IBM Told Execs 'Discriminate Or Lose Your Job,' Worker Says

By Carolyn Muyskens ( November 21, 2024, 4:36 PM EST) — IBM rewarded executives for meeting diversity goals and threatened them with punishment for failing to do so, essentially telling them to “discriminate or lose your job,” a white male consultant who was terminated alleged in a suit filed in Michigan federal court on Wednesday…. 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

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Pay Once and Use This PDF Tool Forever

Savvy businesses have discovered a secret weapon in the battle against software subscription fees: Lifetime licenses. Yes, your days of monthly or yearly subscriptions could very well be over if you grab this new PDF tool. SwifDoo PDF Pro doesn’t require a subscription to edit, convert, sign, or manipulate your business’ PDFs. Instead of those painful $20 monthly fees, you’d only have to pay $34.99 once to own this lifetime PDF software for Windows (reg. $129). Goodbye expensive Adobe, hello affordable SwifDoo We understand it might be hard to part with a tool that’s done your business well, but it’s time to cut back on expenses. PDFs are a crucial part of operations, but a basic tool shouldn’t cost you $240 yearly—especially when SwifDoo can do the same things. Here are just some of this affordable PDF software’s features: Add and edit text to update contracts, resumes, or reports. Crop and adjust images to tweak pictures or enhance a presentation. Create PDFs from various formats like Microsoft Office documents, CAD drawings, or images. Scan paper files to digital to digitize documents or notes. Translate documents when working with international clients. Like any good PDF tool, SwifDoo also has OCR. This means you can search a document for text without reading through the entire thing manually. You might search for a name, number, or quote and easily copy-paste it from the PDF. Aren’t you glad it’s not Adobe? Check out now to get this Adobe Acrobat alternative for only $34.99, compared to $20 monthly for the rest of your business days. Get SwifDoo PDF Pro here for an unbeatable price. Prices and availability subject to change. source

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DOJ Urges Chrome, Android Sales In Google Case

By Bryan Koenig ( November 21, 2024, 12:19 AM EST) — The U.S. Department of Justice late Wednesday formally asked a Washington, D.C., federal judge to order a range of steps to end Google’s monopolization of general search services and the text ads shown alongside search results, most notably by forcing the company to spin off the Chrome browser…. 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

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7. News influencers on Instagram

News influencers – People who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers on any of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) or YouTube. Political orientation – A measure of a news influencer’s partisan or ideological views. A right-leaning news influencer is one who publicly expresses that they identify as a Republican or conservative or support Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. A left-leaning news influencer is one who publicly expresses that they identify as a Democrat, liberal or progressive or support Vice President Kamala Harris (or supported President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race) in the 2024 election. This information was found in the bio, profile picture, banner image, pinned posts or recent posts on an influencer’s social media account, any personal website or professional page, and prominent media coverage. Values and identities – Language or imagery in the bio, profile picture, banner image or pinned posts on an influencer’s social media account that expresses specific beliefs or identities. News organization affiliation – An influencer with this affiliation is one who either currently works for or previously worked for a news organization, as well as freelancers who have regularly contributed to news organizations. A news organization can be any news outlet that has a staff and multiple bylines. Researchers considered affiliated influencers to have this background regardless of their news organization’s political orientation, audience size or primary publishing method (digital, TV, print, etc.). Major social media sites – The five primary sites we studied, chosen based on audience size and the presence of discussion about news: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube. A majority of Instagram news influencers (57%) explicitly claim a clear political party or ideology. Within this group, slightly more say they are on the political right (30% of all Instagram news influencers) than the left (25%). Influencers were categorized by whether they identify with a political party or ideology or expressed support for the Democratic or Republican presidential candidate in their social media profile, posts, personal website or media coverage. About this chapter This chapter looks at news influencers on Instagram. Virtually all of them also have accounts on other sites. For analysis of news influencers in general across social media sites, read the report overview. In this report, news influencers are people with large followings on social media sites who regularly post about current events or civic issues. Refer to the methodology for details. Related: Instagram users’ experiences with news Some news influencers on Instagram also identify with specific groups or causes. For instance, 7% identify as LGBTQ+ or pro-LGBTQ+ rights, and 7% are pro-Palestinian, while 3% are pro-Israeli. These positions can be expressed in words, images or emojis (including flags). About twice as many Instagram news influencers are men (63%) as are women (32%). By contrast, among Americans who regularly get news on Instagram, 59% are women. Refer to the methodology for details on how researchers categorized news influencers by gender. Eight-in-ten news influencers on Instagram (80%) do not have a current or former affiliation with a news organization. But 20% have worked in the news industry in some capacity. For more details on the differences between influencers who have worked for a news organization and those who have not, read Chapter 4. What are Instagram news influencers posting about? To get a sense of what news influencers are posting about, researchers collected and analyzed all public posts by the 500 news influencers in our sample for three separate weeks: July 15-21, July 29-Aug. 4 and Aug. 19-25. There were many major events related to the election in or around these weeks, including the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump on July 13, the Republican National Convention July 15-18, President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race July 21 and the Democratic National Convention Aug. 19-22. While 43% of posts by Instagram news influencers that focused on current events during this period were about politics or the election, this was lower than the share of political posts on other sites. Instead, a relatively high share of Instagram posts focused on social issues (21%) and international issues (18%). Many of the posts about social issues focused on race (7% of all news-related posts) or LGBTQ+ issues (3%). And a large majority of the internationally focused posts were about the Israel-Hamas war (14%). Instagram had a much higher percentage of posts about this war than any other site during this period. What other sites are Instagram news influencers on? Virtually all news influencers on Instagram are also on at least one other site. In other words, there are almost no influencers whose presence is entirely on Instagram. In fact, about three-quarters (78%) of all Instagram news influencers are on at least three other sites, including about half (51%) who are on four or more sites (in addition to Instagram). The most common other social media site for Instagram news influencers is X: 83% of Instagram news influencers are also on the site, formerly known as Twitter. About two-thirds (65%) are also on YouTube, and more than half (56%) are on Facebook. Fewer Instagram news influencers are also on TikTok (45%). Not only are Instagram news influencers on other sites, but many also have other ways of connecting with their audiences beyond social media. About four-in-ten (43%) host a podcast, and a quarter have a newsletter that fans can subscribe to. Like news influencers on other social media sites, most of those on Instagram seek financial support from their audiences. This includes 57% who offer subscriptions (Instagram offers a subscription tool), 39% who solicit donations and 31% who sell merchandise. Overall, 72% use at least one of these methods to bring in money. A small share of Instagram news influencers (8%) also have a public Discord server where they can further connect with fans and followers. source

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DataStax CTO Discusses RAG's Role in Reducing AI Hallucinations

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) has become essential for IT leaders and enterprises looking to implement generative AI. By using a large language model (LLM) and RAG, enterprises can ground an LLM in enterprise data, improving the accuracy of outputs. But how does RAG work? What are the use cases for RAG? And are there any real alternatives? TechRepublic sat down with Davor Bonaci, chief technology officer and executive vice president at database and AI company DataStax, to find out how RAG is being leveraged in the market during the rollout of generative AI in 2024 and what he sees as the technology’s next step in 2025. What is Retrieval Augmented Generation? RAG is a technique that improves the relevance and accuracy of generative AI LLM model outputs by adding extended or augmented context from an enterprise. It allows IT leaders to use generative AI LLMs for enterprise use cases. Bonaci explained that while LLMs have “basically been trained on all the information available on the internet,” up to a certain cut-off date, depending on the model, their language and general knowledge strengths are offset by significant and well-known problems, such as AI hallucinations. SEE: Zetaris on why federated data lakes are the future for powering AI “If you want to use it in an enterprise setting, you must ground it in enterprise data. Otherwise, you get a lot of hallucinations,” he said. “With RAG, instead of just asking the LLM to produce something, you say, ‘I want you to produce something, but please consider these things that I know to be accurate.’” How does RAG work in an enterprise setting? RAG gives an LLM reference to an enterprise information set, such as a knowledge base, a database, or a document set. For instance, DataStax’s main product is its vector database, Astra DB, which enterprises are using to support the building of AI applications in enterprises. In practice, a query input given by a user would go through a retrieval step — a vector search — identifying the most relevant documents or pieces of information from a pre-defined knowledge source. This could include enterprise documents, academic papers, or FAQs. The retrieved information is then fed into the generative model as additional context alongside the original query, allowing the model to ground its response in real-world, up-to-date, or domain-specific knowledge. This grounding reduces the risk of hallucinations that could be deal breakers for an enterprise. AI resources from TechRepublic Premium How much does RAG improve the output of generative AI models? The difference between using generative AI with and without RAG is “night and day,” Bonaci said. For an enterprise, the propensity for an LLM to hallucinate essentially means they are “unusable” or only for very limited use cases. The RAG technique is what opens the door to generative AI for enterprises. “At the end of the day, they [LLMs] have knowledge from seeing things on the internet,” Bonaci explained. “But if you ask a question that is kind of out of the left field, they’re going to give you a very confident answer that may … be completely wrong.” SEE: Generative AI has become a source of costly mistakes for enterprises Bonaci noted that RAG techniques can boost the accuracy of LLM outputs to over 90% for non-reasoning tasks, depending on the models and the benchmarks used. For complex reasoning tasks, they are more likely to deliver between 70-80% accuracy using RAG techniques. What are some RAG use cases? RAG is used across several typical generative AI use cases for organisations, including: Automation Using LLMs augmented with RAG, enterprises can automate repeatable tasks. A common use case for automation is customer support, where the system can be empowered to search documentation, provide answers, and take actions like canceling a ticket or making a purchase. Personalisation RAG can be leveraged to synthesize and summarise large amounts of information. Bonaci gave the example of customer reviews, which can be summarised in a personalised way that is relevant to the user’s context, such as their location, past purchases, or travel preferences. Search RAG can be applied to improve search results in an enterprise, making them more relevant and context-specific. Bonaci noted how RAG helps streaming service users find movies or content relevant to their location or interests, even if the search terms don’t exactly match available content. How can knowledge graphs be used with RAG? Using knowledge graphs with RAG is an “advanced version” of basic RAG. Bonaci explained that while a vector search in basic RAG identifies similarities in a vector database — making it well-suited for general knowledge and natural human language — it has limitations for certain enterprise use cases. In a scenario where a mobile phone company offers multiple-tiered plans with varying inclusions, a customer inquiry — such as whether international roaming is included — would require the AI to decide. A knowledge graph can help organise information to help it figure out what applies. SEE: Digital maturity key to success in AI for cybersecurity “The problem is the content in those plan documents are conflicting with each other,” Bonaci said. “So the system doesn’t know which one is true. So you could use a knowledge graph to help you organise and relate information correctly, to help you resolve these conflicts.” Are there any alternatives to RAG for enterprises? The main alternative to RAG is fine-tuning a generative AI model. With fine-tuning, instead of using enterprise data as a prompt, data is fed into the model itself to create an influenced data set to prime the model for use in a way that can leverage that enterprise data. Bonaci said that, to date, RAG has been the method widely agreed upon in the industry as the most effective way to make generative AI relevant for an enterprise. “We do see people fine-tuning models, but it just solves a small niche of problems, and so it has not been widely accepted as a solution,” he said. source

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High Court To Review Legality Of FCC's Subsidy Fees

By Christopher Cole ( November 22, 2024, 4:00 PM EST) — The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to review whether fees collected to support the Federal Communications Commission’s array of telecom subsidy programs for low-income consumers, schools and rural healthcare run afoul of constitutional limits on taxing authority…. 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

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Mistral unleashes Pixtral Large and upgrades Le Chat into full-on ChatGPT competitor

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Mistral, the French startup that made waves last year with a record-setting seed funding amount for Europe, has launched a slew of updates today including a new, large foundational model named Pixtral Large. The company is further upgrading its free web-chased chatbot, Le Chat, adding image generation, web search, and an interactive “canvas,” matching the features of and turning it into a more serious and direct competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. As Mistral AI CEO and co-founder Arthur Mensch wrote on his account on the social network X, “At Mistral, we’ve grown aware that to create the best AI experience, one needs to co-design models and product interfaces. Pixtral was trained with high-impact front-end applications in mind and is a good example of that.” Users who want to try out the new Le Chat features will need to enable them as beta features on the web interface. Note that Le Chat access does require a free Mistral, Google, or Microsoft account to use. Pixtral Large — open source multimodal AI Pixtral Large, Mistral’s new 124-billion-parameter model, builds upon its predecessor, Mistral Large 2, unveiled over the summer 2024, as well as its first multimodal model, Pixtral 12-B, released in September. It includes a 123-billion-parameter decoder and a 1-billion-parameter vision encoder, enabling it to excel in both text and visual data processing. Parameters, as you’ll recall, refer to the number of settings that govern a model’s inputs and outputs, with more parameters generally connoting a more capable, knowledgable and performant model. According to a post by Mistral Head of Developer Relations Sophia Yang to her X account, Pixtral Large excels at “multilingual OCR [optical character recognition], reasoning, chart understanding, and more.” Yang included a screenshot of Pixtral Large in Le Chat analyzing a receipt uploaded by a user using OCR, showing its capabilities for ingesting and documenting expenses, as well as in this case, splitting a bill with a tip included. With a context window of 128,000 tokens, Pixtral Large is able to handle up to 30 high-resolution images per input or around a 300-page book, again equivalent to leading OpenAI GPT series models. The model demonstrates state-of-the-art performance across diverse benchmarks, including MathVista, DocVQA, and VQAv2, making it ideal for tasks like chart interpretation, document analysis, and image understanding. While the model and weights are available for download freely on Hugging Face, they are released under a custom Mistral AI Research License, which specifies only non-commercial, research-focused applications. Those looking to use it commercially will need to do so through Mistral’s API on its Le Platforme managed web service, or obtain a separate license from the company directly through a contact form, meaning it is not actually fully open source. Still, by offering Pixtral Large, Mistral AI empowers researchers and developers to harness advanced multimodal AI while ensuring responsible and ethical use. Le Chat comes for ChatGPT with rival matching features At the center of Mistral’s AI tools is Le Chat, a free platform now enhanced with new features powered by Pixtral Large. Designed for diverse use cases like research, ideation, and automation, Le Chat integrates text, vision, and interactive functionalities into a seamless productivity experience. New Features of Le Chat: 1. Web Search with Citations: Users can supplement the AI’s knowledge with real-time web searches, complete with source citations for transparency. 2. Canvas for Ideation: This innovative interface allows users to create, modify, and collaborate on documents, presentations, and designs in an interactive new space that appears to the left of the chatbot interface. As Yang wrote about it on X: Le Chat Canvas is “great for creative ideation. You can use Canvas to create documents, presentations, code, mockups… the list goes on.” It comes just six weeks after OpenAI released its own Canvas sidebar interactive element for ChatGPT, which many viewed as a feature designed to rival Anthropic’s earlier Artifacts release for its Claude chatbot. 3. Advanced Document and Image Analysis: With Pixtral Large, Le Chat can now process and summarize complex PDFs, extracting insights from graphs, tables, equations, and more. 4. Image Generation: Through a partnership with separate image model startup Black Forest Labs, Le Chat now includes image generation capabilities powered by the Flux Pro model, enabling users to produce high-quality visuals directly in the chat interface. This is a clear answer to OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 integration in ChatGPT (both models from OpenAI, however) as well as the second big integration of Black Forest Labs’ new models into a leading AI foundation model provider’s offerings, following its earlier team-up with Elon Musk’s xAI to power image generation in that company’s Grok-2 chatbot available through X, the social network Musk also owns. 5. Task Agents for Automation: Customizable agents automate repetitive tasks like summarizing meeting minutes, processing invoices, or scanning receipts, saving users time and effort. These features position Le Chat as a versatile AI assistant, capable of handling tasks traditionally requiring multiple tools. Mistral AI highlights Le Chat’s comprehensive feature set and its accessibility compared to platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. While competitors may require premium subscriptions for similar functionalities, Le Chat provides an integrated, multimodal experience entirely for free during its beta phase. Mistral is coming to play hard With Pixtral Large and the enhanced Le Chat, Mistral is flexing its research and development muscles. Even as some in the tech industry believe that the cost of intelligence is being driven down and making life more difficult for model providers to find revenue streams, Mistral isn’t giving up on advancing its offerings to compete with the other leaders in the field, and doing so on fewer parameters — 124 billion compared to say, 405 billion from Meta’s latest Llama 3.1 release. However, Mistral is still missing some of the advanced voice and audio features found on rivals such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode or Google’s Gemini Live. A recent survey by Kong showed despite

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1. Americans’ experiences with social media news influencers

As the wider political and media world has taken notice of news influencers, Americans have begun to incorporate these individuals’ posts into their news habits: About one-in-five (21%) say they regularly get news from news influencers on social media. This data comes from a survey of more than 10,000 U.S. adults conducted in late July and early August 2024. The term “news influencers” was defined for survey respondents as “individuals who have a large following on social media and often post about news or political or social issues.” This is similar to how we define this group in our analysis of a sample of 500 news influencers. This chapter dives into the attitudes and experiences of Americans who regularly get news from news influencers. Similar to other patterns of social media use and news consumption on social media, younger adults are much more likely to get news from news influencers on social media. Nearly four-in-ten Americans ages 18 to 29 (37%) say they regularly get news from news influencers, compared with just 7% of those 65 and older. Virtually identical shares of Republicans (21%) and Democrats (22%), including independents who lean toward each party, say they regularly get news from news influencers. White Americans are less likely than other racial or ethnic groups to get news from news influencers. Only 17% of White U.S. adults say they do this, versus higher shares among Hispanic (30%), Asian (29%) and Black adults (27%). In addition, adults with lower incomes are more likely to get news from news influencers. About a quarter of those with lower incomes (26%) do this, compared with 21% of those in the middle-income category and 16% of those with higher incomes. What types of information do Americans get from news influencers? It is common for Americans who regularly get news from news influencers to see several types of information from these creators. Overwhelming majorities say they get all four types of content asked about in the survey: basic facts (90%), opinions (87%), funny posts (87%) and breaking news (83%). To gauge whether people are seeking out influencers whose opinions align with their own, we asked all Americans who say they get opinions from news influencers whether or not they mostly agree with these opinions. Most people who get opinions from news influencers (61%) say they see opinions that they agree and disagree with about equally. Three-in-ten say they mostly see opinions they agree with from news influencers, while just 2% say they mostly disagree with them. Similarly, a 2023 Pew Research Center study of news and information on podcasts found that podcast listeners who hear political opinions are much more likely to say those opinions line up with their own opinions than that they are different (47% vs. 7%). Most Americans who get news from news influencers see the content as helpful, unique Adults who regularly get news from news influencers generally say content from news influencers has helped them better understand current events and civic issues and that it is at least somewhat different from the news they get from other sources. Among those who get news from news influencers: 65% say news influencers on social media have helped them better understand current events and civic issues, while just 9% say they have made them more confused. About a quarter (26%) say they have not made much of a difference. Seven-in-ten say the news they get from news influencers is at least somewhat different from the news they get from other sources, including roughly a quarter who say it is extremely or very different (23%). About three-in-ten (29%) say news from news influencers is not too or not at all different from news from other sources. Americans’ connections with news influencers Among U.S. adults who regularly get news from news influencers, 58% say they follow or subscribe to at least one news influencer on social media. The substantial share who do not follow an influencer may be a reflection of algorithmic social media feeds that show people posts from accounts they do not follow. A smaller share of those who get news from news influencers (31%) say they feel personally connected to one of these content creators. When asked if there are any news influencers they feel they have a personal connection to, about seven-in-ten say no (69%). Political ideology linked with differing views on news influencers While Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party get news from news influencers at the same rate as Democrats and Democratic leaners, Republicans who get news from news influencers are more inclined to say this news is extremely or very different from the news they get from other sources (28% vs. 19%). On the other hand, Democrats who get news from news influencers are slightly more likely than Republicans to say it helps them better understand current events and civic issues (69% vs. 62%). People at either end of the ideological spectrum are particularly likely to express this view. Among those who regularly get news from influencers, Republicans who identify as conservative are more inclined than those who say they are moderate or liberal to say news influencers have helped them better understand current events and civic issues (67% vs. 55%). And liberal Democrats are more likely than moderate or conservative Democrats to say this (76% vs. 60%). Among those who get opinions from news influencers, similar shares of Republicans (31%) and Democrats (32%) say they mostly get opinions they agree with. Again, however, those at the ends of the ideological spectrum are more likely to express this view. Among those who regularly get news from news influencers and say opinions are one thing they see, identical shares of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats (42% each) say they mostly see opinions they agree with. By contrast, much smaller shares of conservative or moderate Democrats (20%) and moderate or liberal Republicans (13%) say this is the case. Instead, these groups are more likely to say they agree and

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Announcing Forrester’s 2024 Security & Risk Enterprise Leadership Award Winner And Finalist

Forrester’s Security & Risk Enterprise Leadership Award recognizes organizations that have transformed their security, privacy, and risk management functions into capabilities that build a trusted and resilient business and fuel the organization’s long-term success. Congratulations to Schneider Electric, this year’s winner, and our finalist, Piedmont. Schneider Electric Earns And Sustains Trust By Creating Safe, Secure, And Resilient Digital Ecosystems Schneider Electric is a global leader in energy management and automation, with a presence in over 100 countries. As our winner, Schneider Electric stands out for its comprehensive and structured approach to trust, privacy, and talent management in its security and risk program. Its Trust Charter, aligned with the company’s code of conduct, shapes employee behavior and attitudes. Dedicated employee events such as Trust Week further enhance the organization’s “trust IQ.” Privacy is treated as a distinct value beyond compliance, with strong “privacy by design” and awareness initiatives. Schneider Electric’s Cybersecurity Talent Development initiative promotes upskilling and reskilling, addressing both current and future needs. The company aims to enhance resilience by continuing to raise the bar on cyber defense and strengthening its capabilities to respond to incidents. In detail, our judges were particularly impressed with Schneider Electric for its: Trust Charter and Trust Center. The Trust Charter integrates ethics, safety, sustainability, quality, cybersecurity, and governance, demonstrating a holistic approach to security and risk management. The Trust Center is designed to address a growing number of cybersecurity, product security, and data protection-related requests from customers and stakeholders. It serves as a one-stop shop for all global incoming queries, ensuring that responses are validated, standardized, and qualitative. Strong enterprise commitment to product security and privacy. Schneider Electric’s focus on product security came through loud and clear, with cybersecurity and product security equally presented to the board in a dedicated meeting. Examples include its emphasis on embedding security into R&D and the overall development lifecycle, a dedicated Trust Center team to address common security and privacy concerns and customer requests within a specific timeframe, and regular CISO-to-CISO conversations with customers to foster trust and maintain transparency. Detailed focus on cybersecurity talent management. Schneider ensures that it looks outside of security for emerging talent within other functions. This creates clear role descriptions and enables career and training paths to move into different roles within security. The organization not only has a strong focus on upskilling and reskilling employees but also offers specific training and a cyber badge distinction for all employees interfacing with customers. Embedded approach to Zero Trust principles and cyber resilience. Schneider Electric embraces the principles of Zero Trust in its IT core and, of course, in product security. As attacks on manufacturing and critical infrastructure increase, breaches are inevitable. What sets companies apart is their readiness and response to these incidents. Schneider Electric places a strong emphasis on continuous improvement and conducting global cyber crisis simulations multiple times a year, which further enhances its resilience strategy. Robust third-party risk management. Finally, our judges noted that Schneider Electric’s third-party risk management program extends assessments to fourth+ parties and requires attestations and critical executive-level discussions with suppliers. Piedmont Prioritizes The Protection Of Patient Data What impressed us with Piedmont’s submission was its clear commitment to making a positive difference in every life the company touches by implementing robust security and risk management strategies. Piedmont has established a comprehensive information security team that focuses on several areas. These include developing clear policies, implementing rigorous controls such as multifactor authentication and encryption, and ensuring that security and privacy are shared responsibilities across departments. Regular risk assessments, continuous training, and strong leadership support are key components of the program, which aims to protect patient data, stay ahead of emerging threats, and foster a culture of accountability and trust. Strengths of Piedmont’s security and risk program include: Comprehensive controls. In an industry known for underfunding essential security technology, Piedmont has implemented multifactor authentication, encryption, secure remote access, patching, and antimalware protection across the enterprise. Shared responsibility. Security and privacy are viewed as shared responsibilities across various departments, ensuring that risk is addressed and that controls are implemented throughout processes. Continuous improvement. Regular risk assessments, proactive threat identification, and continuous training and awareness education help maintain a high level of security and adaptability to emerging threats. You can learn more about Schneider Electric’s approach to building business resiliency through enterprise security and risk leadership at Forrester’s Security & Risk Summit, taking place in Baltimore and digitally on December 9–11, 2024. Presenters from Schneider Electric will be there to share more about its approach in a keynote session. We look forward to your stories on how your security and risk teams are building trust and driving business performance. Get ready to submit your entry in next year’s Security & Risk Enterprise Leadership Award in 2025! source

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Limited Time Price Drop: Code Faster and Better for Just $28

TL;DR: Turbocharge your programming, particularly your collaborations, with Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 for Windows — it’s on sale for just $27.97 through November 21. Time is money, so boosting your productivity can have a significant impact on your bottom line, such as when you can collaborate on programming seamlessly and efficiently across platforms with your teams. That is exactly what Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 for Windows allows you to do, and it’s on sale right now and through November 21, at just $27.97. Code faster Less typing means faster coding. With IntelliCode, Visual Studio can complete a line or an entire block of code for you. It can even list the next best options to choose from, all of which help you code more accurately, as well as more rapidly. Meanwhile, CodeLens offers a comprehensive view of your codebase, displaying authors, recent changes, tests and more so you can make more informed decisions. Collaborate Live Share offers personalized coding sessions with real-time collaboration, including access controls and customized editor settings to speed up editing and debugging cycles. Even more importantly, it ensures that everyone’s code remains consistent. Multi-language programming Best of all, Visual Studio allows you to program across platforms and languages. Create cross-platform desktop and mobile apps. Edit ASP.NET pages as they’re running using the web designer view. Use Blazor to design responsive web user interfaces in C# or build, test and debug C++ and .NET apps in Linux. You can even employ hot reload capabilities across both of them. Why Microsoft Visual Studio Basically, you can turbocharge your productivity by using advanced tools and built-in integrations to craft high-quality code. Then you can deliver the most innovative apps, no matter how challenging your development workflows are. It’s easy to see why Visual Studio has a perfect 5-star rating on Microsoft Choice Software. It’s always good for business when you can learn new skills, but it’s every bit as important to have the tools that can make your work better, easier and more efficient. Get Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 for Windows today while it’s on sale for just $27.97. Sales end November 21 at 23:59 Pacific Time. Prices and availability subject to change. source

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