Experience Digital was incredibly honoured to be crowned AWS Rising Star Partner of the Year 2022.
Each year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) recognises key leaders within the AWS Partner Network (APN) for their contributions to driving innovation and growing successful cloud businesses by leveraging AWS. As part of the AWS Partner Summit ASEAN on 17th May, AWS hosted an intimate Partner Summit Awards event at Dolton House, Hyde Park Sydney to publicly announce the winners of their 2022 awards.

Experience Digital was recognised for assisting MedHealth with the national roll-out of their purpose-built assessment tool that converted paper-based resources into a digital toolset. As a result, MedHealth experienced a 100% shift to the digitised tool out of their 20,000 national registered user base.

The celebrations were elevated as AWS honoured the 10-year anniversary of the APN program this year and the incredible contribution their AWS Partners have made in driving digital transformation across their ANZ customer base over the past decade.

After only joining the APN Program 2 years ago, Experience Digital has rapidly grown to 70+ employees globally, with offices in ANZ, Southeast Asia and Europe. Recognised now as an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, Experience Digital boasts 10+ years of experience in technical consulting, focused on driving collaboration through their customer-first mentality. Specialising in digital transformation, cybersecurity, cloud migrations and web app development, they rely on AWS for their suite of purpose-built tools to deliver high-quality customer projects.

“At AWS, we ensure this expertise is maintained through our new Partner Paths program, and APN differentiation programs such as our Competency, Service Delivery, and Service Ready programs. We also augment this with relevant training offerings which help partners deepen their AWS knowledge and skills, differentiate their business, and better serve their customers. Congratulations to all of this year’s winners.” – Sumal Karunanayake, AWS Head of Partner Sales, ANZ.

Having achieved competency in AWS Lambda and on track to complete 3+ additional competencies in 2022, Experience Digital invests heavily in its partnership with AWS. In 2021, they grew their team by 180%, with their dedicated AWS team including the acquisition of an AWS Community Lead, their goal is to exponentially grow within the AWS segment. Through completion of 60+ AWS certifications and accreditations, they are well on their way to achieving Premier Tier due to their transient capability across a range of AWS focus areas.

“We are absolutely thrilled and incredibly grateful to be crowned as the AWS Rising Star Partner of the Year in 2022. Over the past two years, we have heavily embedded our business in the AWS ecosystem to solve our customer’s hardest challenges with the right digital solutions. This award acts as a testament to our team’s incredible partnership with AWS. This is only the beginning of great things to come!” says David Theodorou, Founder of Experience Digital.

AWS’ Rising Star Award specifically recognises partners for their investment & growth within the AWS space through analysis of factors including customer satisfaction, case studies and AWS-built offerings. Boasting 1300% YoY growth in the AWS segment in 2021, Experience Digital has proven its contribution to the partnership.

Alongside the likes of Deloitte, Accenture and Tata Consulting Services, Experience Digital was delighted to be recognised for its involvement with AWS. Having been selected for involvement in multiple Startup & SMB Programs designed to fast track AWS customer success, Experience Digital continues to dedicate its time to this partnership & prove its stake in the wider global AWS community.

Experience Digital recognises and congratulates the other award finalists including TechConnect & Lancom Technology for their immense growth in the AWS space over the past year. Watch the full ANZ Partner Summit 2022 Awards evening on-demand here.

“What a huge achievement for Experience Digital to be crowned as Rising Star Partner of the Year for 2022! This award really solidifies all of our efforts over the past year with AWS and sits with everyone from strategy, marketing, sales and delivery. Congratulations to the finalists and winners of the other Partner Awards.” – Holly Hudson, AWS Community Lead at Experience Digital.

About Experience Digital

Experience Digital is a trusted digital software, data, automation and systems integration house with 10+ years of expertise in cloud technologies and business applications. With a focus on digital transformation, they specialise in cloud migrations, application development and cybersecurity. With offices in Australia and Europe, servicing a range of customers internationally from startups to enterprises and government to the private sector. What sets them apart is their approach to projects centred around transparency, collaboration and thinking big. For more information, go to experience.digital

Each year, AWS honour members of the APN who are leaders in the channel and play key roles in helping their customers drive innovation by leveraging AWS. The AWS Partner Awards recognise a wide range of born-in-the-cloud and traditional consulting and ISV partners embracing collaboration and specialisation.

‘We’re incredibly grateful to be voted as a finalist for AWS Rising Star Partner of the Year. We’ve built our business heavily embedded in the AWS ecosystem to solve our customer’s hardest challenges with the right digital solutions. This award acts as an acknowledgement of our strong partnership with AWS, and this is only the beginning!’ David Theodorou, Co-Founder of Experience Digital.

As an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, Experience Digital holds 10+ years of experience in technical consulting, focused on driving collaboration through their customer-first mentality. Specialising in cloud migrations, cybersecurity and web app development, they rely on AWS for their suite of purpose-built tools to deliver high-quality customer projects.

AWS’ Rising Star Award specifically recognises an AWS Partner for their investment in their AWS partnership and growth, analysing a range of factors including customer satisfaction, YoY growth, public case studies and AWS-built customer offerings. With 1300% YoY growth in the AWS segment in 2021, Experience Digital has proven its contribution to the partnership.

Having achieved competency in AWS Lambda and on track to complete 3+ additional competencies in 2022, Experience Digital invests heavily in its partnership with AWS. With their team growing by 180% in 2021, they hired a team dedicated to AWS projects including an AWS Community Lead with the goal to continue to grow their AWS segment exponentially. The team has completed 60+ certifications and accreditations to showcase their capability across a range of AWS focus areas.

“We’re excited to hear who is crowned the winner of the award Rising Star Partner of the Award 2022 out of the three finalists. This award really solidifies all of our efforts over the past year with AWS and sits with everyone from strategy, marketing, sales and delivery. We wish every company the best of luck with this award!” – Holly Hudson, AWS Community Lead at Experience Digital.

Despite only being an AWS Partner for two years, Experience Digital have already been involved in a range of Partner Programs in the realms of IoT, Serverless, Well-Architected and AWS Immersion Days. Furthermore, they have been selected for involvement in multiple startup programs designed to fast track customers to AWS.

Experience Digital have proven their stake in the AWS community by sharing ongoing valuable resources including blogs and videos, and hosting a co-branded workshop for AWS customers in 2021 on the topic of Cost Optimisation. After an extremely successful turnout, this will likely be the first of many as their trajectory of business goals grows in 2022. They are honoured with this award nomination and continue to prioritise growth within their AWS segment.

About Experience Digital

Experience Digital is a trusted digital software, data, automation and systems integration house with 10+ years of expertise in cloud technologies and business applications. With a focus on digital transformation, they specialise in cloud migrations, application development and cybersecurity. With offices in Australia and Europe, servicing a range of customers internationally from startups to enterprises and government to the private sector. What sets them apart is their approach to projects centred around transparency, collaboration and thinking big. For more information, go to experience.digital

It’s no secret that cloud computing has fast become the new norm across countless industries aiming to reduce their operational expenditure and carbon footprint. Simultaneously, capitalising on the wealth of benefits in regards to globalisation and fast, secure connection adds to the appeal of transitioning to this technology.

So, we’re not here to explain why cloud computing deserves a spot within your next board meeting discussion, we have other blogs for that. Instead, we’re exploring how to not only fast-track your success with cloud migration but also optimise and streamline the entirety of the process. So, let’s get into it.

Adopting a Sustainable Approach to Cloud Migration

Organisations often utilise a ‘lift and shift’ approach to their cloud migration – which has an array of benefits, but alas, also downfalls. It involves migrating software deployments with little, or no, modification and is reserved for organisations within the transitional stage to an eventual cloud-native solution. This is often the choice for organisations with decades worth of data as this approach is less labour intensive and involves less administration for the organisation. Although, the promises of cost-saving are not guaranteed unless correctly managed.

The suitability of lift and shift is selective, with not all data benefitting from rehosting – instead adopting alternate approaches would be more suitable such as rewriting, re-releasing or even entirely replacing it. The mistake of defaulting too quickly to a rehosting approach to defer the cost of modernising critical applications more often than not results in higher cloud operating costs following migration.

Research from Gartner in 2020 tells us that 45% of organizations that perform a lift-and-shift migration will overspend by 70% during the first 18 months of their new architecture as a result of over-provisioning resources, thus missing the core opportunity of streamlining their architecture.

SO, where to from here?

It’s All About Strategy

Understandably, lift and shift is an approach well suited to many organisations, although building a cloud strategy that is best suited to your organisational needs is a necessity for a successful migration. Working with a trusted and experienced migrations partner will involve collaborating to deeply understand your drivers, principles and objectives, to ensure the approach taken honours these. Discussing the financial considerations and pricing models should give you a greater comprehension of which path is the best one to take in your situation.

Key Considerations

Further to the above, there are an array of key considerations before opting to migrate your workloads to the cloud. These are a great starting point before choosing your technology partner and cloud provider and should act in conjunction with further research

• Opt for efficiency when rearchitecting infrastructure – this requires the application of right-sizing instances which reduces the possibility of paying for underutilised resources.Understand your current baselines – this will help you avoid the costly trap of learning as you go. Utilise the power of your data to drive growth forecasting and therefore decision making in regards to your migration.Prioritise and implement security protocols – security in the cloud is the customer’s responsibility meaning that encryption, IAM and data protection is something that should be prioritised within your strategy.Consider both short-term and long-term costs – ensure all pricing models are considered and the most aligned to your requirements is chosen, as choosing a set-cost instance type is not always the most beneficial option.

The Process of Migration

Once you’re adequately equipped with the information you need to confidently migrate, you can follow AWS three-step migration process which involves:

• Assess: Assess the ‘readiness’ of your organisation for cloud operation, considering which approach mentioned above aligns best with your array of workloads. This should build the foundations of a strong business case for migrating.Mobilise: This step focuses on bridging any outstanding gaps in your original business case, by building your baseline environment (known as the ‘landing zone’), understanding application interdependencies and evaluating migration strategies.Migrate & Modernise: Finally, each of your applications is designed, migrated, and validated. There are an array of AWS services available to finetune and streamline this step to iterate on your new foundation, turn off old systems, and constantly evolve toward a new, modern operating model.

Let’s Save You Some $$$

Saving on infrastructure costs is arguably one of the main drivers for cloud migration, with the upfront costs and administration of running data centres something much easier outsourced to a cloud provider.

AWS is one of the leading cloud providers when it comes to cloud migration, offering a comprehensive set of migration tools, services and solutions to cater to your migration workload requirements. One of the best things about AWS is their strong focus on cost optimisation which is reinforced through their range of budgeting tools to ensure their customers are not paying more than they need to. By utilising Migration Evaluator, a projection of the overall total cost of ownership (TCO) for AWS based on your actual resource utilisation is presented and can then be built into your budget.

Employing automation, autoscaling and pay-as-you-go structured pricing models is crucial to saving on cloud costs. Utilising best practices throughout your migration and the entirety of your cloud computing use allows for further control, lower costs and greater security. You can read more on proactive ways to reduce costs by leveraging AWS Well-Architected Framework in our blog here.

We’re Here to Help.

Here at Experience Digital, we pride ourselves on our 10+ years of experience. As an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, we’ve helped an array of customers on their cloud journeys. Our strong focus on collaboration and communication combined with our cost-saving strategies is what increases our customer’s chances at long-term scalability and success.

We have a range of dedicated and personalised cloud migration packages to help you confidently migrate to cloud computing. If you’re interested in learning more, book your free discovery call today.

Therefore, upon the announcement of the strategic collaboration agreement between AWS and Ingram Micro Cloud, we were intrigued, to say the least.

Ingram Micro Cloud operates as an extension of the AWS Partner Network (APN) offerings, as a distributor providing a dedicated end-to-end service to drive enablement, training and more.

One of our guiding principles here at Experience Digital is to work collaboratively with our customers to achieve their desired outcomes. With this in mind, it only made sense to leverage Ingram Micro Cloud for their IaaS offering to explore further possibilities to help optimise our customers operations.

Experience Digital began their journey with Ingram Micro in 2021, operating as strategic cloud allies and allowing us to provide a deeper level of support to our growing AWS customer base. Here’s why AWS partners, like Experience Digital, partner with Ingram Micro.

This collaboration fosters the ability to streamline how Experience Digital’s customers manage their AWS billing process, as well as offering competitive pricing and enhanced offerings. Integrating their customers across to the Ingram Micro platform allows for greater operation, visibility and optimisation of their billing process.

The team at Ingram Micro help boost credibility and trust with our customers. Combining Experience Digital’s expertise with Ingram Micro’s credibility allows us to further extend our reach.

We continue to build our capability and connections to help more customers thrive in the digital world. Reach out today if you need help on your cloud journey.

With a predicted 18 billion IoT devices in use in 2022, the likelihood of a security breach within your organisation continues to rise. To put things into perspective, according to Forrester’s State of Enterprise IoT Security Report (2021), unmanaged IoT devices are 84% more vulnerable to cyber-attacks than corporate-managed computers.

Some 1.51 billion IoT breaches occurred in the first half of 2021 (according to Kaspersky’s 2021 report). So, whilst IoT technology offers the promise of a vast increase in productivity, efficiency and collaboration, it, unfortunately, falls short in the form of security – exposing organisations to a whole new range of intricate and complex cyberattacks.

Let’s discuss how to reap the benefits of IoT without compromising on security.

Increasing Visibility to Mitigate Vulnerabilities

With the 2022 outlook for the cyber industry heavily involving the notion of increasing cyber-resilience, it’s crucial to create a culture of cyber awareness throughout your organisation. According to Palo Alto’s 2021 IoT Security Report, 78% of IoT decision-makers noted an increase in non-business IoT devices utilising corporate networks in the past year, citing the pandemic and work-from-home arrangements as the major contributing factors. With the main reported issue being a lack of visibility and communication, how can you ensure these unknown devices don’t increase your vulnerabilities?

Regardless of the size and stage at which your organisation is into your IoT usage, further strengthening your cybersecurity measures means always keeping it front of mind. Additionally, shifting your organisational mindset to ensure security is considered in all executive decisions is paramount. This often involves implementing a clear strategy for change management, which includes re-educating employees at all levels of the organisation and refreshing or overhauling your IoT strategy completely. Despite this sounding daunting, it allows you the opportunity to address and implement threat protection, risk assessments, prioritise your security executive’s recommendations and increase device visibility & inventory.

With statistics telling us that 51% of security enterprise professionals have reported on not fully understanding the risks associated with unmanaged and IoT devices and 80% not sure where to start – we’re here to break down these barriers.

So let’s dive deeper into recommendations.

Address Threat Detection & Protection

Depending on the nature of your IoT devices, threat prevention mechanisms will vary in their scale and complexity. Due to their extremely diverse nature, IoT devices often permit numerous points of compromise. Adopting an aggressive cybersecurity posture includes putting into effect mechanisms such as payload-based signatures to block advanced threats.

The first step in your IoT Cybersecurity strategy should be to focus on the fundamentals, utilising the notion of building from the ground up. Ensuring your data and applications are protected means assessing all of the risks your devices and networks are involved in.

Your IoT security strategy should encompass the ability to draw data from a cloud-delivered threat intelligence engine that delivers real-time malware analysis. Minimising weaknesses across your network is often attributed to the level of real-time responsiveness to pending threats.

Complete Risk Assessments

There are an array of different IoT-directed attacks circulating, from DDoS to IIoT, and security camera breaches. For this reason, conducting regular risk assessments to deeply understand not only where your main risk lies, but also the appropriate level of risk, allows the correct direction of resources and enforcement of security policies. Conducting risk assessments should continually provide you with valuable insight into vulnerability management and threat detection.

So what comes next? What should you do once a threat has been detected? As mentioned above, the level of real-time responsiveness to a threat is crucial to minimise the severity of the breach. Automating the ability for devices to shut down once they have been compromised is crucial to ensure compromised devices don’t act as a gateway to further vulnerability. Although this is an extremely complex process, experts in IoT security will navigate and automate this process to increase security.

Implement & Abide By Security Standards

Increasing compliance should be a top priority, but not only to increase internal security and manage risks. As a bonus, global security standards such as ISO 27001 and NIST provide the opportunity to showcase your organisation’s high-level security protocols. A range of frameworks and certifications exist to exemplify high-level security standards, catering to different sized organisations.

Whilst security frameworks tend to overlap and collectively provide the capability to identify risks, implement controls and monitor performance; NIST is a voluntary option that is often acquired by companies as a fundamental part of their security framework before scaling. Undertaking a NIST audit provides insight into where your cybersecurity program stands. Then you can make an informed decision before developing and implementing an ISO 27001 framework.

ISO 27001 is a less technical and internationally recognised approach. With more emphasis on risk-based management, ISO 27001 provides best practice recommendations to secure all of your information and is ideal for organisations with a level of operational maturity.

In regards specifically to IoT Security, in January 2022, Xiaomi, a market-leading consumer electronics and smart manufacturing company launched global security standards for its IoT devices. The new guidelines set requirements for device hardware, software, and communication methods. Xiaomi outline specific requirements for data security and privacy, communication security, authentication and access control, secure boot, data deletion, and more.

These guidelines fill a gap in the market for a set of industry standards in regards to IoT security, with businesses able to utilise this guide to avoid basic security and privacy protection risks in regards to their IoT products.

Prioritise Your Security Team’s Recommendations

Awareness of growing IoT security risks has previously been underrated, and not considered as part of executive decision making. Appointing a dedicated security team increases the functionality of your cybersecurity measures, providing accountability as well as the ability to raise awareness throughout your organisation. This team’s responsibility lies in education – demonstrating to stakeholders the vulnerabilities of unmanaged devices and building the business case to secure an additional budget allocation. Gathering a larger budget leads to the acquisition of necessary resources and technologies to secure these unmanaged IoT devices.

Increase Device Visibility & Inventory

Device visibility opens up a realm of concern – how are you meant to secure devices if you don’t know they exist? Therefore, completing a thorough audit of all devices on your network will provide you with valuable insights you can then leverage. This data will advise where and how these devices are used to clearly outline how they could be exploited. Furthermore, this data should dictate new policy and control implementation to ensure devices are appropriately monitored and secured. This will minimise the possibility of data breaches and cyberattacks.

Implementation without Insecurity

Although the statistics and recommendations mentioned above may seem unreachable, especially for smaller businesses – they are critical to the longevity of a secure organisation. Leveraging subject matter experts and frameworks can lessen the burden of full compliance and IoT security.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) are a world leader in cloud services, providing device support and foundational frameworks to assist with implementation and ongoing security protection. AWS IoT provides a multitude of services and solutions with security top of mind. AWS IoT Device Defender is a service providing the capability to manage your fleet of IoT devices through continually auditing your IoT configurations, sending an alert if any configurations deviate from security best practices. This service can be implemented in conjunction with AWS IoT Device Management and IoT Greengrass to quickly recognise and mitigate potential attacks.

These services oversee the management of your data interaction including connectivity and control services, as well as the device software. All components are customisable and compliant – governed by the AWS Shared Responsibility Model to give you peace of mind in regards to protection.

A Helping Hand

There’s no denying that IoT security is extremely complicated, therefore leveraging IoT professionals in the field is our primary recommendation. Utilising professional expertise and recommendations provides the opportunity to solidify a full-proof IoT security framework, securing your devices and providing continuous protection against potential threats. Utilising expert collaboration and leveraging best practices provides allows for efficient risk recognition and management.

As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, we’ve helped customers with IoT Security strategies to meet their ultimate goal – whether that be achieving security compliance, ongoing risk management or security protocol implementation.

If you’re not sure where to start, need expert advice, or are ready to completely overhaul your current strategy – reach out today.

AWS Market Share

AWS offers over 200 fully-managed products and services from servers, storage, networking, serverless computing and security. They operate globally, via 84 availability zones which span 245 countries and territories. Diversifying their geographic locations allows them to service customers internationally, without having to compromise on security.

The benefits of using AWS are countless, extending upon its availability, security and performance – so let’s take a deeper dive into exactly why we, here at Experience Digital, partner and utilise AWS’ products and services as the go-to for our customers.

Why Do We Use AWS?

Alongside the abovementioned benefits of using AWS, one of the main value propositions outlined by Jeff Bezos is its ability to drive companies away from physical computing technology and into the cloud. With serverless computing one of the services offered by AWS, the need for physical infrastructure is completely removed. This means organisations no longer need a large upfront cost to invest in their own data centre, but rather can utilise one of AWS’ within their 26 regions across the globe.

Our startup customers who require consulting services find this most enticing as it not only mitigates upfront cost but also allows them to leverage AWS’ state of the art security for their data. The level of control and visibility provided by AWS’ security model mitigates concerns in regard to user data and privacy. We service a range of large government clients with an imperative requirement for high-level security and the wide range of AWS security services cater to their needs.

Let’s explore how AWS serves our customer’s broad range of diverse needs, and what their provisioned architecture can help them achieve.

Advantages

The Economy of Scale & Cost Saving

We live in a world that rapidly evolves, as do your requirements. ‘Locking in’ to contracts is no longer a suitable option for most organisations utilising cloud infrastructure, especially those with new businesses who are unsure of the size, scale and longevity of their ventures. One of the major benefits of using AWS is that you can elect for a payment model whereby you pay only when you consume computing resources and pay for how much you consume.

Furthermore, as a large global organisation, one of the major benefits of utilising AWS is leveraging the economy of scale. Due to their sheer number of customers (over 1 million), AWS can offer competitive and flexible pricing. Therefore ultimately, you can achieve a lower variable, pay-as-you-go cost due to the aggregate cost for AWS to operate in the cloud.

Scalability & Adaptability

AWS offers a range of purpose-built services designed to promote the availability and scalability of your compute resources. Our customers often cite scalability as high importance on their projects which refers to the infrastructure’s ability to support growth, adapt to rapid increases and unplanned spikes in traffic. Furthermore, minimising potential downtime in the instance of a cyberattack or server failure is also a crucial requirement.

Amazon EC2 offers Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with resizable compute capacity in the AWS cloud. Offering complete control of the computing services, EC2 is customisable to your needs. Instances are categorised into three separate categories based on expected use and cost. EC2 uses the AWS Management Console, the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), or AWS Software Developer Kits (SDKs) for instant scaling in accordance with your evolving needs and makes it simple to deploy virtual servers and maintain storage.

Amazon RDS operates as another AWS service known for its scalability, providing a cost-efficient way to easily set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. Using the power of automation, time-consuming administration tasks are streamlined, freeing up more time for you to focus on your business.

Security & Reliability

As touched on above, AWS is known for their high-level security protocols. AWS offers a wide range of notable tools in the realm of security – from data protection and IAM to compliance and data security.

AWS services are governed by the Shared Security Model, which arguably sets them apart from their competitors. The model devises security responsibilities between AWS and their customers with AWS managing security of the cloud, whilst the customer manages security in the cloud.

For our customers who host multi-tier web applications or a public-facing website and want improved security posture, AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) enables a connection between on-premises resources to AWS infrastructure through a virtual private network. Amazon VPC provides the ability to control inbound and outbound access for your resources in your own virtual private network. This ultimately provides more granular control of the cloud network and an extra layer of security for workloads and data.

Increased Business Optimisation & Productivity

Due to the availability of AWS regions and the vast array of purpose-built tools available at the click of a button, it’s extremely easy to deploy globally. This equates to lower latency and therefore an increased customer experience. Additionally, utilising tools to automate workflows lessens the workload on dedicated IT support staff, sparing your organisation both time and extra expense. This allows seamless optimisation of business operations and the capability to focus more on what matters to your core business growth.

Our Partnership

We’ve worked closely with AWS for almost a decade, offering AWS products and services to our loyal customer base. From Government clients to Enterprise and Startup organisations, we help our customers solve their hardest problems with the right digital solutions.

As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, we leverage AWS’ diverse array of tools to build web applications, facilitate cloud migrations, achieve security and compliance requirements and much more. We’re involved in multiple AWS Partner Programs to expand upon our knowledge and capability within the space and continue to provide the best, most relevant and aligned offerings. Our involvement in Partner Programs allows us to provide multiple incentives to customers, not only adding value but also increasing security as well as selected financial benefits.

Reach out today to learn more about how we can help you leverage the breadth and depth of AWS and its broad selection of purpose-built products and services.

Understanding the basics

Not sure where to start? We have a range of blogs available to help you understand the broad range of AWS offerings available. Check out how leveraging the AWS Well-Architected Framework will help you reduce costs, how to drive innovation with AWS IoT offerings and how to navigate serverless architecture.

Need help navigating the digital landscape? As mentioned, there is a multitude of AWS purpose-built services designed to assist you. Check out our range of services and book your consult today. We’re here to help you.

Book your Discovery Call today.

The landscape of cyber dependence has drastically increased following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This (arguably inevitable) shift to cloud-based operations for the majority of companies, regardless of industry, has served many benefits as well as an increased amount of associated risks. This substantial digital shift has seen companies rapidly increase their technological capability to serve their remote-based workforce and growing scope of customers. Following on from this, consumers have also demonstrated a major shift in their online habits, with a major increase in the use of online services within the e-commerce space.

Consumers are not the main victims of cybercrime though, with organisations also falling victim to a larger scale of cyberattacks, averaging $3.6 million USD per incident according to IBM, 2020. In efforts to intercept communication and access sensitive company data, businesses can experience a range of cyberattacks, which we’ve defined in our recent blog, ‘How to Keep Cybersecurity Front of Mind’.

With this ongoing threat only set to increase, let’s break down the main predictions associated with the cybersecurity industry for 2022/23, and how to effectively prepare your business for what’s to come.

Cybersecurity Trends for 2022 onwards

In the digital ecosystem, small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) unfortunately represent the largest target of cyberattacks, with 55% of SMEs have experienced a cyberattack in 2020 according to The World Economic Forum’s 2022 Global Cybersecurity Outlook Report. Although startups are perceived as the easiest target, cyberattacks on SME’s involve greater complexity and greater monetary benefit for attackers.

According to CB Insights, the main industry facing daily cyberattacks is Financial Services, with a report by Boston Consulting Group revealing that financial services firms are 300 times more prone to cybersecurity attacks than businesses in other industries.

Unsurprisingly, the main type of cyberattack organisations continue to face is ransomware, with an increase of 151% in the first six months of 2021 and research by PwC suggests that 61% of technology executives expect this to increase even more in 2022. This rapid increase is largely attributed to cryptocurrency circulation, enabling attackers to remain anonymous therefore harder to track. Ransomeware is typically deployed via a phishing attack, as a way in which hackers gain access to businesses data via their employees clicking an unsafe link.

In response, 2022 will see businesses increase their cloud security focus to equip their business with security against hackers intercepting data communication. Furthermore, businesses are beginning to recognise the necessity of continual employee training to ensure their workforce feels confident in not only identifying a potential attack but acting correctly to mitigate any risks associated.

How to Prioritise Cybersecurity & Protect Yourself

Shifting from a Cybersecurity to Cyber Resilience Mindset

The main focus in 2022 should be the transition from attempting to avoid cyberattacks entirely. 48% of the World Economic Forum’s Cyber Outlook survey respondents recognise that the increase in automation and machine learning will introduce the biggest transformation in cybersecurity in the short-term future.

Therefore, the likelihood of experiencing a cyberattack in some form is extremely high, if not inevitable for most larger businesses at some point in time. Accepting this and understanding the need to adequately anticipate, identify and recover from these attacks is more beneficial for your business. This process is known as increasing cyber resilience, which highlights an innate focus on minimising the severity and timeframe of an attack, as opposed to trying to avoid it altogether. Cyber resilience should undoubtedly be a core focus within your cybersecurity plan moving forward.

This ability to implement a robust incident response process can not only save your business financially but also decrease the ramifications associated with the publicity surrounding a cyberattack. With the major societal shift to accepting the notion of a perceived attack, demonstrating transparency and accountability throughout business operations will greatly assist businesses in establishing, or regaining, trust with stakeholders, partners and customers in the instance of an attack. This leads to the next key focus for this year.

Education via Policy Creation

Alongside providing ongoing employee training to equip your staff in feeling adequately protected against a cyberattack, businesses should be implementing a Cybersecurity Policy document. Creating this policy can greatly decrease the severity of an attack, with your IT able to consistently evaluate the readiness of your business against a potential attack and test it regularly. Furthermore, building out this robust set of tools and guidelines allows for stronger communication between teams, which is crucial in the instance of crisis management occurring.

Implementing cybersecurity policies and methodologies is important, although shifting your businesses’ mindset to truly appreciate the criticality of cybersecurity as a business-enabling function is one of the most fundamental ways to drive change.

Despite the recognition of cyber resilience as crucial to successful protection against cyber threats, various organisational, technical and regulatory barriers can hinder the successful implementation. To overcome these barriers, alignment from business executives is essential. A holistic, collaborative approach to understanding requirements involves appointing security-focused executives and ensuring cybersecurity is considered within important business decisions.

These individuals operate as subject-matter experts who drive change and consider risk at the forefront of key business decisions policy implementation.

“Cybersecurity leaders require the right skillset, tools and partnerships to assess these risks and to build resilient digital economies.”  – Albert Antwi-Boasiako, Acting Director-General, Cyber Security Authority (CSA), Republic of Ghana.

Collaboration to Secure the Ecosystem

For businesses looking to strengthen their shield against cyberattacks, a growing trend in 2022 is that of partnerships. As touched on above, hiring subject matter experts internally allows for a greater level of consideration and preparation against a potential attack. Another option preferred for smaller businesses involves outsourcing – by partnering with other businesses with dedicated security sectors. This provides the opportunity to build a layered and robust security model – including network, endpoint and data-centre controls.

The surge of cyberattacks over the past few years has seen threat groups join forces to launch major attacks and gain resilience. Cyber leaders acknowledge the need for greater collaboration in the realm of cybersecurity throughout the entire ecosystem to combat this, encouraging a greater understanding of the benefits of sharing cybersecurity knowledge to build a resilient ecosystem.

“The industry needs to work to democratise security, particularly as the talent gap and retention continue to stretch teams thin.”  – Ian McShane, field CTO at Arctic Wolf explained.

We’re here to help.

With the innate necessity to increase your cybersecurity measures becoming increasingly imminent, implementing policies and securing your business against pending cyberattacks seems daunting. If you need a helping hand to fill the security gaps within your business, our highly experienced consulting team can assist with all your data and asset security needs. From ISO 27001 framework compliance to replatforming, let us assist you in feeling confident and secure.

Contact us today.

Building or migrating to cloud architecture is extremely complex, therefore it’s a necessity to ensure that applications are built to the highest level of standards – for resilience, scalability and profitability. Being transparent about project timeframes and potential roadblocks is core to how we operate to build rapport and a strong reputation.

Our approach to projects is similar to that of a mentor to our customers – we want them to succeed. We do this by providing them with the tools, resources and support required to streamline the entirety of their cloud journey.

And, that’s where AWS comes into it.

They say there’s no point ‘reinventing the wheel’, so why not leverage one of the largest and most reputable global cloud providers to further our capability and help our customers succeed? It’s a win-win!

Getting Well-Architected with AWS

As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, here at Experience Digital, we’ve been leveraging AWS services for almost a decade, with the Well-Architected Framework consistently governing how we operate in the cloud. The overarching concept is simple, as coined by AWS themselves, existing to ‘help you understand the decisions you make whilst building workloads on AWS’.

So what exactly does it encompass? Let’s break it down.

The Well-Architected Framework was introduced in 2012 as a set of guidelines built in response to customer feedback. Their goal was to build a place where best practices and guiding principles could be widely accessed, and written in a manner that is much broader than a simple checklist. It has since evolved to encompass countless resources as well as a purpose-built Well-Architected tool to assist developers in building workloads to the highest levels of resilience.

The Framework promotes the idea of constant improvement. Evaluating design, architecture, and implementation all represent the overarching progress toward their desired outcome. The necessity to practice informed decision making, prioritise risk mitigation and utilise best practices is of utmost importance.

Therefore, the Framework now operates as a primary mechanism that continues to be built upon to provide insight and expertise in best practice. AWS also provides industry-specific lenses such as Machine Learning, IoT and SaaS to personalise the framework in specific use cases.

Why is this so important?

Utilising best practices is often largely underrated.

But why?

Due to the nature of looming project deadlines, shorter timeframes, budget pressures, demanding customers or simply having a lack of qualified talent to assist – attention to detail can tend to slip through the cracks.

Secondly, let me paint a picture.

AWS offers over 200+ products and services (and growing), which all require constant iterations to ensure their reliability and security, meaning software updates. Although always updating software seems like the most simple way to mitigate vulnerabilities in the cloud, software updates are often missed or ignored. This consistent necessity opens up a world of possibility in the realm of cyber risk.

The Pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework

The pillars operate as the cornerstone of any AWS Architecture, as outlined below.

Operational Excellence is the ability to understand how customers use their workloads and where systems or procedures could be improved to maximise delivering business value. This primarily focuses on running and monitoring systems with topics ranging from automation, event responses and defining stands to manage day-to-day operations.

Security is a no-brainer. This pillar focuses on maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of data, controlling access management to protect systems and establishing controls to detect security vulnerabilities

Reliability promotes the notion of a workload performing for its intended function consistently. The ability to recover from a failure or outage to meet growing business and customer demands. A key theme in this realm is that of change management as well as preventative system design.

Performance Efficiency acts to ensure the correct compute resources are chosen in alignment with your requirements and utilised efficiently to minimise cost, risk and maximise reliability. This extends to then monitoring performance and making informed decisions to maintain efficiency as business needs evolve.

Cost Optimisation focuses on avoiding unnecessary costs. This involves understanding your expenditure and selecting the most aligned resources to your requirements. Constant analysing over time promotes scalability without overspending.

Furthermore, as mentioned above, industry-specific lenses were also introduced last year. Including the addition of the Serverless lense, further diversifying AWS’ ability to provide workload-specific advice.

Give Me (Back) The Money

So let’s delve into the good stuff, what we’re all here for – how can you optimise costs by utilising this Framework?

The Cost Optimisation Pillar opens up a whole world of resources and guidelines to ensure you’re managing your spending whilst not having to compromise on quality. Cost Optimisation specifically feeds into the overarching concept of perpetual improvement, defining this process as a continuous refinement over the lifecycle of your workload.

To summarise the design principles that guide Cost Optimisation by AWS, they are:

Implement Cloud Financial Management: To put it simply, dedicate adequate time and resources to build knowledge and capability, allowing you to build processes, similarly to in any other department of your business.

Adopt a Consumption Model: Pay only for the compute resources you’re using as demand fluctuates (this can save you up to 75%!).

Measure Overall Efficiency: Analyse the output and cost of your workload associated with delivery. You can then use this data to understand and influence future business decisions, such as increasing functionality or reducing cost.

Analyse and Attribute Expenditure: Similarly to other facets of your life, this involves itemised budgeting. Thankfully, the cloud makes it easier to identify this data allowing for transparent cost attribution against revenue streams, accurately measuring your ROI.

Stop Spending Money on Undifferentiated Heavy Lifting: Outsource the hard work of administration, management or forecasting, where you can. This allows you to focus on your customers and business, rather than the infrastructure.

Further to this, the key recommendations from AWS to reduce costs involve:

• Practising Cloud Financial Management
• Expenditure and usage awareness
• Cost-effective resources
• Managing demand and supplying resources
• Optimising over time

Let Us Do the Heavy Lifting

As recommended by AWS, it’s important to outsource or automate processes where possible to increase business agility and maximise optimisation. If this all sounded a bit too complex, let us do the heavy lifting.

Here at Experience Digital, we pride ourselves on our ability to budget, keeping our customer’s costs low to increase their chances at long-term scalability and success. Book in your Well-Architected Review and our team of experienced engineers will audit your architecture and provide a comprehensive report with actionable items and recommendations on the next steps.

The benefits of booking your Well-Architected Review with us include:

• Receive a comprehensive audit of your AWS account with the knowledge & skills on how to consistently improve your business operations
• Access in-depth guidance and valuable cost optimisation techniques for building capability within the design of your workload, selection of services, configuration and operation
• Grow your understanding of cybersecurity, reliability and performance efficiency to influence future business decisions
• Unlock the endless potential to reduce your AWS spending and build a highly resilient and scalable cloud workload
• Utilise countless robust cloud service resources, trusting in AWS’ global reputation
• Access up to $5,000 worth of AWS credits*

*Pending Experience Digital complete Well-Architected Review & 25% of HRIs per workload are resolved

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month, so this month we’re sharing insights on the alarming statistics surrounding cybersecurity as well as tips for businesses to promote cyber-savvy practices to protect themselves and their data. The rationale behind the annual awareness month is due to the notion of cybersecurity being often perceived by leaders as an afterthought or additional requirement, as opposed to a necessity. This perception extends in viewing cybersecurity as a highly technical process that must be outsourced to professionals.

This year’s evergreen theme to #BeCyberSmart encourages both individuals and businesses to own their part in protecting themselves against an attack and stressing the personal accountability and importance of taking proactive steps to enhance cybersecurity measures.

Barriers to Implementation

Firstly, let’s outline the why behind the lack of implementation and responsibility when it comes to implementing cybersecurity procedures and protocols. These transcend individuals, extending to some of the largest businesses in the world.

We’ve outlined the main barriers as:

Cost: Investing in cybersecurity is expensive, both in terms of network security as well as employee training. Although, it could be argued that the consequences of ignoring it are far more drastic. For instance, if cybercrime were a country, it would be the third-largest economy behind the USA and China and is predicted to inflict damages of $6 trillion USD by 2025. Cybercrime costs are expected to grow 15% YOY – representing the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history … need I say more?

Updating Legacy Infrastructure: Updating operations on legacy systems may seem easy for smaller businesses but for international businesses that have utilised the same systems for decades, failing to transition to newer infrastructure and update systems is their downfall. One of the simplest ways to be vulnerable to a cyberattack is by not keeping your software regularly updated. Although the process of transferring to a new system or process may seem daunting, ripping off the bandaid, in this case, is a necessity to avoid being targeted.

Specialised talent shortage: It’s no secret that there’s a shortage of qualified IT professionals, let alone those trained specifically in IT security, making it difficult to recruit this level of talent. Furthermore, escalating salary requirements can seem unattainable for smaller businesses. Consequently, many companies opt to simply skip the technical requirements for staying cyber-safe due to a lack of time and money.

Regularly Training Employees: Nearly 40% of data breaches are internal, so training employees on their security practices is crucial to mitigate this risk. As technology advances and hybrid work culture evolves, many employees and contractors opt to utilise personal devices for convenience, although this can easily expose confidential company information if these devices are then hacked.

Defining Cybercrime – Types of Attacks

With cybercrime increasing drastically each year, technology continues to evolve in its sophistication, fostering further opportunities to gain unauthorised access to IT data. There are countless different ways this can happen, let’s break them down simply:

Malware or Ransomeware: Malware is a type of application that once downloaded, performs a variety of malicious tasks. Some involve access to a network, others utilise screen-sharing to obtain credentials or other valuable data from the unsuspecting victim, whilst others simply cause disruption. Ransomware is one of the most notable forms whereby attackers manipulate the victim by encrypting their files and requesting a ransom payment in order to regain access.

Phishing: Probably the most common form of attack is phishing – we’ve all received an illegitimate email that seems… off. In this instance, the goal is to impersonate a bank, real estate or other trusted entity and request your credit card or other confidential credentials.

Password Attacks: As the name suggests, this type of cybercrime is increasingly prevalent and often effortless. Yes, changing your password monthly seems frivolous and unnecessary, but trust me – it’s not. There’s a range of technology available to essentially ‘crack’ a user’s password, so adding on a ‘123’ when prompted is not going to cut it.

Denial-of-service Attack: In a denial-of-service attack, a server or network is flooded with inbound traffic with the goal to exhaust resources and bandwidth. As a result, the system is unable to fulfil legitimate requests. In the instance an attacker utilises multiple compromised devices to launch this attack, a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack occurs.

DNS Attacks: DNS tunnelling is more sophisticated and occurs when organisations implement adequate security protocols but fail to monitor their DNS traffic for malicious activity. Attackers insert malware into these queries in which most firewalls cannot detect.

Man-in-the-middle attack (MITM): Albeit less common nowadays due to end-to-end encryption, MITM attacks involve a third party intercepting communication between individuals to obtain personal information.

Strategies to Enhance Cybersecurity

All in all, the lack of prioritisation of cybersecurity as a risk and ignorance towards to frequency of attacks is what lets most businesses down. We’ve shared strategies below to assist in kick-starting a culture of security awareness and empowerment for your team:

Train your Staff: Most businesses will host a one-off cybersecurity training session, although fall short on regular cadences. Similarly to fire drills, security sessions should be hosted regularly to ensure employees feel empowered to secure their data.

Update your Devices Regularly: Stay on top of updates – to the latest security software, web browser, and operating systems.

Double your Log-in Protection: Where possible, enable Multi-Factor authentication (MFA) using a trusted device or authentication token.

Change! Your! Password!: Yes your dog is cute, no he doesn’t need to be your password for the next decade. Utilise a password manager to pick the longest password, or passphrase, possible.

Act Cautiously: Not sure why your bank is requesting your credit card information via email? Give them a call. Once you discover a phishing email, report it via your email provider to help block suspicious emails in the future. You can also utilise spam filters in your inbox to further your security.

Always Encrypt: When sharing sensitive data or files, always encrypt them – at rest and in transit.

Back up your Data: In the instance of an attack, always ensure you’ve got an offline backup stored.

Do a Security Assessment: If you don’t feel equipped to understand the vulnerabilities in your software, outsource this to a professional. Utilising external security frameworks by cloud providers such as AWS is a great way to understand where you may need to increase your security protocols.

We’ve Got You

All in all, hopefully, this blog has filled you with the knowledge and motivation to go ahead and start prioritising cybersecurity. It starts with being informed, aware and empowered – and sharing that knowledge to build resilience in the online world.

Unfortunately, 43% of cyberattacks are targeted at smaller businesses, with an alarming 66% have experienced an attack in the past 12 months alone.

We all came from humble beginnings, and as a small business ourselves – we want to help. As such, for a limited time only we’re offering eligible startups an exclusive $10,000 AWS package including a FREE AWS Well-Architected Review (valued at $5000) and $5,000 of AWS credits for remediation.

Schedule your 15 Minute Discovery Call today!

As technology evolves, as does the human demand for ‘smart’ devices, fitted with increased value propositions for both consumer and commercial functions. Automation, without any need for human intervention, has quickly become something that’s expected for many in multiple facets of everyday life. So the real question posed here is how can this be facilitated so effortlessly and safely to truly harness maximum value?

This blog expands upon the considerations aforementioned in my previous blog including an in-depth look into the benefits and potential drawbacks of implementing an IoT solution for your business.

Benefits

The power of IoT is understood differently depending on the setting. The benefits of this encompassing technology are interpreted alternately for those attributed to individuals who utilise IoT in various locations including, homes, offices, factories, vehicles, retail, worksites, cities and logistics.

• Increased Productivity:The provision of automatic data processing – free of human intervention – IoT reduces numerous mundane tasks for employees and consumers. Wearable IoT devices facilitate individuals to monitor and maintain health and wellness, leading to increased fitness and productivity. IoT devices – in the home can be utilised for chore automation and energy management reduction (up to 100 hours of labour) in a typical household. Furthermore, in a corporate setting, reducing the headcount of workers ultimately leads to reduced operational costs for businesses.
• Additional Asset Utilisation & Business Models: Transforming business cases for long-standing assets to transition to an as-a-service offering by equipping these assets with IoT tracking. Allowing businesses to introduce new models that monetise this equipment and earn extra profit.
• Efficient Operational Management:The introduction of RFID tags – the interconnection of devices combined with their automation has led to efficiency when managing workflows. This includes inventory management, location tracking, spare parts management and more. Moreover, automatic asset lifecycle monitoring and scheduled maintenance allow for fine-tuned controls and resourceful management of assets, increasing their longevity and production rates.
• Improved Workplace Safety:Albeit being a broad and overarching statement, in multiple ways, the notion of increased safety in the workplace can be attributed to IoT. Firstly – hazard reduction, due to IoT’s ability to monitor the lifecycle of assets, meaning asset retirement is forecasted correctly and workplace accidents at the hands of outdated equipment are reduced. Secondly – smart devices reduce the probability of human error during various stages of business operation, reducing risk enormously. Lastly, a system of IoT devices including surveillance cameras and motion sensors can be utilised correctly to ensure the security of a workplace which ultimately prevents potential theft.
• Enhanced Personalised Customer Service:Due to the capability of IoT devices capturing user-specific data, therein lies an opportunity to leverage this to the benefit of your customer. By providing automated reminders, follow-ups and check-ins, you can reinvigorate your brand to be front of mind resulting in increased retention.
• Effective Cost Reduction:Every point mentioned above ultimately results in reduced costs for your business – including a lower cadence of purchasing new equipment, increased production rates, lower salary costs with automation of tasks and so on.

Drawbacks & Risks

• Cybersecurity & Confidentiality:The most prominent risk with IoT devices is cybersecurity creating grave concerns with the confidentiality and integrity of this data. As its primary function is that of network connection and data sharing, the risk of a data breach or cyber attack is increasingly prominent. Technology moves forward at an alarmingly fast rate allowing for increased vulnerabilities, especially when you add in the rate at which companies rush ‘smart’ products to market to support trends.
• Security Flaws: IoT solutions rarely contain adequate anti-tampering and encryption protocols. The risk of fraudulent behaviour involving IoT devices is high due to the collection and transmission of highly sensitive data. This can result in identity theft, loss of corporate secrets, equipment or products, sabotage, etc.
• Cost: The investment to install the baseline infrastructure and security necessities for businesses to carry out correct IoT implementation is costly. This includes the network and technical infrastructure installation as well as the ongoing maintenance costs. Alike other investments, there can be a considerable delay in reaping the financial benefits in profit from the implementation (although the all-time profit will ultimately greatly exceed the original investment).
• Niche Skillset Requirement:To manage the entirety of an IoT solution, trained professionals must understand the complexity and scope of the devices. The requirements from staff include deployment, setup and constant maintenance; therefore highly trained, skilled administrators should be recruited. Although fewer team members are required, these staff must have experience in IoT management.

The future of IoT

As discussed, the impact of IoT is becoming increasingly apparent as the powerful technology continues to proliferate throughout multiple settings. IoT is changing the way businesses operate, create and deliver products – how individuals manage their health and wellness – and how countless facets of life are continually optimised. The magnitude of this effect continues to be monitored and forecast – though the real power has not yet been quantifiable.

A concept as powerful as IoT requires deep consideration and research before implementing – whether in a business context or as an individual opting for devices around their home. Through increased knowledge, creators of IoT-enabled products and services will have a necessity to divulge clear explanations of how their data is collected and where it’s being used and stored. The worthwhile value proposition through promising transparency and data protection to maximise the uptake and trust within IoT.

If you’d like more information on how to utilise IoT and leverage this within your business specifically, you can reach out to our team of experts within the field of IoT. Explore how we’ve assisted our clients, including Gear Tracker, in successfully implementing solutions to benefit from the technology.