Best of LinkedIn: ICT & Tech Insights CW 51 - 02

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgeier and Frennis, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about ICT and tech insights from CW-FiftyOne to Two.

00:00:08: Frennis supports ICT enterprises with market and competitive intelligence, decoding emerging technologies, customer insights, regulatory shifts, and competitor strategies, so product teams and strategy leaders don't just react, but shape the future.

00:00:24: Welcome to the deep dive.

00:00:26: Today, we're cutting through the noise to really analyze the top ICT and tech insights that have been dominating the conversation for, what, the last four calendar weeks.

00:00:33: That's right.

00:00:34: And looking at all the sources, what really stands out is, well, a pretty significant shift.

00:00:39: It's a shift toward execution, isn't it?

00:00:41: It's

00:00:41: all about execution.

00:00:42: We're finally seeing the industry move from these broad vision statements about... AI or the cloud to this intense focus on strategic execution and really operational resilience.

00:00:52: Absolutely.

00:00:53: The chatter has really tightened up.

00:00:54: It's about a pragmatic AI adoption, finally tackling those foundational security problems and dealing with real world constraints that are shaping decisions right now.

00:01:03: We're moving from the art of the possible to the art of the practical.

00:01:06: A perfect way to put it.

00:01:08: So let's dive in starting with theme one, the absolute fundamentals of cybersecurity and operational resilience.

00:01:16: It's almost a painful place to start, but it's so necessary.

00:01:20: Because what our sources show is this major divergence.

00:01:23: You have the industry rushing toward advanced models like Zero Trust.

00:01:27: But at the same time, so many organizations are still failing at the absolute.

00:01:32: basics.

00:01:33: And it's shocking how common those simple failures are.

00:01:36: I mean, Rami Alcafajai noted this brutal statistic.

00:01:39: Over fifty companies had significant data breaches.

00:01:43: Why?

00:01:43: It's almost embarrassing.

00:01:44: They just ignored credential hygiene and didn't enforce multi-factor authentication.

00:01:48: MFA.

00:01:49: And his assessment was so blunt, it's the one that stuck with me.

00:01:51: He said, third actors don't break in, they log in.

00:01:53: They just log in.

00:01:54: Think about that.

00:01:55: We spend millions on sophisticated defenses and the front door is basically unlocked.

00:02:00: The keys are under the digital doormat.

00:02:01: So if that's happening in large enterprises, what about SMBs?

00:02:05: Daniel Seric pointed out that in smaller companies, it's often management decisions.

00:02:09: It's pure operational chaos.

00:02:11: Untested

00:02:12: backups.

00:02:12: Untested backups.

00:02:14: Updates that are deferred forever.

00:02:16: No clear controls.

00:02:18: It's less about a sophisticated attack and more about just, you know, failing to run a responsible business.

00:02:24: And to counter those simple entry points, like phishing, Okan Yildiz really stressed the need for preparation.

00:02:31: Fishing is still the lowest effort way in.

00:02:33: It just is.

00:02:34: Which means you need SOC-ready, repeatable workflows.

00:02:38: Things like free fishing, incident playbooks are so valuable because when that attempt happens, and it will, you need a clear procedure, not panic.

00:02:45: So once those fundamentals are hopefully mastered, then we can talk about proactive defense, and that's where the conversation always turns to zero trust.

00:02:52: But ZT is finally getting some conceptual clarity.

00:02:56: And it really

00:02:56: needed it.

00:02:56: For so long, people confused ZT with ZT&A.

00:03:00: which is just one piece of the puzzle.

00:03:02: Exactly.

00:03:02: And Jamison Chokrek had this fantastic analogy to break it down.

00:03:05: I

00:03:05: love this.

00:03:06: It's so good because it forces a strategic discussion.

00:03:10: So ZT, zero trust itself, that's the high level strategy.

00:03:14: The policy that says, we trust nothing and no one.

00:03:17: Okay, the big idea.

00:03:19: Then you have ZTA, the architecture, that's your guiding framework, like a Sabia SA or TOGAF, that tells you how to build everything to support that strategy.

00:03:27: And then the ZT and A... The network access part is just the technology.

00:03:31: It's the tool, the pipe wrench you use to fix one specific plumbing problem in the house.

00:03:36: A pipe

00:03:37: wrench?

00:03:37: Exactly.

00:03:38: If you only buy the tool, you've bought a door lock, but you haven't changed the house rules.

00:03:42: Right.

00:03:42: And that's why Waldemar R. and Reimsche said ZT is all about being consistent.

00:03:46: Consistency means MFA everywhere and application whitelisting.

00:03:50: It's a mindset shift.

00:03:51: From

00:03:51: what are we blocking?

00:03:53: What

00:03:53: are we deliberately allowing?

00:03:55: It changes everything.

00:03:56: And

00:03:56: yet, Pratap Mandal brought it all back down to Earth.

00:03:58: He reminded everyone that zero trust doesn't start with tools.

00:04:01: It starts with configuration.

00:04:03: Misconfigurations.

00:04:05: Still a top coin's breaches.

00:04:06: It's the triple threat then.

00:04:08: Strategy, architecture, and flawless execution of the basics.

00:04:12: And that execution vulnerability, that goes straight into the cloud.

00:04:16: The cloud runtime is the new front line.

00:04:18: Francis Odom revealed that forty four percent of enterprises had a cloud breach last year.

00:04:24: And here's the killer detail.

00:04:26: These places are running what, three to eight different cloud security tools?

00:04:30: Yeah, but only thirteen percent can actually correlate the alerts between them.

00:04:33: That's a nightmare.

00:04:34: You're drowning in alarms, but you have no idea which fire is real.

00:04:37: That alert fatigue just leads to slow response times.

00:04:40: It's not a tool problem.

00:04:41: It's an integration and context problem.

00:04:44: So theme one tells us we're still fighting fires because of basic mistakes, even as we move to the cloud.

00:04:49: But none of that matters if the next big wave, AI, doesn't have a strong foundation.

00:04:54: Let's shift to theme two.

00:04:56: data foundations, and the AI supercycle.

00:04:59: The consensus here is pretty clear.

00:05:00: AI is moving fast from just experimenting to real enterprise-wide execution.

00:05:05: But, and it's a bit, but that whole transition depends on solid data governance.

00:05:10: It's the non-negotiable prerequisite, right?

00:05:12: Absolutely.

00:05:12: And Andreas Horn gave us a brilliant simple way to think about data governance.

00:05:17: He boiled it down to just four things.

00:05:19: Ownership, quality, access.

00:05:22: and accountability.

00:05:23: And his point was that businesses don't buy governance.

00:05:25: They buy outcomes, just where the KPIs, smoother M&A, and those outcomes depend entirely on those four pillars.

00:05:32: If you don't build them, you hit the wall that Marco Gaier warned about.

00:05:36: the paradox of delegated data competence.

00:05:38: I thought

00:05:39: that was a great phrase.

00:05:40: The biggest barrier to a profitable AI strategy is that data is fragmented and data competency, well, it's just been pushed down to IT.

00:05:47: Right.

00:05:47: It has to be an executive level concern.

00:05:49: It's a business asset, not just a plumbing problem.

00:05:52: And once you have that ownership, AI has to be treated, as Sandra Viller said, as an architecture decision, right in the heart of the enterprise.

00:05:59: You can't just bolt it on the side of your Cloud ERP and expect magic.

00:06:02: And the money is certainly following that logic.

00:06:04: Louis C. cited a Gartner projection of what, four point seven trillion dollars in global AI spending by twenty twenty nine?

00:06:09: A

00:06:09: massive number.

00:06:11: But the fascinating part is the growth.

00:06:14: AI cybersecurity is set to be the fastest growing segment.

00:06:17: A seventy four percent CAGR.

00:06:19: Which speaks directly to the new risks.

00:06:21: And that brings us to the most regent one.

00:06:24: Agents security.

00:06:26: Vivian wave like this is a new board level risk.

00:06:29: Because agents remove the human break.

00:06:32: That's the core of it.

00:06:33: The human break is gone.

00:06:35: When an AI agent can act on its own trigger transactions, combine data, the whole threat model just flips on its head.

00:06:42: Identity explodes, speed multiplies the damage, and the attack surface becomes unrecognizable.

00:06:47: And the most dangerous agents, as she pointed out, are the compliant ones.

00:06:51: The ones doing exactly what they were told.

00:06:53: That

00:06:53: is genuinely chilling.

00:06:55: The agent does precisely what it's instructed.

00:06:58: but the instructions were flawed or incomplete and there's no human context or oversight.

00:07:03: How does a CISO even monitor that?

00:07:04: You're

00:07:05: not auditing logs anymore, you're trying to audit intent.

00:07:07: And this completely changes the job of a security professional.

00:07:11: Tamer A Law projected that in the future, they'll interact more with agents than with tools.

00:07:16: The key skill won't be navigating a dashboard.

00:07:19: It'll be critical thinking, knowing what to ask the system and crucially knowing when the system is confidently wrong.

00:07:25: A whole new type of judgment is needed.

00:07:27: This focus on future risk forces us to look even further out.

00:07:31: Ankush Rivestaba noted the next decade will be shaped by the convergence of quantum plus AI.

00:07:37: And that creates an immediate data risk.

00:07:39: Hari Natharajan warned that the problem isn't today's decryption.

00:07:42: It's that sensitive, long-lived data is being harvested right now.

00:07:46: Harvest and hold.

00:07:47: Exactly.

00:07:48: They collect it today, store it, and decrypt it years from now when quantum computers are ready.

00:07:53: It's a delayed exposure bomb.

00:07:55: You have to start your crypto inventory now.

00:07:57: The clock is ticking.

00:07:59: But it's not all about waiting for better hardware.

00:08:01: Marcus Flish showed that algorithmic innovation alone is already giving us huge gains in quantum sensing.

00:08:07: Right.

00:08:07: Smarter software is getting more out of today's quantum hardware.

00:08:10: It's bridging that gap.

00:08:12: And that whole discussion about long-term data control is a perfect transition to our final theme.

00:08:17: digital sovereignty and infrastructure strategy.

00:08:20: This is no longer just a policy debate.

00:08:22: It's a design principle.

00:08:24: And in Europe, you have to start with the challenging reality.

00:08:28: Arvea Moraney mentioned Airbus preparing a tender for a sovereign cloud to mitigate exposure to the U.S.

00:08:33: Cloud Act.

00:08:34: The stats are pretty stark.

00:08:36: Something like eighty percent of Europe's digital infrastructure relies on foreign, mostly U.S.

00:08:41: firms.

00:08:41: AWS, Microsoft, Google own seventy two percent of the market there.

00:08:45: That's a systemic dependency.

00:08:47: And Gerhard Burr pointed out that it runs even deeper.

00:08:50: The very tools for IT asset management and FinOps, the tools you use to audit the cloud, are also dominated by US vendors.

00:08:58: So how sovereign is your control if even your visibility tools are foreign?

00:09:02: It forces you to define what true sovereignty is.

00:09:04: And I'm in Alzaroni's stress that it's an operational question, not just a legal one about data residency.

00:09:10: It's

00:09:10: about who can access, govern, and act on the data.

00:09:12: Exactly.

00:09:13: Who's really in control?

00:09:14: Which is why, as Dirk Amola argued, digital sovereignty will succeed or fail based on execution, not just regulation.

00:09:21: It's about orchestrating what you already have.

00:09:23: Which leads to a more pragmatic European view.

00:09:27: Patricia Butters, citing Martin Merz and SAP CEO Christian Klein, made the case that Europe should focus on its strengths.

00:09:35: Like its data and enterprise software.

00:09:36: Right.

00:09:37: Don't try to win a costly race to replicate hyperscalar infrastructure.

00:09:42: As Klein put it, the hardware train has left the station.

00:09:45: A pragmatic view.

00:09:46: So the architectural response becomes everything.

00:09:49: Derek Dobson framed the sovereign by design hybrid cloud as a national security necessity.

00:09:55: The architecture, not the branding, is what decides sovereignty.

00:09:58: And the scope of that control is broadening.

00:10:01: Luca Caligari introduced this idea that energy sovereignty is becoming the new digital sovereignty.

00:10:08: And you see that with Google's huge bet on acquiring intersect power.

00:10:12: They want control over the full stack right down to the energy source for their critical compute.

00:10:17: It's all about operational control.

00:10:18: And in the end, whether we're talking about credential hygiene or operational sovereignty, it all points to one thing.

00:10:24: Veil at Aluka called it digital confidence.

00:10:26: Trust, simplicity, security.

00:10:28: so that the technology just works and people can focus on their mission instead of wrestling with the tech itself.

00:10:34: Looking across all three themes, cyber fundamentals, AI foundations, and sovereignty.

00:10:39: The message for ICT leaders is just undeniable.

00:10:43: The focus for this year has to be on robust, reliable execution.

00:10:47: Absolutely.

00:10:47: The landscape is moving at machine speed, which demands better human decision making.

00:10:52: And that brings me to a final thought, building on something Jeff Winter said.

00:10:56: The value of data is no longer just about storage.

00:10:59: It's about decision latency.

00:11:00: How fast you can act on

00:11:01: it.

00:11:01: Exactly.

00:11:02: So as we move into this era of autonomous AI agents and quantum threat timelines, what do you think will differentiate the leading ICT enterprises in say, twenty twenty six?

00:11:13: Will it be the speed of their systems or will it be the quality of their human judgment?

00:11:17: something to think about.

00:11:19: If you enjoyed this deep dive, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:11:22: Also check out our other editions on cloud, defense tech, digital products and services, artificial intelligence, sustainability and green ICT and health tech.

00:11:31: Thank you for diving deep with us.

00:11:32: Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next one.