There are more vulnerabilities around than ever. The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report highlighted an almost 200% growth in the exploitation of vulnerabilities in 2023. In the first seven months of 2024, new vulnerabilities rose by another 30% compared to the previous year. No wonder vulnerability management tools are becoming a staple of the enterprise cybersecurity arsenal. “Vulnerability management is a core function of cybersecurity,” said Michelle Abraham, research director, Security and Trust at IDC. “Leaving vulnerabilities without action exposes organizations to endless risk since vulnerabilities may leave the news but not the minds of attackers.” 1 Semperis Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Enterprise (5,000+ Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees) Enterprise, Large Features Advanced Attacks Detection, Advanced Automation, Anywhere Recovery, and more 2 ESET PROTECT Advanced Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Any Company Size Any Company Size Features Advanced Threat Defense, Full Disk Encryption , Modern Endpoint Protection, and more 3 NordLayer Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Medium (250-999 Employees), Enterprise (5,000+ Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees), Small (50-249 Employees) Medium, Enterprise, Large, Small Top vulnerability management tools comparison Many vulnerability management tools have similar features. But when I looked into them more closely, I noticed that they each have their own focus or approach. Some are more specialized than others. I compared them based on price as well as four key features: Cloud, on-prem, or both. Being part of a comprehensive cybersecurity suite. Automated discovery. Automated remediation. Be aware, however, that an apples-to-apples comparison based on price is impossible due to the different ways vendors price their products and services as well as a lack of transparency on pricing. Starting price Cloud or on-prem Cybersecurity suite features Automated discovery Automated remediation Tenable About $4,000 per year for 100 assets. Cloud-based. There is a separate on-prem suite called Tenable Security Center that includes vulnerability management. Vulnerability management, web application scanning, cloud security, identity exposure, operational technology security, attach surface management, and risk assessment. Yes Yes ESET $275 for five devices per year for the ESET Protect package that includes ESET Vulnerability and Patch Management Cloud-based. A separate on-prem suite is available that includes vulnerability management EDR, server security, mobile threat defense, encryption, threat defense, cloud protection, vulnerability & patch management, MFA, and MDR Some automated discovery but not as broad as some of the others Some auto-remediation capabilities are included Syxsense $9 per device per month or $960 per year for 10 devices One version for the cloud and another for on prem Patch management, vulnerability scanning, IT management, mobile device management, and zero trust Yes Yes CrowdStrike $184 per year for the full suite and about $40 per year for Exposure Management Cloud-based EDR, antivirus, threat hunting/intelligence, exposure management, AI, threat hunting, cloud security, SIEM, data protection, automation Yes Yes Qualys $295 per year for the small business version and about $2000 for the enterprise version. Cloud-based with an on-prem version available. Asset management, vulnerability & configuration management, risk remediation, threat detection & response, EDR, cloud security, and compliance. Yes Yes Rapid7 $6 per month per asset or $2 per month per asset for a 500-asset license. Cloud and on-prem AI engine, XDR, exposure management, and attack surface management. Yes Yes Ivanti $4 per month per user. Cloud or on-prem Discovery, IT automation, real-time insight, endpoint management, network and endpoint security, supply chain, and service and asset management. Yes Yes StorageGuard $200 per month for up to 50 systems. Cloud No Yes Limited Tenable Vulnerability Management: Best overall Image: Tenable Tenable Vulnerability Management takes a risk-based approach to vulnerability management. It focuses on network visibility in order to predict when attacks will occur and to be able to respond rapidly when critical vulnerabilities are in play. A 60-day free trial is available. SEE: How to Create an Effective Cybersecurity Awareness Program (TechRepublic Premium) Why I chose Tenable I selected Tenable as the best overall vulnerability management tool overall for many reasons. It is the market leader among vulnerability management tools with a 25% market share. It includes a wealth of features and ticks just about all the boxes. It contains hundreds of integrations with other platforms and security tools that make automation of workflows easy and reduce the number of resources needed to keep the enterprise safe. Pricing Tenable costs about $4,000 per year for 100 assets. Features The Tenable Community is active with plenty of users willing to assist you to address problems. Active and passive scanning of on-premise systems, virtual machines, cloud instances, and mobile devices. Cloud Connectors give continuous visibility and assessment into public cloud environments like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Amazon Web Services. Built-in prioritization, threat intelligence, and real-time reporting help users to understand risk and proactively disrupt attack paths. Tenable Vulnerability Management helps IT to prioritize threats. Image: Tenable Pros and cons Pros Cons Fully integrated into the broader Tenable One platform. Some users report that support could be improved. Continuous, always-on discovery and assessment Real-time scanning and overall scanning speed could be improved. Threat intelligence Not the cheapest solution on the market. Automated vulnerability prioritization. Better suited to experienced IT professionals Real-time visualization of risk, and tracking of vulnerabilities, assets, and remediations. Vulnerability risk scores to identify risk. ESET Vulnerability and Patch Management: Best for SMEs Image: ESET ESET Vulnerability and Patch Management can automatically scan thousands of applications for any of tens of thousands of common vulnerabilities and exposures. It can prioritize and filter vulnerabilities by exposure score and severity. Why I chose ESET Vulnerability and Patch Management I liked ESET as it is easy to install and run. This makes it attractive for SMEs and larger organizations that lack IT and cybersecurity resources. Pricing $275 for five devices per year for the ESET Protect package that includes ESET Vulnerability and Patch Management. Features Supports multiple versions of Windows, Linux, and macOS. Detects over

According to Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2024, 69% of global B2C decision-makers increased their investment in content management technology, up from 59% who did so in 2023. Web content management software growth now outpaces the growth of the broader software market and is poised to reach $15.3 billion (total addressable market) by 2028. Business investment and growth in this content management system (CMS) market are primarily driven by: The proliferation of content-driven digital experiences across a growing number of digital touchpoints, which requires robust management capabilities. An increase in consumer demand for speed in their digital experiences, which requires outstanding experience delivery. Increasing investment in digital transformations generating new use cases, which requires new content-led digital experiences. New CMS Research Focuses On Business Impacts Of Emerging Features, Not Chasing Shiny Objects Through six months of research across the CMS vendor community, our October 2024 report, Strategic Technology Selection Guide For Content Management Systems, gives leaders a deeper understanding of the emerging trends in content management tech, from visual builders to content studios. Approaching the CMS landscape through the strategic lenses of business revenue and cost drivers helps leaders correctly prioritize emerging features for impact to business outcomes. Further, these two new reports help leaders develop targeted vendor shortlists amid the following challenges and trends: Communicating generative AI’s value to executives and boards. Generative AI capabilities in CMSes are impacting content operations, team efficiencies, and cost drivers across enterprises, but clearly communicating the current and future investment of CMSes enabled with enhanced genAI features remains a challenge. Selecting the right architecture and solution. Confusing messaging and varied capabilities of CMSes have made the decision between platforms vs. composability and “pure headless” vs. “hybrid” solutions more challenging than ever. Capitalizing on technology investments. The future of content management and consumption is changing rapidly. Evaluating CMS trends helps leaders balance results today while helping them evaluate emerging features that they can capitalize on as consumers and technology change. Let’s Connect As you work through your CMS strategy and selection, schedule a guidance session with me to correctly navigate the challenges and trends listed above. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Disclaimer: I voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election and stand by my choice. Republican politician and businessman Donald J. Trump has won the 2024 U.S. presidential election in a strong political comeback, despite various pre-election polls showing him neck-and-neck with his opponent Kamala Harris (the current and now outgoing Vice President, a Democrat). As many who follow the news know all too well, one of his most outspoken allies in this election was none other six-company owner/operator and technology multibillionaire Elon Musk, who committed tens of millions in funding to a political action committee advocating Trump’s re-election. All of Musk’s technology companies stand to benefit from Trump’s return to office Musk owns or operates the following companies, all of which stand to benefit from Trump retaking power: Tesla Motors: Though Trump has pledged not to enforce electric vehicle mandates or tighter emissions standards, Musk’s popular electric vehicle and autonomous vehicle company could benefit from loosened restrictions on vehicle standards overall, especially with regards to autonomy. Already, Tesla stock is up more than 13% today on the election being called for Trump. SpaceX: Musk’s rocketry and spacefaring company has feuded before with the federal government, particularly the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which just last month levied $633,009 in fines to SpaceX alleging it failed to “follow its license requirements during two launches in 2023.” Musk would likely seek to use the Trump Administration to recall this fine and remove future licensing requirements preventing what he sees as necessary speed and nimbleness from the agency or a more “hands-off” approach. Starlink: Similarly, Musk’s satellite internet offshoot Starlink, which currently has more than 6,000 satellites beaming internet from orbit, would likely benefit from Trump’s pledges to reduce administrative burdens and red tape from federal regulatory agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and FAA. Neuralink: Musk’s experimental brain implant company has reportedly caused the death, injury and dismemberment of test monkeys but also also been successfully implanted into a paralyzed human patient, allowing them to control a computer with their brain signals. Given it is a medical device, it is overseen by the federal Food and Drug Administration, which has already approved Neuralink implantation in humans and trials. But the Trump victory will likely only further clear the way for Neuralink to ramp up its trials on more human subjects and do so faster. X: Musk’s social network, the renamed Twitter he purchased for $44 billion two years ago, has already been through a process of mass and targeted layoffs, as well as policy and feature updates permitting more freewheeling and extremist speech and content, and led to a more political right-wing oriented userbase and content. This trend is likely to continue and X to gain even more prominence as a mouthpiece for Musk’s, Trump’s, and their allies’ positions. xAI may benefit and move from being a runner-up in the AI race to a leader But most importantly of all, xAI, Musk’s AI startup offshoot of X designed to rival his former company OpenAI, is now likely to become far more of a viable alternative to the U.S. government and military as a contractor and AI technology services provider. Already, the U.S. government has been courted by and is reportedly working with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta to integrate generative AI models into various departments. However, now that Musk helped propel Trump to a victory, expect xAI to join in the list of federally approved AI vendors and possibly even preferred AI vendors — though of course, the government is technically supposed to remain vendor-neutral for companies operating within the U.S., signing contracts based on request-for-proposals and the businesses’ fitness for the job. xAI will also likely benefit from repealed Biden-era AI Executive Order Yet as AI influencer Andrew Curran noted on Musk’s X network this morning, another direct outcome of Trump reassuming the White House come January 2025 (when he is to be sworn in) is a strong likelihood — outlined in the Republican Party election platform — of the repeal of outgoing President Joe Biden’s Executive Order (EO) on AI, which Biden issued in October 2023 and requires developers of powerful foundation models to share safety test results and other critical information with the US government and subjects companies training AI models to red-teaming exercises by the federal agency The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). While many in the AI industry and outside of it applauded this order as a means of ensuring safety of AI deployments on American and global society, some analysts suggested it could lead to undermining U.S. AI competitiveness on the global stage, both in the commercial (direct-to-consumer and business-to-business) marketplace and the military arena. As such, with the likely repeal of this EO come January 2025 or early 2025, it could aid xAI and its competitors in shipping new models faster — though as we’ve seen with xAI’s Grok-2 and its permissive image generation feature, that can also lead to a rise in deepfakes and other wild, offensive, but also creative and imaginative AI imagery. Either way, things are looking good for Musk’s companies and xAI in particular – and that may help the company’s models become more enticing to developers and business customers. source

At ADIPEC 2024 in Abu Dhabi, ADNOC, Masdar, and Microsoft signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) to advance artificial intelligence and low-carbon initiatives aimed at reshaping the energy landscape. The collaboration, which combines expertise in energy and technology, is set to support environmental and economic goals through renewable energy, carbon capture, and efficiency projects that reduce emissions and enable a sustainable future. Under the SCA, the companies will evaluate the potential to power Microsoft’s data centers with renewable energy sourced through Masdar, a key ADNOC stakeholder. In addition, they will explore using AI for carbon capture, low-carbon ammonia, and hydrogen projects that reduce the carbon footprint of existing energy systems. A core focus will also be accelerating AI deployment across ADNOC’s operations to enhance efficiency, cut methane emissions in line with the Oil & Gas Decarbonization Charter, and improve biodiversity monitoring for environmental protection. Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, ADNOC Managing Director and Group CEO, and Masdar Chairman, spoke on the transformative impact of the collaboration. “We are at a pivotal moment, driven by the rise of the Global South, the rapid energy transition, and the exponential growth of AI,” he said. “AI is redefining productivity and progress, creating new opportunities and challenges. By collaborating on AI’s immediate challenges, we can unlock long-term benefits across the energy value chain, securing a sustainable future for generations to come.” source

For the third consecutive quarter, Gartner has found that cyber attacks staged using artificial intelligence are the biggest risk for enterprises. The consulting firm surveyed 286 senior risk and assurance executives from July through September, and 80% cited AI-enhanced malicious attacks as the top threat they were concerned about. This isn’t surprising, as evidence suggests AI-assisted attacks are on the rise. Other commonly cited emerging risks outlined in the report include AI-assisted misinformation, escalating political polarization, and misaligned organizational talent profiles. Attackers are using AI to write malware, craft phishing emails, and more In June, HP intercepted an email campaign spreading malware in the wild with a script that “was highly likely to have been written with the help of GenAI.” The VBScript was neatly structured, and each command had a comment, which would prove an unnecessary effort for a human to write. The researchers then used GenAI to produce a script and found similar output, suggesting that the original malware was at least partially AI-generated. SEE: 20% of Generative AI ‘Jailbreak’ Attacks are Successful The number of business email compromise attacks detected by security firm Vipre in the second quarter was 20% higher than the same period in 2023, and two-fifths of them were generated by AI. The top targets were CEOs, followed by HR and IT personnel. Usman Choudhary, VIPRE’s chief product and technology officer, said in the press release: “Malefactors are now leveraging sophisticated AI algorithms to craft compelling phishing emails, mimicking the tone and style of legitimate communications.” Retail sites alone experienced an average of 569,884 AI-driven attacks each day from April to September, according to Imperva Threat Research. Researchers said that tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, as well as special bots that scrape websites for LLM training data, are being used to conduct distributed denial-of-service attacks and business logic abuse, for example. More ethical hackers are admitting to using GenAI, too, with the proportion increasing from 64% to 77% in the last year, according to a report from BugCrowd. These researchers say it assists with die-channel attacks, fault-injection attacks, and automating parallelized attacks to simultaneously breach multiple devices. But if the ‘good guys’ are finding AI valuable, then so will the bad actors. Must-read security coverage The rise in these attacks should not come as a surprise AI can lower the barrier to entry for cyber crimes, as less-skilled criminals can use it to generate deepfakes, scan networks for entry points, reconnaissance, and more. Researchers at ETH Zurich recently created a model that could solve Google reCAPTCHAv2’s puzzles used to distinguish humans and bots 100% of the time. Analysts at security firm Radware predicted at the start of the year that this newfound accessibility would lead to the development of private GPT models used for nefarious purposes. They also forecast that the number of zero-day exploits and deepfake scams would increase as malicious actors become more proficient with LLMs and generative adversarial networks. Indeed, Google’s Mandiant tracked 97 total zero-day vulnerabilities that were discovered and exploited in 2023, marking a 56% increase from a year earlier. Last month, Microsoft listed deepfakes amongst the most significant attack types used by increasingly prolific ransomware groups. SEE: AI Deepfakes Rising as Risk for APAC Organisations Executives are also concerned about over-reliance on IT vendors IT vendor criticality also made it into Gartner’s list of top concerns among senior risk and assurance executives for the first time this quarter. Zachary Ginsburg, Senior Director of research in the Gartner Risk and Audit Practice, said in a Gartner press release: “Customers with a concentration of services with one vendor may face elevated risk in the event of outages, or they may face unanticipated changes in services depending on new regulations or legal decisions in the EU, U.S. or elsewhere.” He alluded to July’s CrowdStrike incident, which saw about 8.5 million Windows devices worldwide disabled and caused huge disruption to emergency services, airports, law enforcement agencies, and other essential organizations. SEE: What is CrowdStrike? Everything You Need to Know “Because third parties, like SaaS vendors, rely on other vendors, organizations may not realize the full extent of their exposure,” Ginsburg added. Gartner predicts that 45% of businesses globally will have experienced attacks on their software supply chains by 2025. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More We’ve known it for some time, but now it’s certain: The generative AI race is as much a contest for developers as it is for end-users. Case-in-point: Today, Elon Musk’s xAI, the spinoff startup of the social network X that uses its data to train new large language models (LLMs) such as the Grok family, announced its application programming interface (API) is now open to the public and with it comes $25 free per month in API credits through the end of the year. Given it’s already November, that’s just 2 months worth of free credits, or $50 total. xAI's API is live! – try it out @ https://t.co/BZD8ZyOTTY* 128k token context * Function calling support* Custom system prompt support* Compatible with OpenAI & Anthropic SDKs* $25/mo in free credits till EOYhttps://t.co/CCQAry6d5w https://t.co/MEEU2wkstS — xAI (@xai) November 4, 2024 Musk previously announced the xAI API was open in beta three weeks ago to the date, but apparently uptake was not enough for his liking, hence the added incentive of free dev credits. Is $25 per month with 2 months remaining really that much of a carrot? It doesn’t sound like much coming from the world’s wealthiest man and multi-billionaire, and it’s not really on a per user basis nor in aggregate, but it may be enough to entice some developers to at least check out xAI’s tools and platform for building apps atop of the Grok models. Specifically, xAI’s API is priced at $5 per million input tokens and $15 per million output, compared to $2.50/$10 for OpenAI’s GPT-4o model and at $3/$15 for Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet model. Ultimately, that means xAI’s $25 credit won’t get the developer very far — only about two million tokens in and one million out per month. For reference, a million tokens is equivalent to 7-8 novels worth of words. The context limit, or how many tokens can be inputted or outputted in one interaction through the API, is around 128,000, similar to OpenAI’s GPT-4o and below Anthropic’s 200,000 token window, and well below Google Gemini 1.5 Flash’s 1-million context window length. Also, from my brief test of the xAPI, I was only able to access grok-beta and text only, no image generation capabilities such as those found on Grok 2 (powered by Black Forest Labs’ Flux.1 model). New Grok models coming soon According to xAI’s blog post, this is actually “a preview of a new Grok model that is currently in the final stages of development,” and a new Grok “vision model will be available next week.” In addition, xAI notes that the grok-beta supports “function calling,” or the ability for the LLM to take commands from a user and access functions of other connected apps and services, even executing them on the user’s behalf (if the connected app allows such access). Compatible with the competition Furthermore, the xAI account on the social network X posted that the xAI API is “compatible with OpenAI & Anthropic SDKs,” or the software development kits of different web tools used by developers of those platforms, meaning it should be relatively easy to switch out those models for grok-beta or others on the xAI platform. Musk’s xAI recently switched on its “Colossus” supercluster of 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs in Memphis, Tennessee, which is being used to train its new models — the largest or one of the largest in the world — so apparently that facility is already hard at work. What do you think? Is it enough to get the developers out in the VentureBeat audience to try building atop xAI? Let me know: [email protected]. source

By Nadia Dreid ( November 7, 2024, 3:35 PM EST) — The Federal Communications Commission is thinking about removing a requirement that all submissions to its Broadband Data Collection come certified by a professional engineer, but the Rural Wireless Association thinks that’s a mistake…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

Are your customers abandoning their shopping carts or not returning after their first purchase? Is your call center receiving repeated inquiries about information already available on your website? Is it taking too long for customers to check out? This may indicate that your customers lack the information and reassurance they need, and therefore don’t feel confident to move forward.  The UX field has long emphasized ease and effectiveness, but good UX is also shaped by whether customers feel valued, understood, and confident. User confidence is a user’s belief that a product, service, or system works as expected and is dependable.  According to the US and Canada CX Index Rankings, confidence is the top positive emotion that impacts customer loyalty. Yet we often observe that brands fail to inspire confidence in digital experiences and reassure customers that they’ve taken the rights steps or gotten to the right place.   Design For Confidence To Build Trust  Think about a customer looking for a product that they need you to deliver in two days – but they don’t know which products qualify for this option. Compare that experience to a customer who can filter products by delivery times upfront. Ultimately, both customers likely find what they need, but the second has a more positive emotional experience. When the design builds confidence, users not only complete tasks successfully but also have emotionally positive experiences that drive loyalty and build trust.  How To Increase Your Customers’ Confidence  This holiday season, take action to increase your customers’ confidence in your digital experiences. High customer engagement during the holidays is an opportunity to determine where your customers need confidence most in their journeys.   Here are four best practices you can start with:  Inform users on their progress and the result of their actions. Users hesitate to proceed on apps or websites without clear information on what happens next and they may need extra reassurance for certain tasks, such as orders and returns. What’s going to happen after clicking “continue” in the checkout flow? What’s the next step after they initiate a return? Will the user be notified about the status of their return or will they have to contact customer service for updates? Provide descriptive button language to clarify the next steps and proactively update them on their progress. Avoid coercive and deceptive design patterns. Coercive and deceptive design patterns, commonly known as “dark patterns,” manipulate customers into acting against their own interest and hurt customer trust in the long term. Fake countdown timers that create a false sense of urgency, forcing users to add an item to cart to reveal the price, and difficult cancellations are just a few examples of manipulative design patterns. Growing awareness of these practices is leading to calls for stricter regulatory guidelines and enforcement to protect customers. In July 2023, the FTC filed a complaint against Amazon for using coercive and deceptive design that trapped consumers into signing up for Prime and made it difficult to cancel the subscription. Most recently, the agency announced a final “click-to-cancel” rule that requires sellers to make the cancellation process for subscriptions and memberships easy for customers. These manipulative design patterns frustrate customers and damage loyalty — and put companies at risk of legal fines and reputation damage. Even if you’re not intentionally using these design patterns, your digital experiences may still come across as manipulative. To avoid this, evaluate your experiences by asking whether you are genuinely aiding customers in making informed decisions without obscuring or misrepresenting content.  Reduce bad friction in the UX. Friction does not always mean poor usability. In fact, designing the appropriate level of friction into customer journeys earns customer trust. For example, excessive friction – such as intrusive pop-ups, lengthy forms, or convoluted return policies – confuses users and leads to frustration and abandonment. By contrast, good friction – like requiring multiple steps in a payment process to ensure careful review – builds confidence.   Review your user flows to eliminate bad friction and increase good friction. The US government is taking action on this issue as well: The White House launched its “Time Is Money” initiative to combat corporate practices that make consumer interactions unnecessarily burdensome. That includes excessive paperwork, subscriptions that are difficult to cancel, and use of dysfunctional chatbots that provide incorrect information and make it difficult to get help from a human agent.   Provide clear guidance in forms and error messages. Clear input guidelines and error messages are essential to help users understand what information is required and why. This enhances confidence, but brands often miss it. I shared the story of how vague guidelines and error messaging impacted my choice of insurance provider in a previous blog post. Recently, while shopping with a new retailer, I was frustrated to be asked to create an account — especially since I couldn’t check out as a guest. Additionally, when prompted for my birthday without any explanation, I was left wondering if it was a legal requirement, for marketing purposes, or something else entirely.  Are you clearly communicating what information you need and why in forms? Do error messages clearly explain what’s missing and how to fix the issue? Review your digital experience with these questions in mind and make sure that usability flaws like unclear information don’t negatively impact your customers’ experience.   Let’s connect  The holiday season is a time for new beginnings — so start by enhancing user confidence in your digital experiences. If you’re a Forrester client and would like to discuss this topic further, set up a conversation with me here. You can also follow or connect with me on LinkedIn.  source

The layoffs will cost the company somewhere between $11 million and $13 million for “cash expenditures for severance payments, employee benefits, and related costs” according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) form 8-K (which must be filed to reveal major events that shareholders should be aware of) that the company filed on Wednesday. In a letter to employees on Wednesday, Woodside wrote that the layoffs were needed because “we need to simplify the way we work and operate more efficiently.” “We began by combining teams focused on customer experience (CX) products, including support, sales and marketing, and reallocating people and investments to prioritize our fastest growing employee experience (EX) business. These decisions were made thoughtfully and carefully to set a strong foundation for our future,” Woodside wrote. “To add more focus on our EX, AI, and CX priorities, we are realigning our global workforce, putting us on a path to have a bigger impact for our customers. We’re making these changes while our business is profitable and our AI-powered products are providing increasing customer value. We believe this will help us accelerate our growth and simplify the way we work, so that we’re running Freshworks in a way that’s efficient and scalable.” source

By Sydney Price ( November 6, 2024, 10:19 PM EST) — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has urged a California federal court to ax three of crypto exchange Kraken’s defenses in a case alleging it violated securities laws by offering crypto assets without proper registration, arguing that the court has already rejected Kraken’s claims that the agency lacks authority to bring the case and that existing law is too vague…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source