Middleware Consulting International

More Individualized Approach Helps Optimize Both Security & User Experience

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., — IBM (NYSE: IBM) Security today announced it is extending its artificial intelligence (AI) technology originally developed to protect users in the financial services industry, to clients in all industries via the company’s identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) offering. IBM Cloud Identity now features AI-based adaptive access capabilities that help continually assess employee or consumer user risk levels when accessing applications and services. The solution escalates suspicious user interactions for further authentication, while those identified as lower risk are “fast tracked” so they can access applications and services they need.

With data breaches on the rise, traditional means of securing access, like passwords, are often not enough to prevent unauthorized access. The rise of credential-stuffing attacks, where a malicious actor obtains a list of credentials and tests them at various other sites using a bot, demonstrates that many password combinations have been leaked. According to a 2019 report, compromised and weak credentials are cited as the cause for more than 80% of data breaches.¹ Meanwhile, 2017 research found that large companies are managing hundreds of applications – up to 788 custom applications on average for companies with more than 50,000 employees.² Considering the amount of programs and passwords that employees are managing between their professional and personal lives, it is increasingly important that new security measures do not hinder user experience.

“Companies are constantly trying to optimize both security and user experience, but the trick is ensuring security is not disrupting the everyday user journey,” said Jason Keenaghan, Director, IBM Security. “IBM Cloud Identity with adaptive access is using AI to give organizations a holistic view of context for user access, based on indicators like malware and risk indicators, device insights, and user behavior, to help them focus security on high risk logins and give the majority of users seamless access to their accounts and applications.”

Adaptive Access: Smart Context

Many organizations continue to rely on older username and password methods to provide employee and consumer users access to services. Due to the patchwork of applications and solutions organizations are working with, they may not be able to deploy more modern security layers. This can create a blind spot that prevents security teams from easily implementing rules that flag suspicious indicators like malicious logins, unknown locations, unrecognized devices, and whether a user is on a company’s network VPN.

IBM Cloud Identity is an identity-as-a-service solution that helps organizations connect every user to every application using adaptive access. Through the use of AI, the service helps simplify access management and security for users by assigning user risk levels based on a defined set of factors. With these risk levels, administrators can create rules that level up or level down authentication – implementing strong authentication but only when needed. The service leverages the following features to determine risk and enable adaptive access decisions:

• Artificial Intelligence – a user behavior score is assigned based on the level of trust or risk assessed for each user. A number of factors are assessed including web intelligence, location data, malware and risk indicators, and device insights. For example, using AI, the system can detect irregular mouse movements or flag a user trying to login from a browser infected with keylogging malware. IBM Cloud Identity with adaptive access leverages IBM Trusteer AI technology to assess users based on a fraud evidence database, fraudulent pattern analysis, and cross-organizational patterning.
• Smart Access and Seamless Login: Since AI capabilities are able to assign risk levels, only users considered to pose a higher threat are prompted to go through multifactor authentication or denied access. By only prompting specific users to further verify their identification, rather than all users, organizations may be able to reduce operational expenses related to items such as two-factor authentication and help desk password resets for both current and new users. This can potentially lead to cost cuts considering organizations spanning different sectors have allocated more than $1 million per year to password-related support alone.³
• Low-code Deployment: Adaptive access policies can be created and applied to applications and APIs with little to no development effort, and without application changes.

“According to our primary research results, the establishment of low-friction end user experiences has the potential to help boost security effectiveness while reducing management efforts and related costs,” said Steve Brasen, Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates. “By injecting intelligence into access processes, IBM is helping its customers implement the appropriate level of authentication enforcement for users while minimizing impacts to their productivity.”

LONDON, Aug. 28, 2019 — The Vodafone Business and IBM  venture, which launched earlier this year, today announced it has signed an eight-year deal with National Express, a leading UK-based transport provider with services in eight countries. The agreement covers the provision of cloud and digital services that will underpin National Express’ ‘digital first’ approach; to use the latest technologies to raise customer and safety standards, drive efficiencies and grow its business.

Vodafone Business and IBM announced their intent to join forces in January this year, bringing together their respective strengths in connectivity and hybrid cloud.  Together, they offer customers straightforward access to the technologies needed to integrate multiple clouds and prepare for the next wave of transformation enabled by 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), edge computing and software defined networking (SDN).

IBM and Vodafone Venture

IBM and Vodafone Ensure Smooth Ride to Hybrid Cloud for UKs National Express

Under the agreement, the Vodafone Business and IBM venture will first modernise National Express’ IT estate by moving to IBM Cloud and implementing a hybrid cloud strategy, building on the existing connectivity services provided by Vodafone Business. This will enable National Express to effectively manage multiple clouds in different locations and from different vendors; and to seamlessly scale up and down to support usage spikes.  Additional security and risk management will be added to protect the transport operator’s technology infrastructure and provide greater resilience.

This activity will lay the foundation for future innovation and enable National Express to speed the development of new customer-focused innovations – such as personalised passenger experiences, flexible payment options and always-connected vehicles.

Looking ahead, the Vodafone Business and IBM venture will give National Express access to other cloud services and new technologies such as 5G, IoT, edge computing and analytics. Such technologies will enable the transport operator to adapt to today’s digitally savvy consumers, create the best possible customer experience and drive operational excellence.

Debbie O’Shea, Group Chief Information Officer for National Express said, “Working with the new Vodafone Business and IBM venture forms part of our continued investment in technology to better support our strategic ambitions. This partnership enables us to move to a cloud environment giving us a future-proofed platform with increased flexibility that will better support our business.  It also will provide access to emerging and innovative new technologies.”

Greg Hyttenrauch, Cloud and Security Director, Vodafone Business commented, “This flagship win is a powerful demonstration of the value the Vodafone Business and IBM venture can bring to customers. As cloud services and connectivity become ever more inseparable, there is a clear need for the combined expertise we can deliver. We will provide National Express with the holistic solution it requires to drive digital innovation across its business – faster, simpler and at scale.”

“Leading enterprises around the world are turning to IBM and its hybrid cloud capabilities to modernise their businesses and transform operations,” said Michael Valocchi, IBM General Manager of the venture with Vodafone. “By moving to the IBM Cloud and implementing a hybrid cloud strategy, National Express can now tap the combined strengths of IBM and Vodafone and introduce new, innovative services faster and succeed in a digital world.”

Vodafone has a long-standing relationship with National Express and already provides wide area network connectivity and a Secure Internet Gateway.

About National Express
National Express Group is a leading public transport operator with bus, coach and rail services in the UK, Continental Europe, North Africa, North America and the Middle East. Passengers made 898 million journeys on our services in 2018.

About Vodafone
Vodafone UK connects people, businesses and devices to help our customers benefit from digital innovation. Our services span mobile, fixed line, broadband and the Internet of Things (IoT). We employ around 11,000 people across the UK, and operate more than 400 retail stores nationwide.

Having made the UK’s first mobile phone call and sent the first text, Vodafone has a history as a tech pioneer. In 2018 we made the UK’s first live holographic call using 5G, and were first to start carrying live 5G traffic from a site in Salford, Greater Manchester. Today we serve over 18 million mobile and fixed line customers in the UK, with 4G network coverage at 99%. Our customers voted us the UK’s Best Mobile Network at the 2018 Trusted Reviews Awards for the second year in a row. To help deliver Gigabit UK, we are rolling out full fibre broadband across 10 cities in partnership with CityFibre, reaching one million homes and business by 2021.

Our ReConnect programme is supporting women and men back into work after a career break, our IoT technology is working to create a low-carbon society and our free Digital Parenting magazine is helping families across the UK to navigate the online world safely. For two years running, we have been named a Top 100 Employer by Stonewall.

We are part of Vodafone Group, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, with mobile operations in 25 countries, partnerships with mobile networks in 44 more, and fixed broadband operations in 19 markets.

Anheuser-Busch InBev, Cisco GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, Nokia, Schneider Electric and Vodafone to Tackle Supplier Information Management Challenges

ARMONK, N.Y., — IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Chainyard today announced Trust Your Supplier (TYS), a new blockchain network designed to improve supplier qualification, validation, onboarding and life cycle information management. Anheuser-Busch InBev, Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, Nokia, Schneider Electric and Vodafone are founding participants alongside IBM in the network and share a common goal of solving challenges related to supplier information management. IBM’s industry expertise and Chainyard’s product capabilities building on IBM Blockchain Platform have brought this solution to market.

Traditional methods of managing suppliers often involve cumbersome manual processes, which make it difficult to verify identities and track documents like ISO certifications, bank account information, tax certifications, and certificates of insurance throughout the lifecycle of a supplier. By using a decentralized approach and an immutable audit trail built on blockchain, Trust Your Supplier is designed to eliminate manual time-consuming processes and help reduce the risk of fraud and errors, ultimately creating frictionless connectivity across supply chains. By 2023, blockchain will support the global movement and tracking of $2 trillion of goods and services annually, according to technology research firm Gartner Inc.*

“Blockchain has the ability to completely transform how companies onboard and manage their supplier network for the future,” said Renee Ure, Chief Supply Chain Officer for Lenovo’s Data Center Group. “Through Trust Your Supplier, both buyers and suppliers will the see the procurement benefits of blockchain through reductions in cost, complexity and speed.”

Trust Your Supplier creates a digital passport for supplier identity on the blockchain network that allows suppliers to share information with any permissioned buyer on the network. Blockchain ensures a permissioned based data sharing network. This should help reduce the time and cost associated with qualifying, validating and managing new suppliers while creating new business opportunities among suppliers and buyers. Third-party validators, such as Dun & Bradstreet, Ecovadis and RapidRatings provide outside verification or audit capabilities directly on the network.

The Trust Your Supplier blockchain network can also connect existing procurement business networks by relaying necessary supplier data required for exchanging Purchase Orders and invoices, without the need for suppliers to enter it in multiple different networks and automating on-boarding process to those networks. The IBM Supply Chain Business Network can connect to Trust Your Supplier using open industry programming interfaces for access to existing verified supplier information.

“Working with IBM and Chainyard on this blockchain initiative represents a great opportunity for Nokia to further enhance our suppliers’ experience and optimize the onboarding process,” said Sanjay Mehta, Vice President Procurement, Nokia. “Using the latest technology to address a classical challenge will be of benefit for everyone, and further increase the speed of using innovative solutions.”

IBM has over 18,500 suppliers around the world and will begin using the Trust Your Supplier network initially onboarding 4,000 of its own North American suppliers over the next few months. IBM Procurement projects a 70 to 80 percent reduction in the cycle time to onboard new suppliers, with a potential 50 percent reduction in administrative costs within its own business.

The Trust Your Supplier network is currently in limited availability with existing participants with plans for commercial availability later in Quarter 3 of 2019. TYS is built on the IBM Blockchain Platform hosted on the IBM Cloud.

Announcement of Windy Haven being An Authorized Business Partner of HCL!

With the great pleasure we announce that Windy Haven is now an authorized business partner of HCL Technologies (HCL). Windy Haven and HCL Technologies have signed Master Reseller Program Agreement under which Windy Haven is authorized to resell HCL Software, subscription and support in the following product categories: Application Security, Collaboration, Dev Ops, Digital Commerce, Digital Experience, Endpoint Management, Enterprise Marketing, HCL Informix, Mainframe, Workload Automation.

“Impressive roadmap and steps HCL is doing to meet commitments for the future of all the acquisition portfolio instill confidence in the continued customers loyalty growth.  Most of our partners and clients are really impressed with the value of digital solutions delivered by HCL. We do believe in successful business with HCL,”- underlined Alexey Nesterov, Business Development Director, Windy Haven.

As of June 30, 2019 IBM will not processed Renewals for products acquired by HCL. These renewals can now be processed with HCL’s business partners. New orders for the products received after that time should be placed with HCL, not IBM. HCL Business Partners are the correct way to purchase HCL Software.

Welcome to Windy Haven to place new orders for HCL Software!

Contacts us for orders and support.

About HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies is a next-generation global technology company that helps enterprises reimagine their businesses for the digital age. Our technology products, services and engineering are built on four decades of innovation, with a world-renowned management philosophy, a strong culture of invention and risk-taking, and a relentless focus on customer relationships. With a worldwide network of R&D, innovation labs and delivery centers, and 137,000+ ‘Ideapreneurs’ working in 44 countries, HCL serves leading enterprises across key industries, including 250 of the Fortune 500 and 650 of the Global 2000. HCL generated consolidated revenues of USD 8.6 billion for for Financial Year Ended 31st Mar, 2019. For more information visit: https://www.hcltech.com

About Windy Haven

Windy Haven Ltd was established in 2012 for overseas software trading. The average annual turnover is about GBP 15 million. We develop partnerships with software vendors and system integrators across the globe to bring modern and proved IT solutions and services to the U.K. market. For more information visit: http://www.windyhaven.com

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – JULY 3, 2019: ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, IBM, Scentre Group and Westpac have jointly launched a live pilot for Lygon, a new digital platform using blockchain technology to transform the way businesses obtain and manage bank guarantees that are often required as part of a retail property lease.

The launch marks a significant milestone in the global development of blockchain solutions. Lygon represents an industry solution that the participants could not have individually implemented. The founding members have brought together their deep understanding of industry processes to navigate from proof of concept to a live platform that will directly benefit customers and address their feedback on the way in which bank guarantees have been issued to date.

Historically, bank guarantees have been issued manually and on paper. Digitising this process reduces the risk of fraud for all parties involved, decreases the potential for errors and significantly increases the speed of execution.

Initial findings suggest that the Lygon platform has the potential to reduce the time it takes to issue a bank guarantee from up to a month to on or around the same day. Lygon has the potential to benefit many sectors and to reduce the risk of fraud across billions of dollars guaranteed by the banks.

This new, digital process increases transparency and security through the use of blockchain technology while maintaining the privacy required in such a business process.

The pilot will run for eight weeks with live data and transactions for a test group of retail property leasing customers from 3 July. In subsequent phases, Lygon plans to expand the range of digitised bank guarantees that it supports across other industries as well as offering its services to other customers in the retail property sector.

Thousands of retailers around Australia – from single store operators to national and international brands – need bank guarantees from their banks to secure a lease over a retail tenancy.

The pilot will involve lease holders with retail outlets in some of Scentre Group’s Westfield living centres across Australia. After the pilot, Lygon intends to offer access to the platform to all issuers, applicants, and beneficiaries and support broader use cases over time.

The Lygon platform will be operated by Lygon 1B Pty Ltd, a company jointly owned by the five founding members.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – JULY 3, 2019: ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, IBM (NYSE: IBM), Scentre Group and Westpac have jointly launched a live pilot for Lygon, a new digital platform using blockchain technology to transform the way businesses obtain and manage bank guarantees that are often required as part of a retail property lease.

The launch marks a significant milestone in the global development of blockchain solutions. Lygon represents an industry solution that the participants could not have individually implemented. The founding members have brought together their deep understanding of industry processes to navigate from proof of concept to a live platform that will directly benefit customers and address their feedback on the way in which bank guarantees have been issued to date.

Historically, bank guarantees have been issued manually and on paper. Digitising this process reduces the risk of fraud for all parties involved, decreases the potential for errors and significantly increases the speed of execution.

Initial findings suggest that the Lygon platform has the potential to reduce the time it takes to issue a bank guarantee from up to a month to on or around the same day. Lygon has the potential to benefit many sectors and to reduce the risk of fraud across billions of dollars guaranteed by the banks.

This new, digital process increases transparency and security through the use of blockchain technology while maintaining the privacy required in such a business process.

The pilot will run for eight weeks with live data and transactions for a test group of retail property leasing customers from 3 July. In subsequent phases, Lygon plans to expand the range of digitised bank guarantees that it supports across other industries as well as offering its services to other customers in the retail property sector.

Thousands of retailers around Australia – from single store operators to national and international brands – need bank guarantees from their banks to secure a lease over a retail tenancy.

The pilot will involve lease holders with retail outlets in some of Scentre Group’s Westfield living centres across Australia. After the pilot, Lygon intends to offer access to the platform to all issuers, applicants, and beneficiaries and support broader use cases over time.

The Lygon platform will be operated by Lygon 1B Pty Ltd, a company jointly owned by the five founding members.

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK and ARMONK, NY: 2 July 2019 — Rapid adoption of TradeLens across the global shipping supply chain continues as Hapag-Lloyd and Singapore-based Ocean Network Express (ONE) Pte. Ltd announced they will join the blockchain-enabled digital shipping platform, jointly developed by A.P. Moller – Maersk (MAERSKb.CO) and IBM (NYSE: IBM).

Hapag-Lloyd and ONE, the world’s fifth and sixth largest carriers respectively, join CMA CGM and MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, both of which recently announced they are joining TradeLens. With these additions, the scope of the platform now extends to more than half of the world’s ocean container cargo.

“Expanding digital collaboration is critical to the evolution of the container shipping industry,” said Martin Gnass, Managing Director Information Technology at Hapag-Lloyd. “TradeLens has made significant progress in launching a much-needed transformation in the industry, including its partnership model. Now, with five of the world’s six largest carriers committed to the platform, not to mention many other ecosystem participants, we can collectively accelerate that transformation to provide greater trust, transparency and collaboration across supply chains and help promote global trade.”

The addition of these two global carriers will help drive further adoption of TradeLens around the world now that TradeLens customers have access to major carriers in all three leading global vessel sharing alliances on the platform. With an already significant presence in Asia, ONE is further strengthening and expanding its coverage through joint cooperation with TradeLens to help meet the challenging demands of the crucial Asia market.

“We believe this innovative approach based on open standards and open governance can benefit the entire industry while ultimately benefitting our customers who rely on the world’s shipping industry to transport global container volume of more than 120 million TEU across international borders each year,” said Noriaki Yamaga, Managing Director, Corporate & Innovation, Ocean Network Express. “The opportunities to drive greater innovation across the shipping supply chain are enormous and we are excited about the opportunity to provide our leadership and insight to help the platform continue to evolve.”

TradeLens was launched to help modernize the world’s supply chain ecosystems. Many of the processes for transporting and trading goods are costly, in part, due to manual and paper-based systems. Replacing these peer-to-peer and often unreliable information exchanges, the platform enables participants to digitally connect, share information and collaborate across the shipping supply chain ecosystem.

“The addition of more leading carriers to TradeLens will help global supply chain customers expand and explore the benefits of digitization and deliver new opportunities to the increasing number of TradeLens ecosystem participants across the global supply chain. As a neutral industry platform, TradeLens offers supply chain visibility, ease of documentation and the potential of introducing new products on top of the platform. These attributes bring new opportunities for the Maersk transformation towards becoming an end-to-end container logistics company improving the experience and services we offer the customers,” said Vincent Clerc, Chief Commercial Officer, A.P. Moller – Maersk.

Members of TradeLens gain a comprehensive view of their data and can collaborate as cargo moves around the world, helping create a transparent, secured, immutable record of transactions.

The attributes of blockchain technology are ideally suited for large networks of disparate partners. Blockchain establishes a shared, immutable record of all the transactions that take place within a network and enables permissioned parties access to secured data in real time.

“Blockchain for the enterprise is solving previously unsolvable problems,” said Bridget van Kralingen, Senior Vice President, Global Industries, Clients, Platforms & Blockchain, IBM. “Through improved trust, simplicity and improved insight into provenance, blockchain solutions such as TradeLens are delivering proven value across business processes for our clients and their ecosystems. Massive new efficiencies in global trade are now possible and we’re seeing similar effects across the food industry, mining, trade finance, banking and other industries where the value of blockchain is more apparent than ever before.”

Hapag-Lloyd and ONE will each operate a blockchain node, participate in consensus to validate transactions, host data, and assume a critical role of acting as Trust Anchors, or validators, for the network. Both companies will be represented on the TradeLens Advisory Board, which will include members across the supply chain to advise on standards for neutrality and openness.