Cyber Awareness – Be Aware of the Human Factor
October marks Cyber Awareness Month, a time to focus on the complex and increasingly sophisticated cyber threat landscape. At Integreon, I lead the CISO, CIO, and Product Engineering organization. Cybersecurity is of paramount importance and at the core of everything we do. Using a sports car as an analogy, cybersecurity is like the brake in the car, which sets the limits on how big an engine we can put into a sports car. Sound cybersecurity practices are therefore a vital innovation accelerator. Because we are passionate about AI/GenAI, we have come to be passionate about cybersecurity, knowing it is the foundation for operational excellence and customer trust. According to Check Point Research, cyber attacks globally increased 30% YOY in Q2 2024, reaching 1,636 attacks per organization per week. Threat actors using AI to write code for malware and security vulnerabilities created by remote work are two factors attributing to increased cyber incidences. How can you best defend your organization against this growing threat? Today, defending against cyber threats requires a highly collaborative approach, involving not just a select few cybersecurity professionals, but everyone across the organization. It all starts with raising awareness and extends to implementing and enforcing best practices. Ultimately, companies must rely on humans acting responsibly and maintaining vigilance. Strategies for protecting against or mitigating a cyberattack include both human and system factors. Human factors include: 1. Digital Hygiene: Good digital hygiene involves several important habits. First, it’s crucial to avoid reusing passwords across multiple accounts to minimize the risk of unauthorized access. Additionally, sharing devices with others can expose sensitive information, so it’s advisable to limit device access to only trusted individuals. Finally, using only secure Wi-Fi networks can help prevent potential security breaches and unauthorized access to personal and other data. 2. Human Behavioral Hacking: Tactics can include phishing emails which pose a significant threat and can be extremely sophisticated in nature. A large portion of the emails that reach corporate inboxes are either phishing attempts or spam. Despite the presence of advanced anti-phishing and anti-spam tools, malicious emails still slip through the cracks. In the aftermath of a company experiencing a cyber incident, hackers have even been known to call employees posing as IT helpdesk personnel to gain control over the end user’s PC. Threat actors are upping their game using advanced tools. Phishing emails are harder to detect as they now infrequently contain red flag spelling and grammar mistakes. Instead, they are sophisticated in appearance and well-written, often personalized and generated with the help of AI/GenAI tools. System factors include: 1. Application Failures: Database corruption can lead to the loss of critical data, system downtime, and potential financial implications for businesses. Therefore, it is crucial to regularly backup data, implement robust security measures, and conduct routine maintenance to mitigate the risks associated with such failures. 2. Industry Incidents: Like the CrowdStrike service disruption early this year and the telecom carrier DNS outage, these events resulted in significant downtime and exposure for businesses worldwide. 3. Hardware/Infrastructure Failure: The most challenging scenario for an infrastructure failure is when an organization’s system is partially down yet remaining with a system “heartbeat”. This makes diagnosis and recovery decisions more difficult. Generally, the more automated and lower cost the recovery option is, the faster and easier it is for the operations team to take decisive action to maintain business continuity. Actions to protect against and respond to the threat landscape include: 1. Reducing the Attack Surface. This is the security boundary once breached can lead to data loss. Identity and network access points are common security boundaries. When you have more account or account authorization active than minimally necessary, you enlarge the attack surface. This is why the account of an offboarded employee should be expeditiously removed. By the same token, when you create network topology, you want to control the access points, especially those that are externally facing so that there are fewer entry points for an attacker to gain access into your network. Controlling network access can be done physically or through software or a combination of both. In summary, you want to make the security boundary as small and as controlled as practical to minimize the attack surface available to hackers. 2. Mitigating vulnerabilities before hackers can exploit them. 3. Minimizing the impact when a cyber incident occurs, otherwise known as minimizing the “blast radius”. For example, when a server is comprised, it does not necessitate bringing the other servers down. By using techniques such as zoning and subnetting you can limit the impact that a single comprise can have on your overall technology landscape. 4. Creating resilient recovery options often requires having additional recovery instances. Prepare ahead by identifying risks, backing up data, and establishing response protocols. System resiliency tools and strategies have greatly improved over the years. However, the human factor continues to be the area of greatest vulnerability. As systems become more secure, AI/GenAI has made humans an even softer target for threat actors. Addressing it requires a collective effort and daily vigilance. Happy Cyber Awareness Month! Read our other Cyber Awareness Month Blogs
“Garbage In – Garbage Out!” Still Applies with Gen AI
This article originally appeared on Solutions Review’s Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community enabling the human conversation on AI. View the original article here. For as long as there have been computers, we’ve heard the warning, “Garbage in – Garbage out!” when it came to expecting great outcomes from using poor data. But with the advent of generative AI (GAI) applications, many were hopeful we had finally unshackled ourselves from the issues of poor-quality data undermining the benefits of technology deployments. Surely, this amazing new technology that could learn to find answers from a single example, that could spot and summarize key issues in massive documents in seconds, could also weed through the mess that describes much, if not most, of our data storage. Like Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, we would wave our GAI wand over our cauldron of data and out would come the insights and value long hidden in that dark brew of duplicated, mismatched, incomplete, and poorly OCR’d files. True magic! But is it? A recent study by Gartner suggests that at least 30 percent of GAI projects will be abandoned after proof of concept by the end of 2025 due to poor data quality, inadequate risk controls, escalating costs or unclear business value. Oh my, that doesn’t sound like magic in the making. So why is GAI still stymied by poor data quality, and what should we be doing about it? “Garbage in – Garbage out!” manifests in three primary ways for Gen AI. We see it first in the form of bias and hallucination in our response output when we allow the GAI to wander untamed data sources to provide us with answers. Uncontrolled access yields unpredictable and likely undesirable outcomes. We see it again prominently in the quality of answers we get when the questions or prompts we ask lack the direction or sophistication to get us true value. Your answers are only as good as the questions you ask. Finally, we see it in the form of incomplete or inaccurate responses if we point GAI toward our in-house data sources when they remain full of duplicates, poor-quality images, and incomplete and improperly associated files. Anyone planning to undertake a GAI project needs to address all three of these data quality pitfalls if they expect to achieve basic objectives, much less the often-lofty expectations that flow from this new technology. The first pitfall, bias from untamed resource access, can be controlled by understanding the application you are using and how it is querying the LLM behind your actions. Responsible vendors are containing their search parameters to get responsible outputs. Beware of just using an unfettered Chat GTP interface. The second pitfall is avoiding garbage through poor prompting, which requires education. Investing in your team’s skills will be required of anyone operating in this new GAI environment. Basic courses are available to help users avoid mistakes and get better outcomes from their prompt attempts. For important projects, you can employ a partner organization that has already upskilled their team on prompt engineering. Key partners and service providers have upskilled services teams with training and practice at creating effective prompts. A partner can work within your environment to help you optimize your GAI capabilities without burdening your teams. Finally, there is the age-old need for data cleansing. While GAI may learn to find a particular topic faster than traditional machine learning AI, it will still struggle with poorly imaged documents, distinguishing duplicates, and associating disparate files to get complete and accurate answers. Most organizations have less than stellar data hygiene. A partner can help you clean up that data in cost-manageable chunks, prioritizing high-value or, most often, queried content. Over time, a minimal but steady investment in data clean-up and storage hygiene will pay dividends in getting you more effective output from your upcoming GAI initiatives. We all want the magic, but as any magician will tell you, there is a trick to success behind the show-stopping finish. Investing in your skills, your questions, and your data quality are the required elements of GAI magic. Partners are available to help with these elements. Don’t wait to get your success pieces in place. Foundational investments now will yield dividends when key GAI initiatives take off. And remember, “Garbage in – Garbage out!” still rules.
ALM Consulting Magazine Best Firms to Work For Industry Series Recap
Building Exceptional Firms: From Rainmaking to Culture Building, What Makes Great Firms Stand Out? What Iconic Consulting Firms Do to Grow in a Post-COVID Era Consulting Magazine held the “2024 Best Firms to Work For” Industry Series and awards dinner in New York City earlier this month. Before the evening awards ceremony, Integreon sponsored an interactive afternoon educational program, with business development leaders and innovators exploring today’s success drivers for consulting and providing practical input on what it takes to grow a firm.Tom McMakin, CEO and board member of Profitable Ideas Exchange and author of best-selling books on business development, hosted the afternoon session keynote, “Unlocking Growth: Rainmaking Best Practices in the Post-COVID Era.” McMakin’s talk was rich with pragmatic advice for delivering new business to a firm. He first outlined what having a culture of business development excellence is not. Selling obstacles in his eyes, include the following: Partners who say they are “too busy” to do business development. They need to be involved and help drive new business. Overly complex incentives (which confuse instead of inspiring those who sell to sell more.) Salespeople who are too protective of their “cash cows.” They do not want to share leads to enable cross-sell. Over-reliance on demand generation and leads created from content downloads; not all are qualified leads. Salespeople who do not trust their CRM and do not enter all information. He also spoke about the importance of trust in building a consulting firm business. He went on to explain that consultants possess a unique disadvantage when it comes to building trust, as the buyer must assume an even higher level of trust, as the buyer must have trust someone who is both diagnosing a problem and recommending a way to fix it. He recommended a few ways to close the trust gap effectively with prospective clients, including: Leaning into a referral network. Encourage clients to provide a testimonial, agree to a case study, who serve as a reference. “Narrowcast” your marketing activity. Instead of broadcasting to a large group of B2B decision-makers, focus your efforts from a title, geographic, or firmographic standpoint. Staying focused will help you to create highly relevant messaging as well as have no waste in your outreach. Commit to a market segment over the long term. Being “closer to the deal” helps you to be thought of when an actual need arises, so find ways to “stay close” by creating value as a community builder. Convene like-minded people on a regular basis and serve as host to their networking and peer-to-peer educational sessions. Have your customers participate (they will help lure in others, especially if they are from a well-known/respected organization). Start your outreach by offering participation in a virtual event; it is less of a commitment than a live conference. Instead of “hunting,” consider yourself a gardener tending to seeds in plots. You need to water and weed in order for anything to bloom or ripen. The keynote was followed by discussions on unlocking growth for a consulting firm and building a high-performance culture in post-COVID times, moderated by Murray Joslin, EVP of Creative and Business Solutions at Integreon. The discussion uncovered additional insights, centered on the importance of culture, customer curiosity, and relationship building. A panel with Ralph Barone, AVP Consulting, Cognizant; Frank Limardo, Consultant, SEI; and Ben Waskey, Engagement Director, Wilson Perumal & Company on operationalizing rainmaking. One tip Barone offered was to not start with a PowerPoint deck when pitching a new client. He recommended instead to ask good questions, and to follow up with a deck once you have formulated an idea of how you can help.When asked how he was winning business today, Waskey offered up that in post-COVID times, it is even more important to have a personal touch and to see prospects and clients in person when possible. He suggested taking advantage of existing relationships to build more. Make a point of making a personal visit if he is trying to get to know a prospect.Limardo mentioned that his firm’s approach to building new business is different. They take the long view to creating relationships and selling and while they have business development goals, there are no targets set per rep. Joslin also raised the importance of tracking people and their career, as a switch in companies could open up the possibility of a project. He mentioned that job changes can be tracked in LinkedIn or via software that notifies you when someone has changed jobs.The last discussion of the day was a roundtable on “Building an Exceptional Culture – What it Takes to Build a Remarkable Work Environment.” Joslin moderated this exchange, with the above panelists and audience members. There were several key takeaways from this discussion on what creates a culture for consulting firms to thrive: What makes for a great culture? Collaboration and teamwork with a diverse set of people with different perspectives working together. Empowerment: allowing people to feel like they are part of the organization. Allow them to grow, take on that better assignment, and even make mistakes. Build a culture of people not just wanting to help their clients, but to help each other too. This way everyone feels supported and part of a team. Maintain relationships with people even after they leave your firm. You do not know how they can help you down the road; they may even become a client themselves. Make sure employees at all levels have shared values and are “walking the talk.” Company values can be incorporated into performance reviews to create this accountability. Treat every client the same no matter the size of the account. Every piece of work is important to us because it is important to them. Also, you could end up learning more on the smaller engagements. Encourage employees to act like owners. This is one way to create curiosity, self-initiative, and accountability. It was a full afternoon of consultants helping consultants, in addition to firms being recognized at the
The E-Cla[i]res – Innovations in AI: An Interview with Phoebe Gebre, Chair of Integreon’s Innovation Committee
Today, we sit down with Phoebe Gebre, the Chair of Integreon’s Innovation Committee. With over 14 years of experience at Integreon, Phoebe brings a wealth of knowledge to her current role as an account manager for a major enterprise client and as a Subject Matter Expert supporting the sales team. In her latest endeavor, Phoebe leads the Innovations committee, steering the group through a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Phoebe, the fast-evolving AI and technology landscape has certainly kept the i4 Committee busy this year! What have you all been up to? Phoebe Gebre: Oh, where do I even begin? It’s been a whirlwind of activity and excitement around here. That sounds intriguing! Can you give us some details? PG: Absolutely! We’ve been deeply engaged in testing and piloting new market tools, exploring various technologies from general applications like Microsoft’s Copilot to specialized products that address niche issues. One of our most exciting projects involves developing GenAI-driven workflows for litigation and compliance matters. We’re leveraging generative AI to streamline processes and enhance the efficiency of the current workflows. This includes early case assessments, using AI to interrogate data and provide insights before anyone has reviewed the documents. We’ve also developed prompts and workflows for tasks like document review, privilege logs, third-party production reviews, and summarizing deposition transcripts. More recently, we’ve been exploring ways to use GenAI to ensure consistency and accuracy across our review teams, catching any outliers that may arise. It’s also important to recognize that while GenAI is powerful, it’s not always the most cost-effective solution – as part of our analysis we consider the cost-benefit tradeoff as part of our analysis. Another area of focus has been on developing Prompt Engineering Best Practices. We think about refining the prompts we use as we interact with AI to elicit the most accurate and useful responses. It’s a combination of art and science, and it’s been fascinating to see how much the AI’s performance improves with the right prompts. It’s a huge area of focus for us because our group is already at the intersection of counsel and technologists – we know how to use the tools and we understand the review protocol – so this is just another extension of that. How has client feedback shaped your approach? PG: Our clients are at the center of everything we do. We’ve prioritized sharing knowledge with them, listening to their needs, and learning from their experiences. It’s a two-way street: we provide our insights and innovations, and they offer invaluable feedback and new perspectives. This collaboration has been incredibly enriching and has driven much of our recent innovations. What are your key takeaways so far? PG: We’ve always believed that human oversight is crucial in any workflow, and our experience with GenAI has only strengthened this conviction. GenAI is just another tool in our arsenal: we’re still figuring out what it’s good for, what it’s not great at, when to use it, and when it might be overkill. While it can’t replace human judgment, it serves as a valuable asset when used appropriately. Another key takeaway is the unique challenge GenAI presents to the legal field, particularly in demonstrating its reliability and gaining acceptance under judicial and adversarial scrutiny. We are definitely watching this space. What are the i4 Committee’s priorities over the next couple of months? PG: We’ll continue our rigorous testing. Our partners and clients are teaching us a great deal about what they need and how we can meet those needs with innovative solutions. We are pushing to test Gen AI tools on live client data with both law firm and corporation partners. In addition, we are evaluating privilege log use cases and continuing to evaluate Gen AI for early discovery strategy. And lastly, what has been the most rewarding aspect of chairing the i4 Committee? PG: The most rewarding part has been working with such a talented and driven group of colleagues. It’s been an incredible journey of exploration and innovation. The team’s energy and creativity are inspiring, and we’re excited about the future. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us, Phoebe. Let’s catch up again on the i4 Committee’s activities soon! PG: I am looking forward to it!
ALM Consulting Magazine Best Firms to Work for Industry Series
Join us at the Best Firms to Work For Industry Series! This free 2-hour afternoon program will bring together business leaders and industry innovators to explore critical facets shaping the success of consulting firms. In addition to highlighting key aspects of building a great company culture, we will hear from business development and networking experts on what it takes to grow your firm. Learn More
The Beauty of Data: Your Data May Be Compelling, But Will Anyone Take Notice?
This article first appeared on ALM Consulting magazine. View the original article here. As companies across all sectors have invested massive amounts of capital in the collection and evaluation of data and analytics over the past decade, clear and coherent data visualization has become increasingly important. “Graphics raise questions that stimulate research and suggest ideas,” wrote statistician Antony Unwin in a 2020 article for the Harvard Data Science Review. “Graphics reveal data features that statistics and models may miss: unusual distributions, local patterns, clustering’s, gaps, missing values, evidence of rounding or heaping, implicit boundaries, outliers and so on.” The importance of strong data visualization became tangible to millions during the Covid-19 pandemic, as people around the world sought to understand the mechanisms of infection, assessed case figures and obsessed over curve flattening – or, as one reportedly data-averse former head of state put it, sombrero squashing. Today, data viz fans are numerous enough that dedicated newsletters have been established to report on the topic. The Right and Wrong Ways to Visualize Your Data Of course, there are wrong and right ways to visualize your data. One typical error is including too many details in your graphic, says Kate, a designer who works on data visualization for consulting clients. “Cramming too much information into a small space is a common mistake, as is using overly complicated charts that can’t be understood at a glance,” she says. Additionally, if you’re a business working with designers on visualization, Kate adds, “providing them with the right material and guidance is key.” “It’s always useful to provide designers with the data in a native file format, with cues as to what information should be highlighted and which is less important,” she says. “This allows visual experts to think outside the box and portray the data in the most eye-catching and engaging way possible.” Effective data visualization is especially key for consulting firms where clients rely upon accurate conveyance of multiple data points to draw out conclusions and impactful ramifications of various strategies. Focusing on the most important details and choosing the right visualization for the dataset are among the most important factors for easy comprehension. Examples and Best Practices in Data Visualization This is better illustrated with some visual examples. In this first slide, we see competitive analysis data for Project X – revenue growth and EBIT margin by competitor, as well as M&A deals by industry. There are several opportunities to improve both the data visualization and the legibility of this slide. Chart Type Choosing the right visualization for your data is paramount. Pie charts can be extremely useful for comparing percentages between two or three categories, but more than four or five (at most!) dilutes the ability to effectively parse the differences in category size. Additionally, pie charts are meant to illustrate percentages of a whole – using a pie chart for data that is not a percentage is both inaccurate and ineffective. Bar charts are perhaps the most commonly used form for simple data visualization, but choosing the right kind of bar chart is key. A large number of categories in a vertical bar chart can add visual clutter. Color Be purposeful with your color choices. Keep your palette neutral and use tints (or shades) of color to distinguish between categories. Reserve your primary or accent color to call attention to select categories or data points. Ask yourself “does adding color here help tell the data story?” If the answer is no, stick to the neutrals. Details Focus on the most important information and keep it simple. Overloading slides with too many charts, text, icons and details can make it difficult to understand. Embrace the white space and give your data room to breathe. Remove unnecessary chart details and avoid run-on sentences and tight blocks of text. The following slides show the principles above applied to the same set of data. Vertical bar charts have been reformatted to horizontal and simplified in color. The pie chart has been moved to a new slide and visualized in a more accurate and easier to understand chart. Key facts have been enlarged and given more space and prominence. Data is critical, but how it is shown is also vital to convey clear and insightful messages. Collaborating with visual experts, like Integreon, aids not only the production of content but the visual impact, creating ideal outcomes for consultant work.
Unlocking your CLM System to its full potential: The Importance of Migrating Legacy Contracts
When implementing a new Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) system, organizations often focus on the future—how the new system will streamline contract management, improve compliance, and provide actionable insights. However, one critical step is frequently overlooked: migrating legacy contracts. Neglecting this essential phase can significantly undermine the effectiveness of your new CLM system from Day 1. It’s important to find a partner that understands the complexities involved in this crucial phase and ideally offer a cost-effective, GenAI-powered solution to ensure your transition is seamless and successful. Why Migrating Legacy Contracts is Essential Maximizing Immediate Impact: The true value of a CLM system lies in its ability to manage and analyze all of your contracts. Without migrating these legacy contracts, your new CLM system can only manage a fraction of your contract data, leaving valuable information inaccessible. This immediately diminishes the return on your CLM investment. Additionally, a comprehensive migration ensures that your system can start generating actionable insights from day one, enhancing decision-making and strategic planning. Ensuring Compliance and Governance: Legacy contracts contain critical information like terms and conditions that must be managed for regulatory compliance. Overlooking these opens your organization up to unnecessary risks. Proper contract migration ensures that all your contracts are governed under the same compliance framework, reducing the risks considerably. Organizations must ensure each legacy contract is thoroughly reviewed and mapped to the new system’s compliance parameters, safeguarding your organization against potential legal and regulatory pitfalls. Improving Efficiency and Usability: A centralized system that houses all your contracts means better searchability and improves overall contract management. In turn, this leads to better decision-making and operational efficiency, making it easier for your team to find the information they need when they need it. Failure to properly migrate legacy contracts will lead to a bad user experience, causing the CLM system to be underutilized, and then the frustration with your CLM sets in. When users struggle to find the information they need or encounter inconsistencies in data, the efficiency and effectiveness of the CLM system are greatly reduced. Common Misconceptions About Legacy Contract Migration Fear of Increased Costs: Some providers may downplay the importance of migrating legacy contracts to avoid scaring clients with higher costs. While this step does require an investment, the long-term benefits far outweigh the initial expense. By adding a GenAI-powered approach, you can receive a cost-effective solution tailored to your needs. Overpromising Seamless Migration: The migration of legacy contracts is often more complex than initially perceived. Some providers may oversell the ease of migration, leading clients to believe it will be a straightforward, effortless process. The reality is that successful migration requires expertise, a robust strategy, and the right technology to manage the complexities involved. With the evolution of Gen AI-powered solutions, there has never been a better time to make sure your migration process is working to its full potential.
Case Study: Contract abstraction and migration
Enhanced speed and efficiency in data abstraction and summarization through use of genAI Client Large US manufacturing company Challenge Summarization and abstraction of key data points across 40,000 documents within a tight timeline, without compromising accuracy Solution Integreon leveraged Leah Legal Copilot to create and validate the data model and to further streamline the summarization and abstraction process. A playbook was also developed to establish rules for summarization and data analytics, as well as to ensure consistency and accuracy. Results The project successfully delivered a summary of more than 50 critical data points across the 40,000 documents within the stipulated timeline, meeting the company’s expectations. Furthermore, over 300 key terms were abstracted for data analysis, enabling the company to gain valuable insights from the vast amount of information. Key Takeaways By implementing a structured approach and leveraging technology, the company efficiently tackled the task of summarization andabstraction, achieving the desired outcomes within the set timeline. Using a dedicated team from a service providerthat utilizes advanced technology can transform complex data abstraction and migration processes Developing clear rules and playbooks for data migration ensures consistency and accuracy in the outcomes Leveraging GenAI platforms can significantly enhance speed and lower costs for abstraction and migration projects