Technology

Nearly half of 16 to 25 year olds (49%) are worried about the privacy of their personal data and how their personal data is used and more than one in three (41%) are concerned that technology is being controlled by a few companies and individuals according to a recent online YouGov poll.(1)

Over half (56%) of 16-25 year olds polled also believe that having the right digital skills is very important in today’s society, but almost half (44%) believe there is a digital divide as not everyone has access to hardware, software and connectivity.

But there is an ethical digital alternative to the tech giants. Platform co-ops are tech platforms owned and controlled by the users and people who provide the services. Trade body Co-operatives UK has launched an accelerator programme to support entrepreneurs to develop their emerging ideas.

British Sign Language (BSL) interpreting service Signalise is a pioneering example of a platform co-op. Signalise is co-run and co-owned by Deaf people and BSL interpreters, who come together to collaborate, discuss and drive the business for their mutual benefit. Unlike the profit-led corporations that have traditionally been providers, Signalise are improving access to health services by empowering users and giving them choice and control over their access.

BSL interpreter, Kwan Perry, said: 
“We’ve never had control over our services. We’re told what to do by faceless agencies and it felt like the time for change.”

North London delivery service Wings is another platform co-op. It was created in direct response to the gig economy where riders’ earnings are unpredictable and often below the minimum wage. Wings pays riders a guaranteed London Living Wage and provides them with job security, sick pay and benefits. It operates with 100% zero-carbon vehicles and is committed to prioritising local, independent businesses over big chains.

Wings was set up with the support from the UnFound Accelerator – a 10-week accelerator for digital business start-ups that use mobile apps or online platforms to provide services and solutions. UnFound aims to launch a new wave of fairer, ethical and co-operatively owned tech businesses.

Rolling out again in spring 2022, the free business accelerator is now open for applications from aspiring UK-based ethical digital businesses.

Wings co-founder, Rich Mason said:
“We took part in the accelerator programme in the run up to our launch and working together with industry experts and groups developing their own platform co-op ideas was an invaluable experience.”

Delivered by Co-operatives UK, the national network body for co-ops, and supported by The Co-operative Bank, the Unfound Accelerator draws on an extensive network of experts to help ethical digital start-ups plan their businesses and develop their products, strategy, branding and marketing.

The accelerator helps participants find the right co-op model for their digital business and take them through the steps for launching it. With weekly workshops, regular check-ins and one-to-one sessions, aspiring entrepreneurs will go from idea to operating business. And they’ll learn how to shape an ethical digital enterprise that can launch successfully.

At the end of the 10-week accelerator, teams are invited to pitch their idea to a live audience and a panel of judges with the chance to win a share of a £10,000 prize fund donated by The Co-operative Bank.

Co-operatives UK’s CEO, Rose Marley, said:
“Today’s co-operative movement is driving some dynamic new developments that aim to create a fairer economy. Collaborative tech sits front and central to this, and Co-operatives UK has been at the forefront of supporting game-changing platform co-ops for a number of years.”

“We are anticipating an exponential growth of these ‘new look’ co-operatives and absolutely believe they are well placed to tackle some of society’s new problems.”

Catherine Douglas, Managing Director, SME Banking at The Co-operative Bank, said:
“We’re excited to hear from pioneering ethical digital start-ups and to see the teams develop as they take part in the UnFound Accelerator. Co-operatives are proving to be a vital business model for workers and communities in the current climate. We’re proud to be at the forefront of supporting new co-operative businesses through our investment in this programme and our support for the wider UK co-operative movement.”

For more information and to apply go to www.unfound.coop/accelerator

Stefan Wagner is an associate professor of strategy and innovation and director of PhD studies at ESMT Berlin. His research interests cover the intersection of firm strategy, technological innovation, industrial organization, and law.

Price discrimination – charging different customers different prices for the same goods – is common in offline markets. This is not too surprising as charging different customers different prices for the same product based on their willingness to pay allows companies to increase profits.

However, despite thebenefits in offline markets, price discrimination has not been implemented on a large scale for digital products. This is surprising as price discrimination could be implemented at comparably lower costs in the digital realm where consumer data that is prerequisite for individualized pricing is routinely collected. The big data collected could be used to determine personalised prices for each consumer based on their characteristics or search histories, for example.

To analyse how much profit digital companies forego by not charging individualised prices for different users, weanalysed different pricing strategies in the online video gaming industry. The full paper is available here and is joint work with Louis-Daniel Pape, Christian Helmers, Alessandro Iaria and Julian Runge. Specifically, we study pricing strategies employed in a highly popular mobile game similar to Candy Crush Saga. Gaming accounts for more than three quarters of the total app revenue in major app stores, including Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, but while game developers in this market collect around 90% of their revenues through paying customers on freemium models, alternative pricing strategies in this industry have not yet received much attention in research.

The game used in our study consisted of levels that can be solved in a short amount of time with the completion of each level rewarded with a certain number of stars. The first 39 levels were free before reaching a pay-gate to unlock level 40, with pay-gates then present every 20 levels thereafter. Pay-gates can be unlocked with a sufficient number of stars. If players reach a pay-gate with insufficient stars they can unlock the gate by replaying levels to increase their stars, inviting a friend to play, or paying for a ‘key’ with 70 virtual coins (equivalent of $1).

For this study, we obtained detailed data tracking how around 300,000 players interact with the video game over a 15-day period. The data not only contains player characteristics but, more importantly, in-game purchase decisions of the players when it came to unlocking pay-gates. Exploiting this data, we were able to identify a structural model of player decision making factoring in player characteristics, progress in the game, and different pricing mechanisms employed by the gaming company. Such a decision model allows simulating consumer choices under different pricing regimes and thus allows to link alternative pricing strategies to firm profits.

At the time of data collection, the game developer charged the same (uniform) price to all players and was not engaging in any form of price discrimination. Simulating different pricing strategies, we found that the price initially set by the game developer was suboptimally low. The company could have charged a significantly higher price without losing too many customers. As a result, setting a uniform price at a higher and optimal level can have increased profits by 340%. We suspect that the gaming company overestimated the price responsiveness of players and thus shied away from charging higher prices. Interestingly, and contrasting conventional wisdom, the results also showed that first-degree price discrimination, i.e., charging individualized prices, would have only very limited additional effects on profitability. Compared to an optimal uniform price for all players, discriminatory pricing strategies with prices optimised for each player separately would only lead to slight in profits compared to the optimal uniform price (+3%).

In summary, our results indicate that the game developer can substantially increase profit by using basic information readily available on player characteristics and in-game behaviour. However, a simple uniform pricing strategy may already guarantee most of the profit implied by elaborate forms of price discrimination, which might explain why price discrimination has been used sparsely in online markets.

Keep in mind that attempts of price discrimination in online markets havealso been met with animosity in the past; Amazon’s early attempt to price discriminate buyers of DVDs based on purchase history was met with resistance and negative publicity. The minimal gains made through price discrimination when compared with uniform pricing might not be considered worth the potential backlash, explaining the lack of price discrimination online.

Compared to an optimal uniform price, charging different customers different prices in online markets has limited effects on profits, finds new research from ESMT Berlin.

Price discrimination – charging different customers different prices for the same goods – is common in offline markets as it allows companies to increase profits. Despite its promises, price discrimination has however not been implemented on a large scale in the monetisation of digital products, where examples remain limited. This is surprising because price discrimination could be implemented at comparably lower costs in the digital realm where consumer data that is prerequisite for individualised pricing is routinely collected.

To analyse how much profits digital companies forego by not charging individualized prices for different users, Stefan Wagner, associate professor of strategy and innovation at ESMT Berlin, and colleagues analyseddifferent pricing strategies in the online video gaming industry. Specifically, they studiedpricing strategies employed in a highly popular mobile game similar to Candy Crush Saga.

For their study, they have obtained detailed data tracking how around 300,000 players interact with the video game over a 15-day period. The data not only contains player characteristics but, more importantly, in-game purchase decisions of the players. Exploiting this data, the research team was able to identify a structural model of player decision making factoring in player characteristics, progress in the game, and different pricing mechanisms employed by the gaming company. Such a decision model allows simulating consumer choices under different pricing regimes and thus allows to link alternative pricing strategies to firm profits.

At the time of data collection, the gaming developer charged the same (uniform) price from all players and was not engaging in any form of price discrimination. Simulating different pricing strategies, the authors found that the price initially set by the game developer was not optimal. Setting a uniform price at a higher and optimal level can boost profits by 340%. Professor Wagner suspects that the gaming company overestimated the price responsiveness of players and thus shied away from charging higher prices. Interestingly, and contrasting conventional wisdom, the results also showed that first-degree price discrimination, i.e., charging individualised prizes, would have only very limited effects on profitability. Compared to an optimal uniform prize for all players, discriminatory pricing strategies would lead to slightly larger profit (+3%).

Professor Wagner says, “Our results indicate that the game developer can substantially increase profit by using basic information readily available on player characteristics and in-game behaviour. However, a simple uniform pricing strategy may already guarantee most of the profit implied by elaborate forms of price discrimination, which might explain why price discrimination has been used sparsely in online markets.”

Keep in mind that price discrimination has been met with animosity in the past; Amazon’s early attempt to price discriminate buyers of DVDs based on purchase history was met with resistance and negative publicity. The minimal gains made through price discrimination when compared with uniform pricing might not be considered worth the potential backlash, explaining the lack of price discrimination online.

The original paper can be found here.

By Will Bailey, Chief Strategy Officer, InvestCloud 

Business opportunities and the potential for greater return on investment can still be found within the wealth management lifecycle. Digital tools will get you there.

How? With the wholesale adoption of digital across all business functions – from front office communications, to middle office risk management, to back office processing and protocols. Digital plays a crucial role for the future of wealth management—allowing firms to harness disruptive trends, rather than be consumed by them. 

Recent times—even prior to the pandemic—has seen investors think differently about their approach to their wealth. We are seeing new competitive patterns, democratised asset classes, and a greater requirement for holistic, goals-based advice. All the while, fee compression is biting and many investors are taking the approach that wealth management is a service commodity.    

Digital is the answer to alleviating many of these problems. But only through strategic digital adoption can wealth managers harness this disruption and prosper in a post-pandemic environment.

Defining your North Star

First, it’s critical to get clear about your strategy. Wealth firms need to find their digital North Star—the technology that can help them achieve their most significant business goals.

Everything—all applications, functions, the very look, feel and usability – should be aligned to this North Star. This can take several forms, from an online conversion of the complete brick and mortar experience, or a fundamental redesign in order to attract a more diverse range of new clients or open new business lines. 

Finding the North Star comprises of two parts. The first, a design study to understand what you and your clients want, and second, a functional study to understand the needed features. This forms the backbone of creating a digital experience. Everything should be implemented to achieve this North Star. If done correctly this is how you ultimately delight clients, offering them value digitally and retaining them for good.

The need for AI and machine learning

If finding the primary goal of digital is the why of digital adoption, then the specific technologies that require implementing is the what and the how. Wealth managers would be wise to look at the impact artificial intelligence and machine learning will have on their business. 

Both have the potential to massively streamline operations—from how business operations can be largely automated, to hyper-personalising the client experience. 

From an operations perspective, heavily manual processes can be simplified and automated, which allows wealth managers to focus more on the client. It also means they can effectively service more clients without compromising on service quality – meaning more assets under management. Essentially, wealth mangers can only be concerned with creating additional value for the business.

Business process automation can unlock even greater value for businesses. New revenue streams—such as financial planning, ESG, etc.—can easily be adopted without placing additional burden on resources. This is crucial as wealth firms look to diversify and grow.

From a client perspective, AI and machine learning means their experience can be completely unique to them. Modern investors are well-versed with platforms and services that are tailored to their exact needs and wants. Wealth management should be no different. 

The same personalisation technology can then be used by the wealth manager to pre-empt and predict client needs. Imagine being able to solve a client’s needs before they come to you with them? This is what automation can bring.

AI and machine learning optimises client engagement at scale. It can define the next best actions via recommendations that use narrative reasoning, based on analysis of products and stocks within a client’s portfolio. This drives further efficiency while creating greater value in client interactions and investment decision-making.

Understanding New Think 

But even with the right tools in place, it is still easy to fall into the technology traps of the past. 

Digital adoption has too often been piecemeal in approach. Different vendors, providing diverse, sometimes individual elements and functionality. This serves to create a disjointed patchwork of differing technologies, and usually results in an expensive to maintain system with a poor user experience from both client and manager perspectives. 

This is old think. Wealth firms need to adopt New Think.

This manifests in a simple principle: that digital transformation must start with the user. It means a single, coherent experience end-to-end. It also means needing to adopt Digital Empathy, the ability to ensure online platforms and services resonate with the individual.

Digital Empathy starts with good design. Is the experience easy to navigate, is it attractive, does it make you want to use it? Once answered, implementing Gaming Theory—a set of abilities to encourage users to engage with you, from push notifications to progression dynamics—ensures the experience sticks with users.  

Next is Decision Theory. This is the ability to persuade clients to undertake certain actions as well as ensure advice is properly conveyed. This includes how wealth managers can avoid clients anchoring on certain aspects and ignoring the bigger picture. Wealth firms can then leverage Data Science to ensure complete process optimisation and derive better experiences based on the user’s actions. 

At each stage, wealth managers collect learnings on how to better improve the experience, which can then be implemented by going back through these steps. 

Digital Empathy means increased engagement. It creates a win-win for both clients and providers: higher satisfaction and greater loyalty.

A successful digital journey must start with your digital user. Embracing New Think can be a challenge, but when the penny drops, the increase in client engagement, retention, growth and operational efficiency creates new believers and new opportunities.

Digital creates greater ROI

Embarking on a digital journey can be a difficult task. But, if the North Star is identified and the right technologies put into place, then wealth firms will be on a good start to the digitalisation of their business. 

But where digital truly exceeds expectations is through the adoption of New Think as the guiding principle. Don’t just build a new client platform. Make it desirable to use and give users a reason to keep coming back to it. Lead with design, and build functionality around the individual user. 

Disruption can be an opportunity. If wealth firms harness digital correctly, great business value and improved ROI will follow.

By: Alex James, Chief Technology Officer, Ascent

Alex James, Chief Technology Officer, Ascent

In an organisation’s race to adopt the latest digital tools and channels to build competitive advantage and boost profitability – whether it’s IoT, mobile, cloud or AI – there can be a very natural tendency to approach digital transformation technology-first. But there are essential foundational considerations that must come first (or run in parallel) if the end goal is to achieve value-driven business outcomes, rather than straightforward technical modernisation. 

A digital transformation is rarely a complete overhaul of business systems. It is more typically a key goal (or set of goals) that leverages a digital process or capability to deliver an outcome most efficiently and effectively. One analogy that works well is to consider the primary goal of a facilities organisation responsible for keeping city centre bins empty. You have two options to deliver this outcome. The first is to send a garbage truck on a route to empty every bin in the city centre. Or alternatively, you could deploy ‘full’ sensors on each bin and a smart GPS route-planner to automatically create a route each day that only includes the bins that need emptying. By building the capability in the second approach, you can deliver that goal in potentially half the time at half the expense.

Examples like this illustrate how easy it is to articulate the potential and value of digital transformation projects – but it’s harder to know where to start. However, there are five essential foundations that really help organisations achieve and sustain advantage from digital transformation:

1.Board level buy-in

Having a team of senior business leaders who are bought-in to the transformation at a cultural level will ensure that the project is aligned to business objectives. Transformation is a long-term strategy, which involves culture and process. To embrace evolving scope, risk, cost and value, projects must work on a value-driven, rather than cost-driven, basis. Clear goals should be established, with measurable KPIs so that performance can be assessed at any point.

2.A single customer view

Enhancing customer experience and engagement is a core focus of many digital transformation strategies. Creating a single customer view across all touchpoints is critical to connect the consumer to the brand via multiple channels. This means connecting data from multiple points in the customer journey, such as billing, marketing and sales, to one single known entity. Only through delivering information to the customer in the way they want to receive it, and optimising customer experience, can an organisation build trust, loyalty and revenue. 

3.Integrated data

Another key foundation for digital transformation is data quality and integrity and where this data resides. If data is held in silos and can only be retrieved from disparate departments, such as HR, finance, sales, then their reporting systems will remain unconnected, rendering it useless for creating actionable insight across the business. A clear data strategy, with the use of data modelling and data management strategies, will be the best basis to develop new digital capabilities.

4.Service-driven technologies

As new technologies become available, more niche/ granular solution areas emerge, such as user authentication, payment gateways and media streaming. It’s therefore critical for a business to understand and leverage service-driven technologies. This typically means many layers of technology systems, and needing to connect together various off-the-shelf modules and services into one coherent system. The beauty of a cloud platform ecosystem like Microsoft Azure is that it comprises a wide range of component solutions as a service to plug in, which you can instantly access. Through leveraging service-driven technologies, and avoiding a raft of disparate peripheral solutions, a business can focus on building meaningful capabilities.

5.Strong internal reporting

Another critical success factor is setting measurement and reporting goals.

Reporting must be understood, trusted and actionable – without this, it’s hard to measure impact beyond the macro levels of revenue. Data quality needs to be high for reporting to be effective and reporting is critical to be able to assess the project at any stage and keep the project on track.

Digital transformation only means what it means to your business. The factors outlined are common to most projects which aim to keep the customer front and centre and rely on data to provide actionable insight for real business advantage. Implementing these core foundations will set the project on the right path to success.

By: Jatin Ondhia, Chief Executive Officer at Shojin Property Partners

Wealth creation through property ownership is becoming more of a challenge. Real estate investments have not been as mainstream as the likes of equities and fixed income products. Whilst a stock is constantly in a passive state of hold or sell, with real estate investment it is inherently different.

The property must be managed and monitored correctly to prevent any erosion of the asset’s value and any return on investment (ROI). Average rental yields are down (to 3.8% in December 2020 from a 5.9% high in 2012) and regulation is strangling financial gain, with perks such as tax relief for buy-to-let mortgages being consigned to the history books.

Whilst unfavourable changes to regulations have been a thorn in the side of those looking for wealth creation through property ownership, the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the decision for many landlords to begin winding down part, or all of their property portfolios.

Add to this the woeful statistics from The National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), which found that 60% of landlords had lost rental income as a result of the pandemic and it’s clear to see why so many are looking for the next answer for wealth creation through property investment.

Despite the challenges, it’s not all doom and gloom. In the annual survey by Lloyds, of City bosses, City firms are bullish about London’s future as a global finance hub. More than two-thirds of financial institutions believe that the burning of EU red tape will reassert London as a global centre for trade and finance as firms anticipate and adapt to the new regulatory environment.

The survey of major banks, asset and wealth management firms, suggests all are more confident about the country’s economic prospects than they were 12 months ago. It seems likely that UK property investment will benefit as a whole from a post-COVID, and arguably post-Brexit bounce, with the market poised for a significant digital disruption. Add to this the opportunity across global real estate and the digital pathway opens up immense opportunities.

Property, as one report highlights, is one of the last industries to fully embrace digitisation. More unglamorous aspects of landlord life, such as conveyancing, contracts and energy usage or carbon footprint of properties are now covered by startups offering online property services. There is an opportunity, via fractional investment, for people in normal professions – so not already high net worth individuals or those running family offices – can build a property investment portfolio online. There are deals out there, which are becoming more accessible, simple and affordable.

Creating a wider audience for wealth creation through the digital transformation of property investment is an exciting development. Institutional-grade real estate investment opportunities in the UK have previously been  beyond anyone but the already very wealthy.

Mid-market property developers have traditionally found it hard to find junior funding partners. This void is now being addressed, thanks to the growing proptech sector. Fractional investment solutions enable individual investors to look beyond equity funds and physical property portfolios towards online alternative investments generating lucrative returns, together with the excitement of being involved with property development.

Furthermore, we will see the minimum investment threshold drop as these platforms expand. The rise of a new investor class will lead to more projects being financed in a virtuous ‘social capitalist’ circle that offers products to suit all risk profiles and where investors are able to build a diversified portfolio, allocating some funds across the investment spectrum.

Many more people will bid goodbye to the stress of getting the plumbers in every few weeks whilst keeping hold of their other jobs – and replace that existence with the pursuit of high return property development projects from the comfort of their laptops and smartphones.

The global online property investment market is forecast to grow from $15bn today to $800bn by 2027, driven by a generation of new, often younger, investors – many of whom may not be in a position to buy property outright themselves. Online portfolios show the potential to provide impressive returns and give some glamour back to property investment. So unthinking the tried and tested formulas will likely become the most attractive way ahead for real estate gains.

– Three-quarters rely on traditional VPNs for remote access while a third also use zero trust as part of their remote access strategy
– Over half plan to reduce third party/contractor access to systems due to security risks

Bracknell, UK – A report launched today by Menlo Security, a leader in cloud security, highlights growing concerns about securing users as the trend for hybrid and remote working is set to remain. The new report – which surveyed 500+ IT decision makers in the U.S. and the U.K., including a third at C-level – looks at attitudes to securing remote access to applications and resources and the adoption of zero trust solutions.

While most respondents (83%) say they are confident in their strategy for controlling access to applications for remote users, three-quarters are re-evaluating theirs in the wake of new ways of working and the growth in cloud application use. While half of employees are currently working remotely or adopting a hybrid approach, around two-fifths (42%) are expected to continue in 12 months’ time.

According to the findings, three-quarters (75%) of organisations continue to rely on VPNs (virtual private network) for controlling remote access to applications, which rises to 81% for organisations of 10,000+ employees. For around a third (36%) of organisations a zero trust approach also forms part of their remote access strategy.

“It seems that most businesses are confident in their remote access security, yet are still relying on a traditional and inherently insecure way of doing things using VPNs, which give access to everything on a network,” said Mark Guntrip, senior director, cybersecurity strategy at Menlo Security. “With only a third currently using zero trust network access, there’s a real opportunity to provide users with access to only those applications and resources needed to do their job. When you start to adopt this approach across everything you do then your whole security mindset changes.”

The top reason for implementing a zero trust solution is improved security, according to 60% of respondents, regardless of whether they are using it or not. One third (32%) point to ease of use, while speed of access and scalability are both more widely recognised among those already adopting a zero trust approach. Significantly, 40% of respondents believe that implementing a zero trust solution places less pressure on IT.

Despite overall confidence by global IT decision makers in the robustness of their strategy for controlling application access for remote users, Menlo Security’s research also shows that:

• Three-quarters of respondents believe that hybrid and remote workers accessing applications on unmanaged devices poses a significant threat to their organisation’s security. Despite this, around a fifth still allow unmanaged devices – laptops, desktops and mobile devices – to connect to corporate applications and resources.

• While the majority (79%) of respondents have a security strategy in place for remote access by third parties and contractors, there are growing concerns about the risks they present, with just over half (53%) planning to reduce or limit third-party/contractor access to systems and resources over the next 12¬–18 months.

Menlo’s Mark Guntrip adds: “As the internet becomes the new corporate network, controlling user access to private applications has become more important than ever. Organisations need to evolve their thinking from providing connectivity to the entire network to segmenting access by each individual application. The right zero trust approach will ensure seamless access between users and the applications they are authorised to use, while all other applications are invisible, preventing lateral discovery across the network.”

An infographic to accompany the report can be found here

Menlo Private Access
Menlo Security has a clientless-first approach to implementing Zero Trust Network Access, enabling organisations to secure access to applications from all devices – including managed, unmanaged and mobile devices. This approach minimises the workload on IT and security for deployment, while maximising the security posture of the company. The clientless-first approach can be augmented with a client for use cases that specifically require client-based access.

Unlike many ZTNA solutions that cannot monitor traffic being sent and received between an end user and a controlled application, Menlo Private Access ensures that security policy is always enforced by remaining inline between the end user and protected applications; utilising our Elastic Isolation Core as a control point to prevent sensitive data loss and stop potential malware from reaching the endpoint.

Company’s virtual offerings, cloud services match with on-premises deployments to solve real-world security challenges for SMBs, enterprises, governments and MSSPs

MILPITAS, Calif. — OCTOBER 13, 2021 — SonicWall, a global leader in physical, virtual and cloud-focused cybersecurity solutions, is emphasizing the return of customer choice for securing and scaling a mix of cloud, hybrid and traditional environments.

“Too many times organizations have been forced to change the way they operate in order to secure access to their networks, data, devices and people,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner. “We’ve been busy innovating cloud and virtual solutions that help organizations secure complex blends of networks, including virtual, hybrid, cloud and on-premises deployments.”

SonicWall’s growing virtual, cloud and hybrid offerings leverage the best of the company’s Boundless Cybersecurity approach to return deployment choices to the customer while solving real-world use cases faced by SMBs, enterprises, governments and MSSPs. SonicWall’s core cloud solution offerings:

– Solve security and connectivity challenges for cloud-native and hybrid environments.

– Secure access to cloud and on-premises applications and virtualized workloads through modern zero-trust capabilities.

– Protect increasingly distributed and remote workforces through powerful virtualized security layers and zero-touch capabilities.

– Simplify threat detection and response by unifying security events and analytics in a single cloud-based dashboard, allowing easy visualization and management of high-risk alerts.

“The modern IT environment is rife with complexity that drives security and connectivity challenges, which can be further complicated when organizations require hybrid environments comprised of physical, virtual and SaaS offerings, and private and public cloud solutions,” said IDC Research Director Chris Rodriguez. “Cybersecurity vendors that support these deployment options add tremendous financial and operational flexibility for their customers, and are also well suited for organizations that are in different stages of their cloud journey.”

SonicWall Solves Today’s Complex Security, Connectivity Challenges

SonicWall’s cloud innovation is driven by the need to solve complex security and connectivity challenges by delivering power, flexibility and choice to customers and partners. SonicWall has collaborated with organizations worldwide to build some of the most secure and robust hybrid networks.

“The University of Pisa connects and secures a wide and distributed network of systems, users, applications and services to ensure our institution can provide the highest levels of on-campus and remote learning,” said University of Pisa CIO Antonio Cisternino. “It’s imperative that we’re able to use the same trusted security controls, regardless of how we deploy them. Through their growing range of virtual, cloud and hybrid offerings, SonicWall gives us that choice and flexibility without sacrificing the security standards we require to protect and enable students, faculty and staff.”

SonicWall ensures organizations are able to set their own deployment paths and cloud migration timelines — not forcing them into a rigid vendor-first approach. By providing cloud-based (e.g., virtual firewall and VPN), as-a-service (e.g., ZTNA, FWaaS) and on-premises (e.g., firewalls, VPN) options, SonicWall empowers customers to deploy what works for their architecture — and adopt cloud transformation at their pace.

These real-world hybrid environments are secured using a cohesive mix of virtual, cloud and on-premises offerings, including SonicWall NSv virtual firewalls, Cloud Edge Secure Access zero-trust security, appliance-free SMA virtual private networks (VPN), and Cloud App Security to protect SaaS applications.

Organizations are able to further scale and extend distributed environments by simultaneously deploying security across multiple locations — with minimal IT support — using Zero-Touch Deployment capabilities.

Implement Zero-Trust Security in as Few ‘15 Minutes’

With the influx of work-from-home access, companies require a simple and secure way of connecting their workforce to resources they need — wherever they’re located.

SonicWall embraces zero-trust security as a tenet of cybersecurity in a perimeter-less, cloud-first reality. SonicWall helps organizations easily and quickly connect remote users to on-premises resources, cloud-hosted applications, branch offices and public clouds. In as few as 15 minutes, SonicWall Cloud Edge Secure Access — the company’s zero-trust network access (ZTNA) offering — quickly scales security beyond the perimeter through modern zero-trust principles. This results in logical trust zones that authenticate every user, device and location for secure access to only the specific services and resources they require.

Simplify Threat Detection, Visibility & Response

New in SonicWall Capture Security Center 3.0, Unified Insights brings analytics from across SonicWall products, including physical and virtual firewalls, wireless access points, switches and endpoint security products into a single, customizable dashboard. This provides a central, easy-to-use location for monitoring environments and troubleshooting incidents, eliminating the need to multi-task across different consoles. Paired with SonicWall Analytics, Capture Security Center 3.0 can transform large volumes of data (spanning tens of thousands of firewall nodes) into actionable insights and defensive actions against hidden risks across networks, applications and users — all with the visibility, precision, speed and scale of the cloud.

Integrate Cloud-delivered Threat Protection Across Hybrid Environments

Regardless of deployment strategy, SonicWall ensures organizations can identify and block both known and unknown cyberattacks across traditional networks, public and private cloud infrastructure, and virtual environments by seamlessly integrating SonicWall physical and virtual firewalls when and where it makes sense for your business. The foundation of this ecosystem integrates with SonicWall’s cloud-based Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) multi-engine sandbox service to stop advanced cyberattacks, including never-before-seen malware and ransomware.

To learn more about SonicWall’s various cloud solutions, please visit www.sonicwall.com/cloud.

By Nick Carey and Tina Bellon

LONDON (Reuters) -European and U.S. cities planning to phase out combustion engines over the next 15 years first need to plug a charging gap for millions of residents who park their cars on the street.

For while electric vehicle (EVs) sales are soaring in Europe and the United States, a lag in installing charging infrastructure is causing a roadblock.

Often cash-strapped local authorities have other priorities than a kerbside network of charging points which would allow owners to ensure their EVs are always topped up.

And while that leaves a potential gap for the private sector, it is one that few EV charging startups, who have been early adopters in other locations, are focused on.

“It’s really difficult to tackle on-street residential charging, so there’s really not many companies that have,” Hugh Mackenzie, chief operating officer at Trojan Energy, said.

Trojan has developed a charger, which is being tested on residential streets in two London boroughs, where EV owners insert a short pole into sockets sunk into the pavement and then plug in their car.

Tim Win, an Uber driver who charges his Nissan Leaf every day, is using the system in Brent, north London.

“After I’ve been driving all day I just want to come home and plug in,” said Win, 39, who previously used a nearby EV fast charger to charge up in 20 minutes but sometimes had to wait in line for nearly an hour.

A “cabbie” using one of London’s new electric black taxis told Reuters he often has to drive between charging points, losing valuable custom as he does, only to find they are either already in use or malfunctioning.

COST CURB

Like the roll out of fibre optic cable for ultra-fast broadband, urban on-street charging using solutions which include lamp post chargers or even wireless, will cost billions.

Solutions like Trojan’s are expensive because they require grid connections. And because there are not yet enough EV owners to ensure a quick return, they are 75% subsidized by Britain’s government.

Trojan’s chargers cost around 7,000 pounds ($9,520) to make and install, but Mackenzie says that if that can be cut to 4,500 pounds it will work for private investors.

But it still requires local authority buy-in.

“The biggest factor in whether kerbside charging is successful is whether you have an interested and engaged municipality,” said Travis Allan, vice president for public affairs at Quebec City-based FLO, which has installed at least 7,000 kerbside chargers in Canadian and U.S. cities.

Yet even engaged local authorities like Brent, which is trying lamp post chargers and other solutions, simply lack cash.

Tim Martin, Brent council’s transportation planning manager, says lamp post chargers cost around 2,000 pounds and rapid chargers around 15,000 pounds, so subsidies are the only option.

“The prospect of being able to fund them ourselves out of our own budgets is practically zero,” Martin said.

Based on car registrations and parking permits, charging startup char.gy estimates there are between 5 million and 10 million cars in London, of which around 76% park on the street.

Government figures show the total is around 40% for Britain’s 33 million cars, while around 40% of Americans do not live in single-family homes with garages.

And while the rise of car sharing services may reduce the need for on-street charging, it is unclear by how much.

Char.gy Chief Executive Richard Stobart estimates Britain will need half a million on-street chargers by 2030, when around half of the country’s cars should be electric. Char.gy runs a network of around 1,000 on-street lamp post chargers in Britain that cost around 1,800 pounds to make and install.

While government subsidies exist, Stobart said, local authorities often lack the resources.

“So they just dither and it takes forever,” he added.

Ubitricity, a Royal Dutch Shell business, is the British market leader, with just 4,000 chargers using lamp posts, which if they are close enough to the kerb and use LED lamps, have enough power to mostly charge an EV overnight.

Lex Hartman, ubitricity’s CEO, estimates that in densely-populated areas, around 60% of Europe’s car owners will need public charging.

“You will need chargers at home, at work, at the supermarket, you will need fast charging, but mainly you need charging everywhere,” Hartman said.

“If the infrastructure isn’t there then people will hesitate to buy an electric car unless they are forced to,” he added.

Europe has more than 90 million lamp posts, millions of which can be used for charging, said Hartman, whose ubitricity also runs a lamp post charger network in Berlin.

The European Commission knows urban chargers “will be essential to convincing more and more consumers to go electric,” and has formed an expert group to advise cities on how to deploy them, a spokesperson said.

‘PAINFUL EXPERIENCE’

Some cities face a huge challenge.

New York state has set a goal for all new passenger cars and light-duty trucks to be zero-emission by 2035.

But New York City currently has just 1,580 charging plugs for around one million cars that rely on street parking.

“Owning an EV in a large city like New York is a really painful experience,” said Paul Suhey, co-founder of electric moped sharing startup Revel, which has launched the city’s first fast-charging hub.

An April study commissioned by New York estimated electrifying its transportation would cost some $500 billion.

In Los Angeles, which has the most chargers of any U.S. city, Blink Charging last year bought city-run EV car sharing network BlueLA, which has 100 vehicles and 200 charging stations.

Blink CEO Michael Farkas said local authorities want charging infrastructure in as many places as possible to encourage people to buy EVs, but companies cannot afford to shoulder the investments until ownership rises.

“You can’t just have a field of dreams, you’ll go broke unless the government wants to pay for it,” Farkas said.

Even in Norway, where state support put it at the forefront of the electric shift, rolling out on-street charging is tough.

Oslo subsidizes larger public chargers and rapid chargers, investments that pay off within three to six years, Sture Portvik, who heads up its charging infrastructure efforts, said.

But making charging accessible for the 30% of car owners who lack designated parking in a city where bans on fossil-fuel cars will start in the next few years is a major challenge.

“It’s extremely important that everybody, regardless of their economic background, gets to be a part of the green shift,” Portvik said. “And they will have to because in a few years they will have to sell their diesel car.”

($1 = 0.7354 pounds)

(Additional reporting by Kate Abnett in Brussels; Editing by Alexander Smith)