An Oracle NetSuite Go-Live success story

In the vibrant city of Cairo, Digitech, a subsidiary of the renowned Noventiq Group, embarked on a transformative journey to revolutionise its operations in Egypt and align with the Noventiq standards of excellence.

Client Background

Before its acquisition by Noventiq, Digitech had relied on a manual, Excel-based approach to managing its business processes. This legacy system hindered efficiency and scalability, making it imperative for Digitech to embrace digital transformation.

Challenges Faced

1. Transition from Manual to Automated Processes: Digitech’s primary challenge was to seamlessly migrate from manual, Excel-based processes to a fully automated system.
2. Localization and Compliance: Operating in Egypt presented dual challenges of complying with local regulations and adhering to Noventiq’s industry standards.
3. Training and Empowerment: With no prior experience in system automation, Digitech’s team required extensive training to equip them with the necessary skills for the transition.

The Solution

Digitech partnered with Catalyst, a leading NetSuite Solution Provider, to design and implement a comprehensive solution that addressed the company’s unique needs. The focus was on achieving localization as per Egyptian regulations while upholding Noventiq industry standards and best practices.

Go-Live Milestone

After months of meticulous planning and implementation, Digitech achieved a successful Go-Live, marking a pivotal moment in their digital transformation journey. This milestone signified Digitech’s embrace of automation and a transformative shift in its business operations.

Benefits Realised

1. Seamless End-to-End Automation: Digitech achieved seamless end-to-end automation across its operations, eliminating manual bottlenecks and enhancing overall efficiency.
2. Streamlined Billing and Compliance: Integration with e-Invoicing streamlined Digitech’s billing processes, ensuring compliance with Egyptian tax authorities, and reducing the risk of errors.
3. Scalable and Replicable Solution: With subsidiaries in multiple countries, Digitech now has a scalable and replicable success story that can be applied to future expansions into other regions.

Results Achieved

Digitech’s digital transformation journey yielded transformative results:

• Enhanced Operational Efficiency: Automation significantly boosted operational efficiency, enabling Digitech to focus on innovation and client satisfaction.
• Secure and Stable Operational Environment: Localization efforts ensured compliance with Egyptian regulations, providing a secure and stable operational foundation.
• Replicable Success in Multiple Markets: The success in Egypt lays the groundwork for Digitech to replicate the achievements across its global subsidiaries.

Future Outlook

Armed with a fully automated system and a future-ready infrastructure, Digitech is poised for sustained growth and continued innovation. The success story in Egypt serves as a testament to Digitech’s commitment to excellence and sets the stage for further advancements in the ever-evolving landscape of digital transformation.

Catalyst: Your Transformation and Protection Partner in a Globalised World

Catalyst, a Silicon Valley-based technology consulting firm with a global presence in over 15 EMEA countries, empowers organizations to thrive in today’s dynamic landscape. We specialize in Business Applications, Business Platforms, Cybersecurity, and Cloud Adoption, guiding our clients through successful transformations and ensuring their digital landscapes remain secure.

While optimistic about value of technology and digital skills, 54% acknowledged that their formal education did not prepare them for today’s working world

ServiceNow today released the findings of a new study that explored employee sentiment on the impact of technology and digital skills on their career and the future of the workplace. 79% of surveyed UAE employees agreed that digital skills give people an edge in business and an almost equal number (84%) said new technologies are helping them reach their potential.

The study — which surveyed 5,500 working adults (18+) in the UAE, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the UK — also highlighted that UAE employees are far more positive about the impact of AI on their jobs, compared to their EMEA peers. Almost three quarters (74%) — a whole 26 percentage points higher than the EMEA average — agree that AI is the biggest opportunity for the future of the workforce. An equal number agreed that AI will boost productivity in the workforce, while only 52% of EMEA employees shared the same sentiment.

Although UAE employees are largely optimistic about the value of tech and digital skills, half of workers (54%) acknowledged that their formal education did not prepare them for today’s working world and 82% also noted that additional education on technology/digital skills would help them feel more confident about their career prospects. As a consequence, seven in ten workers in the UAE (72%) recommended that formal education on AI should be mandatory before the age of 18 and a similar proportion (71%) think the same about coding. 72% also agreed that there needs to be a standardized qualification for digital skills that employers can recognize. Speaking of employers, 81% of UAE employees said businesses have a responsibility to promote the development of AI skills in the workforce.

Commenting on the findings from the study, Mark Ackerman, Area VP for Middle East & Africa at ServiceNow said, “There are two key takeaways for me. For one, while it is clear that employees in the UAE welcome more digital technologies in the workplace, organizations need to be thoughtful when making these investments — an approach that unifies and simplifies processes, will ensure that technology works for employees and customers. The second is that organizations have to make a commitment to providing their employees with not just a career path, but also with the re-skilling and up-skilling opportunities and training programs that will enable them to be their best selves and be valuable contributors to the company and broader community.”

By: Alexander Migutsky, Advanced Technologies Specialist, Positive Technologies
Alexandra Murzina, Head of Advanced Technologies Department, Positive Technologies

What makes smart cities so fascinating is the level of personalization the ecosystem promises across essential daily staples including work, transport, payments, and complete control over applications at home.

With immeasurable IoT applications and effective use of big data analytics, smart cities will emerge a phenomenon that seeks to make us question how we ever managed to operate any other way.

Achieving this level of personalization won’t be easy though. A larger interconnected network requires paths to identify users so they can tailor their experiences to themselves. Whether it be biometric ID cards or authentication portals, users should be able to authenticate themselves and connect to networks using their personal information.

Biometrics are widely used in enterprise security, access control, and banking operations, with facial recognition and fingerprint authentication systems now commonplace in companies, subways, stores, and restaurants.

The demand for biometric technologies is being driven, among other things, by the increasing adoption of biometric systems in the automotive and consumer electronics industries.

But are biometrics geared to provide comprehensive support to smart city infrastructure?

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global biometric system market size is projected to reach USD 76.70 billion by 2029.

However, there are still safety concerns about how these systems operate and make decisions; questions arise – Exactly how safe are these systems? How do they work under the hood, how do they make decisions?

Positive Technologies’ in-house team of cybersecurity experts conducted a white hat investigation focusing on physical and cyber threats to machine learning systems, including attacks that aim to compromise system confidentiality and obtain data.

The goal of the investigation was to discover gaps within biometric security systems leading up to their inevitable integration into smart infrastructure. We hope that our findings can shed some much needed light upon how the industry can collectively ensure seamless connectivity and functionality within biometric authentication systems supporting smart infrastructure.

During our investigation, we took apart two biometric devices and examined their internal electronics.

Device 1

The first device is expensive and uses advanced technology with the latest biometric algorithms. It has a depth camera, two conventional cameras, and an IR dot projector. A depth camera uses a combination of technologies to obtain depth information, increasing the reliability of the biometric system, which means attackers would need to know the user’s face geometry and have the ability to recreate it. Naturally, a device with such technology is used in access control systems at airports worldwide. Such a device is bound to be a staple of central transportation hubs in smart cities. So, how reliable is the device really?

During testing, we discovered that the device has liveness detection to identify whether the biometric source is real. The cameras capture the image, which is then received by deep neural networks for processing.

We found vulnerabilities in the system, particularly through remote code execution (RCE) attacks, which allowed us to extract machine learning models and user vectors to recreate the biometric authentication algorithm. We attempted to restore a user’s face from the representation hidden in the database.

Although we had a shot at carrying out a successful attack, there was probably a lot of optical distortion in real conditions, due to which we lost some points.

Security analysis:

1. Developers did not use depth camera data for authentication which allowed us to circumvent the authorization algorithm.
2. The algorithmic assessment failed when we attempted to generate an artificial face matching a real person’s biometric pattern, but attackers could potentially succeed with more time.

Device 2

The second device we studied was a biometric terminal for tracking employees’ work hours – crucial to supporting enterprise workforces within smart cities. It wasn’t as advanced as the first device as it lacked CUDA cores for complex neural networks. However, it used machine learning algorithms from the 2010s and had two cameras: one conventional and one infrared for biometric authentication.

The infrared camera is the key feature of the terminal. It captures invisible details, making it difficult to trick the system. The terminal uses a cascade classifier, 15 Gabor filters, and an algorithm for local binary patterns in the infrared range to detect and analyze facial features. Although it has some vulnerabilities, such as recognizing the same user with and without glasses as different people, the combination of technologies provides decent defense against attacks.

Security analysis: The biometric terminal is less flexible than the first device because it uses only the infrared range and classic algorithms. Nonetheless, this design makes it more resistant to attacks.

Conclusively

Having studied biometric access control terminals that use different algorithms, we discovered that the terminal with neural networks is flexible and can authenticate users wearing masks, helmets, or makeup, but it can be hacked through considerably antiquated mirroring tactics.

The terminal using classic machine learning algorithms is more resistant to illegal authentication attempts. However, both terminals are vulnerable to remote code execution attacks.

Our recommendations for developers looking to strengthen biometric device security include:

1. Using data from the depth sensor to distinguish between individuals.
2. Conducting independent device audits.
3. Collaborating with security researchers and be open to receiving help.

Developing devices for smart city infrastructure is a complex process that requires experts conducting diligent trial and error routines to ensure frictionless operational capacity across the grid.

Even highly skilled teams can make mistakes, leading to vulnerabilities in the final product. Being open to feedback from real users and experts are key to optimizing biometric applications within smart infrastructure.

By eliminating passwords and PINs, biometric authentication provides a disruptive step in the field of cybersecurity and alleviates concerns around the security of copious amounts of data needed in a hyper-connected ecosystem.

While designing IoT applications for smart cities, biometrics are the ideal solution to achieving personalization and privacy backed by seamless authentication, provided the machinery involved is treated with a pristine level of care and pressure testing.