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You would like to think that a bunch of talented professionals working on a tech project could set aside egos and work together productively toward the common goal – a successful project solution. Nine times out ten… actually probably more like 99 times out of 100 - they can. But with a bunch of talented egos working on a project it can sometimes spur disagreements on next steps, the solution or who should be doing what and when. It makes the project manager’s job harder, it can cause re-work or extra hours to tasks and can cause customer concerns and the quality of one or more deliverables may suffer.
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Let’s consider what I think are 5 key actions toward a successful risk mitigation strategy and a positive move forward following such occurrences.

In my next installment of this “5 Reasons Why…” series on project management related software and services, I want to consider 5 reasons why you should consider Portfoleon to manage your projects and portfolio of projects. I personally had not heard of Portfoleon before, but was delightfully overwhelmed with the power and visibility this tool gives to the project leaders when presenting projects for planning and alignment with organizational goals. The key to getting buy-in from senior management is to demonstrate feasibility, efficiency, and relevance of your plans with these projects and how they align to the strategic company goals. Portfoleon does just that. Let’s consider…
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Get A Bird’s Eye View Of The Project Portfolio

In managing your project portfolio Portfoleon puts emphasis on visualization. Make every conversation you have with your stakeholders productive by instantly pulling the right data from a single source of truth and visualizing it in a way that enables your team to make decisions.

Triskell Software is an excellent choice for strategically planning your projects and products from execution to delivery.

Hybrid Solutions where Project Portfolio Management meets Strategic Planning and Roadmap functionality to gain visibility and increase productivity

As an AI-powered team messaging app, Chanty helps teams communicate, collaborate, and connect with other teams using unlimited group messaging and integrated video technology. Chanty brings all apps such as GitLab, Google Drive, MailChimp, and more used during day-to-day operations into one single place.

​Chanty includes team messaging, voice and video conferencing, screen sharing, task management, search functionality, code snippets, smart notifications, data export and encryption, and more. Chanty allows teams to stay connected in real-time via messaging, voice, and video capabilities. Users can share their screens and other documents to collaborate on specific tasks. In a single hub, users can manage assigned tasks, public and private conversations, call history,...

Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data are transforming healthcare with high-throughput analyses of complex diseases. Machine learning and sophisticated computational methods can be used to efficiently interpret human genomes and other biomarkers, providing insights for patient treatment and with major applications in diagnostics and preventive care.


A personalised treatment plan may include preventive care for diseases that are at a higher risk of developing, for example increased screening for cancer if a patient possesses the BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 gene mutation. Additionally, AI can generate insights from genetic information, biomarkers, and other physiological data to predict how a patient will respond to different treatment options, which may help avoid adverse reactions, reduce the use of expensive or unnecessary treatments on patients that are unlikely to respond, and ultimately reduce hospitalisation and outpatient costs. For more information, GlobalData’s latest report, Precision and Personalized Medicine – Thematic Research, provides insight into the most prevalent uses of personalised medicine, new applications, and the healthcare, macroeconomic, and technology themes driving growth.


Big data and bioinformatics can also offer human-centred data to be used for early drug research in lieu of, or in combination with, conventional methods like cell or animal models. This could help streamline the drug discovery process by reducing the time and money spent on inviable drug candidates, especially for conditions that translate poorly between animal models and humans. For example, laboratory mice have historically been utilised in early phase drug trials but are a poor model for genetic diversity and age-related diseases in humans. So, treatments for neurodegenerative and other age-related conditions could greatly benefit from the inclusion of human genetics in research and development (R&D).


The field of oncology has been the most accepting of personalised medicine, though other areas of medicine could greatly benefit from this medical model. Still, major barriers to commercialisation and access are funding and reimbursement. Stockholders want to invest in therapies that have a large patient pool and payers are hesitant to reimburse patients for novel diagnostic tests and treatments that lack the positive clinical data of traditional ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches. However, we could see interest in the sector resurge as increasing market competition and advances in technology rapidly drive down the cost of genetic sequencing. Physiological data is also more comprehensive and accessible than ever due to the recent growth of remote patient monitoring devices and wearable tech from the Covid-19 pandemic.


Furthermore, companies are collaborating to reduce development costs and share patient data for research. Recently, Valo Health Inc., a medical technology company, and Kahn-Sagol-Maccabi (KSM), a research and innovation center, announced they will perform joint studies utilising KSM’s Tipa Biobank of more than 800,000 samples and Valo’s drug discovery and development platform Opal. The Tipa Biobank stores ‘live’ samples, with plans to continue collecting genetic samples from the same subjects over their respective lifetimes. The collaboration provides an opportunity to utilise the growing patient data sector to capitalise on the race to get AI-designed drugs to market and could give Valo/KSM a competitive edge for developing treatments in oncology and for neurodegenerative diseases. Industry collaborations between big market players may also reassure healthcare payers that personalised technology is worth the investment, improving funding and patient identification for new trials and treatments.


Genetic and physiological data can help paint a clearer picture of overall patient health, and it is expected that the demand for preventive medicine will continue increasing as people live longer and the global elderly population grows. Looking to the future, precision and personalised medicine has the potential to expedite drug discovery, improve disease screening, and predict patient responses to treatment options, leading to improved quality of care and reduced overall healthcare costs.

With airfocus you can manage your product strategy, prioritize what to build next, and create clear product roadmaps.

airfocus is the first end-to-end modular product management platform.
Easily build, run, and scale your product workflows in one place.

Cybersecurity is a critical business imperative. New threat actors are emerging every day, and the cost of cybercrime totaled more than $6.9 billion last year. The recently conducted survey on cyber resilience from Microsoft Security asked more than 500 security professionals to weigh in on emerging security trends and top concerns like hybrid work’s effect on cloud vulnerabilities, the importance of security fundamentals, and the increase in ransomware.


Based on our results, we present five steps organizations can take to improve their cyber resilience.


1. Embrace the vulnerability of hybrid work and build resilience

Hybrid work drove businesses of all types to adopt cloud applications and services, and more people are working in difficult-to-defend environments — which encompasses applications, platforms, personal devices, and home networks. According to the survey, breaches due to cloud misconfiguration are just as common as malware attacks, and are even more associated with significant damage to the business.Roughly 40% of security breaches in the past year significantly impacted the business.


Organizations can defend against the vulnerabilities posed by hybrid work by partnering with cloud experts. Securing the cloud is different from securing an internal network. A cloud security specialist can help navigate common administrator errors, such as misconfiguration and inconsistent implementation of security policies.


2. Limit the impact of ransomware attacks


Ransomware attacks increased by 13% in 2021, and this threat poses a significant risk to businesses. Forty-eight percent of ransomware attack victims in our study report that attacks caused significant operational downtime, exposure of sensitive data, and reputational damage. Organizations that paid the ransom only recovered 65% of their data on average, with 29% getting back no more than half their data.


Because ransomware attacks come down to three primary entrance vectors — brute forcing remote desk protocol (RDP), vulnerable internet-facing systems, and phishing — organizations can limit the damage by forcing attackers to work harder to gain access to multiple business-critical systems. Zero-trust principles like least-privilege access are especially effective at preventing attacks from traveling across networks and discovering valuable data, as well as addressing human-operated ransomware.


3. Elevate cybersecurity into a strategic business function


A strong security posture should focus on building awareness of the threat landscape and establishing resilience, not on preventing individual attacks. CISOs agree: 98% of respondents in the survey on cyber resilience who reported feeling extremely vulnerable to attack were also implementing zero trust, and 78% already had a comprehensive zero-trust strategy in place. Because zero trust assumes breach and optimizes for resilience rather than protection, respondents who indicated maturity in their zero-trust journey were also more likely to see attacks as an inevitability rather than a preventable threat.


Start by assessing the zero-trust maturity stage of your organization. This helps establish a resilient security posture and proactive approach to cybersecurity that facilitates more effective hybrid work, improves consumer experiences and confidence, and supports innovation.


4. Maximize your existing resources


While cyber attacks are increasing in severity, many security professionals believe that taking the above steps to shore up defenses will better protect organizations in coming years as it is implemented across supply chains, partner networks, and ecosystems.


Organizations can advance their cybersecurity maturity by ensuring the comprehensive implementation of security tools. Building on a strong zero-trust foundation, organizations can optimize their existing security investments like endpoint detection and response, email security, identity and access management, cloud access security broker, and built-in threat protection tools.


5. Implement security fundamentals


CISOs are being asked to do more with less, so prioritizing foundational cyber best practices is key. Basic security hygiene still protects against 98% of attacks, according to the Microsoft Digital Defense Report.


Nearly all cyberattacks can be thwarted by enabling multifactor authentication (MFA), applying least privilege access, updating software, installing anti-malware, and protecting data. And yet, across industries, only 22% of customers using Microsoft Azure Active Directory had implemented strong identity authentication protection as of December 2021.


For security leaders, this is an important lesson: start with identity. Whether it’s MFA, passwordless protection, or conditional access policies, having secure identity protections can minimize the opportunity for threat actors and raise the attack bar.
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Strengthening your cyber resilience does not happen overnight; it is a continuous journey. By prioritizing based on risk, organizations can incrementally apply these five steps to confidently move towards better cyber resiliency.