Tech Talk

This post shares eight practical software security and data security best practices to help organizations build a safe and secure virtual workplace.

The advent of remote work has introduced several benefits for employers and employees, including increased productivity, job satisfaction, and lower expenses. However, organizations must be mindful of data security and software security risks associated with remote work when dealing with remote developers.

This post lists the eight best data security practices to help remote employees work securely. 

Robust data security policy 

Employees mishandle sensitive data unintentionally in most data and software security breaches. To avoid potential data-security disasters, companies must be sure their remote team members know their security policy, what constitutes a security breach, and what doesn’t.  A data security policy with a list of dos and don’ts can be helpful for the same. 

Additionally, organizations should appreciate employees in compliance with the policy. At the same time, they should ensure that all employees are aware of the consequences of non-compliance. 

Tools and training for data security

Employees need the right tools and training to comply with the data security policy. Spam filtering tools, antivirus software, VPN, and password managers help employees work without worrying about breaching data security. 

Certain security-related situations may demand software training. And so, in-depth training sessions can help employees get familiar with the software tools to ensure data and software security. 

Limit the use of personal devices 

Personal devices are not as secure as the ones configured and delivered by the company. Therefore, the risk of breach of data security and software security is high. 

Company-owned devices have installed tools and software that reduce the risk of data misuse. Moreover, these devices come with location tracking software, thus offering better software security and data protection.  

Practice zero-trust approach for data security

Organizations around the world use Microsoft’s zero-trust approach to ensure data security. In this approach, each time a user requests access to sensitive data, they have to go through a verification process. 

By practicing this zero-trust approach, companies can ensure seamless data security. What’s more, this approach minimizes the overall damage in case of any external or internal security breach. 

Set secure connections and strong passwords

Setting secure connections is one of the easiest ways to practice data security. Remote work has enabled workers to work from their homes, coffee shops, and pretty much anywhere around the world. And thus, securing an internet connection with a company VPN is one of the most critical steps to keep online activity and location secure today. 

Similarly, password protection is another aspect that demands attention. Employees mostly set passwords that comprise personal information to make them easy to remember.

Subsequently, informing employees about the associated risk with weak passwords and providing a password manager to store multiple passwords for different platforms is essential to ensure data security. 

Get the right VPN for data security

Giving remote developers the right VPN is as essential as securing connections. VPN servers can easily get overloaded while bulk sharing and become vulnerable to DDOS attacks. Organizations must check all the VPN services available before zeroing in on the one they want. 

Nonetheless, an ideal VPN should have an extensive server network, strong firewalls, should be able to manage traffic with split tunneling, and keep track of users.

Regularly update software 

Every network becomes vulnerable when software and applications are not updated regularly. Organizations must install patches when they become available to strengthen their network and baseline security. Therefore, it is essential to update software for continued data security regularly. In addition to this, companies can also conduct the Pen Test for maximum security.

Security breach response plan 

A good security breach response plan helps prevent negative publicity and productivity loss. In addition, organizations with a response plan fare better than those without one by recording what was lost and knowing what to do for specific data security and software breaches. 

Moreover, organizations with a response plan can find where the attack came from, what went wrong, inform employees promptly, and limit negative publicity. 

Summary 

Enforcing the best data security practices ensures that remote workers have a safe virtual working environment. A secured virtual workplace is critical for every company’s growth in this era of digital transformation. 

So, addressing the challenges associated with software and data security is an unavoidable step for embracing remote work.

If you are looking to hire remote developers and engineers, Turing can help. Trusted by hundreds of reputed companies, Turing helps you fill any software role within five days by offering Silicon Valley-caliber developers. Also, Turing offers transparent developer information and easy monitoring to make remote development easy, compliant and secure.

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How is the rise of artificial intelligence in the CPG industry creating new business opportunities for CPG companies? Turing’s AVP of Business Development answers.

In a recent McKinsey podcast, John Straw, senior advisor at McKinsey and Company and disruptive technologies expert, said that the biggest mistake he sees CPG companies making right now is not investing in AI technologies.  If companies want to survive—let alone thrive—adopting AI is no longer optional, Straw notes. 

This post looks at the rise of AI in the CPG industry and its implications and also highlights the challenges and opportunities laid down in the industry’s path to growth. 

The impact of the pandemic on the CPG industry 

2020 was the inflection point in the CPG industry, posing enough challenges to give the CEO, COO, and CFO nightmares. Multiple demand and supply-side problems made it difficult for company leaders to make projections about the market, predict their performance, or estimate how much revenue they would generate.

Despite this, a recent McKinsey report said: “CPG industry experienced intense growth during the pandemic, demonstrating more growth in 2020 than in the four years from 2016 to 2019.”

Isn’t that incredible? 

This growth reflects the massive technology innovation shift taking place in the market. 

According to the same report, the crucial considerations for CPG industry leaders amidst this change include understanding the 2021 cost outlook, making resiliency a C-suite-level conversation, capturing growth while controlling costs, and adapting marketing and customer-loyalty programs to a rapidly evolving environment. 

Adapting to this changing environment will increase the demand for robust engineering talent in the CPG industry.

Opportunity areas for the CPG industry

New opportunities are being created for CPG retailers by technology innovations with each passing day. 

But what do we mean by technology innovations?

Technology innovations refer to the convergence of artificial intelligence, blockchain, IoT, and cloud that provides a personalized, just-in-time, localized experience for the end customer. For example, a recent study revealed that 65 percent of the consumers switched brand loyalty in the last year alone because of stockouts. Stockouts are a problem that AI, blockchain, and  IoT can solve. 

And thus, if you are not able to serve different technology aspects within your business as a CPG retailer, you’re set to lose out to your competition.

What are the challenges CPG industry leaders face today?

CPG leaders must regularly tackle several challenges—from hiring the right people to getting technology innovation projects kicked off. 

The CPG industry is set up in a very globalized manner regarding how the industry players do their business. So, you’ll see a very globalized supply chain for each CPG company. However, when it comes to hiring, the companies are still very localized. 

This hiring constraint results from the legal challenges of having to do business or hiring from regions only where you have a legal presence. 

So, when a CPG company needs to hire AI or blockchain engineers, they face several constraints in finding the right talent at the right time. 

And most importantly, hiring great engineering talent has been a significant hurdle for CPG companies. This obstacle arises because the CPGs are constantly under threat from the big techs of the world. After all, the big techs are known to attract the best talent when it comes to hiring. 

So to sum up, the challenges faced by the CPG industry are: 

Challenge Number One – Constrained to the local talent pool 

Challenge Number Two – Stiff competition from the tech industry

Challenge Number Three – Dial-in hiring is a very cumbersome process 

So, the CPG industry leaders are currently looking at three-prong challenges as to how, when, and where they will get their innovation at top speed.

How is Turing positioned to help these CPG industry leaders?

We now live in a remote-first world. Every company is in a race to reap the benefits of remote engineering talent. Turing has built an Intelligent Talent Cloud of highly-skilled developers who have been rigorously vetted to a Silicon Valley standard on 100+ technology stacks. Turing’s platform combines a planetary reach with AI to deliver your ideal engineers, billed by the month.

But what does this mean for the customer?

• Significantly reduced hiring time, engineering velocity, and dependency on other vendors

  With Turing’s Intelligent Talent Cloud, CPG industry leaders won’t wait for several weeks to hire top engineers. They won’t need to rely on their service vendors or hiring operations teams to get the best talent. Instead, Turing will match them with their desired engineers in less than a week.

• Excellent administrative support
  

  After making a successful match, Turing ensures time zone overlap, transparency, and reliable communication between the developer and the company. Turing’s platform also takes care of global HR and payroll, including developer support, making it easy for managers and developers to securely collaborate and abstract away the complexity of hiring international workers.

• Access to a boundaryless talent pool

  Turing enables CPG industry companies to hire top-quality engineers from all over the world. Companies can access a talent pool of over a million highly skilled developers from over 140 countries, capable of working with over 100 different programming languages. No longer do hiring companies have to be limited to the talent available within a particular geography. Instead, Turing’s Intelligent Talent Cloud can help them unleash the world’s untapped human potential.

• Projects that stay on the timeline
  

  Numerous projects get delayed because of the lack of the right resources. After the match, Turing makes remote development easy, compliant and secure. And thus, the leaders don’t have to worry about their project timelines getting compromised. 

So this is the difference that Turing aims to bring into the CPG industry using its Intelligent Talent Cloud. For example, suppose you have a team of talented engineers who could help you get your technology innovation projects kicked off on time. In that case, the impact you make as an organization would be pretty incredible. With Turing, you can spin up your engineering dream team in no time. 

If you’re looking to change the status quo of your hiring process and how you go about your innovation business, book a consultation call with me. I will be having to set up some time with you and take you through what Turing is doing in space. You can also visit our Jobs page for more information. 

Contact: Vaibhav Srivastava | Email address: vaibhav@turing.com

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Tech companies have a significant competitive advantage over their non-tech counterparts. As a result, digitization has become a vital part of business strategy.

Is every company a technology company now? According to a new report from Deloitte, they should be. The global consulting firm recently shared research revealing that digitally sound organizations have a significant edge over others. 

More digitally mature companies performed better than lower-maturity companies during the past pandemic year, according to Deloitte. They were about twice as likely to generate net profit margins and annual revenue growth significantly above their industry average, the report stated. 

Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of respondents in the Deloitte study said that organizations that don’t digitize in the next five years will be “doomed.” 

Additional findings from the report: 

Going digital helped organizations deal with the pandemic

More than 75 percent of organizations said digitization helped them cope with many pandemic challenges. Such companies were twice as likely to cite digital transformation as their core strategy. As a result, more and more companies turned to IT service providers to streamline their operations.

Digitized organizations generate higher net profit and annual revenue 

Digitally-informed organizations have financially outperformed their competitors in almost every aspect. As a result, 69 percent of respondents plan to increase their investments in digital transformation from an average of US$10.9 million to US$12.6 million in the next 12 months. That is 0.6 percent of their annual turnover and 15 percent higher than the amount they’d spent last year. 

Today, digital is a vital part of competitive strategy. It helps organizations improve customer experiences, upgrade products and services, and promote agility in their business models. As a consequence, all strategies will be digital strategies in the future. Going digital will help organizations secure their future in a world of uncertainty. 

Read the complete survey. 

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