The EPAM Continuum Podcast Network

Innovation and agile: What do they have in common? How are they different? How can they work together? This episode of *Silo Busting* is about providing you a broad perspective on the way we work. We invited Eli Feldman, EPAM’s CTO of Advanced Technology, and Chris Michaud, EPAM Continuum’s VP and Head of Innovation Practice, to talk it out. Innovation for Michaud is “the act of bringing a new idea out into the market, out into the world” and that idea “creates value, creates impact.” Feldman says that this concept is “actually quite consistent with agile.” The pair spend much time thinking about the divergent/convergent methodology, which prompts Feldman to say that *divergent* is about “figuring out that we’re doing the right thing” while *convergent* hones in on “essentially getting that thing done.” They talk about both failing fast and learning fast. They even get specific and talk about our work on the Swiffer. It’s a lively dialogue that might invite you to bust a few silos of your own. Host: Toby Bottorf Engineers: Matthew Fuhrmeister and Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

ESG. Many companies are talking about these three letters but none of them have spelled out exactly what it means to measure—properly and effectively—their Environmental, Social, and Governance activities. The herculean challenges of attempting to do so prompted Jennifer Howard-Grenville, the Diageo Professor of Organization Studies at the Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, to publish a smart piece in *HBR* entitled, “ESG Impact Is Hard to Measure—But It’s Not Impossible.” That article brought her to *The Resonance Test* to discuss with Elaina Shekhter, EPAM’s Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer and SVP, the nuances and challenges here. Howard-Grenville says that businesses are increasingly recognizing that “sustainability is absolutely core to their strategy; you cannot execute a strategy in the 21st century in any business without understanding, sustainability.” Figuring out how to manage this will require acknowledging the hubris in conventional measurement plans and taking a more systems-thinking approach. This is no mean feat, as Howard-Grenville suggests. “We live in a paradoxical world—we need short-term results, but we need to orient to the long term,” she says. “We're *never* going to break down that tension. We need to live with it. We need to move back and forth with it. We need to be okay with it and we need to understand it's difficult.” Press the play button and listen to some frank and thoughtful remarks about trying to take the true measure of ESG. Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

We learned many long-distance lessons during the pandemic. One of the most important involved visiting the doctor. As Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, author of *An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back* and Editor-in-Chief of *Kaiser Health News,* tells our Jonathon Swersey in the latest episode of *The Resonance Test:* “Many of us spend *way* too much time schlepping into doctors’ offices for things that could be done *perfectly* well over the phone.” The pandemic took telemedicine mainstream. Many who previously had only heard of it were forced to experience, practice, and pay for it. The question is: What’s it worth? “Is it 50% of a real, in-person visit? 70%? 100%? Sometimes [it’s] 120%! But I think it really depends on the kind of visit, and how it’s used, and who is creating the telemedicine system.” Regarding the myriad unresolved details of telemedicine—what works well remotely, what must be done in person, how to value all these different treatment options—Rosenthal says: “We have a lot of sorting out to do.” Rosenthal is, admittedly, somewhat skeptical about virtual care. “My worry always that it will be sold as useful because it’s commercial, before it’s useful—and that could give the whole field a bad name, frankly.” But whatever happens when the big telemedicine sort finally happens, it must ultimately be about creating balance. People will always need to do some things in a non-virtual way. As Rosenthal reminds us: “You can’t test someone’s reflexes on a screen.” Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

“If you do a penetration test to an organization and you get blocked, this is where you stop the test, right?” says Sharon Nimirovski who founded White-Hat Ltd., a leading Israeli cybersecurity firm recently acquired by EPAM. “But in real life, the attacker doesn’t do that.” In our latest #CybersecurityByDesign conversation Nimirovski tells Sam Rehman, our Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, that nefarious actors keep looking for other ways inside. “They don’t leave. They’re moving to, maybe, spear phishing. They’re moving maybe to infected URLs, maybe infected Android apps.” How do Nimirovksi and his team meet this barrage of digital assaults? Behind the scenes they repel attackers by building “a database of all the attack techniques and the vectors they use.” His team brings this offensive armada to clients, to test for their systemic weaknesses, and when they find them they create a “vaccine” against the vulnerabilities (“That vaccine is only a behavioral rule that we embed into the client’s given technologies”). A fascinating conversion straight from the front lines of offensive security. Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

People are, belatedly, getting smarter about privacy—and there are all kinds of business and social ramifications here. This is what Jesse Redniss, Founder & CEO of Qonsent and Co-Founder of BRAVE Ventures, and Sam Rehman, our Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, are talking about in the latest #CybersecurityByDesign episode of *Silo Busting.* Pointing to some very recent research, Redniss says: “Nearly 90% of people actually don’t want to have their data shared with external third parties off of their applications.” How can organizations and brands do better? “It comes down to value exchange,” says Redniss. We’re 100% certain that if you listen to this useful and informed conversation, you’ll learn much about Apple’s iOS 14.5, the new AppTrackingTransparency framework, the future of personally identifiable information (PII), and the challenges of privacy education. Just one click and you can jump on the platform of trust and transparency that is their dialogue. Welcome! Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer Ken Gordon

We’ve seen the future of risk management, and it’s going to be digital. Automaton and digital platforms are totally essential. Both Karl Viertel, CEO and Co-Founder of Alyne, and Boris Khazin, our Global Head of DRM Services, agree that Digital Risk Management is where we’re heading. In this episode of *Silo Busting,* these two experts delve into the idea of breaking silos, the importance of working with an organization’s second-line functions, the subtleties of risk quantification, and the generational shift in enterprises today. “There’s a new generation that see themselves as enablers of executing business processes in a safe and compliant way, as opposed to [being] hinderers of business,” says Viertel. Download the latest episode of* Silo Busting*—and do it quickly. As Viertel says, things are moving with extreme rapidity: “The change velocity in organizations is happening so much faster than a 36-month GRC implementation project can model that reality in the system.” Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

Jeffrey Schnapp’s career is a study in professional interoperability. He’s Faculty Co-Director at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and the Founder and Faculty Director of metaLAB (at) Harvard. He’s the Carl A. Pescosolido Chair in Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature and teaches at the famed Graduate School of Design. His business card identifies him as the Chief Visionary Office of Piaggio Fast Forward and, while we’re at it, he’s authored or edited 25 books. Whew. “It’s not good enough to be a generalist but if you are *only* a specialist, it’s unlikely that you’re going to see where the great areas of opportunity lie,” Schnapp tells producer Ken Gordon in the latest episode of *The Resonance Test.* At EPAM Continuum, we feel this idea. Profoundly. We also live in the world of multidisciplinary activity and saw a vast area of opportunity in creating a dialogue with Schnapp—about robots and the future of cities, loneliness, Dante, digital communities, the revitalization of public dialogues, libraries, and the psychopathologies of devices. Whew (again). Much to learn from a man has made his living as a “learner-in-chief.” Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

The bad guys don’t necessarily want your apps. What interests them? Your APIs. In our latest #CybersecurityByDesign conversation David Stewart, CEO of Approov, tells Sam Rehman, our Chief Information Security Officer and SVP: “The majority of attacks that we see are not done by modified apps but they’re done by scripts which have studied the app to the extent of being able to impersonate traffic and transactions that look like they’re coming from a genuine app instance.” This allows the nefarious actors out there to bypass apps completely. Scary stuff. Stewart and Rehman focus their talk on subtleties of API protection and attribute-based access control in the context of zero trust. Now, for you, keeping the mobile experience safe is important, but it’s Stewart’s *raison d'être.*“The reason we exist is to tell the back end that the API request is coming from a genuine app instance, and to do that on a very fast refresh so that it makes it impossible for the bad guys to get hold of anything they can use.” Download this conversation and you'll soon be thinking about shifting left while shielding right. Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

When we engage with an organization, they typically seek to help their customers “be more effective with their products and solutions,” says Keth Crotty, a Director of Business Development at EPAM. Crotty’s talking about something called “partner enablement”—and in this episode of *Silo Busting* Crotty, he and Jonathan Lupo, our VP of Experience Design, gently unbox the concept. In the course of Lupo’s genial cross-examination, Crotty says it’s all about asking, and answering, these questions: “What does that user need to know?” and “How do they get to it a very easy, intuitive way?” It’s very much about interoperability: “These systems need to be able to talk,” says Crotty. “They need to be able to share data with one another, so that this journey is not disconnected and interrupted.” Crotty also reminds us that a partner’s teams may well be siloed (a perfect topic for our podcast): “The team working on training information is not necessarily the same team working on product documentation and that’s not necessarily the same team working to support end users.” Click through and learn about the importance of having a unified content strategy, assembling the right professional services team, and more. Host: Kenji Ross Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

As the world prepares to hang an open-for-business sign on our collective door, we’re at a threshold moment, one Albert Rees, VP and Head of Business Consulting at EPAM Continuum, has dubbed “Pre-Post-COVID.” In this episode of *Silo Busting,* he discusses the concept with Jason Peterson, EPAM’s Chief Financial Officer, and Larry Solomon, our SVP and Chief People Officer. The trio look at the current talent market, data’s role in pre-post-COVID, and what it all means in the complicated context of acquisitions. Peterson nicely sums up our transitional situation by noting that during the pandemic our leaders paired “modern data technologies” and Microsoft Teams meetings so they could “quickly interpret the data and then make decisions. And so we were *way* more nimble than we were previously and I think you’ll continue to see us [become even] more nimble in this post-COVID world.” Host: Albert Rees Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon