Capital One Financial Corporation operates as the financial services holding company for the Capital One Bank (USA), National Association; and Capital One, National Association, which provides various financial products and services in the United States ...

What's Behind the Bearish Analyst Sentiment on Capital One Financial (COF)?

Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE: COF)’s stock price has soared by 9.19 in relation to previous closing price of 89.51. Nevertheless, the company has seen a gain of 8.32% in its stock price over the last five trading days.

Capital One Financial Corp. (COF) Shares Rise Despite Market Challenges

Analysts have been eager to weigh in on the Financial sector with new ratings on Capital One Financial (COF – Research Report) and Willis

Analysts Conflicted on These Financial Names: Capital One Financial (COF) and Willis Towers Watson (WTW)

1 For more information about this non-GAAP financial measure ... mortgage loan origination services through offices located in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia. C&F Finance Company provides automobile, marine and ...

C&F Financial Corporation Announces Net Income for Third Quarter and First Nine Months

Capital One Financial Corporation has emerged as a key player in shaping the future of finance. With its innovative approach and commitment to customer-centric solutions, the company has revolutionized the way financial services are delivered. Over the ...

The Role of Capital One Financial Corporation in Shaping the Future of Finance

Moreover, any failure to comply with these regulations can result in hefty fines and damage to the company’s reputation. Another challenge for Capital One is the evolving nature of the financial services industry. With the rise of fintech companies and ...

Overview of Capital One Financial Corporation

Ready for the name and trading symbol? Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE: COF) has seen a rise in its stock price by 0.92 in relation to its previous close of 97.15. However, the company has experienced a 1.09% gain in its stock price over the last five ...

Capital One Financial Corp. (COF) Beta Value: Understanding the Market Risk

**NM signifies a non meaningful value. A dash signifies the data is not available.

COF.PR.J Capital One Financial Corporation 4.8 DP SH PF J

Advisors have one point of contact ... Member FINRA/SIPC. LPL Financial and its affiliated companies provide financial services only from the United States. Steeplechase Capital Partners and ...

Steeplechase Capital Partners launches with LPL Financial Strategic Wealth Services

Capital One Financial Corporation is a financial holding company whose subsidiaries ... offers a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses and commercial ...

JP Morgan Maintains Capital One Financial (COF) Overweight Recommendation

Get the most recent info and news about Capital One Financial on HackerNoon, where 10k+ technologists publish stories for 4M+ monthly readers.

Capital One Financial Corporation operates as the financial services holding company for the Capital One Bank (USA), National Association; and Capital One, National Association, which provides various financial products and services in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. It operates through three segments: Credit Card, Consumer Banking, and Commercial Banking. The company offers non-interest-bearing and interest-bearing deposits, such as checking accounts, money market deposit accounts, negotiable order of withdrawals, savings deposits, and time deposits. It also provides credit card loans; auto, home, and retail banking loans; and commercial and multifamily real estate, commercial and industrial, and small-ticket commercial real estate loans. In addition, the company offers credit and debit card products; online direct banking services; and treasury management and depository services. It serves consumers, small businesses, and commercial clients through the Internet and mobile banking, as well as through CafÃ©s, ATMs, and branches located in New York, Louisiana, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia. Capital One Financial Corporation was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.

Capital One Financial

Today, DevOps has emerged as the future of the software delivery process. Companies are shifting their focus on optimizing software quality and time to market while leveraging automation tools across different phases of the product development lifecycle (Design, build, test & Deploy). Over the past couple of years, IT companies have rapidly shifted to DevOps business models. . The main reason behind its quick adoption is the ability to deliver applications and innovation faster with minimum time-to-market for dynamic software products. Around 77% of organizations today use DevOps to deploy software or plan releases The latest stats show that DevOps popularity has taken a significant hike in the past few years. DevOps consulting has become an integral part of IT companies' revenue generation. Based on the experience of the , the overall 2021 DevOps market will be worth around . top survey firms USD 5,114.57 Million and reach USD 12,215.54 Million by 2026 One may say that the purpose of DevOps implementation is to reduce the IT budget. Still, we can’t deny that its adoption can generate additional revenues for an organization because top companies claim that . DevOps adoption saves around $1.3 million annually per 100 DevOps users due to improved infrastructure performance by 66% and increased deployment frequency 85% Undoubtedly, DevOps implementation has skyrocketed over the past several years. These striking figures are testament to its potential as a business outcome game-changer. Therefore, DevOps implementation has become a popular buzzword in the IT industry, and many software companies are considering it as their next move. But is DevOps implementation worth investing in at an IT company? This article will provide you with the correct answer and share deep insights about DevOps, its popularity, and the benefits of implementing it into your business. So, let's get started. What is DevOps? DevOps is basically a software development method that emphasizes communication, collaboration, and integration between the various roles in an IT company. It aims to improve relationships between developers and other departments such as operations or QA to produce better products for their customers. In addition, DevOps also offers numerous benefits, from improving productivity to increasing revenue growth. Let's look at the rise of DevOps, how it works, why it has become popular, and how it’s beneficial. The Rise of DevOps Patrick Debois initially coined DevOps in 2009, but its popularity started to skyrocket after Amazon's CTO Werner Vogels published his keynote speech about their success with implementing DevOps practices in 2012. In addition, many tech giants like Facebook and Google also started to use DevOps in their products. Since then, it has become a popular buzzword in the IT industry. How Does DevOps Work? brings together development, QA, and operations into one team. They work closely to share their knowledge to achieve the best product at the end of it all. It involves automating processes that allow developers early access to production code without compromising security standards or compliance requirements. DevOps Solutions Why Implement DevOps? Now that you know how DevOps works let's see why it has become popular. According to Gartner, the . It means companies are willing to invest more money in their business because of its astounding benefits. rise in IT spending is expected to hit $4.2 trillion in 2021, a hike of 8.6% from 2020 DevOps is a way for companies to keep up with the market demands by providing more flexible, agile software products that adapt quickly to changing needs or trends. Furthermore, it also helps IT companies improve their organizational culture and boost innovation within their team. Many studies have shown how DevOps implementation can increase productivity across departments by up to 200%. Business Advantages of DevOps Implementation Besides increasing your profits and revenue growth faster than ever before, here are other benefits you can gain from implementing DevOps: 1. Continuous Delivery & Deployment Implementing a DevOps culture will allow you to release new updates faster which improves the customer experience. In addition, the updates are also more stable since both developers and operations have tested them before being released. Flipkart, one of the largest e-commerce companies in India, has reduced the time it takes to release new updates from several weeks down to just a few minutes. It is possible because Flipkart's developers can deliver any software changes they want directly into production without involving other roles first. "We don't have separate handoffs between teams," said Flipkart's VP of engineering Ravi Garikipati. "Our developers can deploy code to production whenever they want." 2. Increasing Revenue Growth Faster Than Before Since DevOps allows you to release new updates faster, it means that your customers can receive the benefits of these changes much earlier than before. And when they are happy with their experiences using your product, they will probably recommend it to their friends or colleagues, which will help you increase your revenue growth. "The goal of our DevOps transformation is to reduce deployment failure rates, increase deployments per day, shorten lead times for releases (time between code check-in and release), improve customer satisfaction through faster time-to-market responsiveness," said Radhesh Balakrishnan, Director of Product Engineering at Capital One Financial. When Netflix decided to switch from a monolithic architecture based on JVM and Tomcat, they were expecting their whole development suite would take them at least nine months. However, thanks to the DevOps culture that has been implemented in their company, it took them only three months instead. "We had researchers who knew Java develop some libraries using a new framework, and a team of experienced front-end engineers who knew JavaScript develop some applications on top of these libraries. The next step was to have the two teams work together to share their code," said Chris Pinkham, VP Engineering at Netflix. "Once we had both sides working off of common code that they both wrote, we were able to have them working together in a single-day code review. The team was so excited by this that it took us longer to negotiate an agreement on how the remaining pieces would come together than it did for us to get the code merged," said Pinkham. 3. Increased Collaboration & Communication A DevOps culture allows your employees, whether developers or operations professionals, to work together more closely than ever before to deliver new updates faster without sacrificing the quality of their software development efforts. It is one of the main reasons why many companies have been implementing DevOps. It allows them to work more efficiently and have better coordination between the roles and operations professionals. "In a DevOps world, development teams can provision their environments for testing purposes with full access to production data if needed," said Alan Lepofsky, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. "Testing gets done, often with production data. With more testing and better quality software releases, you can get to market faster." According to a survey conducted by Puppet, companies implementing DevOps were able to reduce their downtime from an average of five hours per week down to only one hour and thirty-two minutes per week. In addition, they also managed to achieve this with fewer required resources, which means that the success rate was much higher. "It is one of the main reasons why companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google have been able to remain competitive in today's market. They are constantly improving their software development process by increasing collaboration between developers and operations professionals," said Sam Fell, VP of Product Marketing at CA Technologies. 4. Improved Business Agility Companies implementing DevOps can improve their overall software development process, allowing them to be more agile and adaptable to the ever-evolving needs of today's market. It is one of the main reasons why so many businesses have begun adopting this strategy. It can help companies remain competitive by allowing them to adapt to their customers' ever-changing needs quickly. E.g., companies implementing DevOps have also experienced a much higher success rate when it comes to delivering their software updates since they don't waste time going back and forth with developers to resolve any issues, which means that fewer resources are needed overall. "DevOps is about breaking down barriers between development and operations and creating a culture that fosters collaboration and communication. DevOps increases the speed of business by allowing development teams to be more agile, collaborate better with other departments in their organization, and ultimately produce higher quality software," said Travis Truett, Co-founder & VP Product at CloudBees. 5. Improved Business Results Organizations have to be committed to implementing it as a way for their teams to collaborate and converse with each other more effectively to deliver better software updates faster rather than focusing on traditional methods frequently becoming inefficient over time. In fact, by improving communication between your employees, you can see a wide range of benefits, including higher productivity levels and better in-house collaboration, which ultimately results in improved business performance. Copado's results after Investing in Devops. Source By implementing DevOps, your company will improve its overall software development process by allowing all team members, from developers to operations professionals, to work together without wasting time on traditional methods that often become inefficient. 6. Increased Software Quality When you have your entire team involved in the development process for new or updated software, the chances of delivering better results are higher. Everyone has their unique perspective on what needs to be improved rather than simply relying on developers alone. It means that when teams are all working together towards achieving one common goal, the chances of success are higher than working in isolation. Amazon, for example, has reduced its software bug backlog from hundreds of thousands down to only an average of fifteen per month. It is partly due to their commitment towards DevOps, which has allowed the entire team, including developers and operations professionals, to work together more effectively to deliver their software updates faster without wasting time on traditional methods that frequently become inefficient. 7. Boosts Return on Investment DevOps improves the software development process by allowing all team members, from developers to operations professionals, to work together without wasting time on traditional methods that often become inefficient. It means you can see better business results overall and increased ROI for your IT Company. However, this is only possible if the entire team is committed to improving their communication and collaboration skills. E.g., Alibaba has reduced its time for software build and deployment by almost 75% since it began implementing DevOps, making its developers much more productive overall. DevOps Implementation Roadmap: A Step-by-Step Guide Implementing DevOps is only possible if the entire team working on new or updated software updates is committed to improving their communication and collaboration skills. However, you can quickly achieve this by following a specific roadmap that includes small incremental changes in your company's processes over time. "You can achieve small wins, which are crucial to building momentum in the organization," Travis Truett added. Below is a roadmap that you can follow when implementing DevOps in your IT Company: DevOps Initiative The first step towards improving communication and collaboration skills is to designate a small team within your organization that will oversee this process. E.g., Alibaba has appointed a chief architect who oversees their DevOps initiative, which was the first step towards implementing it in their entire IT Company. "He's the executive sponsor for DevOps," Travis Truett said. "So he has to have a seat at the table." Since it is often difficult to get your entire company on board with this idea, you should consider forming a small team that will spearhead this initiative and help build momentum throughout other departments in time. You can do this by appointing a senior manager who is already respected within your company. Communication Once you have your small team in place, the next step is to improve communication within it. E.g., "There's no way of getting around that if we want DevOps implementations to succeed," Travis Truett explained. "We need great collaboration between development and operations." Communication plays an important role here since all team members involved in developing new or updated software should communicate more effectively. Travis Truett adds: "We need to make sure we're all working together and there's good communication between developers, operations professionals, and IT managers." Since it is easy for some team members to feel excluded from this process due to their lack of communication, you should ensure that everyone feels comfortable contributing their ideas. Automation Once the team is on board with improving communication and collaboration skills, it's time to automate some parts of the development process. The next step towards implementing DevOps in Alibaba was automating their software build processes to reduce its deployment timeframe by almost 75%. It has allowed developers to be more productive overall, which was the primary goal of implementing DevOps. "It's a process that automatically builds and deploys code," Travis Truett added. "From development to production." Automation should be implemented in stages where your team can easily monitor its progress until it becomes second nature to them. Small wins are crucial here because they help build momentum in the organization. Collaboration After your team has taken on more responsibilities through automation, it's time to improve collaboration between all members. One way Alibaba achieved this was by introducing a new chat platform that allows developers and operations professionals to quickly communicate with each other in real-time once they encounter problems or need some advice about something. If there's a problem in the middle of the night, operations can pop into a chat room," Travis Truett explained. "And tell developers what they're seeing and ask them to look at something." It has helped Alibaba decrease its mean time to recover from failures by almost 95% and reduced production incidents by over 40%. "You should always have to keep your eyes on the prize and focus on making things better." Travis Truett added. "That's what we've done for Alibaba Cloud, and it has paid off in spades so far." Collaboration plays an important role here as all team members should work together towards a common goal. By focusing on small wins and keeping an eye on the big picture, your team can successfully implement DevOps in Alibaba Cloud. Important Success Factors At this stage, your team has already implemented some of the essential DevOps principles. E.g., one of the most important things to consider at this point is making sure that everybody is on board with these changes and they become second nature for them, which you can achieve through constant communication, transparency, and training. As for critical success factors, you should ensure that all team members are responsible enough to implement DevOps properly. You should provide them with the necessary tools and resources they need to get started. Your company can successfully achieve its goals through this process. Final Thoughts Implementing DevOps at your company can be a complex process, but the benefits outweigh the challenges. As you have read in this blog post, you can improve teamwork and collaboration within your company by offering them the right tools and resources they need to succeed. With all your company's efforts, you should ensure that it's worth the investment through constant communication and transparency with your team. That's what becomes possible with DevOps implementation, which can be a challenging yet rewarding process for your organization. For better assistance, you can also connect with a DevOps services company. They can help you achieve your goals through this process and provide the right solutions to meet your business needs. FAQs Q. What is DevOps? A software development methodology that allows developers and IT professionals to work together more productively. A. Q. Is it necessary to work with a third-party company for DevOps implementation? Yes, you can take the help of DevOps Company to implement successfully. A. Q. What are the benefits of implementing DevOps at my company? You will be able to reap various business advantages when it comes to improving teamwork within your organization, enhancing communication, increasing transparency, and more. A. Q. How will the implementation of automation improve my business processes and infrastructure? With automation, your company can become more efficient and save time. You will be able to improve collaboration between all team members through the implementation of DevOps. A. Q. Can you provide some examples of companies that have successfully implemented DevOps in their organization? Alibaba Cloud, Netflix, and Amazon are examples of companies that have successfully implemented DevOps. A. Q. What does the roadmap look like for a company looking to implement DevOps? There is no specific road map required as it's all about how you want your organization to work. It can be anything from improving transparency within your business to improving communication, etc. A. Q. Will anything change after implementing DevOps principles at our company, e.g., training and communication? Yes, it will be a positive change in the long run. You might experience some resistance initially, but eventually, everyone will get used to their new roles and responsibilities, which is good for your business. A.

DevOps Implementation: Is it Really Worth an IT Company's Investment?

If cryptocurrency payments are to ever compete with credit cards and mobile apps for day-to-day use, sending and receiving cryptocurrency needs to be just as easy. According to the (FIO) , 75% of people who send and receive crypto are less than confident things will go as planned. Foundation for Interwallet Operability usability report Of those surveyed, 18% reported experiencing actual loss of funds due to user-error. While it’s true that many centralized platforms and applications like Coinbase and Venmo are easy to use, there is no reason to sacrifice user control for convenience One of the biggest critiques against cryptocurrency payments is, why do we need crypto payments when we already have easy ways of transacting using credit cards and mobile wallets? The answer is core to the ethos of blockchain and decentralization. Why Privacy Matters In the current age of Likes, Tweets, same-day delivery, and other forms of instant gratification, we would do well to recall the value of privacy. Privacy means not worrying about your in-home assistant collecting data on conversations that are then accidentally emailed to your boss, that the route you take to work every day isn’t automatically tracked on your phone, and paying your roommate for your side of the rent isn’t posted to a public forum. These are all real-world examples of invasions of privacy, yet somehow the majority of web and app users have accepted them as inevitable consequences of convenience. In many like North Korea, China, Turkey, and Russia privacy is not taken for granted. Governments utilize the tracking capabilities enabled by many social media platforms, websites, and applications to find and punish dissenters and remove speech that criticizes those in power. countries outside of the United States The thirty worst countries for internet censorship from Tech.co . Though citizens of the United States and other democratic countries may feel relatively assured that their freedom of speech will be protected and data from their online activities won’t be used against them, they probably shouldn’t feel so complacent. If the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal taught us anything, it’s that a relatively small group of individuals can exploit huge amounts of data to further their own self interests, even to the detriment of the majority. Whenever we make an online purchase, share a post to social media, or search for information on the web, we are creating data about who we are that can be sold to advertisers and/or be made available to bad actors with malicious intentions. Financial transaction data is particularly sensitive and shouldn’t be sold to advertisers or be made vulnerable to hackers. Yet, the majority of payment methods currently used today collect financial transaction data. track where you shop and the amount being spent, which means anyone using a credit card could be subject to a data breach. Credit cards Just , “Capital One Financial Corp. ( ), the fifth largest credit card issuer in the U.S., revealed that a hacker accessed personal data on 106 million customers and applicants.” The infamous Equifax hack of 2017 compromised the personal data of 143 million customers, including 209,000 credit card details. this past July COF Graph showing US Data Breaches exposing credit and debit card details by year from the non-profit Identity Theft Report Center (ITRC). Mobile applications and wallets are rapidly gaining traction, particularly among , for scenarios like splitting the bill or paying the babysitter. Unfortunately these millennial-loved apps are not much better than credit cards when it comes to user data privacy. young people Venmo payments are , so unless a user consciously changes their privacy settings, every transaction is posted to a public forum. If Venmo users aren’t careful, they could find their date-night dinner listed for anyone, including crazy ex-girlfriends and boyfriends, to see. public by default Cryptocurrency is well-suited to provide a solution to rampant data collection and erosion of privacy. The brilliance of Satoshi Nakamoto’s is that it introduced the first peer-to-peer (p2p) electronic cash system that, through its decentralized design, eliminates the need for middlemen to verify transactions (and store data about them). Bitcoin whitepaper “Private” in the Bitcoin network means that though all transactions are recorded on the public ledger, they are notated pseudonymously as cryptographic hashes. So, though all transactions can be viewed by anyone, the identities of the senders and receivers remain hidden. The fact that there is no central repository of data further protects the identities of users; an Equifax-type situation in which a data breach of the centralized entity makes the personal information of millions of people vulnerable could not occur on the Bitcoin Blockchain. One way a user’s identity could be revealed is if they ever share their public and private keys with a centralized entity—perhaps with a convenient fiat-to-crypto onramp like Coinbase, Gemini, or Kraken. Such centralized entities could be vulnerable to hacks in which users’ personal information would be at risk. Fixing Crypto’s Usability Problem Despite the obvious benefits enabled by cryptocurrency of protecting sensitive personal information, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have yet to achieve high levels of mainstream usage. The biggest issue facing cryptocurrency from achieving mass adoption by institutions and individuals is usability. The fact is that centralized solutions like Venmo are easy to use and blockchain is not. The most salient usability issues for cryptocurrency payments are user addresses and the process of sending and receiving value. The nonsensical string of numbers and letters serving as user public addresses creates huge risks of errors as well as an opportunity for criminals. Users could be subject to a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack in which a hacker alters the recipient’s address during exchanges conducted over less secure channels such as email or text so that funds are transferred to the hacker rather than the intended receiver. Crypto’s “send”-centric focus where transactions begin and end with a “send” means that all the steps leading up to that are handled in archaic, insecure, and typically centralized manners. Most real-world transactions begin with a request for payment: an order cart, an invoice, a check, or just a simple message from your roommate asking for your share of the rent. Yet, that concept largely does not exist in most decentralized blockchains. And transactions in the real world come with metadata—information that gives context to the transaction like the details of the order cart, invoice, or that message from your roommate. If the blockchain ecosystem devolves to a single blockchain to rule them all then these issues of usability could be attacked within the construct of that single chain. But so long as we have multiple chains being used for different capabilities, any solution specific to an existing chain will leave usability challenges intact as users will then have an extraordinarily different user experience from one chain to another, creating mass confusion. In a loosely analogous way in which web users largely interact with the web via a usability layer (HTTP), the blockchain ecosystem needs a decentralized usability layer that can serve all blockchains in a homogeneous manner. Such a dedicated layer would enable decentralized functionality such as cross-chain, human-readable wallet names that replace public addresses and the ability for decentralized requests for payment. In addition, such a layer could handle transaction metadata in a way that works identically across all chains. Beyond this, capabilities such as decentralized recurring payments, fee splitting, and secure routing of multi-signature requests become possible. This is how cryptocurrency can transform the way we transact and maintain user privacy without sacrificing the core tenants of decentralization first introduced by Satoshi Nakomoto. Disclosure: This story was written by the Foundation for Interwallet Operability (FIO), which sets standards for blockchain usability.

Cryptocurrency 2020: Heading Towards Privacy, Adoption, and Ease of Use?

Diversity is in our DNA 🇺🇸 Celebrate Immigrants You cannot tell the story of America without including the tremendous role that immigrants have played in shaping our nation. Now, more than ever, we must recognize their incredible contributions and be grateful for the openness and diversity of our nation. Openness is at the core of humanity. It’s at the core of our ethics and mores. Without immigrants, our country would be far worse off. Immigrants are our friends. They are our soccer coaches, teachers, doctors, lawyers, firefighters, soldiers, authors, artists… To me, they are my family. My dad came here some 20 years ago to start a new life. America took a chance on him. It’s time we show everyone that we are willing to take a chance. The business world, in particular, should be especially thankful and cognizant. The numbers from the demonstrate the importance that immigration has had on our Economy: Renew Your Economy Report Even though immigrants have made up only 10.5 percent of the American population on average since 1850, there are 90 immigrant-founded Fortune 500 companies, accounting for 18 percent of the list. When you include the additional 114 companies founded by the children of immigrants, the share of the Fortune 500 list grows to over 40 percent. More than 40 percent of the 2010 Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. The newest Fortune 500 companies are more likely to have an immigrant founder. Just shy of 20 percent of the newest Fortune 500 companies — those founded over the 25-year period between 1985 and 2010 — have an immigrant founder. Many of America’s greatest brands — Apple, Google, AT&T, Budweiser, Colgate, eBay, General Electric, IBM, and McDonald’s, to name just a few — owe their origin to a founder who was an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. Seven of the 10 most valuable brands in the world come from American companies founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. Diversity is built into our DNA. This is the America we know. and I put together of immigrant founders. Truly amazing what these people have done! My friend a list _Openness is at the core of the American DNA. Immigrants are our friends, coaches, teachers, family members-they are the…_celebrateimmigrants.us Celebrate Immigrants Of course, this is just what we could find overnight scouring google. I’m sure there is more, but here is a start: , The Huffington Post Arianna Huffington , Stripe John Collison , Stripe Patrick Collison , Google/Alphabet Sergey Brin Click to Tweet this List , Colgate William Colgate , Vayner Media Gary Vaynerchuk , Carnegie Steel Company Andrew Carnegie , Elizabeth Arden Inc Elizabeth Arden , Ebay Pierre Omidyar , Social Capital Chamath Palihapitiya , WhatsApp Jan Koum , SanDisk Sanjay Mehrotra , Zuora Tien Tzou , Tesla/SpaceX Elon Musk , Jawbone Alexander Asseily , Gusto Tomer London , WeWork Adam Neumann , Dhiraj Rajaram Dhiraj Rajaram , Eventbrite Renaud Visage , CloudFlare Michelle Zatlyn , Dropbox Arash Ferdowsi , Tinder Sean Rad , Venmo Iqram Magdon-Ismail , Lending Club Renaud Laplanche , Shapeways Peter Weijmarsh , Philz Coffee Phil Jaber , Paypal Max Levchin , Instagram Mike Krieger , Tidemark Christian Gheorghe , Kraft James L. Kraft , Comcast Television Daniel Aaron , Intel Corporation Andrew Grove , Yahoo Jerry Yang , Goldman Sachs Marcus Goldman , Goldman Sachs Samuel Sachs , Capital One Financial Nigel Morris , Qualcomm Inc. Andrew Viterbi , Nordstrom John W. Nordstrom , WR Grace and Company William Russell Grace , AT&T Alexander Graham Bell , Kohl’s Maxwell Kohl , Liz Clairborne Inc Liz Clairborne , Hovanian Enterprises Kevork Hovnanian , Yurie Systems Jeong Kim , Bugle Boy Industries William Mow , Sara Lee Nathan Cummings , DuPont E.I Du Pont , Pfizer Charles Pfizer , Procter and Gamble William Procter , Procter and Gamble James Gamble , Sun Microsystems Vinod Khosla , Sun Microsystems Andy Bechtolsheim , Bloom Energy K.R. Sridhar , Sprinklr Ragy Thomas , Tango Eric Setton , Oscar Health Mario Schlosser , Joule Unlimited Noubar Afeyan , Helicopters Igor Sikorsky , Cheezburger Ben Huh , littleBits Ayah Bdeir , Evernote Phil Libin , Helena Rubenstein Inc Helena Rubinstein , Computer Associates Charles Wang , Youtube Steve Chen , Founder of Zumba Beto Perez , Brightstar Marcelo Claure This list could be 10x longer. 20 years from now, it should be 100x longer. Let’s make sure American policy does not change that. Speak up and stand for what you believe in. Stay inspired! As always, feel free to reach out if you have any questions! You can find me on or Jordan Gonen Twitter

Celebrate Immigrant Founders

When in high school, my class got to visit a community center on the outskirts of my hometown. Naturally, we got most excited when we realized they had a game planned for us. We were split into groups that represented fishing companies—and we could plan our fishing strategy, improve the efficiency of our ships, negotiate with others, and so on. But it wasn’t much fun in the end. After a while, the game ended because there were no more fish in the sea. So, they let us play again—and admittedly, we lasted longer this time. Still, the outcome was the same. The sea was empty, and we all went bankrupt. The game theorist , who studied human conflict and cooperation, would likely have a simple conclusion: We were playing a “finite” game, a game played with the purpose of winning. James Carse But are these the ideal games to be playing in the real world? You may win in the short term, but if all the fish are gone, surely you’re doomed, too? How can we create a win-win situation for business and the planet? These are exactly the kind of questions that have inspired the birth of a movement called regenerative finance (ReFi). Redefining What Wealth Means Rather than finite games, ReFi perpetuates “infinite” games, interactions where the objective is to collaborate in order to . keep playing ReFi challenges the extractive models we’re used to—those that prioritize short-term gains at the expense of our environment and society. Instead, it promotes sustaining or, better, resource capacity over time. regenerating In short, it encourages us to think not just about our immediate business dealings and actions but also about their effects on the world around us. As , it’s a way of thinking about the economy that takes into account the negative externalities that traditional capitalism has often ignored. These include environmental destruction, social inequality, and financial instability. Dalibor Černý puts it Through this more “holistic” lens, it’s no wonder that redefining what means is also a key element of regenerative finance. In fact, it talks about not just one (financial) capital—but . There’s spiritual, social, material, financial, living, cultural, and experiential capital. wealth eight different forms In the fishing scenario, a regenerative action could be reinvesting a percentage of profits into ocean protection. At first, this may not sound like the smartest business move. But when we zoom out, regeneration offers many interesting opportunities. If we went further, the fishing company could diversify into algae cultivation, providing a source of nutrition and benefitting the marine ecosystem. Or they could adopt fishing nets, crafted by the local community, that prevent unintentional capture of non-target species like dolphins. By doing so, they could reap different benefits, including attracting new, more value-aligned customers. The important piece is that by adopting regenerative practices (and, subsequently, investing in different forms of capital), companies can not only protect the environment but also build a stronger, more adaptable, and resilient business model. They can become so well anchored in their ecosystem that they won’t collapse facing a challenge—but rather evolve with them. So… Why Blockchain? Just like decentralized finance (DeFi), ReFi is sparking a whole movement. But while DeFi pushes regulatory boundaries to optimize for profit, ReFi leverages the web3 technologies to aim for lasting, positive global impact. Well, can’t you do regeneration without web3? You can! Let’s say you start a regenerative family farm. You reinvest some profits into a forest that protects the wildlife and allows you to sell carbon credits. You grow organic produce, sell it to the local community, and organize workshops, around beekeeping, for example. It works great, but how about a larger scale? A lot of problems our societies face are down to poor coordination. It’s not like you wake up in the morning and choose to exploit farmers by getting coffee that doesn’t pay them fairly, put on a t-shirt made by children, or damage the planet by taking a car ride to work. Hardly anyone does. Yet, these actions persist due to our failure to coordinate and create better, more transparent, and just systems. Let’s come back to the fishing example. Imagine you had to convince five or fifty fishing companies to collaborate and collectively reduce their catch. They likely wouldn’t trust each other, wouldn’t see benefits in following through, and look to game the system. But with blockchain, this could be different. Blockchain is a powerful tool for coordination. By consolidating diverse data streams into a unified, transparent ledger, blockchain can transform scattered information into a cohesive narrative. This clarity can guide collective action towards more sustainable choices, making it evident that certain paths are simply better for all involved. And with transparency, it keeps everyone accountable. Web3 tools are pivotal for ReFi's mission. Tokenized carbon credits ensure traceability and accountability. DAOs empower communities with decision-making, fostering trust and collaboration. And with DeFi, financial transactions become transparent and less reliant on intermediaries. Together, these tools address our societal coordination challenges, positioning ReFi as a scalable and effective approach to regeneration. Regeneration in the Real World There are many great ReFi examples out there, but one of my favorites is . It’s a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace where artists can link their creations to plastic recovery projects. Plastiks When you buy a piece of art, you're also funding the removal of a specific amount of plastic from the environment. And as the art's value grows, the buyer benefits, too. Big names are taking notice. FC Barcelona, for instance, has teamed up with Plastiks to launch the " " collection to tackle the plastic waste from football matches. Each sold NFT, represented by unique digital art, contributes to cleaning up the environment. Unleash Your Passion Those who buy these NFTs not only back a green initiative but also get special content and rewards from FC Barcelona. Through initiatives like these, businesses can foster a genuine connection around shared values with their community and, importantly, open up a fresh marketing avenue. In short, it pays off. My personal journey in the ReFi space has taken me to Topl, a blockchain protocol dedicated to fostering a more inclusive economy. I’m also passionate about , which is building a global regenerative community. To activate locally, we are starting local chapters—and I co-founded the one where I live in Medellin, Colombia. ReFi DAO We’ve carried out activities like community cleanups and tree planting. While achieving regenerative action on a massive scale remains a challenge, we're making progress, one step at a time. For those eager to delve deeper, there are invaluable resources available. , , and to the are just a few worth exploring. Web3ForGood Crypto Altruism Impact DAO Media Green Pill podcast It's not just about winning today but ensuring there's a game to play tomorrow. While blockchain can't regenerate our world on its own, it gives us a framework to collaborate, innovate, and make decisions that count. It's a journey, and every step we take, big or small, brings us closer to a future where business and the planet thrive together. This article was originally on Patreon. published in Czech

Regenerative Finance (ReFi): What Could Future Financial Systems Look Like, and How Would They Work?

Amazon QuickSight Q vs NLSQL is always a crucial battle for empowering employees with data analytics. NLSQL provides plenty of database integrations and user interfaces, likewise MS Teams, Slack, self-service NLP to SQL API, custom web or mobile app chat support, etc. On the other hand, Amazon QuickSight Q is well focused on Redshift and Amazon QuickSight's front-end interface. ( : ) Disclaimer The author of this story works at NLSQL Do you know that in the past, business professionals relied on the data analytics department to generate any report that was generated from company databases? However, with the development of NLSQL and Amazon QuickSight Q, employees can now build any report using only natural language questions. Both of these tools provide a variety of features, strengths, and also have their own merits and demerits. But these tools are growing faster as the tools created for solving challenging problems of natural language understanding for SQL code generation. In order to solve this challenge, you need to train the model to understand both users' queries and data. Queries understanding works similarly for both providers by parsing the questing and understanding user's intents. For Amazon QuickSight Q you have to rely on existing NLU models under the hood, otherwise, you can supply required values to NLSQL software and modify the NLU model by updating it using the NLSQL web platform or customizations APIs. NLU model needs to interpret and understand all these intents captured in the end user's questions, but also deals with a fact that the same question can be asked in many different ways. For full understanding and answer to understand natural language and give an answer, both software needs to understand database structure. NLSQL admins can emulate database structure by following a video tutorial with a few customisation steps on the NLSQL platform after signing up. API documentation is available as per request after signing up on the platform. For Amazon QuickSight Q admin should provide a knowledge layer with data intent representation using AWS APIs. API documentation is available on the Amazon website. Currently For Amazon QuickSight Q is limited to only a single web interface from amazon with no ability to modify it, despite NLSQL can be integrated to any end-user interface, like MS Teams, Slack, Mobile or Webchat Applications with Active Directory users Authentication. NLSQL software supports additional questions to end-users in order to clarify or double-check the user's intents based on the available dataset. Meanwhile, Amazon QuickSight Q tried to be straightforward with an immediate response based on intent representation probabilities. NLSQL software supports integration into any data visualization libraries (standard package includes Plotly and Matplotlib by default). On the other hand, Amazon QuickSight Q is well focused on offering excellent data visualizations from AWS. Amazon QuickSight Q is a part of Amazon Web Services. It is one of the best cloud-based services providers with a huge ecosystem. It provides you with a full overview of the most crucial services for the business. NLSQL is a UK-based company with a main focus for NLP to SQL technology development and customer support. Despite software installation, NLSQL provides customer support that includes queries monitoring and real-time Natural Language Understanding improvements controlled by NLSQL professionals. NLSQL's focus industries are Retail & Manufacturing (IFFCO, GSK), Healthcare (Aachen Uniklinik), and Airlines (Delta Airlines). Amazon QuickSight Q's focus industries are financial services (Capital One) and Hospitality (Best Western Hotels & Resort). NLSQL is a SaaS company with charges per 1 API call (average annual cost 16k EUR), meanwhile, Amazon QuickSight Q has complex cost calculations based on resources, memory, and storage consumption. Moreover, NLSQL has free of charge POC demonstration based on your database structure, which is available on their main website. ( : ) Disclaimer The author of this story works at NLSQL

Amazon QuickSight Q Review Vs. NLSQL: A Comparison

A common statistic about startups is that about 40 percent fail because they run out of cash or can't raise enough funding. When you look at that number in the context of other statistics, such as the fact that about 90 percent of all startups fail, and 70 percent fail within five years, the landscape seems bleak. However, my experience is that entrepreneurs make a handful of avoidable financial mistakes in the early days. As is the case with managing most things in my life, I think it's best to step back and view the business holistically so you can make the best possible financial decisions. Here are five critical financial lessons I learned throughout my career. Don't waste resources on expensive law firms when forming the company. My best advice to startup founders is to handle the formation process yourself whenever possible. One of the biggest mistakes I made early in my career was thinking that we needed to hire an expensive law firm to do things like incorporation, getting a tax number and paying pre-revenue corporate taxes. It cost upwards of $150/hr., and, to be honest, it was a waste of money. I suggest that early entrepreneurs instead leverage the tech companies that specialize in these types of services (e.g., - Gust, LegalZoom, Nolo, RocketLawyer). For example, we used Gust to handle Food Rocket's legal needs early on. Instead of dropping $10-20,000 on a traditional law firm, we could get everything we needed for an annual fee of $1,000. Let the CTO decide which APIs you need. It's tempting to sign up for as many third-party APIs as possible in the early stages because it seems like it will help you get to market faster. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is you sign contracts too early in the company lifecycle and spend massive amounts of money on services you can't utilize. The better plan is to let your CTO lead the way on this. Take the time to do a "build vs. buy" exercise with your founding team, and let that inform your decision on which APIs are worth the money. Find a common point to rally around, and make sure everyone is on the same page. Know when to hire a financial analyst. Conventional wisdom in VC has always been that you don't need an internal finance person until later growth stage equity rounds. However, it's a mistake to assume this is right for your company. I have a background in finance, so this isn't something I experienced personally, but it's something that I frequently see in other startups. Unless someone on the founding team has extensive financial experience and is prepared to step into a CFO role, startups should seek out a financial analyst no later than their first seed round. Don't rely on spreadsheets for too long. My finance experience didn't shield me from the mistake of relying on Excel for far too long. I built our entire financial tracking system in Excel, which was fine initially, but I dragged my feet on migrating to actual accounting software. When we finally did make the switch, it was a tedious nightmare because I didn't consider how the formatted data would transfer over. Trust me when I say that it's worth the upfront time and money investment to research a subscription software solution for accounting and forecasting. Look for a company that offers expense management, accounting/bookkeeping and cash flow forecasting. Establishing this system in the early days means you won't be scrambling through implementation during a high growth period in the future. Don't try to fundraise with zero traction. If you're pre-MVP and pre-revenue, I strongly advise you not to waste time with fundraising. I made this mistake once. Before my company had a single line of code finished for our MVP, we were already rushing to try to close a pre-seed round. It was a massive waste of time, and it was stressful and demoralizing, too. Investors want to see something tangible and actionable. Walking in with a mediocre pitch, no MVP and no track record shows investors just how green you are, and it's almost certainly going to lead to rejection. Unless you're a previously successful founder or have an exceptional pedigree (e.g., - worked for Google, graduated from MIT, etc.), focus on developing your product and getting it to beta testers. This gets you feedback and speeds up the time it takes for users to actually pay something for your product. Also, don't worry so much about fundraising unless you have a specific, essential need for the cash! Otherwise, it's better to keep building and growing so that you have something impressive to show investors when the time comes to raise capital. Remember the Number One Key to Financial Success The most important thing for a startup's financial health is to manage its cash runway. Cash is the lifeblood of the company, so it's imperative to make connecting all disparate systems a priority. This is how you can ensure all financial data flows into your books correctly. Founders who can take these lessons to heart are much more likely to get started down the right path early and avoid a lot of potential headaches and disasters along the way.

5 Financial Lessons Learned While Launching a Startup

Hi Justin, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind Raze Network? Ishan Pandey: Sure. I am Justin Kellison. I have been a contributor in the crypto industry for around 4 years now and have worked with a few multi-million dollar DeFi projects. I have mostly worked on the marketing front and have created exposure and content for the projects I have managed. Justin Kellison: I came into crypto in late 2017 and stayed throughout the bear market, learning and growing my network meanwhile. I came in touch with the Raze team through my network and joined them in this beautiful journey! My focus here will be on growing and strengthening the RAZE community and create ELI5 content for them. The one most asked for. Privacy is very important. You can’t have true crypto adoption if all your transactions are public on the blockchain ledger. You won’t like your competitors to know about all your transactions in your professional life, plus not the investors because of potential FOMO/FUD. Similarly, you won’t like the whole world in your personal life knowing what you recently bought, what services you took, etc. Unfortunately, everything is public on the blockchain, so there is no concept of privacy there. This is the field Raze is working for, providing privacy to transactions where privacy is required. Because of our highly interoperable nature, we believe we will be able to provide privacy across all chains in the near future. Please tell us a little bit about how cross-chain privacy works? Ishan Pandey: Transfer of tokens via an anonymization mainly use three technical modules: Justin Kellison: Converts any token into an anonymized version of itself. 1. Mint: Converts the anonymized token back into its native form. 2. Redeem: Enables the anonymous transfer of the token, conceal the identity of both sender and receiver, and the amount being sent. 3. Transfer: It is an easy process, but this way, all the transactions you do are anonymized and no one can track it. All these services will be available on our layer-2 privacy-preserving network. This means we will be building our own privacy-focused ecosystem on our own layer-2 network! This is very important to ensure that there is financial privacy and security for users to ensure the fundamental right to privacy is upheld and this can be done through smart contracts. What is the Substrate-based smart contract module, and how does para-leasing on Polkadot work? Ishan Pandey: Our Substrate-based smart contract uses zkSNARKs algorithms and its modules (Mint, Transfer and Redeem). Justin Kellison: These 3 modules help in preserving the privacy of the transactions, balances, and parties involved, as explained above. Every selected parachain will get a leasing period, after which it will be churned out and others will jump in. That’s the approach Polkadot is taking. How does the secret DeFi bridgework? Further, what would be its impact on the industry? Ishan Pandey: Secret DeFi bridge simply means a layer-2 privacy solution that is built with RazeVM is compatible with all VM chains. This means the product can connect to Ethereum, Polkadot, IOST, Harmony, Binance Smart Chain etc, and mint private tokens from their ecosystem to our layer-2 privacy-preserving solution. Justin Kellison: All this will be done privately, as the zkSNARKs algorithm will be used to mint these tokens. This will significantly affect the DeFi industry, as it will be the first product that can provide privacy to so many chains and boost privacy assets liquidity by sourcing liquidity from all these chains. This is a one-of-a-kind product which the DeFi world will be seeing in action very soon. Polkadot’s ever-expanding ecosystem tackled scalability, interoperability, and security concerns. What measures can be adopted further to strengthen privacy and security within the DeFi space? Ishan Pandey: We need to understand that privacy is one of the fundamental pillars for the success of DeFi. All DeFi users should be able to use their preferred services in a completely private manner, with the VM integration. No need to move and try a separate app, just directly mint private tokens in 1:1 ratio directly from your preferred dApp (Ex: Uniswap, Compound, Phantasma, RioDeFi, MantraDAO etc.). Justin Kellison: Very easy and simple process. Thus onboarding and adoption will be easy and immense, leading to the destruction of decentralization and privacy, which are the building blocks of DeFi. The industry’s growth has attracted a significant amount of traffic and users to the emerging cryptocurrency asset; however, as consumer knowledge grows, the “transparency” of most native blockchain networks has become a source of concern for market participants to the participation of regulators. How, according to you, has this affected the market and what is the solution to this issue? Ishan Pandey: Privacy is a growing concern. It’s not good or safe to share all your transactions with every person in the world. This is why a privacy protocol is necessary, which can anonymize the transaction enough to make the transfer secure from all threats and information leakage. Justin Kellison: The solution is simple, and this is what we are working on. Whether you want to do staking, lending, pooling, leverage, or even NFT transactions, everything can be done through Raze Network. You will see our product in action this year only, with Testnet very-very soon. Stay tuned. Recently, a whopping $ 10 million was stolen by withdrawing a large sum of ETH tokens from the Rari Capital decentralized financial protocol. One of the most rampant problems that are way too common within the DeFi ecosystem is hacking. In this regard, please tell us what measures can be adopted by these platforms, from a cybersecurity standpoint, to reduce such breaches? Ishan Pandey: First of all, the code must be open-sourced for anyone to cross-check it, and bounties must be available for those who report bugs/issues. This is a great behaviour that will attract many developers, and incentives will encourage more bug reports/involvement from them. Justin Kellison: Secondly, the code must be audited by reputable firms/third parties to check any critical issues from another set of eyes. These two are the basic steps every DeFi protocol should take. The next step could be partnering with insurance protocols to secure the community’s funds further. Vitalik Buterin has recently donated a billion dollars to help India fight Covid-19, which has devastated the country in its second wave. Do you think such donations, especially within the crypto space, will help in raising awareness within the traditional system? Ishan Pandey: Yes indeed.  In my opinion, this was a good step. And such actions will bring more eyes to crypto and the DeFi ecosystem (as ETH has the most dApps atm). As people do a deep dive, they will understand why blockchain is important and how holding FIAT is ruining their future. I was hoping for more great outcomes from this selfless deed from Vitalik. Justin Kellison: According to you, what next trends are we going to witness in the digital assets industry? Ishan Pandey: More focus on the growing decentralized industry, shifting of liquidity from Cexes to Dexes, and ultimately on the privacy aspects. Having complete control over your assets is necessary, and keeping such info personal to you is your right. Soon the wider community will realize this, and protocols working on providing such services will see significant adoption. Justin Kellison: I am looking forward to contributing towards that goal in the upcoming years! The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence by asking the right questions and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The material does not constitute any investment, financial, or legal advice. Please do your research before investing in any digital assets or tokens, etc. The writer does not have any vested interest in the company. Ishan Pandey, legal researcher at Karm Legal Consultants.

"Privacy Is The Fundamental Pillar of DeFi" - Justin Kellison

Attributing to the global shut down of physical stores and offices last year, the demand for online financial services increased significantly with the remote work setup. Following this, an analysis suggests that the global online banking market valued at US$11.43 billion in 2019 is projected to reach at 13.6% CAGR. US$31.81 billion by 2027 In 2020, there were 1.9 billion active online banking users worldwide. This number is also projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2024. With the increasing user base, cybersecurity threats have also emerged in the financial industry. As FinTech companies hold confidential data, the escalations in phishing and ransomware like cyber-attacks have been worrying. The FinTech sector has observed multiple cyberattacks since its inception. Some of the biggest cyberattacks the FinTech industry faced in the recent past value in millions and billions of dollars. While FinTech companies may have improved their security wall over the years, the risks involved still hold consumers at breath. FinTech companies hold confidential data of individuals and businesses in digital form, thus, face their fair share of challenges. Cybersecurity Challenges In The FinTech Industry Data Sharing Online facilities have made it easy to share data anywhere across the globe. To protect consumer’s privacy and maintain seamless processes, there must be data encryption to protect it from getting exploited in the grey markets. Cross-Platform Malware Infection Modern FinTech organizations use multiple digital platforms to collect, share, and process data globally. This cross-platform usage can attract hackers to develop malware on one platform that circulates the entire system. A major risk of malware function poses a challenge to maintain strong cybersecurity. Data Security The digital presence of large businesses comes with the challenge of maintaining data security and universality for the collection, processing, and storage of information. FinTech organizations have ever-evolving user data like personal information, finance, and health statistics are confidential, thus requiring utmost levels of data security against ransomware, DDoS, and other cyber attacks. Security Risks of Cloud Most digital platforms are powered by cloud technology for storing and maintaining online data. For banking and other FinTech organizations, using cloud-based services bring them scalability, speed, and multiple other benefits. However, it does have its fair share of security threats. Maintaining a reliable and secure cloud server is among the crucial areas for the FinTech industry. Digital Identity Management Maintaining individual identities on online platforms is a key challenge the FinTech industry faces with rising integrated and omnichannel solutions. Biometric information, OTPs, passwords, user IDs, and user authentication apps require strong cybersecurity on all levels to avoid cloning or stealing data. The loss may value in million or billion dollars. Case Study: Capital One Security Breach MIT Management Sloan School conducted a in 2020 on the Capital One data breach of July 2019 that affected millions of users in the US and Canada. case study Capital One is the fifth-largest bank in the United States that is highly regulated by the industry standards set by NYSE, SEC, FCC, and other regulatory bodies. Since 2014, Capital One had been expanding its use of cloud environments to reduce the load on data centers. Besides, the bank also worked with AWS in optimizing security models for secure online financial services. Despite heavy investments in developing secure IT infrastructure, it released a report on July 29, 2019, stating, “the company had determined that an outside individual gained unauthorized access and obtained certain information of credit card customers, affecting 100 million US and 6 million Canadian citizens.” While the attack took place in March, Capital One could only recognize it in July 2019. The FBI stated that the hacker gained access to Capital One’s rented AWS cloud server. The hacker hosted a 3-command script on the GitHub repository that was deployed to access Capital One’s AWS server and obtain confidential credit card information of its users. The extent of a data breach was such that numerous cyber security controls supposedly failed escalating hacker’s access into the server and data exfiltration. After following the basic risk management protocols, private organizations usually have the flexibility to adjust further guidelines and controls that fits their technical requirements. Usually, the NIST framework core defines activities for a more secure IT infrastructure. CSF NIST framework looks after the following elements: : to identify, detect, protect, respond, and recover the threat Functions : to contain specific challenges in the five functions (e.g. data security, governance, analysis, response time, asset management) Categories & Subcategories : to perform specific tasks under categories and subcategories following an adequate procedure (e.g. manual) Information Sources : represents how well an enterprise defines cybersecurity and takes steps to mitigate the threats (Tier 1 - partial, Tier 2 - Risk informed, Tier 3 - Repeatable, Tier 4 - Adaptable) Implementation tiers Every tier of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework is a benchmark for current operations, standardizing cybersecurity and risk management. In case of failure at any step, the entire system becomes vulnerable to hack. In Capital One’s case, the controls possibly failed due to inadequate parameters established earlier compared to the CSF NIST framework. The opportunity for hackers laid in the window between the interpretation of the compliance control application. Even after investing heavily in securing IT infrastructure, talented engineers, CISO, and developing security tools with AWS, Capital One failed to avoid data breaches. It was followed by a decline in stock prices and image negativity highlighting security framework ‘misconfigurations’ and management issues. How It Could Have Been Avoided? Keeping controls relevant with compliance standards, legislations, and regulations as the technology evolved - in the case of Capital One’s breach, the existing security controls applied to Cloud Computing Storage properties were not configured as per the standards set by FFIEC. Therefore, its Framework could not prevent access and exfiltration of sensitive information. Cybersecurity Establishing a governance structure for using multidisciplinary skills and tools - to understand the requirements of evolving technologies, professionals with extremely technical roles must improve their security and governance skills with time. Besides, organizations also need to establish a governance structure for approvals and action mandates to make on-time decisions. Following best CSF NIST framework practices for securing cloud environment - Federal Financial Institutions Examination Control (FFIEC) has established a set of controls to benefit organizations in their CSF NIST framework. Especially for highly regulated industries, it gives more inputs to enforce controls during security operations. Auditing and managing compliance windows - by increasing operation audits, companies can fill the gap between compliance windows for better cyber defense. It continuously helps measure the efficacy of current security compliance controls in real-time. Cybersecurity Solutions for FinTech Cybersecurity is key for developing a framework for any digital FinTech service. Some of the best practices for building secure FinTech solutions are: Data Encryption Data encryption and tokenization are the most effective FinTech solutions. An organization can protect critical data with complex and encrypted algorithms like RSA, Twofish, and 3DES. Also, companies can decrypt original information into readable format via toke vaults. DevSecOps Cybersecurity is an ongoing process integrated into the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). To create a safe digital space, DevSecOps methodology is critical for the integration of cybersecurity in the production pipeline. Secure Application Logic An encrypted password policy is crucial for FinTech security that adds to the application protection. Implementing an OTP system, short log-in sessions, and adaptive authentication can help mitigate data breach risks through multi-level protection. Role-Based Access Control Role-based control restricts access to the network based on its user’s relationship with an enterprise. Through its varying access control companies can reduce internal and external security threats effectively. Testing It is a fact that FinTech software requires consistent testing on each level of SDLC. Some proven methods of building a secure ecosystem are - run penetration tests, regular IT security audits, investing in finance domain testing. Many fintech firms neglect the importance of best practices of financial domain testing. As a result, they experience challenges in delivering expected results and performance. Here is the that discusses a leading financial technology services provider who experienced challenges testing new and existing features. It is because they were entirely dependent on APIs. case study To manage these challenges, they approached QA experts for the solution. They suggested implementing API, performance, functional, and automation testing solutions to streamline testing and achieve pre-defined results. After implementing the above testing practices, the financial technology services provider achieved the following results: Created 36,500 test cases to analyze the application
Automated 5,386 test cases across smoke and regression suites
Reported 21,765 defects throughout all applications Therefore, before testing any domain, including FinTech, QA engineers must consider a resilient QA and cyber security testing checklist that contains a few questions. What are these? Let’s explore. 1. What is your product’s type? 2. What is your product’s category? 3. What threat does the software cover? 4. Which environments are supported? 5. Do you have a thorough test plan? FinTech The Cyber Road Ahead in Financial institutions handle confidential data of individuals and businesses in large digital formats. While it is easy to store and analyze information digitally, it brings a set of cybersecurity challenges in terms of sharing, storing, and managing data. Some of the major risks unauthorized intrusion poses are cross-platform malware infection, Cloud-based cybersecurity risks, including ransomware, and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). By recognizing vulnerable areas and windows, businesses can ramp up intuitively secure designs and manage risks efficiently. Besides, the best practices of cyber protection and data security solutions play a critical role in managing future risks.

CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL

capitalone.com

10K+ employees

Since 1994

COMPANY RANKING

CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL

EVERGREEN INDEX #2331

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

Capital One Financial WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!

CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL

capitalone.com

10K+ employees

Since 1994

COMPANY RANKING

CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL

EVERGREEN INDEX #2331

RELATED COMPANIESRANK

STORIES ABOUT CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

Capital One Financial WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!