In 2022, Technology evolves fast—faster than the technologists who use it. In order for organizations to put this tech to work for them, they need to have a good understanding of the talent ecosystem, and how to work within it.

As Eli Feldman, EPAM’s CTO of Advanced Technology, says, on the latest episode of *Silo Busting:* “Business capabilities are evolving faster than ever and therefore the technology capabilities that support the business capabilities must keep up.”

Feldman’s interlocutor is Sandra Loughlin, Managing Principal and Head of Client Learning & Talent Enablement at EPAM, who makes the important point that companies don’t just need to keep their training their employees on new skills, they need to do so longitudinally. When it comes to the issue of developing capabilities, Loughlin says, it needs to “span entire career changes, especially as automation has changed the roles that people have” and raises the questions of “whether those roles even exist” in the future.

Back and forth, Loughlin and Feldman go, talking about the importance of training people in a way that makes sense for their business (“Getting the right content to the right people at the right time, right way,” says Loughlin) and applying it to their daily work, aligning skills strategy and capability strategy, the capability academy model, mentorship, EPAM’s learning infrastructure, our approach to assessments (Feldman says EPAM focuses “extensively on making sure that assessment is in reality all about guiding the individual toward their next milestone in their career”), and more.

Eavesdrop on Feldman and Loughlin and you’ll soon understand much about creating a healthy talent ecosystem here. Lucky for you, the learning process is as simple as hitting the “play” button.  

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 34: Tackling the Talent Ecosystem with Sandra Loughlin and Eli Feldman

Are you SME paring? That is, are you matching up external cloud subject matter experts with your engineers, architects, and security people to deliver a common goal? That’s what Jim Wilt, Distinguished Architect of Digital Strategy & Technology Innovation at a Fortune 100 retailer, does—and it works. Superbly. “The rate at which you increase expertise at that level is tenfold greater than an encompassing program of certification and training,” he says.

If you’re curious about the cloud, you should attend to the wisdom of Wilt, Miha Kralj, EPAM’s VP of Cloud Strategy, and Norm Judah, EPAM Advisory Board Member, who are all here on *Silo Busting* for the second installment of our series on cloud mastery (hear the first part here: https://www.continuuminnovation.com/en/how-we-think/blog/you-only-realize-when-you-finish-the-marathon-that-its-actually-a-triathlon).  

It’s a wisdom, says Judah, that is *evolving*—and one that leaders shouldn’t keep to themselves: “One of the key measures of wisdom is your ability to share the wisdom that you've got and update the wisdom that you have.”

And it’s one that requires specific measures of success. 

When Kralj asks about defining the cloud native mentality approach and results, he gets an interesting answer from Judah: “What is the *consequence* of mastery?” adding: “A consequence of mastery is actually a clearly articulated technical strategy on which we actually land up building and running a series of systems in a fairly broad way.”  

Listen in to this episode and you’ll walk away with all sorts of cloud-based wisdom including advice on identifying and encouraging technical leaders within one’s organization, some insights into investment strategy, and a deep consideration of the role of the CTO in the complex process of cloud mastery. 

Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 38: Cloud Mastery, Part II, with Jim Wilt, Norm Judah, and Miha Kralj

The smartest designers understand the importance of diversity. It’s not about signaling openminded-ness but about achieving the deepest levels of innovation. We’re talking about truly heterogenous, multidisciplinary teams, which is a familiar concept to us. “Imagine if our future teams were just as representative as the beautiful tapestry of people making up this world,” writes Kevin G. Bethune, author of *Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation,* in his recently published volume. 

But when it comes to investing in such diversity, Bethune, who is our guest on *The Resonance Test,* tells Producer Ken Gordon: “The business community at large has a long way to go.”

Bethune knows whereof he speaks. He’s been around all kinds corporate and design cultures. He studied engineering at Notre Dame, business at Carnegie Mellon, and design at ArtCenter; worked on nuclear generators at Westinghouse; designed shoes at Nike; lead design at BCG Digital Ventures; and most recently became the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of dreams • design + life, a think tank for design and innovation.

His book is, in fact, an interesting hybrid of professional autobiography, an argument for inclusion, a little philosophy of multidisciplinary design teams, and a career guide. And in it, and in this conversation, he uses his lived experience to showcase how an incessant willingness to learn, to stretch, are necessary for a successful career. 

“Careers are made by really leaning into your curiosity,” he says.  

But Bethune also says, in his book on this conversation, that this individual experience needs to be blended into a strong multidisciplinary team. “The collective *we* is better,” he says, because it creates “a greater sense of resilience, greater sense of flexibility, and a greater sense of future foresight than if I didn't have these experiences to offer in the team room.” 

In fact, Bethune talks about so much relevant things, such as the important role education played in his career, collaboration during a pandemic, and how to create a network of your own, among other salient topics. 

Much wisdom here, for those who click. Join us. 

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

The Resonance Test 79: Kevin Bethune, Author of “Reimagining Design”

Nowadays, everyone in healthcare is talking telemedicine… except for maybe Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, Chief Medical Officer of Texas Children's Hospital North Austin, founder of *33 Charts,* author of several books, and a previous *Resonance Test* guest, who prefers the term “remote care.” He finds it a flexible term because it encompasses more than the conventional idea of care through a screen. One can certainly provide remote care via phone call, text, or email. 

“It’s important to think about the different modalities of remote care because different circumstances call for different modalities,” Vartabedian tells our Jonathon Swersey on the latest episode of *The Resonance Test.* 

But the challenge is not just about the varieties of treatment—there’s also the matter of training. Vartabedian says “We have this embarrassment of riches of technology,” adding that much of this tech is doled out to providers “without any real instruction or discussion or dialogue about how we're going to use these tools.”

Problems arise when providers use “the wrong tool for the wrong problem” and “things get really kind of challenging and difficult.”

And let’s not get started on the data! “There's this constant stream of information, and the challenge for us is: How do we harness that? How do we consolidate that to certain times of the day? It's almost a design problem,” Vartabedian says, sounding very much like a designer. 

This fine conversation skis around the idea of data governance, training patients to use MyChart messaging, the difficulty of setting universal standards for communication tools. They talk about what’s been gained (access) and lost (human connection) in a remote-first world. They talk about being sensitive to the interests of the end user. They talk about the importance of touch in the examination process: “It's a form of communication,” says Vartabedian.

It's a deep, informed, and at times personal conversation about how going remote has changed the face of healthcare for practitioners. Get close to their dialogue by clicking below. 

Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

The Resonance Test 80: Dr. Bryan Vartabedian on the Provider Experience in Remote Care

The metaverse business is booming! Companies are scrambling into the virtual world to claim a space of their own and set up shop as fast as they can. Dr. Alexandra Diening, Head of Research & Insights for EMEA, says they need to slow down. She introduces our Jonathan Lupo, VP of Experience Design, in the latest episode of Silo Busting, to a powerful and relevant idea she calls the “responsible metaverse.” Diening talks about the metaverse “opens new pathways for potential risks” and what we can do to close them off. Learn about the new vulnerabilities the metaverse  creates (social, psychological, data and more) and Diening’s plan to gather a diverse community to co-create the necessary guardrails. “I always say that it takes a village to build a responsible metaverse.” If you’d like to be a virtual villager, let's talk. 

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 41: Designing a Responsible Metaverse with Dr. Alexandra Diening and Jonathan Lupo

It’s a weird moment for fashion. Think about refashion, digital fashion, and the challenges of brand loyalty in a complex and increasingly expensive world. What’s a fashion brand to do in the face of all this change? 

Well, a smart place to start is the recently published third installment of our *Consumers Unmasked* research. And that’s exactly where our *Resonance Test* guests—Michelle Grant, Director of Strategy and Insights, Retail, and Consumer Goods at Salesforce, and Pierre Kremer, Senior Director, Retail & CPG, Digital Engagement Practice EMEA at EPAM—center their conversation.

Kremer asks about brand loyalty in recessionary times and how niche companies like Allbirds can have a slightly higher price point, compared to legacy shoe companies, and still compete.

Grant points to materials as key element of innovation. She talks about cutting water usage in making denim or replicating leather with mushrooms.

“Sustainability is a really important value to Gen Z in particular, so that material innovation, where you're being as careful about environmental resources as possible, will read as it resonate with that generation,” she says. 

Grant and Kremer consider many important topics: the resilience of physical retail in hybrid shopping (“Stores are well positioned you to be fulfillment centers… They're essentially mini-fulfillment centers, and in some cases,” says Grant), the current state of hyper-localization, the fashionable topic of NFTs, and more. Pull up a chair and listen as they walk their ideas down the virtual runway. 

Host: Macy Donaway
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

The Resonance Test 83: Consumers Unmasked Fashion Insights with Michelle Grant and Pierre Kremer

“When I meet with executives at banks, every single one of them tells me that they compete by how customer-centric” they are, says Alex Jimenez, Managing Principal, Financial Services Consulting at EPAM. “They can't really verbalize what that means.”

By contrast, Frank Sorrentino, Chairman and CEO of ConnectOne Bank, our guest on this #TakeItToTheBank conversation, is quite articulate indeed. 

Listen as Sorrentino and Jimenez journey into the heart of customer-centric banking. 

“When we have a meeting with clients, it's not about what products and services that we have,” says Sorrentino. “It's trying to understand ‘What are they trying to do?’ before we even talk about any particular product or service.”

This kind of customer understanding will be crucial in the upcoming year. Until recently, Sorrentino, says the economy was like a  “small town, Little League where everybody gets a trophy…. everybody does well and everybody's rewarded and every decision you make happens to be the right one.” He adds: “We're now moving into an economy where I believe discipline is gonna matter. Intelligent choices are gonna matter. And I think there will be winners and losers.”

They go on to discuss important subjects such as the impact of digital technology and humanizing the digital experience, the role of the branch, how companies can optimize their activities in an uncertain economy, and more.

This episode, it must be added, features only winners. 

Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 50: Frank Sorrentino and Alex Jimenez on Customer-Centric Banking

The cloud may have made business more flexible, but it has made security *complicated.* 

According to Jay Parikh, CEO at Lacework and our guest on this #CybersecurityByDesign conversation, the cloud model “introduces a whole new set of risks that I think the industry, we all, are really trying to put our arms around.”

Parikh and Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP his conversational companion, try to figure out how to stretch the arms of cybersecurity to provide an adequate defensive posture.

Part of the answer is starting early. “Ideally you understand risks in your environment before they show up in production and before they impact the business,” says Parikh. “But if there are risks that do creep through into production that you're able to find and remediate them as soon as possible.”

Parikh says it’s important to rethink the way security is done “so that it's part of this move fast, this builder kind of mentality that is there in the cloud.” You need people who can build security naturally into the development process. 

Talent is an issue—a big one—here.

“We need more builders in security,” says Rehman. “Constantly just throwing people at it is just not gonna solve it.” Parikh agrees, adding that security “has to be something that is there and it's part of the build process. It's not an after-the-build process.”

Which means, of course,  that you need the kind of people with the skills about capabilities for being a builder. 

“Finding builders, finding security expertise, is very hard these days,” says Parikh. “The demand just continues to far outstrip the supply of the talent out there.”

And you do manage to bring them on board, you need to provide them with engaging work. “You don't want them to be doing repetitive, mundane things because they're not gonna be happy. Then you have a retention problem.”

Listen to this episode. It’s so relevant and timely and thoughtful that retention won’t be a problem.

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 51: Jay Parikh and Sam Rehman on Bringing More Builders into Cybersecurity

Everybody's talking about generative AI and ChatGPT… but few are doing so with the clear-eyed intelligence and honesty of Sandra Loughlin, EPAM's Chief Learning Scientist, and Alexandra Diening, our Head of Research & Insights for EMEA. In this episode of *Silo Busting,* our conversationalists think about how to optimize this new tech and the unique environment it is creating.

Loughlin says that, regarding ChatGPT, there are "people out there who wish they could turn back the clock and just bury their heads in the sand and pretend that doesn't exist. But generative AI is here, and we need to find ways to live with it and… benefit from it."

She approaches the subject, she says, from three perspectives—from that of her clients, from her practice as a consultant, and as a learning scientist thinking broadly about education.

Diening addresses the hype, and compares it to the speculation surrounding, say, crypto and NFTs, saying of the former: ChatGPT is already delivering tangible value.

Loughlin says she was recently asked to write an article for publication, entered a query into ChatGPT, "and within, you know, 30 seconds it had come out with a full article." She found the draft wanting, of course, and then dove into editing. 

Diening notes that the software's output "lacks the nuance of critical and ethical thinking," which means that people are still very much necessary, no matter how hot the hype.

She adds that this might lead to a labor market shift. "I always talk about the death of generalists when it comes to generative AI." ChatGPT could take care of the dull and repetitive work that any general practitioner can do and allow specialists to shine. Could this be a force in the return to craft? Perhaps. 

Of course, they both worry about generative AI feeding on  polluted data sets. Loughlin says that ChatGPT might, like social media, creating echo chambers “for things that are not true but are very attractive for a lot of people.”

But that’s not the only issue. Diening notes that becoming a specialist requires one to experience the "tedious task of aggregating data" and that, traditionally, one must "go through a certain amount of dull work"—like drafting and redrafting one's words, unassisted—to "sharpen yourself as a specialist."  She reminds us that ChatGPT is a tool, comparing it to a calculator, saying that it "doesn't take the job away from mathematicians" but helps them crunch their complex numbers. The smart way is to look to partner with this technology rather than rival it. 

And that tool, Loughlin says, will ultimately be beneficial for consultants because it will optimize their work. "It's a tool… to help us shape our offerings, get more precise, and create, frankly, more value for our customers."

Curious how it might help *your* customers? Tune in!

Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 55: Talent in the Age of Generative AI with Sandra Loughlin and Alexandra Diening

Not *soccer* teams: SOC teams. When we say SOC, we’re talking, of course, about the Security Operation Center, a group charged with monitoring, detecting, preventing, and responding to cybert threats. In this #CybersecurityByDesign conversation Michael Mumcuoglu, CEO and Founder of CardinalOps, Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, and Aviv Srour, our Head of Cyber Innovation, illustrate the term with vivid examples and relevant, up-to-the-minute details.  

The big challenge is the ever-increasing complexity of our digital systems. “The rate of tech adoption in the business and the evolving threat landscape are basically outpacing the SOC,” says Mumcuoglu. He says that SOC teams are involved in “a constant chase trying to catch up with all that change.”

Education is a constant for the SOC team. “With every new tool and with every new technology, that team needs to have now subject matter experts in really have a huge range of technologies,” Mumcuoglu says.

Part of the issue involves rules. “I have seen many incidents which could have been easily prevented with the proper rules,” says Srour. 

The three cyber experts talk about collecting logs, blind spots, staying up-to-date and handling the burden of false positives. 

Rehman says that for most CISOs, “the abundance of white noise” would not just cause a capacity problem, but would “numb the system down, meaning your teams would now no longer have the right awareness of what is really an anomaly, what is really odd, what is really something that requires investigation. That abundance of white noise actually would kill your system.”

In other words: SOC today is anything but a game. It’s serious business. Learn what it takes to train your team from some veteran players. 

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas 
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 57: Assessing the State of Today’s SOC Teams

The era of generative AI needs humans… not just the data sets they create. Now and going forward, companies will need to depend on perceptive, intelligent, creative humans who can evaluate and, when necessary, stand up to the black box output AI throws at them. What kind of traits do such people embody? Where might we find them? What might they teach the rest of us? That’s what this episode of *Silo Busting* is all about. Tariq King, our VP and Head of Product-Service Systems, and Ira Livshits, Senior Data Scientist at EPAM, meet the test-based questions of Producer Ken Gordon with knowledge and aplomb. 

King, who spent much of his career hiring testers, says he looks for “the way that someone actually approaches solving problems and thinking perhaps in a different way or from a different perspective.”

Livshits notes that with testing in generative AI, “sometimes there is no right or wrong” and that a tester will “have to act or decide based on his or her understanding of the field and maybe intuition.” In short, she says, testing has become much less of a black-and-white job.

Together King and Livshits create a model conversation. They talk about how explainability fits in here, why musicians and liberal arts people make for good testers, the importance of being able to relate findings to a given audience (“[if] I have a PhD focused on machine learning, probably I can understand certain things in a different way than someone who may not have that degree,” says King), and how generative AI is bringing the role of testing closer to the fore.

Go on, give it a test-listen.

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 62 Human Testing and Generative AI with Tariq King and Ira Livshits

When it comes to financial literacy, many banks and financial institutions claim it’s something they actively prioritize for their customers. In reality, this often tends to be lip service. “Banks like to think they’re doing something in this space….They’ll write a long blog that will sit in a resource page on their website. But if you look at the analytics behind those pages, generally they have very few views. They’re not teaching anything to anyone, and this content is just not visible.” This is the claim of Alex Jimenez, EPAM’s Managing Principal of Financial Services Consulting, as he and Theodora Lau, Founder of Unconventional Ventures, discuss the shortcomings of retail banks when it comes to providing customers with financial literacy and guidance. 

“What is their [the bank’s] intention for putting this information out there? Is it just to check a box? Or are they doing it because they genuinely want to help?” asks Lau. If it’s truly the latter, then their efforts are genuinely falling short, especially in this time of unprecedented technological innovation. Worse yet, the one-size-fits-all approach—like an online resource center—fails to address the unique and varied needs of a large swathe of customers. “In the data from a recent survey we conducted, we found that Gen Zers were using physical branches at nearly the same rates as Boomers. It’s because mainly they want to have someone in person to talk to them. And part of that is because we have not done a great job to give young people an understanding of finance,” says Jimenez .

To that extent, banks also need to be cognizant of how they’re training their frontline staff to have financial literacy conversations. Jimenez touches on this, saying, “From a banking side, we also don’t tool our customer-facing employees to be able to do some of this. The philosophy has been, ‘Consumers know us as a bank and therefore will come to us because they trust us and that’s when we can give them guidance about managing their money.’” However, this shortsighted approach can actually leave banks vulnerable to their FinTech and big tech competitors, providing an opening for them to take away market share.

 
The good news is, there are plenty of opportunities for banks to close this gap with technology. Jimenez says:, “My credit card gives me an alert every time I make a purchase. I love that. But every once in a while, I want that alert to be more than just an alert saying, ‘You just spent $100 on Amazon.’ Give me some contextual advice specific to that transaction. That’s the sort of thing that we in the industry could do if we had the wherewithal to do it.”
 
Right now, it’s time to familiarize yourself with the full *Silo Busting* conversation. Get clicking! 
 
Host: Mo Banjoko 
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas 
Producer: Scott MacAllister 
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 63: Financial Literacy with Theodora Lau and Alex Jimenez

The cloud creates “cloud cowboys,” says Yinon Costica, VP of Product and Co-Founder of Wiz. 

This creates, as you might imagine, security issues. 

“Cloud allows people to really own their stuff end-to-end. They can basically create whatever they want,” says Costica. But he says that security professionals need to ensure that the cowboys can “govern their environments in a way that is secured while they continue to build.”

These issues set the theme for this #CyberesecurityByDesign conversation between Costica, Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, and Aviv Srour, our Head of Cyber Innovation.

Rehman notes that the frequency of change in cloud is “great for software engineering,” but adds: “It also makes it very, very difficult for you to actually find your baseline, your footing,” regarding security.

One of the most useful things we learn in this episode is how cloud might help spread the responsibility for security. In the past, security was solely the problem of the security team but with cloud and its self-serve nature, Costica says: “Security now should be democratized to those who are actually managing the environments, running the resources, have the right context.”

As a group, the guys talk about the differences between on-prem and cloud security, the role of visibility plays in cloud, the pragmatism cloud brings to security, and more.

Understanding the manifold nature of cloud is critical, and it will require a lot more education than many organizations realize. Says Rehman: “If you don't have a good understanding of what your cloud looks like, which is majority of people out there, then you still have a huge problem.”

Be part of the solution: Listen.


Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 61: A Clear View of Cloud Security with Yinon Costica, Sam Rehman, and Aviv Srour

The hype around generative AI remains strong. Right now, we’re nestled (un)comfortably atop the peak of this hype, wondering what in the world might come next. We’ve seen generative AI beat the bar exam. We’ve also, more recently, seen it fail to answer simple math equations.

Regardless of some of its failings, there’s no denying that these extremely rapid advancements in generative AI *and* its adoption trajectory are akin to the advent of the internet and the smartphone.
Big things are surely on the horizon.

Still, the path ahead is fuzzy, and many companies aren’t sure how to move forward. The biggest question that’s holding them back: “Is our data going to be safe?”

Our own Sam Rehman, SVP, Chief Information Security Officer, and Val Tsitlik, VP, Head of Data & Analytics, convened to acknowledge this mass consensus and how modern enterprises *should* be reframing this question. 

When companies start thinking through AI data security, “You can get pretty deep down [a] rabbit hole and start thinking about very, very complex scenarios and very complex attack vectors,” says Tsitlik. “Really, the best place to start is with the fundamentals, before you go ahead and start building applications.”

And the discussion doesn’t stop there. Adoption is going to require a monumental culture shift and, “to change an entire organization to be comfortable to embrace working with some form of computer assistant; that’s a whole different ball game,” says Rehman.

Slowly crawling toward exploration and experimentation is futile. Change is knocking at your door, now.

And let’s get one thing straight, folks—things are going to be messy. But that’s all part of disruption, isn’t it? The curious innovators who embrace the messy unknown are the ones who come out stronger on the other side.

“If you don’t start now, I don’t know how much time you’ll need to catch up… Do it and try to embrace it in small chunks,” says Rehman.

Now let’s hear more about what Sam and Val have to say on the fundamentals of data security in an AI-first world.

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Hillary Tiene
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 64: Generative AI Data Security Fundamentals with Sam Rehman and Val Tsitlik

Equity is not easy. It’s tough enough to talk honestly about equity in US healthcare, and troublingly difficult to create solutions that can, and will, be implemented. 

But trouble—good trouble, as Representative John Lewis once put it—is precisely what interests the people on the latest episode of *The Resonance Test.* 

Dr. Djinge Lindsay, MD, MPH, and Arianne Graham are here to talk about their stalwart attempts to solve for equity. Johnathon Swersey, Senior Director of Innovation at EPAM, creates all kinds of necessary trouble by putting tough questions to our two guests. 

Swersey begins by addressing the idea that given the less-than-optimal state of US healthcare, why are we focusing on equity?

“If we don't fix the health disparities in our country, those will spread to the rest of the population and it becomes not just a public health issue, but frankly, a national security issue,” says Graham.

Or conversationalists agree that there has been much talk about equity but that talk is far too insufficient. 

“There has been a lot of verbal acknowledgement of the fact that structural racism is pervasive and all of our systems, including healthcare, but that verbal acknowledgement hasn't necessarily been followed with action,” says Dr. Lindsay.

To move things forward, we need to align our moral imperatives with proper levels of funding. Dr. Lindsay asks us to consider the history of social change: “There have been few successful social change movements that haven't been aligned with some financial incentive for those who hold power.”

One such alignment must just be possible with the new Health Equity Index that's being introduced to Medicare Advantage. Healthcare players, says Dr. Lindsay, will now be required to not only “look at their data, not only stratify their data but to action on closing disparity gaps. Closing differences in health outcomes for people based on their race.”

Ultimately, it’s about beginning from what Graham calls “an asset- as opposed to a deficit-based approach.” She says that understanding the history, pain, and ramifications of structural racism is important but also “there is space to celebrate what makes different cultures unique and use that as a leverage point to engage folks in conversation about health. To tap into the trusted messengers, trusted leaders, and representative figures within communities that are delivering messages of self-actualization and self-efficacy in managing our health.”

Let’s hope we can manage to take a step in a healthier direction. Begin by listening. 

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon

The Resonance Test 87: Health Equity Solutions with Dr. Djinge Lindsay & Arianne Graham

In this special edition of *Silo Busting,* Elaina Shekhter, EPAM’s Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer, interviews Stepan Mitish, VP and Head of Ukraine, about how his role shifted from being a leader navigating war-time crises to a leader embracing the challenges of the business world. Mitish says that the year 2022 was so filled with extreme challenges that he and his team can count it as “three or five years of experience.”

He says the experience truly seasoned his team: “We understood what a great team means, not just in theory.” In hindsight, Mitish says, the experience puts COVID in perspective: “At that time, it was something catastrophical… but now you recall it with a smile on your face."

Mitish talks about how he and his team started preparation for a potential war before it actually took place, creating a very solid business continuity plan (BCP).  But if you ask whether he believed it would happen: “I didn't, and even now, for me it's hard to accept how could anybody in the 21st century do what actually was done.”

He tells the harrowing story of how it began very early one morning. Lots of messages pouring in from areas under attack. After that, “It was very loud night and morning,” he says, adding that he was focused on the quiet evacuation of our people to so-called shelters in the western part of Ukraine. Vinnytsia. Lviv. Ivano-Frankivsk. Uzhhorod.

At the beginning of the war, he was orchestrating 15,000 employees but they were working as one. He says that after a week, “I was afraid to start hearing a lot of complaints from our clients about failed delivery, non-delivery in services.” Instead, he received emails from clients “who were praising our teams for working days and nights and even delivering planned releases.”

By the second or third week, everyone understood that Russia could not do a “so-called blitzkrieg in three days” and that it wasn’t “possible to break Ukrainians and to break EPAM in Ukraine.” He says: “Despite all the challenges, all the craziness that was going on,” he and his team continued to deliver. Relentlessly.  

“People were doing incredible, heroic things on the ground, but also doing delivery from bomb shelters and various faraway locations where people ended up moving to in order to avoid actually being in the midst of ongoing attacks,” says Shekhter. “From your point of view, why do you think they did it?”

Mitish says it was a combination of two things: (a) “Probably it's part of Ukrainian values or DNA to be very much focused on results”; and (b) “We don't have any other home and we understand that we fight for our lives, for our workplaces, for our families. And if not me, then who's going to do that?”

So where are we now in Ukraine?

“I believe that the worst, worst days are already behind us,” says Mitish who wants to encourage our clients and future clients to support Ukraine and bring more business there. “I strongly believe that once this war is over and Ukraine wins, there will be a huge queue of those companies’ investors… and if you're going to be on the end of the queue, probably it will be much harder to find the best talent for you and your business.”

You’ll want to listen to our resilient colleague tell his amazing story. Do so! 

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 66: Operating in Ukraine with Stepan Mitish and Elaina Shekhter

Going mobile: It’s going to create vulnerabilities. That’s the way things work with apps. They aren’t just friendly pieces of software that help you beat traffic or bring your favorite tunes into your eardrums… they are opportunities, rich ones, for the bad guys.

Andrew Whaley, the Senior Technical Director (UK) at Promon and our guest on *Silo Busting,* says that with an app, “You have to be able to trust the security model that you've got around it.” 

Whaley talks with Sam Rehman, our Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, about how apps operate on a client-server model, but “all the client code is distributed outside of your enterprise.” Some of these users could well be criminals who, once gaining access to that code, could "reverse engineer it and come up with ways to attack that.”

And the code in those apps can be a bit suspect. Whaley says that most apps are made up of 80% open-source software. “You know how many of those app developers go and build that source themselves from source and read over it before they compile?” he asks and then answers: “Probably close to zero.”

Speaking of putting the work in… Rehman talks about calibrating “the level of effort that the attacker would have to go through versus the yield.” The trick is, he says, layering on cybersecurity techniques “so that the yield is not worth it for them.”

Whaley replies that “once you layer obfuscation on, you then have this impenetrable forest” and that the “immediately accessible ways of attacking [an application] are taken off the table.”

Together they chat about supply chain attacks, nonlinear programming, and more. Tune in and be safe(r)!

Host: Glenn Gruber
Editor: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busing 67: Andrew Whaley and Sam Rehman on App Security

Sam Rehman—a frequent voice on this podcast network and EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP—was in the classroom recently, teaching students, and in the process was “surprised by the density of PII that's in in the system.” 

This led Rehman to realize that “at least here in California,” higher education’s investment in cybersecurity is “substantially behind.”

Catching up is a theme of today’s conversation about privacy, education, and artificial intelligence. 

Speaking for the (cyber)defense, with Rehman, is today’s guest on *The Resonance Test,* Scott Loughlin, Partner and Global Co-Lead of the Privacy & Cybersecurity Practice at the law firm Hogan Lovells. 

“It took a long time to get people to understand that the easiest thing to do is not always the right thing to do to protect the company’s interest and protect the company’s data,” says Loughlin. “And that is an experience that we'll all have with respect to generative AI tools.”

Loughlin and Rehman are put through their conversational paces from questions by Brian Imholte, our Head of Education & Learning Services.

They have much to say about data governance (“Data is not by itself anymore, it's broken up in pieces, combined, massaged, and then pulled out from a model,” says Rehman), data pedigree, the laws—and lack thereof—regarding privacy and generative AI. They also kick around the role that FERPA assumes here. “You’re trying to deploy this old framework against this new technology, which is difficult,” says Loughlin, adding: “There are some key areas of tension that will come up with using generative AI with student data.”

So where might an educational publisher or school begin? 

“Focus on your value first,” says Rehman. Do your experiments, but do them in small pieces, he says: "And then within those small pieces, know what you're putting into the model.”

This informative and spirited conversation is even occasionally funny. Loughlin brings up a court case about whether or not a selfie-taking monkey selfie would own the copyright to the photo. “The court said no,” notes Loughlin, adding that US Copyright laws are “designed to protect the authorship of humans, not of monkeys, and in this case not of generative AI tools.” 

Download now: It’s sure to generate some new thoughts. 

Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

The Resonance Test 88: Scott Loughlin, Sam Rehman, and Brian Imholte on Privacy, Education, and AI

“There’s been an incident,” is a sentence no one wants to hear… except perhaps people like Ron Konigsberg, Co-Founder and CTO of Gem and our guest on *Silo Busting,* whose business is cloud incident response (IR).

We know what you’re thinking: What makes cloud IR different from all other forms of IR? 

Let’s let Konigsberg explain: “The challenge is that the cloud is technically simply different.” If you’re using legacy tools, “you're going to protect probably 20% of the cloud.”

Konigsberg is joined in conversation by Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, and the pair are pelted with questions by Aviv Srour, our Head of Cyber Innovation.

Konigsberg says that incident responders need to “adapt from network and agents to services and APIs, and constantly learn about new services and stay up to date and up to speed” with what the bad guys are picking up.

Oh, those bad guys! Regarding attackers, Konigsberg says: “They adopt innovation faster than defenders.” They can do so because they have fewer dependencies “and they care less [than defenders do] about breaking things.”

To illustrate, he asks us to think about migrating to the cloud: Imagine you’re an attacker and you simply never worry about any legacy systems from your previous environments. “They have much more liberty and they move faster.”

“They adopt techniques about new services that each cloud provider is releasing *tomorrow,*” says Konigsberg. 

So it is, in some ways, about playing catch-up. CISOs have had to adopt a new mindset and posture. “You can only block so many punches until you have to figure out [that] you need to move around, you need to counter, and so on,” says Rehman.

Rehman adds that CISOs have finally understood the “shared responsibility between you and the cloud provider.” But that’s not the only issue with the cloud. “It's much flatter than what you’re used to on prem,” he says. “Which means a lateral attack is a lot quicker, moving things around a lot easier, and the *simplicity* of people actually moving things around and infecting a large area is substantially higher.”

So how can an organization properly respond to, and learn to prioritize within, the cloud conundrum? One answer, says Rehman, is culture. 

“We have to adopt a learning culture in security,” he says. “They’re always gonna be one step ahead of us, but at least we're one step behind, not ten.” Pick up the pace of your learning and listen to the experts speak. Hit play!  

Host: Lisa Kocian
Editor: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 68: Cloud IR Readiness with Ron Konigsberg, Sam Rehman & Aviv Srour

Responsible AI isn’t about laying down the law. Creating responsible AI systems and policies is necessarily an iterative, longitudinal endeavor. Doing it right requires constant conversation among people with diverse kinds of expertise, experience, and attitudes. Which is exactly what today’s episode of *The Resonance Test* embodies. We bring to the virtual table David Goodis, Partner at INQ Law, and Martin Lopatka, Managing Principal of AI Consulting at EPAM, and ask them to lay down their cards. Turns out, they are holding insights as sharp as diamonds. 

This well-balanced pair begins by talking about definitions. Goodis mentions the recent Canadian draft legislation to regulate AI, which asks “What is harm?” because, he says, “What we're trying to do is minimize harm or avoid harm.” The legislation casts harm as physical or psychological harm, damage to a person's property (“Suppose that could include intellectual property,” Goodis says), and any economic loss to a person. 

This leads Lopatka to wonder whether there should be “a differentiation in the way that we legislate fully autonomous systems that are just part of automated pipelines.” What happens, he wonders, when there is an inherently symbiotic system between AI and humans, where “the design is intended to augment human reasoning or activities in any way”?

Goodis is comforted when a human is looped in and isn’t merely saying: “Hey, AI system, go ahead and make that decision about David, can he get the bank loan, yes or no?”

This nudges Lopatka to respond: “The inverse is, I would say, true for myself. I feel like putting a human in the loop can often be a way to shunt off responsibility for inherent choices that are made in the way that AI systems are designed.” He wonders if more scrutiny is needed in designing the systems that present results to human decision-makers.

We also need to examine how those systems operate, says Goodis, pointing out that while an AI system might not be “really making the decision,” it might be “*steering* that decision or influencing that decision in a way that maybe we're not comfortable with.”

This episode will prepare you to think about informed consent (“It's impossible to expect that people have actually even read, let alone *comprehended,* the terms of services that they are supposedly accepting,” says Lopatka), the role of corporate oversight, the need to educate users about risk, and the shared obligation involved in building responsible AI.  

One fascinating exchange centered on the topic of autonomy, toward which Lopatka suggests that a user might have mixed feelings. “Maybe I will object to one use [of personal data] but not another and subscribe to the value proposition that by allowing an organization to process my data in a particular way, there is an upside for me in terms of things like personalized services or efficiency gains for myself. But I may have a conscientious objection to [other] things.”

To which Goodis reasonably asks: “I like your idea, but how do you implement that?”

There is no final answer, obviously, but at one point, Goodis suggests a reasonable starting point: “Maybe it is a combination of consent versus ensuring organizations act in an ethical manner.”
This is a conversation for everyone to hear. So listen, and join Goodis and Lopatka in this important dialogue. 

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

The Resonance Test 90: Responsible AI with David Goodis and Martin Lopatka

“Open source” is, of course, a technology term. But, as it turns out, when you connect tech-minded people with those who don’t necessarily think of themselves as IT nerds, something magical can happen. In this case, what works in the digital world—transparency, community, collaboration—has a funny way of spilling over into the analog world. Because, well, people are people. We’re wired to connect.

In today’s episode of *The Resonance Test,* open source sage Chris Howard chats up two open source experts from EBSCO Information Services: Christopher Spalding, Vice President of Product, and Rachel Fadlon, Vice President of SaaS Marketing and National Conferences & Events. EBSCO is a founding member of Folio, an open source library services platform (LSP), to which EPAM contributes.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) maintains a precise definition for the term, but in broad strokes, open source refers to software containing source code that can be edited and used by anyone. We all use it every day without realizing it. Indeed, open source powers the internet as we know it. 

Howard asked Spalding and Fadlon to reflect on what open source has been like at EBSCO, so other companies and industries can learn from an open source project that has achieved scale. 

Folio has allowed developers and librarians to work together in an unprecedented way. Being part of the Folio community, says Fadlon, has dramatically transformed the way EBSCO interacts with customers across the company. 

The relationships that develop organically in an open source community, which are less formal and more “person to person,” says Fadlon, have influenced EBSCO to be more community-oriented in all aspects of the business. 

“The way that you approach someone in the library as a community member *to* a community member is very different than the way we were approaching our customers before,” she says. “We’ve made a lot more things more transparent and open” since joining Folio.

Spalding says even the language has changed around communications more broadly. “The focus is on, ‘Well, why would that be closed? Let’s make that open. Why wouldn’t we talk about that?’ Let’s put it all on the table because we get feedback instantly, and then we know the direction that we go as a partnership with the larger community.”

Of course, the trio also talked about security and artificial intelligence, the latter playing out differently in different regions. 
Open source made headlines recently when Linux, one of the most well-known examples of open source, narrowly avoided a cybersecurity disaster thanks to an eagle-eyed engineer. Open source comes with risks, like anything online. Spalding says security concerns might have pushed libraries away from open source a few years ago, but now, increasingly, libraries are adopting the open source adage: “More eyes, fewer bugs. And definitely, more eyes, better security.” 

Howard agrees. “We shouldn’t be afraid of having all of those eyes on us… One of my developers calls it kind of ‘battle testing’ the software, throwing it out to the world and saying, ‘Does this do what you want it to do?’ And if it doesn’t, at least you can tell me … and I can go and fix it or you can even fix it for me if you want to. And I think we’re now finding more and more organizations that actually find that more attractive than scary.”

Open yourself up to a more flexible, transparent future by listening to this engaging conversation. 

Host/Producer: Lisa Kocian
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon

The Resonance Test 91: Open Source with Christopher Spalding, Rachel Fadlon, and Chris Howard

“One of the most essential parts of bringing innovation to market is often the most rarely noted,” says host Macy Donaway on the latest Resonance Test podcast. “And it’s those dedicated client leads and sponsors who have political capital built that they can spend to then overcome hurdles.” We call such people mavericks, and Uma Gopinath, the CIO of Porter Airlines and our podcast guest, perfectly embodies that term. 

Gopinath has been a highly successful change-maker in numerous companies and industries (she was the CIO of Metrolinx, the Director of Technology and Innovation at Lush, and the AVP of Intelligent Automation at Canadian Tire Corporation). Along the way, she has learned how to thrive in the heavily male-dominated technology industry and shares some of her wisdom in this conversation. 

Giving back, in fact, is central to her work. “As a person of privilege, you need to share that privilege with others,” she says, noting that when at Metrolinx, she noticed the diversity of her teams was “in the low teens when we started,” and by the time she exited “We were close to 30-35% in diversity.”

She says that change happens “by intention.” And notes that when a woman didn’t win a particular role, she would ask her colleagues why and was often told, “But she’s the second best.” To this, Gopinath argued that perhaps she was “second best because she's never been given the opportunity to be the first best.”

Fixing systemic bias, she notes: “Calls for courage, calls for some unpopular statements sometimes.”

Courage is a central part of Gopinath’s general ethos, and it takes the shape of a willingness to be curious, to experiment (and experiment at scale: “your denominator has to be big for you to get those useful, successful experiments,” she says). Gopinath talks up the importance of focusing on the customer. Continuously. 

Gopinath notes that many organizations brew up a business case and do a project, “but then nobody goes back to effectively evaluate” the outcomes originally projected. Consequently, she says, “We hear lots of stories about how IT projects don’t deliver.”
She adds that sometimes it’s “a small feedback loop that's required” and that doing “a little more to get to that bigger benefit” is something businesses need to do better.

Gopinath ends with some memorable maverick-level inspiration for future leaders: “Enjoy what you're doing. If you’re not having fun, then go be successful somewhere else.”
Now go have fun and listen to the episode! 

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

The Resonance Test 92: Lessons from a Maverick with Uma Gopinath and Macy Donaway

We’re talking about the lab of the future! Better than that… we’re *building* it. In this episode of *The Resonance Test,* two of the builders are giving us a tour of sorts! Listen as Sridhar Iyengar, Founder, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer and Chairman of Elemental Machines, and Chris Waller, EPAM’s VP and Chief Scientist, chew the scientific fat about creating a collaborative model cell and gene therapy laboratory.

Waller says the lab of the future seeks to “reinvent the way we look at equipment and utilize equipment in a laboratory setting that's used to manufacture cells” by making it, as we say, real. “We’re building out that facility at the EPAM Continuum office in Boston and partnering with folks like Elemental Machines” to enable “the transformation that we're looking for in these laboratory settings.”

Creating such a next-gen lab is a very complicated task, says Iyengar. “Unlike many other disciplines that are primarily software driven or even mechanically driven, the life sciences have a much greater degree of variability.”  

To minimize this variability, they’re putting an Amazon Go level of scrutiny on lab processes. AI, Iyengar says, “can spot patterns across an enormous number of variables and dimensions, much more than any human being can do… To do that you need lots of data, so you can cancel out the noise and you can find the signal in the noise.” The key step here, he adds, is to collect “as many dimensions of data as possible and make it computationally available.”

At present, says Waller, the EPAM Continuum facility enables us to give the future a test run. The lab “allows us to bring our clients, our members of the [Pistoia] Alliance [and] our technology partners together in a safe space to work collectively to derisk the introduction of new technologies into these laboratory settings and show us the future.”

Iyengar adds that when he walks people through the lab, “You see their eyes light up and say, ‘Ohh, I get it; that means we can do XYZ!’” Listen to these two and you’ll soon be having your own XYZ thoughts. 

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

The Resonance Test 93: The Lab of the Future with Sridhar Iyengar and Chris Waller

“Can we use generative AI in a way that teaches us something that we might not have known otherwise, and in that learning… create something that actually has the potential to increase agency for all inside of the system?”

Good question, Angela Stockman! It is, in fact, one of many good questions that Stockman, the author of *The Writer’s Guide to Pedagogical Documentation,* raises as our guest on *The Resonance Test.*

In this episode, Stockman joins Kristin Heist, Senior Director of Innovation Consulting at EPAM Continuum, and our Brian Imholte to dig deep into Gen AI and education. 

Part of that digging involves the art of *asking questions.* Heist says that while building a tutor with input from educators, teachers have been “pushing us to design tools that follow the principles of Socratic method” and not just giving the answers to students.  

Stockman agrees saying that teachers don’t want to see “learners leaning on AI tools just to generate answers or to produce work in ways that you know undermine their opportunity to sharpen their own saw.”

The hope is that students will become keen enough to create whole new ways of doing things—and that teachers will, too. 

Part of teachers’ craft, says Heist, is “learning what works for their students, learning what their students understand, learning who their students are.” But the reality is that teachers are extremely time-constrained. And this makes personalization a challenge.
 
Stockman says that for teachers “who are working with sometimes over one hundred students in a single day,” personalization is “kind of unrealistic”—but a GenAI tutor can truly help.

The real focus is where GenAI tools can, as Heist says, “elevate the teacher's craft,” as opposed to replacing what they're currently doing.

And let’s not forget data! Stockman says that AI is “helping us scoop the data out of their lived learning experiences. We don't have to bring learning to a halt in order to assess what's going on and it can help us with the interpretation of massive amounts of qualitative data.” 

If you have questions about GenAI and EDU, and you know you do, listen up. 

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

The Resonance Test 94: Angela Stockman on GenAI in Education

What should we be focusing on? It’s an essential question for all of us… but for those in the cybersecurity game, it’s critical. Focusing on the wrong things here can be *costly.* Or so says Neatsun Ziv, Co-Founder and CEO of OX Security, in this *#CybersecurityByDesign* conversation with Sam Rehman, EPAM’s CISO and SVP. 

Ziv says that, when it comes to fixing code, “95% of the things” that organizations work on have “zero risk impact,” adding: “That is an insane amount of money that the organization should have spent creating a bigger gap between them and the competitors.”

Managing risk is indeed a major challenge for contemporary organizations. “There's no such thing as one single application anymore,” says Rehman, who wonders: “How do you manage the inherent risk from all these components?”

Ziv says the answer is about getting clients to focus on what’s critical to them. There’s a need to distinguish between vulnerability, theoretical risk and actual practical risk. What is a practical risk? It means getting clients to recognize, as an organization: “This is what I'm concerned about.” 

“I always tell people the risk is managed,” adds Rehman, who says that approach is underpinned by asking questions such as “What's your security posture?” and assessing a client’s risk tolerance.

“You need to be smart about the investment,” says Ziv. He notes that this is where experienced leaders become practical. He gets them to answer questions like: What's exposed? What's internal? What do you want to replace first? How do we do it? 

Ultimately, he says, it’s getting clients to be mature enough to say that they’d focus on the “5% [of efforts] that would actually make a difference in the first year or the second year.” The trick is taking a balanced approach, and the guys bring the idea of balance into the realms of supply chain and open source. 

We leave you with a warning: Listening might have a serious impact on your own security posture. Click play now! 

Host: Kenji Ross
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 69: Neatsun Ziv and Sam Rehman on the Balanced Approach to Risk Management

“If you want to know the future, look at the past.” While no one in their right mind would claim Einstein was giving any thought whatsoever to the future of the financial services industry, history would have once again proven him right if he had. Once upon a time, one’s choice of bank was based on how well that particular institution had won over your trust. That meant building relationships with the customers and the community at large.


While it’s hard to envision any other reality, it’s only been a couple of decades where convenience and the digital experience became such dominating factors. But as banks increasingly leverage emerging technology to race toward automation and digital optimization, the notion of trust and relationship building has all but faded into the rearview. Or has it?


“Yes, you need to have an amazing digital experience. It needs to be convenient, easy and it needs to flow… But you also need to be able to get ahold of a banker just as quickly. You need that opportunity to have someone jump into that digital experience as you’re a part of it–if you have a challenge, or a question or an alternative need. For our industry, that’s what everyone is trying to solve.” This is the mantra of Eric Sobie, SVP, Head of Consumer Sales and Strategy at Heartland Financial USA, Inc. It’s his belief that in order for the financial services industry to move forward, it needs to find a way to bridge the gap between the personalized experiences of the past with the efficiency and digital innovation of today.

And as Chris Tapley, VP of Financial Services Consulting at EPAM, points out, it’s a notion with strong precedent behind it. “It’s interesting because what bank customers told us is that they have very disparate use cases for in-person versus digital interactions with their banks. They want to move money digitally; they want to check balances digitally; but when they need advice, or when they need a problem solved, they… want some kind of in-person interaction. Being able to converge that digital and human experience will be critical.”


As the two discuss, it's this convergence where the emergent technologies of AI and generative AI will play an important role. While they might make it possible to further automate, optimize and streamline customer interactions – for example, recommending a specific product for a customer based on the available data – is this what consumers really want?


As Sobie makes note, the alternative is to leverage these technologies to gain a more thorough understanding of the customer, and to upskill bankers to better build relationships with their customers based on this insight. “I think banks, rightfully so, are a little nervous about AI, because we are a business built upon trust; we want nothing to invalidate that trust. Let’s not use AI to create an opportunity to drive [a product] recommendation. But can we get predictive analytics? Can we understand where the customer is on their road map… and can we get a whole view of who that customer is from the data?” That’s how banks can bridge the gap between today’s digital environment and the personalized experiences of the past.

Now, it’s time to dive into the full *Resonance Test* conversation. Enjoy your stay.


Host: Alison Kotin 
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas 
Producer: Scott MacAllister
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon

The Resonance Test 95: Technology, Trust & the Customer Experience with Eric Sobie & Chris Tapley

How are CISOs holding up in the era of AI? 

According to Tim Ramsay, Managing Director of Mandiant Client Advisory (now part of Google Cloud), and our guest on *Silo Busting*: “You have a number of parts of the organization that may be embracing AI without any involvement from central IT, and more importantly… without security.”

Not an easy situation for a CISO. 

But not to worry, Ramsay and Sam Rehman, EPAM’s CISO and SVP, have seen this kind of thing before. In the pre-AI age, there were other technology inflection points, such as virtualization and the cloud, and our conversationalists learned that dealing with them involved clear communication and trust.

Today’s CISOs “don't want to kill the business or stop the business,” says Ramsay. “They want to enable the business. But that kind of presupposes they know what the business is trying to do.” 

What’s necessary, he says, is for business leaders “to have some level of trust that the security people are actually going to bring something productive to the conversation and not just rule from a position of fear, uncertainty and doubt.”

CISOs must teach their colleagues that secure business is, as Ramsay notes, a team sport and that organizations must know their data assets. Security people must also be clear about risk. “We need to be real about what type of threats we actually are engaging,” says Ramsay.

The lessons of DeepSeek emerge during the episode. Ramsay says he thought there’d be “some voice in the room who would have said, ‘Guys, are we ready? Are we ready for global type of exposure here?’” Getting ready, in fact, means that security must be included from the beginning, both Ramsay and Rehman agree. Rehman adds: “To secure something as an aftermath is a million times more difficult than if you have security in mind when you’re actually going through that innovation process.” 

Rehman asks how CISOs can build the necessary trust. “Meetings are always good, but relationships are where it gets real,” replies Ramsay. “Conversations that CISOs are having alongside other C-levels are going to be much more effective” than meetings that can sometimes feel adversarial. 

Build strong enough relationships and sometimes business leaders will deliver the security message themselves. “It takes a secure CISO to let others carry the message sometimes,” says Ramsay. “It takes the pressure off the CISO to be always the bearer of threats and news of risk.”

Says Rehman: “So much of security requires... letting go of that insecurity.”


Host and Producer: Ken Gordon
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas

Silo Busting 70: Lessons for the Modern CISO with Tim Ramsay and Sam Rehman

What does the phrase “aquatic corporate community” mean to you? A school of fish in business suits holding an underwater meeting around a table of coral? Well, for our guests on the latest episode of *The Resonance Test,* it’s all about plunging into a strategic social responsibility program called “Let’s Swim Together.” 

Antonio Silva, President of European Aquatics, and Kate Pretkel, EPAM’s VP and Head of Sustainability Programs, have pooled their knowledge to answer questions from Balázs Magyar, Senior Director of Account Management at EPAM. 

Swimming is not just sports skill, says Silva, “It's a life skill.” He rightly points out that the pool is a place that can be used by everyone: babies, children, and adults. And, as Magyar notes, it promotes discipline, responsibility, social connections, and physical- and mental health. 
“Let’s Swim Together,” is starting with a pilot program for EPAM Hungary but the program will expand to other companies, other countries. Silva adds that with this initiative, we can reach “the specific goals of a company” and “so-called environmental, social and governance goals.”

This is good news for Pretkel, who speaks ESG fluently. She says that EPAM has a long tradition of helping employees “to make a good impact on the communities that we live and work in,” adding that “It's not *just* about people working for a specific company, but also their friends, their families, their kids and their communities.” 

The challenge, with all these groups, is getting people to take the first step toward the water. 
“We are looking at the whole employee experience,” says Pretkel. The trick is making it easier for our employees to join. To do so, they are incorporated into the “overall experience that we are creating for them.” She says it’s all about “building these habits and also in some cases engaging the team so they can help each other to make this first step.”

In short, Silva and Pretkel are excited about building what Antonio calls, yes, “the aquatic corporate community.” He concludes: “It's about reaching some social goals that [the participants] could not reach if they were not involved in such an activity.”

Host: Macy Donaway
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon



The Resonance Test 96: Building an Aquatic Corporate Community with Antonio Silva & Kate Pretkel

Today’s incident response ain’t your grandfather’s IR. But the psychology surrounding it hasn’t changed an iota. This is precisely what Sam Rehman, EPAM’s Chief Information Security Officer and SVP, and Tab Bradshaw, Chief Operating Officer at Redpoint Cybersecurity, are talking about on this #SecurityByDesign conversation. 

“It really comes down to the preparation piece,” says Bradshaw. It’s about being well prepared and asking: “How often do you prepare in your organization, at a technical level, at an executive level, to handle some sort of incident?” 

Rehman agrees and says that he has clients wondering, “OK, so when am I done?” The perception is that being IR-ready is enough, he says. “That's not the case. It's a muscle. It's emotion. It's how you work. It's how you react to it.”

There are benefits to knowing the proper way to react. “A well-handled breach really builds credibility,” says Bradshaw, adding that the word “reasonable” is omnipresent in IR documentation. He says: “Reasonableness is not just about having a mitigation strategy.” It’s also about, say, practicing tabletop exercises. Regularly. So that when you’re asked about doing regular tabletop sessions, the answer is, as Bradshaw puts it: “Yes, we did it every quarter for the past five years. We feel like we're in a pretty good spot that if something happens, might not be perfect, but we think we have good preparation, consistent preparation, consistent practice, to your point, to respond to the incident when it does occur.”

Rehman says that security people are “used to having that sudden sense of violent impulse and urgency coming to us,” but what about the business leaders and everyone else in the organization? He asks Bradshaw about IR communication: “How do you guide the team through it, especially when everybody's thinking about, ‘Oh, am I gonna be on the news?’”
Of the thousands of breaches Bradshaw and his team have responded to, for “a third, maybe half” of them, there is “some internal chaos at the client—and it's not because anybody's doing a bad thing.” 

“It really comes down to what I call C-squared,” says Bradshaw, which is shorthand for “communication and coordination. Someone has to be the quarterback.”

Bradshaw says the chaos is about “a lack of preparation and testing.” A tabletop exercise needs to be a live fire exercise: “Doing it once a year is not good.” Too many organizations treat IR as a checklist, which is a mistake. He says: “It's a living, cross-functional discipline that evolves with the threat landscape externally, obviously, and also internally as people move.”

And so?  

Get moving. Hit play and get ready. 

Host: Lisa Kocian
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon



Silo Busting 71: IR Now with Tab Bradshaw and Sam Rehman

In the age of AI, there’s no going it alone. Partnership is now an absolute necessity. 

This conversation between Colleen Kapase, VP of Channels and Partner Programs at Google Cloud, and Elaina Shekhter, EPAM’s Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, demonstrates the value of partnership done right. Their back-and-forth embodies the enduring partnership, and unshakable trust, that Goole Cloud and EPAM have built over the years. 

Kapase notes that the conversations she's had with partners were often about modernizing cloud infrastructure rather than more nuanced AI discussions. No more! “It's moved beyond a CIO conversation to a product conversation, to a CMO conversation.” Google and their partners are asking: “What are you doing to leverage AI to advance our products or offerings or processes and customer experience?”

This kind of working is, Kapase says, an opportunity to “grow, grow, grow, grow” that can deeply impact their partners’ customer experience and product development.

Shekhter says that lately there has been much restructuring of the partner ecosystem and then asks bluntly: What is partnership *for?*

“Just delighting the customer,” says Kapase. “I don't know if it gets any more complicated than that.”

Complicating things somewhat, Shekhter wonders if her interlocutor has advice on how partnership can be customer-centric in AI-native transformation work.

“It can sound basic, but communication is *so* important,” says Kapase. “It is really the basis of any great partnership… Strong communication just can make you better together.”
Better together, indeed. 

So, for those who are in or want to join the Google Cloud crowd, or care about partnerships more generally, listen up! Much here to learn about partner-driven delivery and adoption, the role of Agentspace and AI innovation, the importance of optimism, and more.

The Resonance Test 97: The Power of Partnership with Colleen Kapase and Elaina Shekhter

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