Author: Tegan Valeny

Cyber Security Key Trends. neuco’s annual 2022 key trends report.

Posted on by Tegan Valeny

What’s in store for the Cyber Security industry?

2022, where’s it going to go, what does it have in store?

We’ve collated key trends from some of the influential figures across the 4 sectors we recruit into – Cyber Security, Connectivity, Content & Media and Satellite & NewSpace.

We’ve spoken to experts from companies such as Sky, Orbit Fab, Casa Systems, and A5G Networks.

If you want to find out what we think will be the key trends for cyber security this year, then just click the link below to download now!

Click here to download now.

The current state of the connectivity industry

Posted on by Tegan Valeny

In episode #56 of The Tech That Connects Us, we had the opportunity to sit down with Ollie Anderson, SVP, Americas at Benetel. 

We had an in-depth conversation about everything connectivity related, from how he got into the industry (after a stint in the military) through to the more intricate details of his role and the current state of the market. 

We hope you enjoy it as much as we did recording it!

Which specific technology do you think has had the biggest impact on our industry?

“In my view, wireless broadband. It’s one of the biggest things and has enabled a lot of the content industry, a lot of the social media, mobile, you know, video distribution to do to handsets, etc. 

So, I think that has been the biggest thing. And now, going into the future, I think we are going to see more of augmented reality, virtual reality applications coming towards the consumers and being used at the industrial enterprise side, all enabled within wireless connectivity.”

How has the pandemic impacted the connectivity from your perspective and the industry?

“The need for connectivity has grown. And people have been realising that we need reliable connectivity. And now, when, when most of the world is working from home, we are using conferencing tools, just like we are today. So, I think the need for connectivity has grown immensely.”

Which region do you see as having the largest growth area between APAC and the Americas?

“So we see a lot of growth in Europe and in Americas at the moment. Both regions are extremely active and roll out 5G and so on. So, America, as far as Europe is a very active place for us.”

What do you anticipate being the big hot topics in the connectivity industry over the next 12 months?

“I think we are going to see a lot of private 5G solutions and deployments being done specifically for private networks, enterprises, industrial networks, and those alike. 

I think that will be clearly a trend. You see a lot of the cloud providers, for example, lining up their 5G solution offerings and bringing that functionality closer to the enterprise.”

If you’d like to listen to the full episode, click here to access it!

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

What are the barriers to space colonisation?

Posted on by Tegan Valeny

In episode #55 of The Tech That Connects us, we had the opportunity to speak with Bart Womack, CEO of Eden Grow Systems about his thoughts on space colonisation (amongst other insightful topics). 

Eden Grow Systems have had a fantastic year, from exceptional growth through to making significant key hires to take them to the next level. The future looks incredibly bright for the business, and we were so glad to have Bart on the podcast – we hope you enjoy it!

What do you see as the next major barrier to space colonisation? 

“I was at a conference one time with Bezos, we got to meet him and we were also both speakers. And, the biggest secret is that unless we radically genetically modify our bodies, we’re not built for space. 

When Bezos gave a talk at the New World Summit, he was saying that the real future of humanity will be in low Earth orbit; sky cities and sky platforms. This is because you can access the resources of the planet, and you can create a living environment that’s much more suitable for humans and enjoyable for humans, than in space.”

What are the realities of us living in space? 

“I don’t want to be negative, but from a resource standpoint, it’s not feasible. It’s not feasible without radically altering humans. So, I think we need to understand how we’re going to adapt our physiology and even our psychology to adapt to these environments and retain our humanity. 

I think a lot of times when I talk about the Earth being like a garden, one of the most important things that we understand is that we have to grow out of the pot first. You’re not going to just go out into space and Earth. 

Maybe when we have technology that can instantaneously transport us to other places. But until we have that technology, we have to grow out so that we’re still connected into the ecosystem here.”

What’s next for you and the team? 

“Right now we’re building our manufacturing facilities so that we can start expanding the orders that we’re doing. One of the most significant things is in January, we’re launching our crowdfunding on Republic. 

My dream is for our towers because as Dr. Day said, our towers are resilient, they offer the greatest profile of what can be grown. The next step is looking at getting high nutrient density food into kids stomachs. I went to public school, and the food that they eat is one step away from prison food!” 

If you’d like to listen to the full episode, click here to access it!

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

The 2022 Key Trend for the connectivity industry.

Posted on by Tegan Valeny

For episode 54 of The Tech That Connects Us we were joined by François Duchêne – VP Wireless Solutions EMEA at Casa Systems.  

Tom Wilding and Alistair Wilson spoke with Francois about OpenRAN, Private networks and 5G, as well as what the future hold for Casa Systems. 

One question they asked Francois was what will be a ‘key trend’ for 2022 in the connectivity industry. 

Here’s what Francois had to say… 

“I will say even more acceleration, not only in terms of the 5G but in terms of the connectivity you get for global IoT. 

The industry is changing in multiple areas. With 5G we are moving to 5G as a standalone to allow the slicing capabilities on everything in their network providing public edge computing. 

We’ll see more private manufacturing in these areas and the global IoT connectivity as we’re seeing more and more connectivity of multiple devices including cars, phones, watches etc. So we’ll see a rise of smart cities allowing all devices to have narrowband IoT connectivity. 

This connectivity needs to be international as well. Because we’re living in a world where everything is moving and these vehicles are travelling all over the world and will need to be connected.” 

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

Diversity – we all have a part to play.

Posted on by Tegan Valeny

On Episode 53 of The Tech That Connects Us Tegan Valeny and Tim Meredith were joined by Carrie Wooton Managing Director at Rise – a group for Women in Broadcast.

With over 20 years of experience in the industry and being number 9 on TVB Europe’s The Watch List for 2021, Carrie is changing the Media Broadcast Industry!

We take a deep dive into issues surrounding Diversity, Inclusion and all that comes alongside. Read on for a few of Carrie’s insights into this topic.

How can we all be encouraging young talent into the industry? It’s got to start at a grassroots level. How can we all be addressing this? 

 
“It’s through exactly that, we’ve got to be spending time going into schools without a doubt. Individually and also collectively. As organisations make their commitments to diversity they have to allow staff to have the time to go into schools and work with, sponsor and champion these young people. 

We’ve worked with over 400 children in a three week period with our workshops, so let’s say 50% of them were interested. So we’re talking about creating a funnel and we have to commit to investing in those young people whether it’s going in to talk to them about job opportunities and pathways. 

The great thing is we live in a hybrid world, so it doesn’t always need to be face to face. Schools are crying out for workshops like this. They need engagement from us as an industry. So, company leaders need to make sure teams have time to go in and work with schools. But also have commitments to sponsor young people who are perhaps in lower socioeconomic areas and might not have the funding to come to London for a job, interview, workshop or event. But make those commitments. The opportunity is there, the possibility is there, and we can make it happen, we can change the dial without a doubt.” 

“The opportunity is there, the possibility is there, and we can make it happen, we can change the dial without a doubt.” 

 
What other recommendations would you give to these senior leaders as they build teams, as they recruit, as they seek to make their teams diverse and inclusive? 

 
“There are so many different things aren’t there? It’s about making sure that your recruitment process as a whole is fair and transparent. It’s about making sure that those processes also have diversity in them and that you go out to diverse communities with those job adverts. You also need to ensure that your HR teams are doing that, and not just going to the same usual places. One thing we’ve done is launch our own job board at Rise. Which has been brilliant, and it’s an amazing place to make sure you’re reaching a diverse community. 

Working with schools as I’ve already mentioned and with this for leaders, it’s all about the proof is in the pudding. As the leader are you going to be the one going into the school? Are you going to do it yourself because you feel passionate about the change you want to see in the industry? I don’t think as senior leaders you can say to your teams to go out if you’re not willing to step up and do it yourself. There has to be a demonstration of that commitment.  

One of the most simple things companies can do is make sure that gender diversity and ethnic diversity is represented on their website. If you don’t do this then how are people going to feel like this is an inclusive place to work in. 

From policies and procedures through to their recruitment processes through to their commitment to diversity, ensure the younger generation understands that there’s a pathway available to them. 

It’s also important that you as a company are committed to investing in them and ensuring their talent and expertise, which might not always be academic but to make sure that they know and that they feel invested in. 

We know that diversity improves the bottom line, there’s so much research behind that. We also know that diversity improves product innovation and the innovation cycle. Therefore that investment is going to come back to you as a company and your bottom line.” 

 
What would you say to people suffering from imposter syndrome or potentially thinks that an industry isn’t for them because they can’t see other people like themselves in it? 

“There’s so much we need to do around this. In our leadership report, we released last week 75% of those senior leaders did say that they experience imposter syndrome. What imposter syndrome does is it impacts your confidence which in turn impacts your internal dialogue to make you think about whether you should be going for that job and whether you can actually make a difference or not. 

It takes leaders and teams to understand that people experience imposter syndrome. There has to be an inclusive culture within the organisation that allows people no matter their gender or ethnicity to be comfortable to speak up about their imposter syndrome. 

A good solution for this would be mentors, whether they’re formal or informal mentors, we know the value of those and the impact they can have on your confidence and therefore your imposter syndrome. We see that within the mentees too, not just having a mentor but having a group of women that you work with every year, who have your back, champion you and talk things through with you. 

There are tools and techniques to help you through imposter syndrome, but underlying all the tools is confidence. The confidence comes through working in a supportive and inclusive environment. We can also manage our internal dialogue, ‘what does it mean? and what is the fear that underlines that?’.” 

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

What does the future hold for the connectivity industry?

Posted on by Tegan Valeny

Joining John Clifton and Tim Meredith on episode 52 of The Tech That Connects Us was Luis Beute VP Global Sales for Content Providers at Qwilt.

Luis takes us through how he made the jump from telecommunications to CDN and moved halfway around the world to do it too. Focusing on how he has taken as many lessons from colleagues and partners as from managers and mentors, this was a really great insight into Luis and his approach to balancing work and life.

One question we put to Luis was ‘what does the future hold for the connectivity industry?’, read on to find out his answer.

“I haven’t been a good visionary ever, but I’ll do my best. I believe as part of the habits we’re adopting because of COVID now there are many things we want to do from home that we used to do in person that virtual reality can really help with.  

In certain sectors it is already happening, take the real estate, for example, there are companies where you don’t need to visit the premises you are thinking of purchasing, it can all be done via VR. It’s also being adopted in the retail sector to some degree too. 

So VR has some future, but it’s also going to require some infrastructure characteristics that are yet to be widely adopted and that might take some years. 

5G, has already opened some doors but will continue to open more. If you think about it, what did you lack when we were only working with 3G? I’d say you weren’t missing many things. But then when 4G came along you can now watch very good quality videos on mobile for example. I think 5G will do the same, but more from an automation side including low latency.  

One of the applications for 5G I’ve been discussing is connected cars. This will take many years, as there needs to be the technology and the regulation for this. I’ll liken the advance of this technology to when e-commerce first launched, there was a lot of resistance from people to put your credit card number on the internet, so can you imagine sitting in a car without driving it or having somebody you know driving it? 

So a lot of the future advances will come down to the regulations and infrastructure around the applications of these technologies. I believe that this way has no return, I can’t say how long it will take but that’s the way we’re heading as an industry.”

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

We’re Attending Space Tech Expo Europe

Posted on by Tegan Valeny

The count down begins as Andrew Ball and Ewan Lawrenson represent neuco at Space Tech, Bremen!

Space Tech Expo Europe is the continent’s major dedicated supply-chain and engineering event for manufacturing, design, test and engineering services for spacecraft, subsystems and space-qualified components. The exhibition and conference draw attendance from thousands of industry leaders, decision makers, engineers, specifiers and buyers to meet manufacturers across the supply chain for commercial, government and military space.

If you are in Bremen on the 17th or 18th of November, make sure you drop them a note to get in touch!

TRADESHOWS ARE BACK ….Space Tech Expo Europe… it’s going to be a blast!!!

#neuco #spacetechexpo

You can’t be what you can’t see

Posted on by Tegan Valeny

Joining Tegan Valeny and Jake Sparkes for episode 51 of The Tech That Connects Us was Kate Wendelboe.

Kate has had a fascinating career and held senior, influential roles at BT, such as Director of Media & Broadcast and sits on the Board for Rise – a group for Women in Broadcast.

We delved into how Rise is helping address issues of diversity and inclusion, as well as a few other questions around inclusive teams and fitting in, here’s what Kate had to say.

How are Rise helping address issues of diversity and inclusion?  

“One of the best things we do with Rise is making sure that there’s that pipeline of talent coming up. Because that is it; it’s educating children from the youngest of ages, about the opportunities that are out there for them to open their minds up to industries like media broadcast and cyber security. 

With Rise we have a whole series of programmes where we’re looking at the pipeline, all the way from school, up to supporting professionals who are decades into their careers. Our Rise Up programme goes into school and we get kit and link it to some of the science curricula and talk about how images appear on screens. Then we get them to set up a studio in their classroom, so it’s a hands-on experience. Then in the afternoon, they film a game show which brings the whole thing to life for them. 

We’re then finding ways to keep in touch with them as they progress through the education system. We’ve set up a mentoring scheme for people who are at university, we’ve then got a second scheme for people who are early in their career and then networking events throughout to promote the network and to allow people to feel supported.”

So how can we make our teams more inclusive? 

“We’ve just had a brilliant series of events at BT about race, diversity and inclusion, and it’s something that we’re talking a lot about internally. You can have diversity but without inclusion, it’s important to make sure there’s representation. So we’re making sure that we have enough of different groups represented. So that everybody in the team can look around and see somebody who is a bit like them in some ways. And that very much helps in gender inclusivity and makes diversity sustainable. 

‘You can’t be what you can’t see’ 

This all comes back to culture it’s so important that we create a culture where these things can be discussed, and myths can be dispelled and people limiting beliefs about themselves can be worked through and dispelled as much as possible.”

What would your advice be to someone worried about fitting into the industry or concerned about being different? 

“Make sure that you’ve found as many different people as you can within the industry, to make sure you’re getting lots of different perspectives and find somebody that you can trust to talk to. It may be easier said than done but those conversations that you can have when you find somebody you can be open with will help you dispel some of the myths.”

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.     

What does the threat landscape look like right now for OT?

Posted on by Tegan Valeny

Joining us for episode 50 of The Tech That Connects Us was David Brown Vice President and General Manager, International Sales – ZeroFOX. We heard his insights on the OT domain – where he’s headed up both IPOs and acquisitions, what really keeps CISOs up at night, alternative models for industry events, how to recognise the potential in new hires and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

One question Jake Sparkes and John Clifton put to David was ‘What does the threat landscape look like right now for OT?’ Here’s what he had to say.

“There’s no doubt that there are more types of attacks now on OT. We’re seeing ransomware popping up a lot more commonly, or at least we’re hearing about that more now. 

One of the interesting bits about OT is actually when you look at the infrastructure it’s built on. I’d still say that Windows NT and XP are probably the most prevalent operating systems in an OT environment around the world. 

So what does that mean? It means that there’s a tonne of exploits available straight off the internet, you don’t need to be that smart. But if you work up through the levels of sophistication and if we’re talking about large organisations they’ve got quite a sophisticated security posture. 

The two things that I think are really interesting at the moment in that space is the consolidation of the technology to see what’s going on in your OT network. Because if you are a CESO or an information security director then you’ve got more flashing lights than you know what to do with. You may also have an ageing workforce without the domain expertise to understand what’s going on. 

So I think there’s going to be a bigger drive for how do you consolidate all that stuff into a single pane of glass, there’ll be a drive to provide either AI or a managed service that provides recommended actions and remedial work for the top three to five actions that the organisation needs to be focused on. And those actions will be evidenced by what’s going on outside in the rest of the world. 

The second thing that’s of interest at the moment is risk. So you’re seeing now there are new bills going through in the US, and CESOs are looking at what’s the risk across all of my platforms IT and OT. A drive for this is that it’s not been so easy to understand what’s going on with OT, because you’ve had all these flashing lights and an unconnected system, with a lot of tech but it’s just not connected.  

The reason they want to know what their risk is because there’s also a developing insurance market where a number of insurers are getting together and looking at how they can take IT and OT cyber risk and turn that into a sellable product. When we look at the potential of that market it’s probably 30-40 times the size of the complete OT market. What I can see we will get to in the next 2-3 years is a similar system to the black boxes currently being used by vehicle insurers, so you’ll have a premium and it will vary depending on your attitude to risk and your controls that are in place across the whole estate. That then allows organisations to make an economic decision because you might say I will stand the increase in premium which justifies me doing these things across my plant. 

This then becomes a very much return on investment decision. It’s not about fear, uncertainty and doubt it’s actually about economic imperative.” 

Every Wednesday we sit down with some of the biggest names in our industry, we dedicate our podcast to the stories of leaders in the technologies industries that bring us closer together. Follow the link here to see some of our latest episodes and don’t forget to subscribe.