Launching on Wednesday, June 26 at 2pm ET
InformationWeek has been polling IT professionals about their paychecks and personal goals for over 20 years.
In this free event, research director
Amy Doherty
and editor-in-chief
Sara Peters
will provide a glimpse into the 2024 InformationWeek IT Salary Survey findings to set you on the path to finding some answers.
2024 InformationWeek US IT Salary Report:
A Look Back at 2023 -- Profits, Layoffs, and the Continued Rise of AI
2023 was full of economic contradictions. Record profits. Massive layoffs. It was also the year AI possibly saved (or possibly sacrificed) IT.
Continued job uncertainty stemming from massive and sustained layoffs in IT during a loudly hailed booming economy is taking a toll. Despite being satisfied with their jobs overall, more than half of respondents in the latest InformationWeek IT Salary Survey rated their stress as a 6 or higher on a 10-point scale.
Find out how you compare:
- Salary Parity
- Gender Pay Gap
- Non-Salary Benefits
- Stress Level
- Job Perks
- Raises & Bonuses
You already know that every day at InformationWeek brings expert insights and advice to help today’s IT leaders identify the best strategies and tools to drive their organizations forward.
That means original reporting from our team of journalists and unique commentary you won’t see anywhere else! But in case you missed them, here are some of our other must-read favorites from this week:
What's Next from Quantum Computing and AI?
Key Points:
- Quantum AI is a burgeoning computer science sector, dedicated to exploring the potential synergy that exists between quantum computing and AI, says
Gushu Li
, a professor at the
University of Pennsylvania
School of Engineering and Applied Science, in an email interview.
- A growing number of researchers now believe that AI models developed with quantum computing will soon outpace classical computing AI development. For his part, Li believes that quantum AI's biggest initial impact will be in four specific areas: Drug Discovery, Financial Modeling, Materials Science, and Logistics and Optimization.
- Yet the road ahead may be rocky, Li warns. "It's well known that quantum hardware suffers from noise that can destroy computation," he says. "Quantum error correction promises a potential solution, but that technology isn't yet available."
- "AI is a sophisticated software layer that emulates the very capabilities of human intelligence, while quantum computing is assembling the very building blocks of the universe to create a computing substrate," says
Guy Harrison
, enterprise architect at cybersecurity technology company
OneSpan
, in a recent email interview.
Will Snowflake's Response be Enough to Combat Breaches?
Key Points:
- So far this month, Snowflake-related data breaches have been reported at
Ticketmaster
(with hacker group ShinyHunters claiming to steal data from 560 million customers);
Santander Bank, N.A.
(another 30 million customers impacted);
Advance Auto Parts
(with 380 million customers and 358,000 current and former employees impacted, according to Bleeping Computer); and
Pure Storage
(which has confirmed a breach but not specified number of customers impacted).
- Both Advance Auto Parts and Pure Storage immediately pointed out the Snowflake connection. Snowflake in a blog post denied direct fault for the recent breaches by ShinyHunters and others, foisting blame on user accounts not enabled with MFA.
- In an interview with Runtime at last week’s Snowflake Data Cloud Summit in the UK, CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy signaled that Snowflake would add an enforcement mechanism to its MFA policy. "It's clear that we have to do something about this … I think making this programmatic is the next logical step we do need to take," Ramaswamy told Runtime.
-
Kris Lahiri
, co-founder and chief security officer at
Egnyte
, in an email says sound authentication is crucial to cybersecurity. “This should be a wakeup call to all organizations to revisit basic security hygiene like ensuring MFA setup (the primary reason for this Snowflake compromise) and reviewing every company’s supply chain of critical data vendors,” Lahiri says.
Battling Burnout in Cybersecurity
Key Points:
- To kick off the 2024
Gartner
Security & Risk Management Summit last week, Gartner’s vice president analysts,
Chris Mixter
and
Dennis Xu
opened the three-day conference with an introduction to augmented cybersecurity with a focus on leaving the zero-tolerance-for-failure mindset behind.
- The premise of Mixter’s and Xu’s presentation centered on the liability that this type of mindset has within cybersecurity organizations, because this mentality fuels burnout and a lack of sustainability amongst the workforce.
- Mixter emphasized cybersecurity organizations cannot simply spend or budget away the problem of talent, nor their resiliency. Though preventative investments are important and part of the solution to cyber threats and attacks, it’s not a holistic approach nor a cure-all.
- To thrive, “we need highly mature sustainable response and recovery capabilities,” Mixter suggested. According to Mixter, underinvestment in response and recovery is a result of the zero-failure mindset, and that underinvestment “is driving cybersecurity teams into the ground.”
- Xu offered a definition of augmented cybersecurity: to sustainably defend the organization and to elevate response and recovery to equal status with prevention. Augmented cybersecurity organizations identify with the following characteristics: Fault tolerance, Minimum effective toolset, and Resilient cyber workforces.
AI Landscape Feeling Federal Heat
Key Points:
- The DOJ will head the antitrust investigation into chipmaker
NVIDIA
, while the FTC takes point on the probe into
Microsoft
and
OpenAI
, according to
The New York Times
. These investigations have a long runway, but their outcomes have the potential to shake up, and potentially break up, the dominance these three companies have built in the AI market.
- These regulatory investigations will seek to determine if any of these companies’ dominance has been achieved by means that violate antitrust laws. “[They’re] looking to see if there are any entities that control how AI is used and whether they are misusing their power to exclude competitors,”
Spencer Waller
, Justice John Paul Stevens Chair in Competition Law and director of the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies at
Loyola University Chicago School of Law
, tells InformationWeek.
- Just because investigations have been initiated does not necessarily mean they will result in charges and yield results that seismically reshape the AI market. Given the billions being poured into AI and the seemingly inevitable changes it will make to the way we live our lives, antitrust scrutiny is unsurprising.
- AI is a relatively nascent space. Technologies like neural networks and the potential acceleration of AI capabilities with quantum computing leave ample room to rewrite the competitive future.
What Will the Future of DEI Look Like?
Key Points:
- According to CNBC, DEI-related job postings fell by 44% in mid-2023 and 23% year over year in November after growing 30% between 2020 and 2021, which was fueled by George Floyd’s murder by police.
- “What I hear from companies and what our research has shown is that the diversity officer job, the idea that the diversity initiative would be owned by this HR department or group or leader is falling out of favor. [T]he chief diversity officer is being demoted, the number of jobs like that is shrinking, and so it's not so as much of a corporate PR thing that like it used to be,” says
Josh Bersin
, industry analyst and CEO of advisory firm The Josh Bersin Company.
- HR departments are using AI to understand candidates in a way that a human recruiter would not, which elevates some candidates that may not have been considered otherwise. There is also a general HR trend that focuses on skills versus roles, since it’s the mix of skills a company has that enables the company to operate more competitively, or not.
- “The median age of a US worker is 31 or 32, so any IT leader or anybody in recruiting, who’s thinking about this has to create a work experience that's attractive to the current Google generation,” says Bersin.
- In 2022, Bersin published some diversity research that showed by far, the top diversity driver was the CEO and the company defining diversity as part of their business strategy -- not their HR strategy or hiring strategy.
Latest Major Tech Layoff Announcements
Original Story by Jessica C. Davis, Updated by Brandon Taylor
Key Points:
- As COVID drove everyone online, tech companies hired like crazy. Now, we are hitting the COVID tech bust as tech giants shed jobs by the thousands.
- Updated June 15, 2024 with layoff announcements from
Medtronic
,
ByteDance
,
Paytm
,
Copia
, and
Revel
.
- Check back regularly for updates to our IT job layoffs tracker.
Commentary of the Week
Key Points:
- The EU AI Act takes a horizontal approach, regulating AI whether it’s a standalone software offering or embodied in hardware, such as a self-driving car. It also takes a life-cycle approach, regulating aspects of AI from the quality of the data used to develop the service to testing for accuracy and bias to human oversight to deployment to post-market monitoring.
- Parties involved in the development, introduction, sale, distribution and utilization of AI systems all face obligations under the Act. The EU AI Act addresses three key risk areas. Because of this, companies should identify who owns overall responsibility for risk management.
- The U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology has published an AI Risk Management Framework and supporting materials that help guide companies through identifying, mapping, measuring and monitoring risks.
- Th EU AI Act provides different timelines to implement its provisions depending on the risk category, and beginning with its publication in the Official Journal after final enactment:
- Unacceptable risk AI: six months from passage
- General Purpose AI: 12 months
- High risk AI: 24 months
- All risk categories with some exceptions: 36 months
Podcast of the Week
Podcast and Story by Joao-Pierre Ruth
Key Points:
- Data can be lucrative for those who gather it -- but unfortunately it can also be a financial windfall for bad actors that get their hands on it. Data is even more in demand to feed the rapid proliferation of AI models.
- The forces at play in the data scene can be in conflict at times regarding who holds and controls personal data, what that means for monetization, and how cybercriminals continue to affect this conversation.
- How much is at stake from personal and financial perspectives when it comes to the exchange and ownership of data?
- In this episode of DOS Won't Hunt,
Eric Avigdor
, chief product officer of Votiro;
Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, J.D., CIPP/US, CIPM
, managing director with IAPP in Washington DC;
Dana Simberkoff
, chief risk, privacy and information security officer at AvePoint; and
James Coyle
, public sector CTO for Lookout, discuss the intersection of data monetization, security, data privacy, and data ownership.
REGISTER NOW!
"The CIO's Guide to Enhancing GRC in 2024"
This LIVE webinar launches on Thursday, June 20 at 1pm ET:
On Thursday, June 20 - Tune into our free, live webinar broadcast!
Our featured keynote speakers are:
"The CIO's Guide to Enhancing GRC in 2024"
When structured correctly, Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) can enable enterprises to align IT and business goals, while mitigating risks and abiding by industry and government requirements.
Effectively manage your resources and unify your enterprise by utilizing emerging technology that drives data-driven decision making. In this webinar, we'll reveal ways to make GRC easier and more automated to push your company to the next level.
By attending this broadcast you’ll learn:
- How GRC safeguards your business from penalties while increasing customer trust
- How data privacy can impact disaster recovery and risk management
- Several benefits of GRC implementation for organizations
- Why GRC requires a unified and collaborative approach from different departments
- How the future of AI governance will impact GRC
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