Metaverse is a blockchain-based virtual world that is revolutionizing every single industry. From gaming and real estate to Healthcare and fashion, everyone is talking about the impact of the metaverse. Digital assets are at the center of this 3D open world. These assets form the foundation of the Metaverse ecosystem. Here are 5 areas of the metaverse that are yet to be explored by many people.
The Semantic Web: The shift from “readable” machine network to “understandable” intelligent network is what semantic web or Web 3.0 will deliver. More importantly, web 3.0 will ensure platform fiduciaries controlling and monetizing public data will no longer be relevant to do that and data control in decentralized world will rest with its real owner-you and me.
Its XR now, combination of VR and AR : Extended reality will uplift the user experience in the metaverse through metaverse-focused devices like AR smart glasses, haptics, hologram displays, and virtual reality headsets. Such devices can facilitate numerous physical services in the virtual world and help users steer through the metaverse smoothly.
The brand new Social Networking Spaces: Imagine enjoying a football match with a group of fellow citizens but totally strangers without revealing your real identity. These virtual social networks are a certainty now, thanks to Metaworld. Adding to a concealed identity, user generated and owned content sharable only to the chosen network is quite a possibility.
Continue reading: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/5-exploding-areas-of-the-metaverse-you-are-still-unaware-of/

Are we on the cusp of yet another internet revolution? We are, according to technology experts gathered in Berlin for a conference organized by digital learning platform ada. 
New technology could overhaul the web as we know it in the coming decade, they said — both when it comes to how it is built and how it looks.  
On a technical level, tech idealists hope that blockchain technology will help build a new decentralized architecture underlying the internet. In this new "web3" era, the idea goes, users rather than a handful of tech giants would have control over their data, privacy, and what they create online.
"This reinvents how the internet is set up in the backend," Portugal-based author Shermin Voshmgir said. "It is a complete paradigm shift."
At the same time, companies around the world are working on technology to revolutionize the way we navigate the web.

In October 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced to rebrand his tech behemoth as "Meta"
Their vision: Rather than scrolling through websites or apps, people will soon stroll virtually through a three-dimensional version of the internet dubbed the "metaverse" — a digital landscape of sorts where users can work, buy things or meet their friends, and where physical and digital realities converge.
"It will be a walk-in internet, so to speak," said Constanze Osei, who leads the society and innovation policy efforts for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland at US tech giant Meta, formerly known as Facebook.
But as companies like hers pour billions into developing that next generation of the internet, digital rights activists caution that the firms will eventually want to cash in on their investment — and that this could thwart efforts to give users more power over their digital selves.
"The metaverse could become the most invasive surveillance system ever created," said Micaela Mantegna, an Argentinian lawyer and digital rights researcher.
The evolution of the internet
To understand where the next generation of the internet could go wrong, it helps to look at how we got here.
As early as the 1960s, researchers began connecting computers around the world. But it wasn't until the 1990s that the invention of the world-wide-web and web browsers made the network available to anyone who was able to afford an internet connection.
Continue reading: https://www.dw.com/en/what-will-the-internet-of-the-future-look-like/a-63158651

Data is a vital economic driver that delivers more advancement and value to a company. It has the potential to take them to new heights if handled and studied accurately. However, that same data can also expose businesses to risks if left unexplored and unsecured.
With so many data protection laws coming into effect or already implemented, companies need to know how these privacy laws affect their business and what they can do to comply with them. Here’s a brief breakdown of five data privacy laws that could affect your business.
European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation originated in May 2018 and has had a massive ripple effect on businesses. Often considered one of the world’s most stringent data privacy laws, the GDPR’s guidelines impact any organization operating inside or outside the EU that offers goods or services or monitors the behavior of consumers within EU territories. The laws enforced by the GDPR refer to rights and freedoms granted to the data subject or individual user by the “data controller” and “data processor.”
The EU data protection law encompasses EU citizens’ data globally. Companies that fail to comply could receive fines of up to €20 million or 4% of their annual global turnover per violation.
California Consumer Privacy Act of 2020 (CCPA)
Since the US still has no established data privacy laws, most states have put forward their own laws to tackle the issue. The California Consumer Privacy Act empowers Californian end users by granting them more authority over the personal information businesses gather. The CCPA regulations offer stipulated guidelines on how to implement the law correctly.
The law doesn’t require companies to have a physical office in California and applies to all profit-generating businesses offering their goods and services to California residents. A California resident refers to a natural person who’s a resident of California, even if the person is temporarily outside the state.
The CCPA law aims to fortify the privacy rights of California consumers. For example, it gives clients the right to know about:

• All the private information businesses store on them.
• How this information is used and distributed.
• The option to delete any confidential information gathered.
• A possibility to opt out of the sale of their classified information.
• The right to non-discrimination for exercising their CCPA rights.

Continue reading: https://informationsecuritybuzz.com/articles/5-data-privacy-laws-that-could-affect-your-business/

Full device takeover possible.
Researchers at security vendor Bitdefender have found a series of serious vulnerabilities which could be used to remotely control EZVIZ networked cameras without authentication, in order to download and decrypt images.
Bitdefender was able to create an attack chain of four different bugs to take over the EZVIZ cameras, exploiting a stack buffer overflow, and vulnerable application programming interface endpoints.
Together, the attack chain would lead to full camera takeover with video feed access.
Bitdefender was also able capture the encryption key for images and recover the administrator password.
The cameras are sold and used in Australia and New Zealand.
Camera firmware version 5.3.0 build 201719 was found to contain the vulnerabilities, but Bitdefender said earlier versions could also be vulnerable [pdf].
EZVIZ has issued patches for the affected cameras.
Continue reading: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/ezviz-video-cameras-can-be-accessed-remotely-585340

Juniper Research forecasts that IoT security spending will reach US$6 billion by 2023, with growing business risk and regulatory minimum standards that would serve as key spending drivers.
Commissioned by Armis, The Forrester report, State of Enterprise IoT Security in North America, revealed that 74% of the respondents felt their security controls and practices were inadequate for managed, unmanaged assets across IT, cloud, IoT devices, medical devices (IoMT), operational technology (OT), industrial control systems (ICS), and 5G.
Keith Walsh, OT security and operations director at Armis, says the trouble with many installations within organisations is that each department tends to go solo on management and risk containment.
He cites the example of departments that may have managers over OT/ICS facilities, for instance: air conditioning, sanitation, telecommunications, and other functions. Server rooms and computers of all shapes and sizes may be managed by a separate IT department.
Outside a typical office, a process plant in the oil and gas, petrochemicals, and chemicals industries, or a power plant (nuclear, other renewable, or fossil), will yet have different field operations and maintenance managers managing various safety and other controllers. The expertise demanded by these fields tends to be disparate and so it would be difficult to converge all such manageable assets into a single department or system.

Keith Walsh

“For unmanaged devices, which may include OT and IoT, these may yet be another hurdle for organisations, since they may never have been defined as a security hazard, until recent times when 5G/LTE and broadband have permeated throughout every facet of an organisation.” Keith Walsh

Click to expand...

“So, it is safe to say, we can imagine the typical organisation may not have a complete security profile for all managed and unmanaged devices. Asset visibility is the first step in developing a security framework. You can’t secure what you can’t see,” he added.
As more devices in the homes connect to the internet, security and privacy concerns rise to new levels. The Palo Alto Networks’ The Connected Enterprise: IoT Security Report 2021 found that the problem has gotten worse with the rise of working from home. 81% of those who have IoT devices connected to their organisation’s network highlighted that the transition to remote working led to greater vulnerability from unsecured IoT devices.
“The bottom line is that while organisations are adopting best practices and implementing measures to limit network access, digital transformation is disrupting not only the way we work but the way we secure our ways of working,” explains Alex Nehmy, CTO of Industry 4.0 strategy for Asia Pacific & Japan at Palo Alto Networks.
He posits that safeguarding unmanaged and IoT devices continue to be an ongoing challenge. With most cyberattacks accessing corporate networks months before they are detected, ongoing monitoring and IoT device security should become a key focus area of a corporate IoT security strategy.
Continue reading: https://futureiot.tech/iot-security-realities-worse-than-you-think/

Women leaders in IT face career challenges, biases, and self-created barriers in usually a male-dominated peer group. Surprisingly, 43% of STEM graduates in India are women, but only 34% of the IT workforce comprises women. As we go up the senior ranks, this number drastically drops to less than 17%. We see a massive drop out of women in STEM in the early stages of their careers in IT. Further, the pandemic has heightened inequalities at work and home, causing higher attrition in women than men.
Unless every organization intervenes and creates initiatives to enable women in STEM to have healthy career growth, we will end up with a shrinking pipeline of women in STEM to women leaders in IT.
Understanding the Existing Challenges
Over the last decade, many IT companies have become champions of inclusion, diversity, and meritocracy and oppose any form of gender discrimination. Yet, we still see lagging numbers of women IT leaders. Over my career, I noticed two significant challenges we face when growing women IT leaders.
The first challenge is the reluctance of women to internalize their accomplishments. Generations of patriarchal norms have made women hesitant to claim their success. A good intervention would be to have an unbiased celebration of successes at the workplace. Every leader in the organization must be an ally for women and mentor them to present their accomplishments authentically and persuasively. Celebrating successes would create a psychologically safe platform for women to claim their success and thrive in their careers.
The second challenge is that many women see risk and reward as orthogonal goals. In my career, I have seen multiple women who believe career growth implies taking on more responsibilities. They do not associate it with promotions, pay raises, or both. While additional responsibilities are a natural part of the job, there is a parallel increase in the benefits that come with them. Further, in an organization where many role models are male or have traditionally masculine qualities, there is a greater fear of failure and a stronger hesitance to take up these roles. Organizations must invest in mentorship programs for women connecting them with internal and external role models. I owe my career growth to my mentor, who instilled in me the confidence to be bold with risk and reward.
Continue reading: https://www.dqindia.com/growing-women-in-stem-into-leaders-in-tech/

I'm out of the inspiration game. I'm really in the money game now.

Click to expand...

So says Dr Cameka Smith about her shift in focus for The BOSS Network, the organization she founded in 2009.
Smith’s original intention was to establish a community of professional and entrepreneurial black women, offering events, workshops and coaching to help this underrepresented group succeed in the business world. Smith identified a gap in the market for such an organization after leaving her previous career in education. After a decade working for Chicago Public Schools, Smith was one of the thousands of teachers and staff who lost their job when the recession hit in the late 2000s.
Having decided to go into business for herself full-time, Smith spent a lot of time talking to different entrepreneurs from minority communities:

Through all those conversations I was having with different people, it struck a chord with me: I'm an event planner, these are really great conversations. Maybe I should just create a series of events for women of color to talk about career life for us in business, starting a business, different challenges, how do we become successful.

Click to expand...

Smith decided to launch an online forum and event series called BOSS - Bringing Out Successful Sisters, which now reaches over 200,000 women globally.
However, the last four years have seen Smith shift expand her focus from conversations and coaching to funding as she came to the realization that there is little point inspiring a whole bunch of women to start businesses, if those businesses were then failing due to a lack of capital to keep going:

A lot of the women I was working with were saying, we're workshopped out, we're coached out, if we don't have the funding to actually implement these resources and these learnings, we're just holding onto all this information.

Click to expand...

This view is borne out by the data. Black women received a pitiful 0.34% of VC funding in 2021, according to Crunchbase, and there are only around 40 women of color, who have raised $1m+ for their ventures. This is despite the fact that more Black women start businesses than anyone else across the US.
 
Continue reading: https://diginomica.com/some-sage-advice-funding-only-way-get-more-black-women-tech

Her vision has called on her as a co-founder of BuiltxWomen, a business accelerator for female entrepreneurs, founder of Ascend 2020, an investment company that funds businesses started by women and minority entrepreneurs, and Director of Partnerships at TechSquare Labs, where she has mentored over 60 companies with women and minority founders.
Last week, on September 8 and 9,  BLACK ENTERPRISE graced the digital world with its 2022 Women of Power TECH virtual conference.
BLACK ENTERPRISE welcomed Sam, an Atlanta-based tech entrepreneur, investor, and familiar face from The Real Housewives of Atlanta, to talk about her journey into the tech world. She also dropped a few empowering gems for women to succeed.
The Tech Pivot
Before her tech pivot, Sam had a strong background in healthcare, with degrees in Nursing and Genetics and Cell Biology. She credits her partner for not only introducing her to the tech world, but also mentoring her on a path to launch her own technology-enabled beverage company, Limitless Smart Shot.
Continue reading: https://www.blackenterprise.com/done-is-better-than-perfect-meet-the-real-housewife-whos-opening-doors-for-women-in-tech/

The enterprise has seen an explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Today we see more connectivity options at the edge and the need to place computing as close to the data as possible to gain valuable business insights. It has led to the proliferation of IoT devices and Internet-connected smart devices.
Despite the advantages and efficiencies of using IoT devices at the edge, it can serve as a blind spot for organizations from a security perspective. How is IoT being used in the enterprise, and how can it be secured? We will consider important security best practices and how a secure password policy is paramount to the security of devices.
What are Internet of Things (IoT) devices?
In general, IoT refers to devices with embedded software, sensors, network connectivity, and other technologies, allowing them to exchange data with other devices connected to the Internet. IoT devices range from household appliances (refrigerators, thermostats, ovens, microwaves, and other appliances) to industrial tools, sensors, and machines in manufacturing facilities. These connected "things" can collect and exchange many types of data.

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are connecting the physical world with the digital
With the prevalence of broadband network connectivity, wireless networks, and now 5G mobile networks in remote locations, it is now possible to connect any device to the network, including IoT devices. As a result, traditionally "dumb" devices are now transitioning to "smart devices" with the ability to be Internet-connected.
IoT devices are particularly common in the healthcare and manufacturing industries, where business-critical operations and data pass through internet-connected devices like monitors, tablets, scanners, and more.
Why is IoT revolutionizing data collection for businesses?
When you think about the capabilities of IoT devices and the possibilities for collecting and exchanging data, it opens a whole new world of opportunity for businesses to harness the power of data collection.
With IoT devices, the world we live and work in becomes "hyperconnected" so that literally everything around us can collect data and communicate this data to be analyzed. For businesses, it means data collection and analytics sensors can be located everywhere and on everything, giving real-time feedback available for analysis by big-data platforms.
Businesses realize the benefits and value coming from IoT devices, including:

• Businesses can improve productivity and efficiency with the insights gained from IoT-connected devices
• Companies can collect data-driven insights to help make businesses decisions
• It helps businesses realize the full potential of their revenue streams and develop new revenue models
• It allows easily connecting the physical world with the digital world, which helps to drive innovation, agility, efficiency, and new understandings of data models

IoT devices work hand-in-hand with modern machine-learning algorithms allowing the mass of collected data to be analyzed very quickly, allowing businesses to extrapolate intelligent business insights. In addition, the analyzed data allows gaining visibility to statistics, KPIs, and other metrics. These may be used to identify anomalies with equipment performance or send alerts based on various thresholds configured.
Continue reading: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/securing-your-iot-devices-against-cyber-attacks-in-5-steps/

The European Commission on Thursday presented a new Cyber Resilience Act proposal aimed at imposing new cybersecurity requirements on internet-connected devices ranging from "smart" toys and fridges to security cameras.
Manufacturers of digitally connected products would have to meet new EU requirements, whether the products are produced in the EU or not. The act would ensure products carrying the CE marking meet a minimum level of cybersecurity checks. Sensitive products running afoul of the rulebook face fines of up to €15 million, or 2.5 percent of worldwide turnover, whichever is higher.
"We need to protect our IT area, our cyberspace and our internal market," EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said, showing an internet-connected camera and warning such a device could pose risks of hacking and even state-backed espionage.
An annex attached to the legislation lays out how there would be two categories for products: one for critical products, which will cover about 10 percent of the market; and a second category that will cover all other products. For low-risk products, the Commission will ask companies to perform a self-assessment, indicating that a product meets cybersecurity standards. For those that can present a significant cybersecurity risk, a manufacturer will have to prove they meet the requirements to a national authority or through a third-party assessment.
For mobile phones, for instance, "the cybersecurity parts of a product like this escape regulation. And this is what we're coming to address," said Margaritis Schinas, Commission vice president responsible for security policy.
Continue reading: https://www.politico.eu/article/new-cyber-act-to-raise-safety-standards-across-the-bloc/

One of the problems with ubiquitous technologies is that we sometimes lose sight of how much they've changed our lives already and how much more change they can still deliver.
Technologists have been building devices to generate and transmit streams of information for decades, but the term "internet of things", or IoT, wasn't coined until 1999 by RFID pioneer Kevin Ashton at MIT. He argued that sensors and other devices would eventually replace humans as the main originators of the data flowing into the internet.
Ashton's insight was perhaps overshadowed by the concept of the internet connected smart fridge unveiled by LG in 2000. And if your yardstick for the success of IoT is that a frozen pizza can be quickly delivered to replace the one you've just eaten, you just might think that promise has yet to be fully realised.
But that perspective risks ignoring the many ways in which a broad array of sensors, edge components and consumer devices have proliferated in the last two decades. All of these can produce substantial, consistent streams of data, and additionally require the infrastructure and software smarts to make use of them.
Continue reading: https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/15/iot_is_not_just_for/

Since its 2008 debut, blockchain has developed quite a bit. The advantages of the distributed digital database, including transparency, speed, cost efficiency and scalability, have become apparent. What’s also become apparent is that blockchain still has a long way to go, and that some of its advantages can also present challenges. 
8 Advantages of Blockchain
As we delve into eight distinct advantages of blockchain, two points are worth keeping in mind. First, while all blockchains are based on the same technology, all do not perform equally. Smaller blockchains with fewer users can be more nimble and efficient, while larger ones can be relatively slow and expensive. 
Second, blockchain is an evolving technology. Whatever advantages it sports now are bound to become even sharper in the future. “The most vital improvements to blockchain will be in the realms of smart contracts and consensus,” said Sean O’Brien, founder of the Privacy Lab at Yale Law School. Layer 2 technologies will continue to revolutionize what’s meant by blockchain and bring more and more of what’s done on and offline into the realm of Web3, he said. 
 
BLOCKCHAIN IS DECENTRALIZED
No bank or entity controls blockchain, which some tout as its biggest advantage. Why? “A decentralized business model is one in which there is a greatly reduced opportunity for any single entity, or collusion of entities, to secretly manipulate the rules for their benefit,” said Dan Burnett, executive director of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, an organization focused on developing open blockchain specifications, according to its website.
He offered as an example, Uniswap, a decentralized stock exchange that uses a completely automated algorithm, which runs on Ethereum, to accomplish the exchange of cryptocurrency. No Securities and Exchange Commission or other governing body is involved because there doesn’t need to be, Burnett said. “No parties are needed for enforcement because it is enforced by computer code that just doesn’t allow for anything but what was programmed.”
 
BLOCKCHAIN ENABLES TOKENIZATION
Blockchain technology offers wealth-building opportunities to people who can’t currently access them in the form of fractional ownership, said Fairlane Raymundo, an NFT artist and Web3 marketer. 
Continue reading: https://builtin.com/blockchain/advantages-of-blockchain

We have evolved rapidly as a species on the technology front, especially in the last three to four decades. Just when we thought Web 1.0 was the biggest thing that happened, Web 2.0 came with its share of rich interactivity, e-commerce and web-native content sharing. Centralization was the dominant mode for operations and service delivery in Web 2.0, and this gradually opened up many significant concerns, including internet neutrality, data privacy, anonymity and service monopoly.
A seminal paper on decentralized finance in 2008 by a pseudonymous entity/person named Satoshi Nakamoto opened up an essential possibility of having trust in a decentralized transaction context. Blockchain, leveraged to enable Bitcoin, is becoming the most disruptive technology of this century, and it changes how we perceive the connected world of business operations involving multiple parties.
With the advancement in cloud computing, Industry 4.0 (with IoT and intelligent automation as its backbone) and artificial intelligence, it wasn't long before a computer scientist like Gavin Wood figured out the missing technology piece in this labyrinth of real-world interactions. He could see how well blockchain could connect the dots in the new internet context, thus laying the foundation for Web3.
Current World State For Enterprises
If we look at the prevalent business interactions across organizations, there are elements of data fragmentation, operations rigidity, application centralization and lack of process visibility. Trust predominantly is based on authority and becomes more of a prerequisite than the desired effect. Systems integrations are spaghetti partly because of the siloed core operations systems in each domain or subdomain.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/09/12/digital-transformation-connecting-the-dots-with-web3/?sh=208ac23570b3

Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen can’t seem to agree on what Web3 is and whether it’s even happening. In late 2021, as blockchain companies started calling themselves the “This of Web3” and the “That of Web3,” Musk asked, “Has anyone seen web3? I can’t find it.”
Though the term isn’t long enough to be a Wordle guess, it’s constantly being redefined to include more and more. Web3 is built on the idea that there are two distinct stages of the internet, and that we’re entering a third.

• Web1. The internet started out as a tool for government agencies and evolved into a civilian compendium of text-and-image web pages mostly used for research. (Millennials might remember making book reports based on what they could find on 50states.com.)
• Web2. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon rode in on their unicorns to centralize the web and give creators platforms to easily produce online content.
• Web3. In its ideal form, this iteration of the internet will be a mix of its predecessors: decentralized, user-friendly, accessible, and owned by its creators rather than big tech companies.

One common theme that runs through the many working definitions of Web3 is that it will eliminate middlemen, meaning the tech giants that run Web2. In this idealized version of the internet of the future, Web3 users would be able to sell their best social media posts as NFTs or run ads with them, rather than Twitter or a Meta taking home the revenue a post generates.
Web3 could mean that users no longer rely on banks of servers run by companies like Amazon. Instead, all web experiences could run on blockchains that users directly interact with. Because blockchains are stored as encrypted bits of code spread across thousands of personal computers, “Web3 servers can’t go down,” per Ethereum’s website. Considering how many AWS-caused shutdowns major sites like Ticketmaster and Tinder have experienced, that would be a BFD.
Continue reading: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2022/08/22/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-web3

Blockchain is one of the fast-growing technologies in the industry. According to Statista, revenue from blockchain is expected to reach 39 billion by 2025. The usefulness of blockchain technology emerges from its unique features like immutability and decentralization. These features allow the industry to build a network of tamper-proof records and values. The demand for blockchain professionals is simultaneously increasing. This presents a lucrative job opportunity for job seekers.
What is blockchain?
Blockchain is a sophisticated technology. It uses cryptography extensively to secure records and build a tamper-proof network, wherein records can’t be altered unless validated by a majority of participating parties on the network. This feature makes it suitable for several use cases in the industry. Supply chain, retail, and finance, among others, use blockchain in operations, making operations more efficient and streamlined.
 Smart contracts, cryptocurrency, and Dapps (decentralized applications) are major applications of the technology.
 To work with blockchain requires a comprehensive understanding of programming, computer science, cryptography, and web development. You will need a strong knowledge of all the mentioned subjects to excel in blockchain development.
Continue reading: https://www.datasciencecentral.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-learn-blockchain/

Blockchain is gaining traction in the real estate industry, which raises eyebrows regarding the justification of this technology’s use in a sector already worth more than $326 trillion.
The Blockchain is far more than a gimmick that sellers of luxury penthouses can offer their ultra-rich clients. It can assist governments, businesses, and regular people looking to buy or rent a home.
Here are five critical aspects that blockchain technology has the potential to improve or completely transform:
1. Property search process
The whole process starts with a property search, and this is where the first problems show up.
Statistics suggest that 93% of home buyers in the U.S. use an online website to find a home. These websites – primarily real estate marketplaces and platforms – connect buyers and sellers and allow prospective buyers to use filters to drill down into the specific criteria of their ideal property. All Web2 applications, though, are not without flaws.
First and foremost, the property information hosted on these websites is frequently inaccurate, outdated, or incomplete. Furthermore, data fragmentation across multiple listing platforms can lead to confusion. Blockchain technology, on the other hand, has the potential to solve these issues in many ways.
Instead of putting the same information about a property into multiple platforms by hand, agents and sellers can just put it in the blockchain database once. Second, data entered into the blockchain is irreversible and cannot be changed. Finally, future platforms might start handling tasks like listing, payment, and legal documentation.
Continue reading: https://cryptoslate.com/blockchain-can-potentially-resolve-these-5-critical-issues-in-the-real-estate-industry/

Having blockchain replace outdated paper-based transactions will allow companies to see in real-time what’s happening with their products without waiting for the original shipper or their trading partner to file the paperwork. A significant problem for supply chain managers is the lack of traceability in their supply chains.
The fact that the most recent transaction in a supply chain occurred only once makes it difficult to build complete data sets about the history of shipments and their timeliness to market. Using blockchain to provide traceability means that once a shipment has been made, it can’t disappear from the system and be lost or damaged on route. It would include food products, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and automobiles. IF you are interested in trading Bitcoin, take the first step at bitcode-prime.live.
Each company within a supply chain can add its information to this type of shared ledger, allowing them to track incoming materials through the entire manufacturing and distribution process without manually creating any new paperwork. Let’s discuss the potential pros of adopting blockchain as the global supply chain.
Blockchain can give companies more control.
In today’s global supply chains, a parent company is often separated from its subsidiary by several tiers of intermediary suppliers, including shippers and assemblers. This structure makes it harder for the parent company to monitor its product as it moves through the chain. With blockchain, a company can easily see its products moving along the chain at every stage of production and distribution, even if there are many intermediaries involved. It also means they eliminate any delays caused by contacting another party to obtain information or proof that something has been completed correctly.
Continue reading: https://amicohoops.net/perks-of-using-blockchain-as-a-global-supply-chain/

Recent data released by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) reflects an increase in the participation of women in scientific and technological fields in the last two decades. As per the data, the percentage of women researchers has increased from 13.9 in 2015 to 18.7 in 2018. In 2018-19, around 28% of women participated in extramural R&D projects as compared to 13% in 2000-01. An overall increase is observed in almost all the fields, but an encouraging rise of women researchers is seen in the field of social sciences and humanities. The percentage of women researchers in the social sciences and humanities is 36.4% while that in engineering and technology is 14.5%. In natural sciences and agriculture it is 22.5% each and in health sciences it is 24.5%. “The proportion of female researchers is significantly less in India considering the male-to-female ratio is 4:1 or even less. Also, while there are more than 40% of female graduates in STEM fields in India, which is higher than the global average of 30%, only about 15% land jobs in STEM-related fields,” explains Ruchi Singh, Scientist F, ICMR-National Institute of Pathology, Safdarjung Hospital Campus.
Continue reading: https://www.educationtimes.com/article/careers-science/94191174/new-initiatives-to-increase-women-researchers-in-science-and-tech

More and more women are joining the tech industry every day. Companies, no longer comfortable with the status quo, begin to realize the great benefits of having a diverse workforce, and start to provide equal opportunities to people of all walks of life. I love hearing stories about diversity changing company culture and even improving the bottom line. It shows us the workforce is evolving and women are playing an essential part in this process.  I recently read a Deloitte article that predicted that by the end of 2022, the tech industry will reach an all-time high of 33% female representation.
This is a pivotal and exciting time for women in tech, a historically male-dominated industry. However, there are many remaining obstacles women face in the workforce. Luckily, with the proper resources and guidance, organizations can empower women with the skill sets needed to overcome challenges and lead successful careers. One such tool is mentorship.
A mentor is someone who usually has either a similar profession or background and who can offer their wisdom and share their experience with the mentee to help conquer obstacles and make important career choices. The right mentor can even be a door opener and a long-term point of reference to confide in during the journey.
The impact of mentorship on career satisfaction is striking: 40% of women cite lack of mentorship as one of the biggest challenges in the tech industry, alongside a lack of female role models and opportunities for advancement.
As the Chief of Staff and SVP of Business Operations at Acronis, I am proud to see firsthand the role mentorship plays in inspiring and educating women in the tech industry. We have officially launched our own mentorship program, with already 50+ mentees involved across the world.
Continue reading: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/blog/posts/why-providing-mentorship-programs-and-growth-opportunities-to-women-in-technology-should-be-every-organizations-priority/

Of all Fortune 500 companies, only 8.8% have women CEOs. This indicates that about 91% of Fortune 500 CEOs are male. And yet, we say that incredible progress has been made in the workplace. More women leaders are an absolute must in the world we live in today.
Women's leadership as a sub-theme in management is rising. For centuries we have talked about leadership, but we talked about men's experience in leadership while disregarding the profound differences in workplace experiences between genders. Women leaders defeat many workplace barriers caused by gender biases and are transformational role models. Their challenging journey to the top allows them to develop themselves remarkably. This leaves less room for anyone to challenge the need for more women in leadership.
But that's not the only reason women leaders should be on the rise. While the world is being launched into the fifth industrial revolution, seven global tech revolutions (AI, VR/XR, AVs, quantum computing, blockchain, IoT and 3-D printing) are taking place, all requiring characteristics women leaders naturally bring. When I presented these ideas for the first time during an online keynote called "Why women make tech more ethical" for a global recruitment company, the chat was flooded with viewers who questioned my statement before I could even explain why.
Traditionally, women being less entrepreneurial than men accounted for their natural aversion to risk and putting money, which sometimes doesn't belong to them, at stake to make a profit. As a woman who bootstrapped the development of an international brand, I can attest that nothing feels more shameful than having to borrow money. You're testing out an idea that has more potential to fail than it does to become successful. Considering the volatility of autonomous vehicles and the destruction that testing these futuristic cars has brought, being risk-averse is not that bad.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2022/09/12/why-the-world-needs-more-women-in-leadership/?sh=50db01f21e2e

For Allie Mellen her formative moment came during her first experience at Black Hat.
She was a student at Boston University in 2015, where there was only a single course dedicated to cybersecurity across the entire program. That was all it took for her to get hooked. The class was “really hands on” with students expected to hack a server for their mid-term and final exams.
It also included a research presentation, and she was part of a team that chose to hack a Square reader. Her professor was impressed and encouraged the group to submit the research for Black Hat. When their project was accepted, she jumped on a plane to Las Vegas where she gave her first cybersecurity presentation in front of a live audience, went on CNN and CNBC for interviews and made a host of new connections in her field.
Years later, that experience still sticks out in her head for influencing her decision to pursue a full-time cybersecurity career. But there were also other, less pleasant memories and encounters.
“I had people tell me that I didn’t look like a hacker. I had people tell me I was only getting on CNN because they wanted a token woman on the show,” said Mellen, now a senior analyst at Forrester. “Those kinds of comments … don’t feel great. It was very common, actually.”
It is, of course, no secret that the cybersecurity industry has a woman problem. Despite making up nearly half the overall workforce, women compose just under one-quarter of the cybersecurity workforce and slightly more than a quarter of the STEM workforce.
But recent research as well as interviews with women in the field underscore how a handful of early or formative moments can heavily shape or influence their decision to remain on their career path in cybersecurity or pursue other kinds of work entirely. Together they reveal insights into where the industry has gone right — or wrong — in attempting to foster and develop female talent.
Continue reading: https://www.scmagazine.com/feature/careers/the-formative-moments-women-share-what-kept-them-in-cyber-or-drove-them-away

You’ve probably heard it before, but we’re going to say it once more: technology isn’t going anywhere. And because entrepreneurs worldwide know that, they’ve managed to create what seems like endless opportunities and business ventures in the tech space.
If it isn’t a new physical tech product, it’s groundbreaking software. If it isn’t pioneering software, it’s a tech agency teaching people how to use various tech tools. And the list goes on and on.
The thing is, women are responsible for a significant chunk of the tech industry’s evolution. In more detail, let’s look at how women are making strides in tech.
Women are Making Strides in the Tech Space
Recent data on women in the tech industry reveals that women make up about a quarter of the population in STEM and computer science occupations. This may seem like a small number, but it’s a significant improvement from prior years.
It’s also only the start of the strides women are making in the tech space. For example, we’re rapidly advancing in newly developed tech-related industries, like fintech. Women in fintech enjoy a comfortable wage, an intense demand for their skill set, and a meaningful role in making finances more manageable for people. 
In addition, IT development, generally, is on the rise. Companies will embrace artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, 5G wireless connection, and cybersecurity tech even more in the future. Women are taking advantage of this technology boom by securing positions centered on the above.
We’re making a push for leadership positions in tech as well. Gloria Wu, Naomi Lackaff, and Rhian Lewis are just a few tackling the digital space to make it more welcoming and supportive for women.
Influencers like Rawan, Maya Bello, Hosanna Hali, other Black women in tech are making waves online by circling other women interested in the tech space and providing them with tips, resources, and advice on how to break in successfully.
And don’t forget about women starting and growing tech companies. Odunayo Eweniyi, Kristina Ashley Williams, and Lilly Mittenthal are just a few names on the growing list of women founders in the tech space.
Although we have a long way to go, women are changing the face of the tech industry every day.
Continue reading: https://womenlovetech.com/how-women-are-changing-the-face-of-the-tech-industry/

Powered by digital transformation, there seems to be no ceiling to the heights organizations will reach in the next few years. One of the notable technologies helping enterprises scale these new heights is artificial intelligence (AI). But as AI advances with numerous use cases, there’s been the persistent problem of trust: AI is still not fully trusted by humans. At best, it’s under intense scrutiny and we’re still a long way from the human-AI synergy that’s the dream of data science and AI experts.
One of the underlying factors behind this disjointed reality is the complexity of AI. The other is the opaque approach AI-led projects often take to problem-solving and decision-making. To solve this challenge, several enterprise leaders looking to build trust and confidence in AI have turned their sights to explainable AI (also called XAI) models.
Explainable AI enables IT leaders — especially data scientists and ML engineers — to query, understand and characterize model accuracy and ensure transparency in AI-powered decision-making.   
Why companies are getting on the explainable AI train
With the global explainable AI market size estimated to grow from $3.5 billion in 2020 to $21 billion by 2030, according to a report by ResearchandMarkets, it’s obvious that more companies are now getting on the explainable AI train. Alon Lev, CEO at Israel-based Qwak, a fully-managed platform that unifies machine learning (ML) engineering and data operations, told VentureBeat in an interview that this trend “may be directly related to the new regulations that require specific industries to provide more transparency about the model predictions.” The growth of explainable AI is predicated on the need to build trust in AI models, he said.
He further noted that another growing trend in explainable AI is the use of SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) values — which is a game theoretic approach to explaining the outcome of ML models.
Continue reading: https://venturebeat.com/ai/why-the-explainable-ai-market-is-growing-rapidly/

Understanding customer churn is critical to sustaining a healthy business. Knowing how and why customers leave and what can be done to win them back underpins efforts to target new markets and product requirements. As a data-driven process, churn management has matured into a mission-critical task that companies depend on to make sense of the market.
But no two companies are alike. An acceptable churn rate for one may be catastrophic for another. Even identifying when churn has occurred can be challenging: It may be sudden and deliberate or gradual, implicit and unconscious. For example, a SaaS subscriber may let a service expire for unknown reasons and then rejoin a month later. Does that count as churn? If so, how is it quantified?
Every company is bound to have some level of churn. No matter how great your company’s products or services are, people and markets are always changing. The key is finding the sweet spot where you’re not forced into an economically unsustainable model of finding new customers to replace old ones. This challenge isn’t new. But today’s digital landscape allows us to take a more granular look at customer behavior—one that calibrates the retention versus acquisition question to individual behaviors.
Although it’s deceptively simple to calculate turnover with a simple equation—divide customers lost by the total number of customers in a given period—learning how, when and why churn is occurring is more nuanced. You need a comprehensive view of the entire customer experience. One way to navigate that complexity is with data and artificial intelligence (AI).
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/09/13/how-ai-can-help-deal-with-customer-churn/?sh=1efd9e227978

Not too long ago, professional web designers wouldn’t dream of using a no-code website builder—if you didn’t personally write each line of HTML and CSS, could you really call yourself a real designer? Today, many professional web designers have enthusiastically embraced no-code solutions, using them to get more done in less time without sacrificing quality.
Similarly, we’re now seeing advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools combined with the ease of no-code platforms. These new solutions are changing the way we use data and opening up exciting possibilities for all sorts of businesses.
The Evolution Of AI Analytics
In the first generation of AI analytics, companies were primarily concerned with collecting and storing data. Database tools like MongoDB, SQL and Redshift were soon developed to help software engineers with this task.
The next step was to look at what we could learn from all this data. In this second generation, data visualization companies like Periscope Data, Mode and Tableau came along to help businesses make sense of the data they were collecting.
Today, we’re in the third generation: predictive analytics. Here, people can use AI to find patterns in their data and predict what’s coming next. However, this latest step in AI analytics has brought new challenges. In those first two generations, users were very technically minded. To help new audiences get the full benefit of predictive analytics, new tools are necessary. As a result, we’ve seen a new category of tools designed to help data analysts use machine learning without writing code.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/09/12/when-the-rise-of-ai-meets-the-ease-of-no-code/?sh=3a6ace761ffd