Enterprises can automatically identify and remediate data security, privacy, and governance violations

OneTrust, the market-defining leader for trust intelligence, announces enhancements to OneTrust's data policy engine designed to identify data security, privacy, and governance violations and automatically set and enforce data policies across the entire data ecosystem. Coupled with powerful automation, OneTrust's data discovery, classification, and governance solutions provide companies with the tools to adopt an effective data governance program and drive responsible data use.

"Security and privacy teams need to be able to quickly identify violations and remediate them to prevent data misuse, breaches, and loss," said Blake Brannon, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at OneTrust. "With our enhanced data policy engine, organizations can easily understand how their data aligns with their policies, reduce risky data, and automatically remediate issues across their entire data ecosystem."

Every organization has data privacy, security, and governance policies to protect and use their data responsibly. Yet, applying these policies in the digital realm can be complex as many security, privacy, and data management teams need multiple tools to implement them effectively. OneTrust consolidates these processes into a single platform that spans the entire data life cycle.

With the enhancements to the data policy engine included in OneTrust's Data Discovery solution, it's now easier to identify data security and privacy risks and remediate violations to the data policy. The data policy engine supports this in the following ways:

• Continuous monitoring for policy violations: Data Discovery automatically classifies and inventories data and evaluates it against a company's data policies. This determines, for example, whether data has been kept for longer than regulations require, if sensitive data exists in unsecured locations, if data is shared with open access, there is unencrypted data that should be encrypted, and more.
• Automated application of remediation actions: Security, privacy, and IT teams can set and enforce data policies across their entire data ecosystem. OneTrust's data policy engine automatically brings data into compliance with remediation actions like data deletion, restricting control, masking sensitive data in databases, and managing redundant, obsolete, and trivial data. Organizations can also customize pre-built policies based on regulatory intelligence or create their own.

OneTrust Data Discovery provides the foundation of visibility and control for any data, privacy, or security team. With AI-powered data classification, built-in regulatory intelligence, and automated policy enforcement, Data Discovery delivers the capabilities enterprises need to automate data security and governance. Coupled with category-defining consent, preference, and privacy management, OneTrust Data Discovery enables modern businesses to ensure responsible use of data throughout the entire data lifecycle.

Technology Partnership Enables Mutual customers to Reduce Cloud Risk and Accelerate Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)

BigID, the leading platform for data security, privacy, compliance, and governance, today announces its partnership with leading cloud security provider Wiz as the company unveils Wiz Integration (WIN) Platform. BigID, hand selected as a launch partner, brings the power of data security posture management (DSPM) to WIN, so that customers can seamlessly integrate Wiz into their existing workflows. 

WIN enables Wiz and BigID to share prioritized security findings with context including inventory, vulnerabilities, issues, and configuration findings. Mutual customers receive the following benefits: 

• Discover where sensitive and regulated data lives and its vulnerability to exposure
• Mitigate risk and prevent lateral risk movement by enforcing data-centric policies around sensitive data
• Augment zero trust initiatives by understanding your sensitive data and its accessibility to prevent exposure

The combined value of these two offerings will streamline security for organizations that are on a cloud journey, regardless of where they may be on that journey. 

"We're excited to partner with Wiz and bring together enhanced security capabilities - accelerating  CSPM, DSPM, and CNAPP while enabling a new security operating model that is scalable and collaborative. This partnership will enable our mutual customers to leverage the power of Wiz and BigID seamlessly and efficiently, enhancing their overall experience, improving their security, and reducing risk across their cloud and on-prem environments," said Nimrod Vax, head of product and co-founder of BigID.

"A best-in-class cloud operating model reduces risk, improves ROI, and drives efficiency," said Oron Noah, Director of Product Management, Wiz. "That value proposition is what lies at the heart of WIN, and what partners like BigID are helping to make a reality. This collaborative philosophy brings real customer benefits and we are so thankful to have BigID on board for this launch."

WIN is designed to enable a cloud security operating model where security and cloud teams work collaboratively to understand and control risks across their CI/CD pipeline. Wiz is setting the industry standard in integrated solution strategy to maximize operational capabilities of organizations with partners like BigID in WIN.

Research highlights confidence in AI to improve customer experience even as broader trust issues linger

Consumers have confidence in artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool for transforming their customer experiences but have growing concerns over AI's increased prevalence in other disciplines, according to new research from Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA), the low-code platform provider empowering the world's leading enterprises to Build for Change®. The study, conducted by research firm Savanta and unveiled at PegaWorld® iNspire, the company's annual conference in Las Vegas, surveyed 5,000 consumers worldwide on their views around AI, its continued evolution, and the ways in which they interact with the technology.

It found a general acceptance of AI in areas relating to customer experience, with two thirds (67%) of respondents agreeing AI has the potential to improve the customer service of businesses they interact with, and more than half (54%) saying companies using AI will be more likely to offer better benefits to customers compared to businesses that do not. Meanwhile, nearly half of respondents (47%) indicated they are comfortable interacting with well-tested AI services from businesses, and two thirds (64%) said they expect most major departments within organizations will be run using AI and automation within the next ten years.

Despite this, the research also highlighted a major lack of trust in AI in several areas, including:

• A preference for people: Despite demonstrating an appetite for the use of AI in customer engagement, 71% of respondents said they still prefer to interact with a human being than the AI itself. The vast majority (68%) also said they would trust a human bank employee to make an objective, unbiased decision about whether to give a bank loan more than an AI solution, while the overwhelming majority (74%) admitted they would trust a medical diagnosis from a human doctor than one made by AI with a better track record of being right, but which could not demonstrate or explain how it arrived at its decision. Meanwhile, despite 51% saying they think an autonomous car is capable of making a more ethical decision than a human driver might in avoiding a car crash situation, 65% agreed that AI should not be allowed to overrule a human driver in such a situation.
• The rise of the machines: The vast majority (86%) of respondents said they feel AI is capable of evolving itself to behave amorally, with more than a quarter (27%) saying they think this has already happened. Almost half (48%) said it was likely that generative AI will eventually become sentient or self-conscious. Almost a third (30%) said they were concerned about AI enslaving humanity – a small increase from the 27% who said the same in a similar study conducted in 2019. Only 16% said they had no concerns over AI whatsoever.
• Reality check: While the study points to an increased general awareness of AI as a tool for everyday use – more than half of respondents said they think the technology is now responsible for producing more than half of all photos (55%) and videos (55%) they consume – concerns are building over how challenging it is to tell what's real from what's fake, with the majority indicating some level of difficulty in determining whether content has been generated by humans or AI. Nearly two-thirds (63%) indicated they couldn't tell whether a long-form article had been generated by AI or a human, while a similar number said the same about photos (59%) and videos (58%). More than half (56%) said it was difficult to tell if AI had generated TV reports they consume.

Quotes & Commentary: 
"As applications like Midjourney and ChatGPT bring AI to the masses, it's no surprise that we're seeing a degree of conflict. Let's not forget, many people are already accepting the benefits this technology can bring; after all, asking Alexa or Siri a question is nothing new for most consumers," said Dr. Rob Walker, general manager, 1:1 customer engagement, Pega. "However, it's also perhaps inevitable that as the spotlight on this technology intensifies, so does the level of fear and uncertainty around some of the more science-fiction influenced 'doomsday scenarios' surrounding it. As these concerns grow, the need for those organizations to demonstrate greater transparency in the outcomes these AI systems produce, and perform ethical bias tests to check how it 'behaves' at all times becomes clear.

"What we're seeing is that while people seem more comfortable than ever using AI, they'd rather hold it at arm's length when it comes to dealing with big, impactful decisions. Consumers are still expressing a strong desire to retain human interactions as a key part of the way they interact with organizations. What this tells us is that people are important, and that consumers want human beings in the loop at all times. The best way to embrace technologies like AI is to use them to supplement and augment existing human skills. Businesses that can do this effectively will be able to reap the benefits, keep their customers happy, and maximize their productivity."

Kore Konversations plays host to captivating discussions on how Conversational AI and Generative AI together will transform enterprise customer and employee experiences

Kore.ai, the world's leading enterprise conversational AI platform and solutions company, unveiled a framework for rapid and large-scale adoption of conversational AI and generic AI use cases within global businesses through the use of generative AI and large language models (LLMs). The new framework, GALE (Generative AI LLM Platform for Enterprise), was announced as part of its new product stack at the conclusion of its two-day customer event, Kore Konversations, during May 25-26, 2023 in Orlando, Florida.

Kore.ai's first-ever customer-centric event, Kore.ai Konversations - The Real Conversations, was focused around the theme "The Future of Experiences," and saw more than 300 delegates from large global enterprise customers, prospects, partners and analysts from diverse industries across 18 countries.

In his keynote address, Kore.ai CEO and Founder Raj Koneru emphasized the need for technologies that enrich end-user experiences as a means to build value and improve business outcomes. As human experiences are centered around languages, technologies that excel in natural language usage will enable enterprises to foster great experiences for their customers, employees, agents and partners alike, he explained.

"Spoken words, visual signs and gestures are at the core of how we express our needs, feelings and emotions. That's how we are born, connect with others and grow up. Every application and enterprise function of the future will be conversationally enabled and transform the way businesses interact with their customers and employees. The emergence of generative AI and LLMs has added a new dimension by opening unlimited possibilities to create enriched experiences. Businesses need to foster a robust language strategy to ride this wave of innovation," Koneru said.

Kore.ai, a frontrunner in leveraging GenAI technology, is creating best practices around conversational as well as non-conversational user experiences through its formalized GALE framework. These practices, which were shared with the delegates at the event, focus on simplifying, expediting, and enhancing the process of building virtual assistants for better end-user experiences. It also involves building domain-specific customized LLMs that are pre-trained and can orchestrate conversations in accordance with enterprise data, business rules, and user context.

In his special address to the gathering, Gartner Vice President and Distinguished Analyst Bern Elliot predicted that generative AI and ChatGPT will profoundly impact the conversational AI landscape by improving productivity and changing the way customer service experiences are delivered.

The conference featured two customer panels with delegates from American Water, Florida Blue, Millennium Bank, San Ysidro Health, MAZAMA, Express Scripts, eBay, Morgan Stanley, PNC Bank, and Kore.ai. The speakers shared their conversational AI implementation stories, challenges and best practices, while also discussing the opportunities associated with generative AI and LLMs. Panelists also shared cautions around key aspects such as enterprise security, hallucination, response controls, and calibration. The panelists recounted their experiences of working with Kore.ai as a trusted partner that's leading some of the most innovative and consequential implementations in the market today.

"Kore Konversations presented a wonderful platform to meet and interact with visionary and hands-on leaders from different industries," said a senior executive at a large banking enterprise. "It was a great opportunity to share with and learn from others about conversational AI experiences as well as the vision and opportunities presented by Generative AI. Overall the content presented and the interactions at the event were educational and enriching. I am certain that we are marching in the right direction."

The breakout sessions set the stage for delegates to network and strike conversations on a diverse range of topics that included: 

• Pre-built IVA Solutions: Delivering Value Out-of-the-Box
• Best Practices for Conversational Design
• Voice vs Digital: Key Considerations and Best Practices
• Use Case Prioritization: Where to Start
• Bring Enterprise Systems and IVAs Together to Tailor and Personalize Experiences
• How Generative AI Elevates the IVA Experience
• Business Case Development for Conversational AI
• Conversational AI Trends and Its Impact on CX, AX and EX

The pre-event workshop on "The power of LLMs and Generative AI with Conversational AI" organized by the Kore.ai team was attended by over 150 delegates. The event also featured demos and presentations on Kore.ai's product offerings such as SmartAssist, IT Assist, HR Assist, BankAssist, RetailAssist, HealthAssist, where the delegates had the chance to review and understand how these solutions are leveraging the benefits of LLMs and generative AI to create better customer and employee experiences.

"Kore.ai Konversations was an epic and eclectic mix of perspectives, insights and future-facing visioning that did a great job of showcasing Kore.ai's experience, thought leadership and commitment to customer success," said London-based renowned conversational AI thought leader, influencer and VUX World Founder Kane Simms, who hosted the event.

"It's clear that there is not only a huge buzz surrounding this enterprise AI space in general, but there's also excitement and enthusiasm on behalf of Kore.ai's customers and partners surrounding the work that Kore.ai is doing and its ability to fuel and amplify enterprise automation activity. Sign me up for next year!" said Simms, who also delivered a keynote on how the unique confluence of conversational AI and generative AI technologies is redefining the customer experience trends across industries.

The company, which has been named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms for the second year in a row, has recently launched key innovative features like Smart Co-pilot, AI-Assisted Dialog Node, zero-shot and few-shot models into its platform technology.

At the conference, Kore.ai announced a strategic partnership with Mphasis, leading global IT services provider for a joint go-to-market approach that involves solution implementations, research and engineering support to their extensive enterprise customer base.

With over 400 customers, Kore.ai automates at least a billion interactions every year through its conversational AI platform and solutions, and has delivered more than $1 Billion in cost savings to global enterprise customers to date. Around 200 million consumers and close to 2 million enterprise users currently leverage Kore.ai solutions to improve customer, employee and contact center agent experiences that drive business outcomes.

Latest release elevates user experience as Fetch carves out new category for mobile
commerce

Fetch, America's No. 1 rewards app and leading consumer-engagement platform, today announced a major product update that unlocks a suite of social features along with new backend tools to enhance personalization and a redesigned user interface that puts consumers at the center of the experience. 

Fetch 3.0, named for the version number on the latest release for both iOS and Android, the new-and-improved app represents an evolution in the rewards experience and a nod to the future of mobile commerce, omnichannel loyalty and brand-consumer engagement. These new features are aimed at nurturing its community of savvy shoppers and providing compelling opportunities to engage more deeply with the Fetch app, all while delivering little moments of joy for Fetch's more than 18 million monthly active users.

"We have a motto here at Fetch: If there's something we can do to make things better for our users, we do it – even if it's difficult. With this update, we're continuing to elevate our product, and we're tapping into an emerging space within mobile commerce by bringing the experience from solo to social," says Wes Schroll, Fetch CEO and Founder. "This is something completely new within the rewards space, and we're so excited to share this experience with our users."

Previously in beta, the newly expanded social features include the ability to search for and add friends within the Fetch app, an activity feed where users can see which brands and purchases are earning their friends the most points and send reactions, and a leaderboard where friends can compete to be the top point-earner for the month. The leaderboard also allows users to track and compete against their own personal record.

"These social features tap into fundamental human desires – to see and be seen; to compete, cooperate, and celebrate," says David Berk, Group President, Product and Technology at Fetch. "As we continue adding depth to this experience, our aim is to build an infinite world where people can always find new reasons to open the app and new ways to win the game of Fetch."

Results from the social beta show that the features are catching on and driving engagement – the percentage of Fetch users who use social features increased from 26.3 percent in January 2023 to nearly 50 percent today. These users also engage with the app more frequently, with monthly scan-return rates 4.4 percent higher than non-social Fetch users.

With 35 percent of its user base engaging with the app daily, Fetch is the "stickiest" app in the mobile shopping category, outperforming retail giants like Amazon, Target, Walgreens, CVS, and Kroger. Only a handful of elite apps achieve daily engagement at this scale – think Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Fetch is approaching this level, trailing just 11 percentage points behind Twitter. In fact, looking at a variety of engagement metrics, Fetch performs more like a social media app – and it's the only loyalty app playing at this level.

Fetch has also made several performance and design improvements, putting more value front and center for consumers. The redesigned "Discover" page improves visibility for brands and offers, adding a "For You" tab that curates the most relevant offers and allowing users to sort by recency, point value, and category. The new design also allows users to more easily track progress on offers that require multiple purchases. These changes will empower users to discover new brands, redeem more offers and earn even more rewards.

Notably, the update includes a more powerful ranking algorithm, which draws from users' actual purchase history to deliver relevant brand recommendations and personalized offers based on what consumers are actually buying. While other digital platforms rely on demographic data for targeted advertising, Fetch's ability to tap into this zero-party purchase data gives brand partners a privacy-compliant way to achieve the highest level of personalization and campaign performance efficiency.

"Brand marketers today are faced with the significant challenge of signal loss from the demise of third-party identifiers, which has led to online ads becoming less effective," says Meredith Guerriero, Chief Operating Officer at Fetch. "With Fetch users submitting more than 11 million receipts every day, the platform is able to capture, in real time, item-level insight into individuals' entire purchase history. Because of this, Fetch is uniquely positioned to solve the biggest problem facing the adtech industry today."  

The most inclusive rewards platform ever created, Fetch is retailer agnostic – consumers can submit receipts from any store or restaurant, plus online transactions, and earn rewards regardless of what they purchased. This frictionless user experience has led to Fetch capturing more than $152 billion in retail sales annually, putting the platform on par with the nation's top retailers.

Whatfix, a leader in digital adoption platforms (DAP), today announced an expansion of its collaboration with Microsoft with its listing on the Azure Marketplace, aimed at providing data-driven digital adoption solutions to joint customers.

The listing will enable global enterprises on the Microsoft Azure cloud to access and deploy solutions from Whatfix that meets their business needs. Whatfix has different plans built to cater to a wide variety of DAP use cases and customers can choose the plan best suited for them, directly from the Azure Marketplace to begin their digital adoption journey.

Whatfix's vision focuses on making technology more intuitive, collaborative, and self-serviceable for software users and helping organizations achieve capabilities and productivity goals through the concept of userization. The goal is to ultimately influence business value outcomes like revenue win rate, cost reduction, risk compliance, and more.

"Microsoft has changed the way people work and communicate with technology. By providing digital adoption capabilities to our joint customers, we can help maximize their ROI on their technology investments," said Vispi Daver, Chief Revenue Officer at Whatfix. "Our collaboration with Microsoft will provide Azure customers with a seamless experience of using Whatfix on their enterprise applications and enable them to achieve digital adoption at scale."

Since 2021, Whatfix has collaborated with Microsoft to provide fully integrated, complete digital adoption solutions for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams, enabling customers to use these applications more effectively and efficiently. Whatfix's listing on the Azure Marketplace extends the collaboration to help organizations deliver frictionless digital experiences that reduce complexity across their entire tech stack.

"Through Microsoft Azure Marketplace, customers around the world can easily find, buy, and deploy partner solutions they can trust, all certified and optimized to run on Azure," said Jake Zborowski, General Manager, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft Corp. "We're happy to welcome Whatfix to the growing Azure Marketplace ecosystem." 

Content technology platform's unique publisher relationships enable advertisers to lower their overall emissions with greener programmatic deals.

Nativo, the storytelling platform where advertisers and publishers distribute brand stories at scale and gain unparalleled insights about their content, today doubled down on their continued commitment to building a more-sustainable programmatic advertising ecosystem via its direct path to premium supply. Nativo's announcement comes at a time when the digital advertising ecosystem is struggling to rein in its ballooning carbon footprint caused by wasteful intermediaries within the programmatic supply chain and rampant bid request duplication.

Through single-path publisher relationships, Nativo eliminates duplicate auctions from the bidstream, greatly reducing the environmental impact of any given ad impression. At the same time, the company employs automated traffic-shaping technology helping to improve the relevance of bid requests and reduce overall carbon emissions generated by the auction process.

"Being an industry leader is about more than just doing what's right for your business. It's about helping to build a more-sustainable industry by embracing models that help advertisers and publishers achieve their goals while still supporting the overall health of the marketplace and our planet," said Ryan Pfeifle, Head of Programmatic Strategy at Nativo. "That's why Nativo supports the most direct possible path to premium supply. This is the direction the entire industry is heading right now, and we're already there. In fact, we were built that way from inception."

As ads work their way through the programmatic ecosystem, every step requires energy and computing power, which generates carbon emissions. Meanwhile, the aggressive auction duplication tactics that have become common on the open internet give way to a rising number of bid requests for any given ad impression, resulting in higher ad tech operating costs and carbon footprints.

"To build a greener industry, the digital ecosystem needs to reduce the number of intermediaries through which an ad must travel between the advertisers and the publisher," said Pfeifle. "To that end, advertisers should be seeking the most efficient supply path to publishers, while publishers themselves should be optimizing the number of partners they allow to bid on every impression. As a partner, Nativo supports these needs on both sides of the equation."

By unifying multiple content sources, Netlify Connect allows enterprises to realize the agility, scalability, and performance of composable web architecture

Netlify, the leading platform for modern web development, today announced Netlify Connect, a unified data layer that enables organizations to seamlessly transition from monolithic to composable architecture. With Netlify Connect, enterprises have the freedom to migrate to a fully composable web stack at their own pace and reap modern web benefits including agility, performance, and scalability. Netlify Connect customers can leverage all existing content sources and systems to optimize past web investments, avoid vendor lock-in, and reduce costs compared to a full stack migration. 

"The introduction of Netlify Connect is an important step forward for Netlify's platform and our vision for the modern, composable web," said Matt Biilmann, CEO at Netlify. "Enterprises are continuing to realize the massive opportunity presented by composable web architecture, and we're committed to offering solutions that allow enterprises to ship sites and higher converting campaigns faster than ever before."

Netlify Connect enables real-time content distribution across all websites and applications globally. When combined with best-in-class solutions for identity authentication, commerce, and security, Netlify Connect creates a powerful ecosystem that unlocks future-proof web architecture and drives world-class digital experiences.

Managing multiple, disparate data sources slows developer velocity and creates complexity. Netlify Connect enables teams to unify data from any content source – legacy or headless – into a productive, streamlined web development workflow. Netlify Connect is powered by a best-in-class GraphQL API that connects content sources and caches content at the Edge. 

"Netlify Connect significantly speeds up data sourcing from any content source. Querying the data sources was fast and easy, this could be a game changer for building powerful sites and apps," said Blaine O'Brien, Senior Engineering Manager at Hinge Health.