Arthur Cox is pleased to announce the appointment of Eileen Burns as Head of our Legal Tech and Innovation Services Group. Eileen brings close to 30 years of experience in international consulting services and the tech industry to the firm.
Prior to joining Arthur Cox, Eileen spent almost 20 years in senior leadership positions at both European and global levels within Accenture CIO, focusing on digital transformation programmes which delivered tangible and game changing outcomes for the consulting giant. Eileen worked for 10 years in the Accenture Management Consulting practice, working directly with clients on large-scale business change programmes across a range of industries in Ireland, the UK, France and Germany.
Eileen will lead the Arthur Cox Legal Tech and Innovation Services Group. The group offers our clients a world-class solution for large scale data-intensive projects. With its multi-disciplinary teams of legal professionals and consulting, project management and legal tech staff, the group provides an innovative, reliable and efficient service to our clients.
Harnessing the firm’s significant investment in globally recognised legal tech software solutions, the group has extensive experience in the successful delivery of due diligence, contract reviews, regulatory investigations, data access requests and loan due diligence projects at scale for our clients. Its focus on quality, supported by project management and the latest technology has earned the group a reputation both nationally and internationally for excellence in client service and is attracting interest from corporate, institutional and government bodies both at home and abroad.
Arthur Cox. Photo Chris Bellew /Fennell Photography Copyright 2018
Commenting on the appointment, Brian O’Gorman, Managing Partner of Arthur Cox, said: “We are delighted to welcome Eileen to the firm. Eileen brings with her a wealth of experience in business consulting, technology and leadership. We look forward to Eileen bringing this experience to bear in the delivery of next generation legal services for our clients”.
Eileen comments: “I am delighted to join Arthur Cox at this exciting time for the legal profession globally. With the recent advances in legal tech, the explosive growth of data, increased regulation for many industries and globalisation of business, there has never been a more important time to drive innovation and address client challenges in a new way that goes beyond the traditional law firm approach”.
Partners of Avaya Holdings Corp in Ireland have over the past 6 months signed more than twice the number of Powered by Avaya IXseats for unified communications than were signed in the first six months after the product’s launch in February 2018. This represents thousands of cloud seats being taken up by Irish businesses over the past half year alone. Avaya currently has 3.7 million cloud seats between its public and private offerings globally.
Demand for cloud-based communications comes as businesses are increasingly seeing demand from Irish employees for more flexible and remote working options. The job search engineIndeed revealed recently that the number of Irish people searching for jobs using the term ‘remote working’ surged 171 percent in 2017.
David Flood, Managing Director of Avaya Ireland, said: “It’s not just employees that are calling for the move to the cloud. Businesses are also increasingly recognising the advantages of cloud-based working, including the growth of robust network infrastructure that underpins and facilitates remote working in Ireland and the savings that can be made through migration to cloud-based networks.”
The growth in cloud adoption strengthens Avaya’s lead in the Irish market. According to MZA Consultants’ report of the Irish Contact Centre Market, Avaya accounts for 91% of the market for contact centres with more than 100 agents.
Along with a long roster of Small to Medium Enterprise customers (SMEs), Avaya Ireland works with the country’s leading banks, emergency services, education institutions, government departments and global technology and pharmaceutical companies.
All of these organisations are looking to modernise their contact centre platforms and move to a more omnichannel environment to reflect consumers growing expectations of a seamless purchasing and customer experience.
The uptake in cloud adoption can in large part be attributed to the efforts of Avaya’s partner community that have been enabled by Avaya to build out competitive cloud offerings. The country’s largest operators, including BT, eir and Vodafone, are Avaya partners, along with a community of channel partners that includes Capstone, Damovo, Kaptec, Maintel, Telcom, WellTel and Rainbow Communications. The community has been expanded with a recent surge of regional-based partners, including Conversation Piece and Ripplecom, who have helped cloud penetration for organisations in locations outside Ireland’s main urban areas.
The successful growth in cloud adoption in the region, and its importance in developing Avaya’s market-leading contact centre technology are key reasons why Ireland was chosen as the location to host the 53rd Partner Community Council (PCC) Conference. For over 25 years, the Avaya PCC has been the best forum for authorised partners to engage with Avaya. A strong alliance of more than 1,500 members, the PCC has driven changes that have had a positive impact on sales and support tools, solution initiatives, services policies and more. Self-funded, partner-led and manufacturer-sanctioned, the PCC is a rare type of organisation which gives Avaya partners the ability to lead the conversation and improve their ease of doing business with the company.
Speaking from the conference, Flood said: “We’ve seen a growing trend among Ireland’s SMEs to consume contact centre services in an OPEX model. Avaya’s cloud solutions, especially
Powered by Avaya IX, are giving them the agility they need to succeed. On the other end of the spectrum, the public sector in Ireland, especially in health services, is making a committed move to use more digital channels to engage with citizens. Conferences like the PCC ensure Avaya is constantly improving its dealings with partners to make sure both SME and large scale public sector implementations with Avaya an easy choice.”
Arnold Berends, PCC EMEA Chairman and Senior Sales Consultant at Dimension Data added, “The PCC is going from strength to strength and the conference is reflective of Avaya’s unique and extremely robust relationship with its partners. There really is no better way for new business partners and attendees to network with Avaya experts and collaborate on the best ways to serve the market.”
Avaya customers in Ireland will have a chance to explore the latest technological innovations from Avaya and ecosystem partners at Experience Avaya Dublin, the premier event for the future of intelligent communications and its impact on digital transformation, taking place May 2nd , 2019.
Avaya today celebrated the graduation of the Avaya Academy Class of 2019. The 17 graduates, who have trained in Avaya’s market-leading training program for six months, filled various roles across the EMEA and APAC regions, supporting the company’s Sales, Engineering and Marketing organizations. They now enter the Avaya workforce as fully fledged employees ready to challenge their surroundings and contribute to Avaya’s continuing success as the leading global provider of innovative communications software solutions.
“I welcome our new recruits into the Avaya workforce, and thank them with all my heart for entrusting us with their future. Over the last six months, these 17 talented men and women have already made an impression on everyone who has worked with them, and I’m truly excited about the passion, determination and raw ability that they will bring to bear at Avaya,” said Nidal Abou-Ltaif, President, Avaya International.
Now in its second year, the Avaya Academy is an immersive development program for new hires in customer-facing functions that helps individuals enter the field with exceptional training, advanced industry knowledge, and a customer-focused mindset that will propel the company and its partners into the future.
By Chris Huggett, Senior Vice President, EMEA & India at Sungard AS..
Spending £100m an hour or £28,000/second, is an immense responsibility for the public sector. How it chooses to distribute an approximately £817 billion annual budget impacts everyone living in the UK. Deciding how to squeeze out every bit of value is crucial, and wrong decisions will be mercilessly scrutinised by the media and electorate. Up until recently, most decisions have been made without the use of new technology such as machine learning and AI, powered by the public cloud, which the commercial sector has been doing for a decade. This has been due to the legal limitations of using sensitive data in such clouds. This is changing, however, and the public sector now has access to the public cloud to process and store an increasing amount of its data. Providing a platform on which to better manage and use information will create a launchpad for innovation within the public sector. It’s an opportunity that will fundamentally improve the sector’s ability to provide services to UK citizens.
Chris Huggett, Senior Vice President, EMEA & India at Sungard AS
But there’s one more, big hurdle to get over and that is one of trust. Data-savvy citizens and the demand for more transparency have choked the public sector’s ability to capitalise upon the opportunities that public cloud can offer. We expect, even demand, the public sector to be incredibly diligent with our data. Unsurprisingly there is legislation in place to ensure that data with a level of sensitivity is both properly protected and kept sovereign by virtue of it remaining within the UK and only accessible by British citizens.
The introduction of new sovereign public cloud services like our ownthat allow the public sector to store Sensitive and Official Sensitive data on the public cloud is removing that hurdle. Providing the public sector with the ability to capitalise upon a secure, legally compliant public cloud means it can innovate at the same pace as industry and drives better decision making. Put into practice, these things could have huge benefits across the public sector.
The big decisions
Organisations with access to broader, larger data sets can make better decisions and all of this can be handled much more affordably in the public cloud. Decision-making processes such as where to build roads, hospitals and schools, through to identifying where to increase policing levels, even military deployments, can rapidly take into account a huge variety of disparate data. This creates insights that simply cannot be derived any other way in an acceptable timeframe or at acceptable cost. Ultimately, this can make the UK safer, better educated and healthier.
Who’s driving my car?
The information stored by the DVLA includes a huge amount of confidential data about the UK’s population and on the nation’s vehicles. With 8,500 cameras recording approximately 35 million number plates every day the possibility exists of being able to more quickly identify the location of a stolen vehicle. However, using techniques similar to the way banks identify fraudulent transactions, combining known data about the vehicle’s owner, other insured drivers and the vehicle’s information and location, it may be possible to identify a possible theft having happened even before the owner realises it has taken place. Imagine how that could reduce car thefts and lower insurance premiums?
Prevention not cure
The ability to look at diverse data sets, including sensitive patient data, could unleash a revolution in healthcare enabling advanced preventative medicine. Taking into account what the NHS already knows about its patients and adding it to other data such as that from the increasing adoption of wearable tech, we are approaching the point of being able to identify possible health scares for citizens with a considerable level of accuracy. The impact on the population and possible cost savings for the ever-strained NHS are considerable.
There is so much value to be gleaned from the huge volume of data that the public sector holds that could have an incredibly positive societal impact. This is just the tip of a very big iceberg that is increasingly visible thanks to new sovereign public cloud technologies.
A White Paper published by Code Institute has highlighted how Ireland’s growing Digital Skills crisis is likely to have a major impact on the country’s growth prospects over the coming years.
Intended to act as a guide for Irish companies seeking workable solutions to address the digital skills crisis, the White Paper shows how the issue is affecting not just organisations’ recruitment efforts, but critically their overall operating performance.
Speaking at today’s launch of ‘The Digital Skills Crisis – Time to Act’, Jim Cassidy, Code Institute CEO said, “The worldwide shortage of ICT talent that is threatening employment growth across the globe, is also a significant issue here in Ireland. Over the next two years an expected 12,000 jobs are to go unfilled in the Irish ICT sector, which will have a direct knock-on impact on productivity and growth.”
While recognising the scale of the problem, because of funding shortfalls many traditional education providers in Ireland are struggling to meet the level of demand for digitally literate graduates. According to the European Commission, Ireland currently has one of the lowest levels of basic digital skills in the EU, and with 9 out of 10 jobs requiring digital skills in future, the White Paper makes it clear that significant Government investment in the digitisation of education is required.
Underlining the need for more investment is the Government’s own report, ‘Digital Transformation: Assessing the Impact of Digitalisation on Ireland’s Workforce’, which warns that 46,000 hypothetical jobs are at risk due to automation. However, the Code Institute’s White Paper argues that these losses can be avoided with proper planning and digital upskilling of the workforce, so that even more jobs can be created.
Industry has a major role to play in this regard, by being more pro-active in the education and upskilling of workers. A Digital Employee survey carried out as part of research for the White Paper, reveals that while 66% of people have been offered training in their job, the vast majority (60%) found what was offered to be less than good. A slight majority (53%) said they would move to another role if better training was offered, while a majority (60%) have had to use their own money to advance their learning and training.
For organisations that wish to retain staff by promote in-job training, the White Paper recommends that:
Existing talents and capabilities must be managed and once identified organisations can capitalise on them as new technological breakthroughs arise.
Companies must be willing to accept that as skills are identified, career paths may radically change.
Companies must develop a learning and development model that offers adequate and frequent skills training to all members of staff.
Expanding on these recommendations and some of the key conclusions contained within the White Paper, the launch event also included a panel discussion with tech leaders David Kirwin, Accenture Director of Technology, Reshmi Goff, Technical Sales Lead, Microsoft, and WorkJuggle CEO, Ciara Garvan.
Also speaking as part of the panel discussion, Code Institute’s Jim Cassidy noted that, while there is no quick fix to the digital skills crisis, there are some practical solutions that can bridge part of the gap, “We actively work with HR and L&D departments to provide the right digital talent. Whether it’s developing a digital talent strategy, offering a line of sight to some of the best new developers or upskilling existing staff within your company, there are simple, cost-effective, ways to bridge the gap.”
Sophos a global leader in network and endpoint security, today announced the findings of its report, Exposed: Cyberattacks on Cloud Honeypots, which reveals that cybercriminals attacked one of the cloud server honeypots in the study within 52 seconds of the honeypot going live in Sao Paulo, Brazil. On average, the cloud servers were hit by 13 attempted attacks per minute, per honeypot. The honeypots were set up in 10 of the most popular data centers in the world, including California, Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Mumbai, Ohio, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Sydney over a 30-day period. A honeypot is a system intended to mimic likely targets of cyberattackers, so that security researchers can monitor cybercriminal behaviors.
In the study, more than 5 million attacks were attempted on the global network of honeypots in the 30-day period, demonstrating how cybercriminals are automatically scanning for weak open cloud buckets. If attackers are successful at gaining entry, organizations could be vulnerable to data breaches. Cybercriminals also use breached cloud servers as pivot points to gain access onto other servers or networks.
“The Sophos report, Exposed: Cyberattacks on Cloud Honeypots, identifies the threats organizations migrating to hybrid and all-cloud platforms face. The aggressive speed and scale of attacks on the honeypots shows how relentlessly persistent cybercriminals are and indicates they are using botnets to target an organization’s cloud platforms. In some instances, it may be a human attacker, but regardless, companies need a security strategy to protect what they are putting into the cloud,” said Matthew Boddy, security specialist, Sophos. “The issue of visibility and security in cloud platforms is a big business challenge, and with increased migration to the cloud, we see this continuing.”
Visibility into Weaknesses
Continuous visibility of public cloud infrastructure is vital for businesses to ensure compliance and to know what to protect. However, multiple development teams within an organization and an ever-changing, auto-scaling environment make this difficult for IT security.
Sophos is addressing security weaknesses in public clouds with the launch of Sophos Cloud Optix, which leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to highlight and mitigate threat exposure in cloud infrastructures. Sophos Cloud Optix is an agentless solution that provides intelligent cloud visibility, automatic compliance regulation detection and threat response across multiple cloud environments.
“Instead of inundating security teams with a massive number of undifferentiated alerts, Sophos Cloud Optix significantly minimizes alert fatigue by identifying what is truly meaningful and actionable,” said Ross McKerchar, CISO, Sophos. “In addition, with visibility into cloud assets and workloads, IT security can have a far more accurate picture of their security posture that allows them to prioritize and proactively remediate the issues flagged in Sophos Cloud Optix.”
Key features in Sophos Cloud Optix include:
Smart Visibility – Provides automatic discovery of an organization’s assets across AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) environments, via a single console, allowing security teams complete visibility into everything they have in the cloud and to respond and remediate security risks in minutes
Continuous Cloud Compliance – Keeps up with continually changing compliance regulations and best practices policies by automatically detecting changes to cloud environments in near-time
AI-Based Monitoring and Analytics – Shrinks incident response and resolution times from days or weeks to just minutes. The powerful artificial intelligence detects risky resource configurations and suspicious network behavior with smart alerts and optional automatic risk remediation
“Migrating several petabytes of data and many applications to AWS and Azure made it necessary to transition from a manual to automated process for security monitoring. Sophos Cloud Optix’s multi-cloud security and compliance platform capabilities provided real-time cloud workload protection status in seconds. The AI-powered monitoring and alerts helped reduce the noise and allowed our teams to focus on delivering value to the business,” said Aaron Peck, vice president and CISO, Shutterfly, Inc., a Sophos customer, based in Redwood City, Calif.
“Our goal is to provide the most comprehensive and highly-effective cyber security services to all of our clients. Whether in technology, manufacturing or utilities, our customers want to maximize their investments and protect their data in the cloud. The partnership with Sophos and the ability to offer Sophos Cloud Optix is important to us because it allows us to provide continuous compliance coupled with intelligent cloud visibility and immediate threat response. With Cloud Optix, our growing customer-base will have the opportunity to solve the toughest challenges in cloud security,” said Rajeev Khanolkar, president and CEO, SecurView Inc., a Sophos partner based inEdison, New Jersey.
Sophos Cloud Optix leverages AI-powered technology from Avid Secure, which Sophos acquired in January 2019. Founded in 2017 by a team of highly distinguished leaders in IT security, Avid Secure revolutionized the security of public cloud environments by providing effective end-to-end protection in cloud services, such as AWS, Azure and Google.
Pricing and availability details are available from Sophos partners worldwide.
Expleo Ireland, the technology partner for innovative companies, today announces that it is hosting an exclusive Business Agility event in Dublin. The event, which features speakers from a wide range of industries will explore how companies can thrive in an era of unrelenting change.
The event, which takes place in Expleo Group’s Dublin offices, is for professionals who are interested in new ways of working and implementing business agility processes to futureproof their companies and gain a competitive advantage.
The session will feature a panel of experts who come from consulting, business agility and enterprise backgrounds, giving attendees a deep understanding of the value and reality of adopting business agility practices and modern ways of working. Speakers will include Richard Goold, Partner at Moorhouse Consulting UK and David McGrath, Director of Business Agility, Expleo Ireland.
Richard Goold will present the 2019 Moorhouse ‘Barometer on Change’ report which gives insights into the challenges that organisations face when implementing change. Richard will also discuss ways in which companies can thrive when politics poses business obstacles and customer expectations are rapidly shifting.
Meanwhile, David McGrath, Expleo Ireland, will delve into key agility trends that Irish organisations can leverage to their own advantage. This will then be followed by an agility “ways of working” discussion which will deal with practical real-world experiences of team management through times of significant change.
Speaking about the event, Siobhán Smith, Marketing Manager, Expleo Ireland said: “Businesses are spending more on change initiative than in previous years. However, these initiatives frequently become redundant before they are completed because of the pace of change.
“Change is becoming hard to predict and even harder to navigate, with organisations having thoroughly mixed opinions on where to invest internally. The aim of the event is to share the capabilities we believe will allow organisations to survive and grow in the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous business landscape they face today.
Tickets to the event are free but places are limited. All interested parties should contact info@expleogroup.com to register before Friday 19th April.
Sony has announced the launch of a brand new 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc player, the UBP-X1100ES. New features includeDolby Visio HDR support, movable subtitles for viewing in Cinema Scope 2:35:1 aspect ratio and a new intuitive menu and interface. Designed to give a more immersive experience with 4K HDR playback and Dolby Atmos® 3D surround sound.
The UBP-X1100ES is optimised for custom home theatre installations with IP and RS232 connectivity for native support with key home automation suppliers. Built for optimum video and audio performance, this universal player enhances playback on non-HDR TVs with HDR to SDR conversion, grants access to the latest 4K HDR streaming services and supports playback of almost any disc or file format including Hi-Res Audio. Bravia Mode also ensures optimised viewing with Sony Bravia Displays.
Students from third level colleges around the country were awarded in the Light House Cinema for running events, developing and designing projects and creating videos, animations, radio ads and graphics for the National Transport Authority’s Smarter Travel Campus Awards 2019. The entries produced by students, promote ‘smarter’ modes of transport; particularly walking, cycling, public transport and carpooling.
“We are delighted to see students from a variety of disciplines from campuses around the country developing projects and multimedia pieces to promote, facilitate and enable sustainable transport options. We were also very impressed by the standard of the entries, as were the judges.” Anne Graham, Chief Executive Officer, National Transport Authority.
The winners in the Events & Health Management category were Luke O’Driscoll, William Horan, Christopher Asmus & Kate McMahon, University of Limerick.
Students Chris Britton, Dylan Flynn and Dara Darcy from Limerick Institute of Technology picked up the top prize for their Audio & Animation entries, and received very positive feedback from the judges, including Steven Maher from Windmill Lane. Students Ruth Barnes, Mark Bergin & Edward Hannon, also from Limerick Institute of Technology, won the best Video category.
The Graphic Design & Illustration category winners were Dion Breen & Didi Delaney, Limerick College of Further Education. Winners of the Engineering & Innovation – Technology category were Taidhg Treacy, Sean Callaghan, Caoimhe McDonnell & Katelyn Gallagher, Dublin City University and the award for the best Engineering & Innovation – Design went to Peter Healy, Vaibhav Sethi, Samarth Naresh, Luke O’Higgins & Patrick Devaney, Trinity College Dublin.
Lecturers were also awarded for bringing projects to promote smarter modes of transport into their graded coursework. Winners of the Lecturers Award 2019 were Nora Ni Fhlatharta & Roisin Crowley, Limerick Institute of Technology (Multimedia), Jenny O’Connor, Waterford Institute of Technology (Health & Event Management) & Gareth Bennett, Trinity College Dublin (Engineering).
The Smarter Travel Campus Awards are organised by the Smarter Travel Campus programme of the National Transport Authority. This was the fifth year of the awards. It was open to third level institutions in Ireland who are partners of the Smarter Travel Campus programme.
