytics, but it does not move the company along the analytical maturity curve.  A deeper focus on the decisions that the business makes and thereby centering analytical capabilities around helping to enable actionable insights will move the needle.
3. Add Decision Theory to your analytics– If Data Science helps you turn information into actionable insights, Decision Theory helps you structure the decision process to guide a person to the correct choice. Decision Theory, along with Behavioral Economics, is focused on understanding the components of the decision process to explain why we make the choices we do. It provides a systematic way to consider tradeoffs among attributes that helps us make better decisions. Tools such as thresholds, alerts, decision matrixes, and choice architecture should be considered important capabilities to add to your team’s tool chest.
4. Create a Report Certification process– As report proliferation occurs with self-service analytics, creating a standard for the health and validity of a report is going to be important if the analytics are to be consumed by a broader audience and are to be trusted.  For example, you may have one group create a report with key metrics sourced from uncertified data sources. By putting reports from individual departments through a certification process similar to UL labeling on electrical products, broader consumers will know the level of scrutiny that has been put on the report by Data Governance and IT teams and thereby trust the data and metrics contained within it.

As IT Business Intelligence teams look to move up the value chain in the capabilities they offer to their internal customers, adding addition skillsets, methods, and tools will be a necessity. The capabilities outlined are a great fit for a centralized team to own and this transformation in IT BI teams can speak to the value these enhanced capabilities provide to the business.

Andrew Roman Wells is the CEO of Aspirent, a management-consulting firm focused on analytics. Kathy Williams Chiang is VP, Business Insights, at Wunderman Data Management. They are the co-authors of Monetizing Your Data: A Guide to Turning Data into Profit-Driving Strategies and Solutions. For more information, please visit www.monetizingyourdata.com.

It’s no surprise that big data is on the rise in businesses around the world. Companies routinely use big data to analyze common trends in their practice; enabling them to make sophisticated decisions to ensure their businesses prosper. According to Statista, an online statistics, market research and business intelligence portal; companies routinely use data to drive process and cost efficiency; drive strategy; and to monitor and improve financial performance. When used in these ways, data has the ability to save the company a significant amount of money because they are able to spend their money efficiently.

While data does have the ability to improve a company’s performance; companies just aren’t catching up on the trends as fast as one would assume.  Big Data software company, Quoble along with Dimensional Research; recently published an e-book, “An In-Depth Look at Big Data Trends and Challenges”. As the name suggests, the data looks at global data trends in the workplace and the problems that businesses often face.

Among the issues that the research uncovered was, “the realization of value from big data in on-premises environments has lagged expectations, largely due to complexity, cost overruns, steep demands for specialized talent, and need for powerful computing platforms.” While companies may understand the value that big data brings their company; finding qualified candidates and obtaining funds to purchase the computing platforms needed to manage data sets are among the set backs employers are facing today. Nearly 75% of those surveyed sighted a gap between the necessary resources and tools that are available to them. And while 50% of businesses plan to moderately increase their data headcounts in the next year; 83% find it difficult to find the right candidate.  Not only does it take time to find the money to pay for data headcounts; finding the right candidate can often times be complex and time consuming.

The survey found that big data teams’ lack of experience creates a slow progress to get things done. 42% also sight that it is hard to keep up with big data trends and new data sources.  Big Data is constantly expanding. Five years ago machine learning and AI weren’t as mainstream as they are now. BI tools were available but not widely used and companies didn’t have big data teams. In fact their “team” often consisted of one or two data scientists. Big Data’s continuous growth has lead to expansion that many businesses can’t keep up with.

The intention of Quoble’s “An In-Depth Look at Bid Data Trends and Challenges” is  not to solve these problems, but to bring awareness to the issues that companies are facing when it comes to data.  As big data continues to surge, so will an influx of knowledgeable employees and efficient software that will guide the business to succeed in an age where big data is becoming the norm.

To view the full report, go to Quoble’s website and download the free e-book.

Colleagues think of data analysis much in the same way they think about marketing. Which is everyone thinks they are data analysts. With little to no practice they can put together graphs and visualize data at the drop of a hat. When interviewing Dave from accounting he made sure you knew that he has Tableau reader on his desktop which totally means he’s one step away from Tableau certification. Karen from Sales also discussed her extensive knowledge when it came to Excel. Yes, that same Karen who emailed you a month ago and asked how a pivot table worked.

If you’re interested in a career in big data it shouldn’t be daunting, but you should take the time to research and learn the tools and software needed to excel (pun intended) at the job. Data analysis is so much more than filtering data and pretty graphs. It takes someone who is curious and can think analytically to thrive in the job.

In his 2009 book, Now You See it: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis; author and information technology innovator Stephen Few lists 13 key traits of a data analyst. Among those traits include, self-motivation; open-mindedness; and the ability to spot patterns. An average data analyst can access a data set; scrub the data; and visualize it using one of numerous data visualization platforms available. She then comes to conclusions based on those visualizations and calls it a day. An exceptional data analyst can use that same data set and visualization tools and come to the same conclusions. The difference is that he will ask different questions and hypothesize about why conclusions are what they are. An exceptional data analyst asks why 9 out of 10 dentists prefer Colgate or why Rugby is becoming a more popular youth sport in the United States while lacrosse youth teams are declining.  For them, it isn’t enough that the data shows an increase in Rugby youth teams. They have to know why. Which will ultimately bring them to more questions which will lead to more data sets and more visualizations. In essence, is a data analyst’s job ever really done?

Another factor that separates a mediocre from an excellent analyst is the ability to tell a story. Unless you are speaking to a fellow analyst, chances are spewing out data isn’t going to capture the attention or the comprehension of what the statistics show. In fact, if you go that route, you may be met with a lot of blank stares. It’s important to tailor a narrative to the audience you are speaking to. Crafting a story beforehand makes it easy for your audience to follow and will help you answer any follow up questions that you might receive.

While you may have the skills that make an excellent data analyst, without practice you’ll never truly be outstanding at your job. And with data analysts and scientists being critical to the success of a company, it’s important that you push past mediocrity and aim for excellent. So tomorrow when you go into work remember that not everyone can be an analyst but by methodically thinking, crafting a perfect story from your data sets and asking questions, you’ll be on the road to greatness.

The SEC has proposed a data breach disclosure rule that would require chief information security officers to more quickly assess the impact of a cyberattack. So reports GovInfoSecurity.

The proposed rule would force public companies to notify regulators of a breach within four days of determining the breach is “material.”

With the rule, CISOs would have to talk with the board no later than a day or two after finding out about a breach to decide whether it is "material." This would help the company stay in the SEC’s good graces.

Read the full article from GovInfoSecurity.

The State Department has begun operating a new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy. So reports CNET.

The move restores an agency setup that had been in place before the Trump administration reorganized, folding a standalone cybersecurity office into an economic bureau.

First announced by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in October, the new bureau will be led by high-ranking diplomat Jennifer Bachus as principal deputy assistant secretary.

Read the full article from CNET.

Congress has approved a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill that includes a mandate for critical infrastructure companies to promptly disclose cyberattacks and ransomware payments. So report Insurance Journal and Cybersecurity Dive.

The legislation, which requires incident reports be sent to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, came under criticism from the FBI, which sought a more direct role.

The rules fit into a wider attempt by the White House and lawmakers to bolster U.S. cybersecurity amid prominent hacks.

Read the full article from Insurance Journal and Cybersecurity Dive.

The Senate’s recent passage of major cybersecurity legislation appears to have exposed a bureaucratic turf war within President Joe Biden’s administration.

The Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act, S. 3600, which the Senate passed on March 2, would require critical infrastructure companies to disclose cyberattacks and ransomware, as The Hill reports.

The required disclosures would be made to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

At a Senate hearing in September, as Politico reports, both CISA Director Jen Easterly and White House National Cyber Director Chris Inglis have vocally championed the legislative package. But after the measure’s passage in the Senate, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and FBI Director Christopher Wray have slammed the legislation, which doesn’t require reporting of hacks to their agencies. An FBI official reportedly warned that particular provisions might hobble the bureau’s ability to gather information from companies or stop cybercrime groups.

The White House has since maintained its support for the legislation, indicating it might be open to changes sought by the DOJ but not threatening that Biden would issue a veto without such changes. Homeland Security Chair Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and ranking member Rob Portman (R-Ohio) signaled no appetite for tweaking the package, which arose from months of congressional back-and-forth.

“It’s disappointing to see the FBI take a bureaucratic dispute public under the guise of a serious threat to public safety,” while Matthew Travis, a former deputy director of CISA, called the optics “awkward at best," Trey Herr, director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, told Politico.

As CNN notes, the legislation would require operators of U.S. power plants, hospitals, ports and other infrastructure to notify CISA of cyber incidents within 72 hours and ransomware payments within 24 hours.

Following the criticisms, Easterly tweeted, “We have a terrific operational partnership w/our #FBI teammates & will continue to do so, to include always ensuring that cyber incident reporting received by @CISAgov is immediately shared with them.” She didn’t express support for amending legislation that she described as “a critical step forward in ensuring our nation’s security.”

The legislation was awaiting a vote in the House of Representatives.

Twitter’s $44 billion deal to sell itself to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has prompted an outpouring of opinions across all corners—and cybersecurity experts are no exception.

As The Washington Post reports, chatter in the cybersecurity community largely focused on the Tesla CEO’s plans for direct messages on the social media platform. Currently, DMs on Twitter don’t use end-to-end encryption, though their contents tend to be highly private. The lack of encryption means that various countries may require them to be handed over with the proper warrant. Others worried that Musk, for whom Twitter is a hobby alongside Tesla and the other firm he runs as CEO, SpaceX, might publish DMs on a whim.

Patrick Howell O’Neill, senior editor at MIT Technology Review, noted “the considerable obstacles that Twitter would face in making DMs secure.” O’Neill added, “It’s a difficult problem without easy solutions that cover everyone.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) bemoaned the lack of either encryption for DMs or a tougher U.S. privacy law. “The protection of Americans’ privacy must be a condition of any sale," he tweeted.

Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, echoed the call for encrypted DMs. “I bet there are plenty of people who are going through their DMs and deleting things,” she wrote. Runa Sandvik, who works on digital security for journalists, indicated that Twitter ought to be able to figure out how to secure DMs.

Musk also vowed to make Twitter’s algorithms public. Matt Tait, former chief operating officer of Corellium, suggested this plan might not raise serious cybersecurity concerns. “Adds a few minor risks, perhaps, but the key systems that matter for cybersecurity risk are likely to be supporting systems, corporate systems, and database state that won't be shared," he tweeted.

Musk said that an additional goal was “authenticating all humans.” Ron Bradley, vice president of Shared Assessments, noted that “the human element [is] the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain” and praised this aim. “This change can’t come soon enough and will greatly impact spam bots and other modes of false information," he said, speaking to Channel Futures.

Musk’s Twitter purchase also came on the heels of European Union institutions’ announcement of a deal on the Digital Services Act, a new law that will impose a heavier burden on tech companies. As PYMNTS.com notes, the jury is still out on whether Musk will help or hinder Twitter in complying with the DSA’s requirements, including annual risk assessments and protecting minors.

Twitter has already been a victim of a major cyberattack. In 2020, it suffered a data breach orchestrated by a 17-year-old hacker.

Google’s recent $5.4 billion acquisition of cybersecurity giant Mandiant was the second-largest in the tech company’s history, and industry observers have been debating what it means for the cybersecurity space.

In the bigger picture, Google’s pickup of Mandiant could spark more M&A activity across the cybersecurity industry, as S&P Global reports. “In a nutshell, this deal was a shot across the bow from Google to Microsoft and Amazon with this flagship cyber security acquisition," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a research note.

Amazon and Microsoft could end up buying other cloud security outfits as a result of the deal, said Ives, who described the Mandiant buy as “the tip of the iceberg to a massive phase of consolidation potentially ahead for the cloud space.” Ives said possible targets would include Varonis, Tenable, CyberArk, Qualys, Rapid7, SailPoint and Ping.

Within the cloud computing realm, the Mandiant transaction may reflect Google’s status as a distant third behind Amazon and Microsoft, as Inc. notes. To catch up, Google arguably needs to act like it’s already one of the industry leaders, rather than a relative newcomer.

“The way we look at it is we're obviously not competing with our peers at the scale they were then, we are competing at the scale they are now in a market that is accelerating," Ruth Porat, chief financial officer of Google parent company Alphabet, said at an industry event. Porat added that the deal would better enable Google to meet the “idiosyncratic needs” of its various customers, who demand artificial intelligence and automation.

Regarding the deal, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said in a blog post that clients also ask for threats to be detected faster and with greater sophistication.

At a more basic level, Analytics Insight notes that buying Mandiant is expected to bolster Google Cloud’s current cloud security offerings, improving them to “deliver an end-to-end security operations suite with even greater capabilities to support customers across their cloud and on-premise environments.”

Colonial Pipeline has hired the first chief information security officer in the company’s history, highlighting a recent flurry of noteworthy cybersecurity people moves across corporate America.

Cybersecurity vet Adam Tice is Colonial’s first CISO, overseeing the pipeline operator’s information and data security regime, as Cybersecurity Dive reports. Since February 2021, Tice had been running cybersecurity and threat intelligence at Silicon Valley Bank. Previously, he was a senior vice president at Equifax following the credit reporting agency’s 2017 data breach.

Last May, Colonial’s operations were disrupted for six days by an expansive ransomware attack, forcing the company to pay a $4.4 million Bitcoin ransom (the feds ultimately retrieved $2.3 million). A Colonial spokesperson is quoted as saying that Tice’s hire reflects the company’s “commitment to elevate security practices across the enterprise.”

Colonial is searching for a new chief information officer to succeed Marie Mouchet, who is retiring in late April as part of what the spokesperson describes as a planned transition. Mouchet will remain in her role during the new CISO’s onboarding process.

Elsewhere, Fortress Information Security—a supply chain cybersecurity provider for critical infrastructure organizations—has named Betsy Soehren-Jones as its new chief information officer, as Security Magazine reports. Previously, Soehren-Jones was director of cyber strategy and policy at energy giant Exelon.

In her new role, Soehren-Jones will lead Fortress’ energy business, including sales and marketing along with the human resources, public policy, sales and strategy teams serving the company’s critical infrastructure, manufacturing and Department of Defense business lines.

In other cybersecurity personnel announcements, artificial intelligence company Altair has promoted Jeff Marraccini, a 25-year veteran of the firm, to chief information security officer. According to a press release, Marracini was previously Altair’s senior vice president of cloud strategy and technology.

Separately, cybersecurity startup Snyk has hired a new legal chief, Karyn Smith, who formerly held the same role at communications platform company Twilio, as Reuters reports.

Plus, cybersecurity firm Cohere has announced both a new chief technology officer, Evin Hernandez, and a new chief information security officer, Haseen Usman Ahmed.

Since before President Joe Biden announced new sanctions against Russia in response to its “invasion” of Ukraine, warnings have been mounting about Russian cyber attacks against American organizations.

As Harvard Business Review reports, “Conflict in Ukraine presents perhaps the most acute cyber risk U.S. and western corporations have ever faced.” The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the European Central Bank each warned that Russians could retaliate against economic sanctions with cyber warfare. Indeed, low-level tussling was already underway in the days leading up to Biden’s move.

According to HBR, organizations should first review their business continuity plans. Leaders need to think about what it would take to keep operations going “in a pencil-and-paper world” for days if not months.

The next recommendation is for organizations to consider their supply chains. Many large U.S. companies have at least some dependence on Ukrainian IT service providers.

HBR’s other suggested steps include engaging with peer networks, vendors, and law enforcement around cyber attacks; instilling a “security mindset” in the workforce through such basic steps as multifactor authentication; and coordinating between corporate intelligence and cyber intelligence teams.

Russian cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure are probably the biggest worry, as Philadelphia’s WHYY reports. “Certainly the power grid, internet connectivity, the financial systems, our ability to get money from an ATM to make payments with credit cards, water systems, sewage systems, transportation networks,” Drexel University’s chief information security officer Pablo Molina said. Molina cautioned organizations and individuals to prepare for possible cyberattacks and stay on guard against misinformation.

The FBI has urged U.S. companies to brace for Russian cyberattacks, as Newsweek reports. Deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco said recently that companies “would be foolish” not to shore up their cybersecurity amid Ukraine-Russian tensions.