Access Fabric Powers New Security Dashboard and Access Explorer Features to Help Customers Decrease Identity Attack Surface and Reduce Risk 

ConductorOne, the leader in identity security and access governance, today announced the ConductorOne Access Fabric, a unified data layer underpinning the ConductorOne platform that enables advanced access orchestration and automation. The Access Fabric provides comprehensive visibility into even the most complex environments, unifying historically disjointed access controls across all of a company's technology, including SaaS, cloud infrastructure, on-premises infrastructure, directories, and HR systems. The ConductorOne Access Fabric enables new platform features, including a security dashboard and access explorer, allowing security teams to quickly identify and remediate access-based risks.

"Managing access across modern cloud and SaaS environments has become impossibly onerous. As a result, identity and access have grown beyond the capacity of human oversight and represent a significant attack vector — and huge headache — for security teams," said Alex Bovee, co-founder and CEO of ConductorOne. "Our Access Fabric sets the foundation for modern access control within cloud-forward companies. It creates a platform to orchestrate access across all of a company's apps and infrastructure, helping teams decrease their identity attack surface and reduce risk."

The Access Fabric is made possible through ConductorOne's out-of-the-box, agentless connectors. The solution normalizes access and permissions data across SaaS, IaaS, on-prem, and homegrown applications into a single pane of glass. The Access Fabric gives teams the ability to quickly uncover high-risk entitlements, inappropriate access, orphaned accounts, and other security threats, and to remediate those risks.

Security Dashboard: Easily Identify and Remediate Access Risks

The new security dashboard provides teams with a view of the most important risk factors and security concerns related to identity and access, including: orphaned accounts, inactive users, standing privilege, high-risk users, standing and temporary high-risk grants, and more. Made possible by the Access Fabric, the security dashboard gives teams an easy-to-use console to view the vast access and permissions data from across their complex systems. The dashboard surfaces opportunities for risk reduction with built-in remediation options, such as revoking access, offboarding users, and changing service accounts.

Access Explorer: Search and Visualize User Access and Permissions

The all-new access explorer allows businesses to easily search and visualize user access and permissions across any application, providing granular visibility through a user-friendly interface. Security teams can now easily search for and identify:

• Accounts without an account owner
• All accounts for a given application, as well as accounts for a given user across all applications
• Orphaned accounts for a given application
• Users without an assigned access approver
• Accounts that have not logged in within a certain time period
• High-risk permanent and temporary access

In addition, the access explorer provides security teams with an easy-to-use visualization feature, allowing them to review access paths for any user, application, or resource.

"Discovering access risks with ConductorOne's Access Fabric functionality is a game-changer," said Matthew Dintrone, cloud security and compliance analyst at Grin. "Managing orphaned accounts and inactive users used to be a bit of a time sink and a heavy lift, but now it's a swift task that significantly boosts our security posture."

New Platform Capabilities Address the Needs of An Organization’s Employees Outside the Contact Center that Require Customer Engagement Capabilities; Beta Program for Qualified Customers In Progress

8x8, Inc., a leading integrated cloud contact center and unified communications platform provider, today announced beta availability of a new product line that will enable organizations to deliver effective customer engagement across the entire organization. This beta is in progress for qualified 8x8 customers. 

These new capabilities further bridge the gap between UCaaS and CCaaS, transforming the availability, utilization, and contextualization of customer interaction data throughout the entire organization to enable smarter decision making across the many different touch points through powerful and predictive insights. By incorporating both native and third-party data, cutting-edge AI solutions, and platform-level contact center components into built-for-purpose interfaces for customer experience professionals outside the contact center, 8x8 is in a unique position to help organizations precisely tune and refine all interactions to create positive customer outcomes.

“Organizations are hampered from delivering an even better customer journey and experience because they have a significant portion of employees, outside of the contact center, that regularly engage with customers but lack the right technology to support their specific needs,” said Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research. “8x8 is a leader in bringing cloud contact center and unified communications together on a single platform, and in today’s CX-driven world, 8x8 is bringing even greater value to organizations by providing these workers with persona-based, customer-facing capabilities that can drive more successful business outcomes and competitive advantages.”

The new product line effectively addresses the needs of employees, who serve as both functional experts as well as frequently engage with customers. This underserved user base plays a pivotal role in customer engagement and are increasingly responsible for successful customer outcomes, yet have not been equipped with the right-fit tools and capabilities to enable consistent, positive customer experiences.

“Organizations that excel at customer service and experiences understand that orchestrating exceptional customer journeys is an organization-wide responsibility,” said Samuel Wilson, Chief Executive Officer at 8x8, Inc. “By introducing an innovative new product line that expands cross-organization customer engagement, 8x8 is providing organizations with intentionally engineered capabilities that empower every customer-facing employee to make the most of every interaction, leading to superior customer satisfaction, loyalty and ultimately, business success.”

Available to select customers, 8x8 customers who would like to register their interest for the beta program for this new product line can sign up by emailing customer.labs@8x8.com.

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements in connection with a new product line supporting cross-organization customer engagement. Readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in any such forward-looking statements. Readers are directed to 8x8’s periodic and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a description of such risks and uncertainties. 8x8 undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Reveal becomes LoopMe’s exclusive Brand Lift Survey provider for the Out of Home channel

Reveal Mobile, the leading provider of Out-of-Home (OOH) measurement, today announced a partnership with LoopMe for brand lift measurement. 

The partnership between Reveal Mobile and LoopMe solidifies a true full-funnel campaign performance solution for OOH, providing the market with measurement solutions for outcomes, from brand lift to sales.

LoopMe’s proprietary AI-led survey technology optimizes media campaigns in-flight, creating a real-time feedback loop to improve advertising performance and outcomes. With the new Reveal partnership, LoopMe expands its industry leading technology to offer best-in-class measurement across OOH, as well as digital and CTV.

Brand lift has long been a staple for traditional brand marketers to evaluate the efficacy of their advertising campaigns. The explosive growth in Out of Home opportunities has brought more brand marketers into the channel and with them their demand for measurement rigor. LoopMe’s solution provides those brand marketers confidence to continue investing more in Out of Home. Reveal is proud to help broaden adoption of LoopMe’s solution.

“As Out of Home grows based on the value it brings brand advertisers, reliable and affordable campaign measurement is critical,” said Anna Bager, President & CEO of the industry’s trade organization OAAA. “New technologies from the application of programmatic to the deployment of experiential creative are enhancing the efficacy of OOH and brands marketers are noticing.”

“This partnership with Reveal is a critical step in measuring the impact of OOH campaigns on foot traffic, in-app, and online activities, and delivering brand lift outcomes across all consumer advertising channels,” said Lisa Coffey, Global CRO of LoopMe. “We are excited to expand our U.S. offering with purpose built solutions for measuring campaign effectiveness in the OOH space.”

Randy Kilgore, Reveal’s CRO said, “We’re immensely honored to be chosen as LoopMe’s exclusive partner for Brand Lift surveys in the OOH channel. LoopMe is a global organization with leadership in media optimization and analytics. They have the highest standards for themselves and we’re humbled to be chosen.”

The power of Out of Home advertising is borne out in research:

• 68% of U.S. adults notice OOH ads on their way to the store.
• 76% of U.S. adults took action on their mobile phone after recently seeing a mobile ad and 43% made a purchase.
• 61% of adults view OOH ads favorably which is higher than any competitive media.

Innovative new contextual intelligence technology is Proximic by Comscore’s latest tool to provide accurate, real-time data to publishers and advertisers for targeting

Proximic by Comscore, a division of Comscore Inc. and a leading provider of audience and content targeting solutions for advertising activation, has announced a new US patent for its livestream contextual intelligence technology. This patented technology will support publishers to more effectively monetize their livestream video inventory and increase advertiser confidence in buying livestream media. 

This patent covers Proximic by Comscore’s process of contextualizing livestream video content in real-time, including categorization against its full ID-free Predictive Audience taxonomy, to inform dynamic ad insertion.

“With this livestream technology, advertisers will be able to better ensure their ads will appear alongside content they deem contextually relevant and brand safe for real-time live video,” said Rachel Gantz, Managing Director, Proximic by Comscore. “This technological advancement is a significant development for live video advertising and couldn’t come at a better time with contextual targeting taking a larger presence amid signal loss.”

The leader in agile market research rounds out its C-suite by appointing senior leaders as CMO, CFO and International Managing Director

A new survey from Canva reveals why they’re making AI their top priority 

• 94% plan to increase their investment in AI

• 84% say there are too many AI tools in the market

• 72% are concerned about application sprawl, adding to their complexity and security risks

• 64% say they don’t have enough IT staff to train employees

Canva, the world’s only all-in-one visual communication platform, today released new insights from more than 1,360 CIOs on their priorities, opportunities and the challenges of managing their IT amid the AI boom. The company commissioned Harris Poll to survey CIOs from the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, India, and Australia to understand how they’re managing application sprawl and making decisions about workplace tools in the AI era.

The top global findings include:

• More apps are entering the workplace, but consolidation and reducing complexity are top of mind. CIOs report the pace of new apps in the market is rising globally, with 71% expecting to adopt between 30-60 new apps in 2024. With the rise in the number of new applications, application sprawl (the growth in individual applications used in a workplace) is a challenge for 72% of CIOs, with 30% being very concerned with increasing complexity, but they plan to reduce it. 51% are planning on some level of consolidation, with 24% planning for significant levels.

• IT teams are overwhelmed, making simplicity and user-friendly tools more important than ever. The need to consolidate is being driven by stretched IT teams who are facing a rapid increase in the number of apps to manage. Nearly two-thirds (64%) report that they don’t have enough staff to train employees on new apps, including safe and proper use. Forty-four percent say their teams spend more than half of their time educating employees about new technologies, leaving less time for planning, innovation and other business-critical work.

• AI is dominating the mindshare of CIOs but identifying the right tools is a challenge. Despite concerns about application sprawl, nearly all CIOs (94%) plan to increase their budget to make investments in AI apps, with two-fifths planning budget rises of more than 50%. IT leaders recognize the benefits of adopting AI, such as saving time on creative or strategic tasks (52%), helping consolidate apps (50%), and offering greater insights to guide business decisions (50%). Identifying the right solution is a challenge, with 84% saying that there are already too many AI tools available, causing confusion and overlap for employees.

• Integrating AI is high on the agenda. Nearly all CIOs (90%) agree that AI tools can dramatically improve both their role and their employees' experience, but cite integrating AI (37%), access to IT talent (33%), and data security (27%) as the most common challenges. Most seem ready to leverage the technology, with 70% saying they have firm guardrails in place to ensure safe and responsible use.

“Navigating the avalanche of new technologies designed to make business easier is proving to be harder than ever. The balancing act CIOs face is unenviable: innovate with AI but don’t contribute to app sprawl,” said Cameron Adams, co-founder and chief product officer, Canva. “Our findings reinforce that CIOs want to be agents of change and innovation by choosing technology that helps their organizations have a greater impact while consolidating cost and reducing complexity.”

Today’s CIOs are constantly on the lookout for productivity tools that fuel greater efficiencies in the workplace. Within the design and creative ecosystem, there's deep fragmentation of AI-powered tools which aren’t serving the needs of the workforce, potentially slowing down the adoption of cutting edge technologies. With the goal of empowering individuals, teams, and enterprises to create visual communication at scale, Canva introduced Magic Studio in 2023 to simplify and consolidate the best AI-powered design tools into a secure and easy-to-use platform.

Building upon their proprietary rules engine, leading SaaS business intelligence (BI) platform provider, x2Systems, Inc., has announced the launch of x2 BotSquad, a new BI platform designed to leverage cutting-edge AI-technology and advanced rule designing tools for an unparalleled level of complex BI rule automation.

Capital Will Allow for Expansion of Sales and Marketing Initiatives

Cancels $10 Million Securities Purchase Agreement with GHS Investments

Retained ThinkEquity as Financial Advisor

AiAdvertising, Inc., an industry leader in AI-powered advertising solutions, today completed the second tranche of its securities purchase agreement with Hexagon Partners, Ltd., a Texas-based investment company, for a strategic investment of $2.5 million. 

Hexagon Partners Equity Investment

On April 11, 2023, AiAdvertising entered into a securities purchase agreement with Hexagon Partners, Ltd. for a strategic investment of $5.0 million and potentially up to $9.25 million. The investment by Hexagon Partners was structured as the purchase of newly designated Series I Preferred Stock of the Company that converts into AIAD’s common stock at a ratio of 1 to 400. In addition to the initial $5.0 million investment, the transaction provided an option for two additional tranches totaling another $4.25 million investment, with a total blended underlying as-converted common share price that represents an aggregate investment at a premium to the closing price of AIAD’s common stock. The $2.5 million second tranche transaction closed on January 30, 2024, and completes the investment.

Securities Purchase Agreement Terminated on January, 30 2024

On March 28, 2022, the Company entered into purchase agreement with GHS Investments, LLC, a Nevada limited liability company, to buy from the Company, up to $10,000,000 worth of the Company’s registered common stock, $0.001 par value per share from time to time. From March 28, 2022, through January 30, 2024, the Company sold an aggregate of 259,661,078 shares of common stock at an average price of $0.007 per share for gross proceeds of approximately $1.79 million under the agreement. On January 30, 2024, the Company terminated the purchase agreement with GHS Investments.

ThinkEquity Hired as Financial Advisor to list on a National Exchange

On January 12, 2024, AiAdvertising engaged ThinkEquity LLC, a boutique investment bank, to act as AiAdvertising’s financial advisor to list to a national exchange.

"We are privileged to extend our partnership with Hexagon Partners, and we celebrate their continued confidence in our company,” said Jerry Hug, CEO of AiAdvertising. “The new investment will enable us to focus on further development of our AI-powered targeting solutions to generate more engaging, higher-impact campaigns that drive results for our clients. In addition, with the new investment from Hexagon to propel our sales efforts, we believe we will reach cashflow breakeven in the near-term. While we have valued our relationship with GHS Investments, we believe our improving business metrics will allow us to raise capital more efficiently than in the past, and consequently, we have cancelled our $10 million Purchase Agreement with GHS.

“We are also excited to partner with ThinkEquity to explore listing our shares on a national exchange, which will represent a significant milestone for the Company. As we leverage our strong momentum to focus on delivering superior results to our clients, being listed on a national exchange increases corporate visibility, improves liquidity, and raises awareness of AiAdvertising in the financial markets. We look forward to working with the team at ThinkEquity for a successful uplisting,” concluded Hug.