Tech Talks Daily

Sophia Matveeva is the founder of Tech For Non-Techies, a learning community and media company. Sophia has contributed to the Financial Times, The Guardian, and Forbes on entrepreneurship and technology and hosts the top-rated Tech for Non-Techies podcast. She has also guest lectured at Chicago Booth and London Business School, and led the Blackstone x Techstars accelerator at the University of Texas at El Paso. As a non-technical founder, she has co-created apps and algorithms that have been used by thousands, won App of the Day by Mashable, and were featured by Inc, the BBC and more. Sophia loves helping entrepreneurs and has advised Chicago Booth's New Venture Challenge and Microsoft x London College of Fashion incubator. She also holds an MBA from Chicago Booth, and a BSc (Hons) in Politics from Bristol. She speaks English, Russian and French. Sophia Matveeva shares her startup story. Then, we talk about why investors are turning towards non-technical founders and what this means for the industry. Sophie shares advice on how non-technical professionals can transition into a career in tech for non-technical professionals.

Stijn "Stan" Christiaens has a new title at Collibra - Chief Data Citizen. He joins me on Tech Talks Daily to discuss how Collibra is getting data and policies ready for a cloud-native world, ensuring the company complies with growing privacy regulations, protecting data assets, and more. We also discuss why the most critical priority for this year is increasing and maintaining data quality. Over the past transformative year, Collibra has spent many resources in getting the business to be digital-first. And he knows that data products are garbage in, garbage out, so the outcomes of the product, the user experience, and the smart features all depend on the quality of the data that feeds them. I also learn why he's changed his title and what it means. Collibra is putting smart data quality controls at various places and how he plans to organizational data priorities for the rest. We also talk about the EU's recent announcement to take control around AI and how the proposed legislation will strengthen AI update, investment, and innovation across the EU.

Rohan Pasari is the co-founder and CEO of Cialfo, an AI-driven platform that brings together people, software, and data to simplify college and career counseling workflows. He co-founded Cialfo with the vision to make education accessible for 100 million students globally. Rohan joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast to discuss how EdTech can make higher ed more accessible, how data analytics is transforming the college recruiting process and shares insights into the shift to virtual search and recruitment channels for higher education.

Recent announcements from Facebook and Twitter are signaling growing support for security keys as a means of user protection. Stina Ehrensvärd from Yubico discusses why this is an essential step toward a genuinely passwordless future for all. Yubico has worked closely with both platforms to support two-factor authentication based on its physical security keys. So while Facebook users have been able to use the hardware to secure their accounts on desktops, the recent announcement sees iOS and Android users now able to do the same. This adds a critical security layer and prevents a password from being the last line of defense against phishing or other malicious attempts to compromise private information. Importantly, security keys also reduce friction and complexity for users compared to the repeated insertion of One Time Passcodes or similar security features. Yubico's mission has always been to make the internet a safer place for everyone – and over the years, it has partnered with tech giants such as FIDO Alliance, Google, and Microsoft to develop appropriate standards and realize this vision. In our interview, Stina discusses the collective impact of these recent announcements and how increased industry collaboration is delivering the highest level of security and convenience to more users online, regardless of device and platform. I learn more about how Yubico helps companies like Google secure 85,000+ of its employees against online fraud, platforms like Gov.UK to help protect gateways against cybercriminals, and within the UK government and defense departments to secure their security users.

With stakeholder capitalism and conscious capitalism entering the mainstream, we wanted to explore the future of work and how businesses are not just leveraging technology to help run their business but also transform the employee experience. Danijela Nandi, Senior Product Manager at Citrix Workspace, and Nancy Pautsch, Chief Evangelist of Stakeholder Value (President) of Envision IT talk about how hybrid working and how technology makes teams more productive and helping to build a more conscious culture where everyone has a sense of purpose. They also discuss the ROI of improving employee engagement and wellbeing. About Envision IT Envision IT is a soulful company whose business is technology optimization, ensuring that mainstream technologies in businesses today are an enabler to employee engagement and business success (versus being an obstacle). Nancy Pautsch is the Chief Evangelist of Stakeholder Value (President) of Envision IT, a group of curious and compassionate people growing a soulful company. Envision's mission is to enrich the lives of their stakeholders. Their business is technology consulting focused on optimization to ensure technology is an enabler to employee engagement and business success. Envision is the go-to technology partner for organizations across the U.S. Nancy has been in the technology industry for 20+ years. Keys to her leadership are a growth mindset and fostering collaborative cultures that breed a grounded sense of purpose while striving for excellence. As a thriving Firm of Endearment, Envision has been lauded locally for their contributions to the community and economy; recognized globally in the technology industry as 'best of the best' for engineering quality, innovation, and customer experience; and highlighted by the Conscious Capitalism movement as a model for stakeholder orientation.

Real Ice is a Wales-based company that has invented a revolutionary renewable energy-powered ice maker to replenish the polar ice caps that are melting as a result of global warming. The Real Ice machine, developed by recent Bangor University graduate Cian Sherwin, is a windpowered machine that pumps water from under the Ice to the surface, where it freezes rapidly and patches gaps in the sea ice. It also works to thicken the Ice, thus increasing the albedo effect, which is the ability to reflect the sun's energy back into space instead of being absorbed by the earth. Still in the prototype phase, the project plans to employ indigenous people of Arctic regions to own, maintain and operate the machines. At the same time, they earn carbon credits which can be sold to companies to offset their fossil fuel use. By combatting the effects of global warming and ice loss on traditional local communities, Real Ice also hopes to boost the development of Arctic regions experiencing the harsh negative effects of global warming.

Mansour Karam is the Co-Founder of data center network automation company Apstra, which was recently acquired by the networking giant Juniper Networks. With over a decade of experience in network automation and network solutions, Mansour currently works at Juniper as the VP of Products, helping clients deliver on their networking solutions and make the most out of their business with Juniper. Mansour discusses how automation is essential to minimizing costly mistakes and eliminating human error from mundane tasks in a hyperconnected data center. Mansour also elaborates on the two main areas where automation maximizes productivity in the data center. We talk about scaling capacity with output so that data center development is not inhibited and processing repetitive tasks, so developers have more time and bandwidth for crucial development. Mansour also explains how automation is essential to minimizing expensive mistakes and provides robust data sets for IT leaders to apply hyper-accurate insights in development. About Juniper Juniper Networks challenges the inherent complexity that comes with networking and security in the multicloud era. They do this with products, solutions and services that transform the way people connect, work and live. They simplify the process of transitioning to a secure and automated multicloud environment to enable secure, AI-driven networks that connect the world.

Curve Health is an elderly care telemedicine platform that is installed directly into nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs). The company announced a $6m seed round in late 2020, and on May 6th, will announce national partnerships with facilities in Minnesota and California, bringing telemedicine access to the bedsides of hundreds of patients. The platform is peer-reviewed & proven by the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine to reduce unnecessary hospital transfers from skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) by up to 80%. About Tim Peck Tim Peck is the founder of Curve Health. Before founding Curve, Peck earned his MD from NYU, then held a faculty position at Harvard Medical School and was the Chief Resident in the Emergency Department at Beth Israel Deaconess (BIDC). From there, Peck cofounded Call9, a company that was the forebearer to Curve Health and was responsible for changing the landscape of care delivery to nursing homes.

Assaf Morag and Ehud Amiri from Aqua Security join me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to discuss finding from Aqua's 2021 Security Report, which assesses cloud infrastructure risks. During 12 months, Aqua Security conducted an in-depth analysis of Aqua Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) usage data and found that 40% of users had at least one misconfigured Docker API. But, overall, 84% of users were able to detect and remediate misconfiguration issues using CSPM, which would otherwise have gone unnoticed without manual involvement. Although cloud-native applications have many benefits, such as allowing more agility by giving more people access to define the environment, it means that many organizations are moving away from a centralized approach to security. Where once there was only a small, highly skilled team of security practitioners making all configuration changes, we now have a modern, decentralized approach. Indeed, a recent IDC survey showed that almost 80% of respondents had at least one cloud security breach over the preceding 18 months. We talk about Aqua's 2021 Security Report findings, explore the complexity of cloud environments, and discuss some solutions to help mitigate these risks.

With nearly half of Americans currently working from home, and an additional 20% expected to remain that way in the future, the challenge of remote authentication has never been more important. Replacing passwords and updating software are no longer enough as lines blur between work/personal security posture and data subsequently becomes more at risk. Eric Brown, Senior Manager, Enterprise Identity & Access Management at SAIC, urges that with this change comes a need for organizations to recalibrate their approach to authentication. Eric shares his insights and advises how to secure identities while balancing a simplified user experience. He also discusses lessons learned with SAIC as the company transformed to a remote workforce – including key takeaways related to their multi-factor authentication platform for remote employees. About SAIC SAIC is a premier Fortune 500® technology integrator driving digital transformation. Their robust portfolio of offerings across the defense, space, civilian, and intelligence markets includes secure high-end solutions in engineering, IT modernization, and mission solutions. Using their expertise and understanding of existing and emerging technologies, they integrate the best components from their own portfolio and partner ecosystem to deliver innovative, effective, and efficient solutions critical to achieving their customers' missions. Saic consists of a team of 26,000 driven by mission, united purpose, and inspired by opportunity. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, SAIC has annual revenues of approximately $7.1 billion.