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James Shanahan, Ph.D., to lead Bryant University Data Science Initiative

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Bryant University announces the appointment of James (Jimi) Shanahan, Ph.D., as the inaugural John ’01H and Jeanne Rowe Professor of Data Science, effective summer 2019. Shanahan brings 30 years of leading-edge entrepreneurship, data science expertise, and academic accomplishment to the new role. Bryant’s curriculum, with its unique integration of business and liberal arts, is perfectly suited for this interdisciplinary course of study. The University launched an innovative undergraduate program in Data Science in fall 2017 to meet growing demand in one of the fastest growing sectors worldwide.

“If one looks to the future impact of rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, block chain, the ‘internet of things,’ and other emerging technologies, it is clear that higher education must take the lead in preparing graduates for the many challenges and opportunities these developments will create,” says Bryant University President Ronald K. Machtley.

“I am honored to be joining the Bryant University faculty,” says Shanahan. “The workforce of the future will require constant up-skilling, and employee digital dexterity will outweigh tenure and experience. Bryant recognizes this and is well-positioned to prepare its students with the technical and critical thinking skills needed to successfully compete in the digital marketplace.”

“Jeanne and I have been delighted to help Bryant University because it does so much to help young people acquire the skills that make them productive in today’s ever changing society,” says John Rowe ’01H. “We are especially pleased that Bryant’s first Rowe Professor, Dr. James Shanahan, is expert in the rapidly moving fields of big data and artificial intelligence. Sorting the real from the fantastic in these areas will be a vital part of tomorrow’s education.”

Throughout his career, Shanahan has split his time between industry and academia, gaining vast experience developing cutting-edge information management systems that harness deep learning, statistical machine learning, and information retrieval in domains such as web search, ecommerce, retail, computational advertising, and security. As a teacher and scholar, he most recently served as a founding faculty member of the Masters in Data Science programs at University of California, Berkeley, and Indiana University. He has also held visiting positions at University of California, Santa CruzRutgers University, and Syracuse University.

Provost and Chief Academic Officer Glenn Sulmasy, J.D., LL.M., notes that with Shanahan’s leadership the new Data Science program will capitalize on the Bryant reputation of bringing together the best of data science and business, reflecting the emerging demands of the 21st century workforce. “The Bryant Data Science initiative is interdisciplinary in nature, including a rich experiential component, and aligns perfectly with Bryant’s strengths and innovative culture. The addition of Jimi Shanahan to our outstanding faculty will help advance the program and prepare our students, both intellectually and practically, for the surge in marketplace demand for skilled data scientists and analysts.”

Madan Annavarjula, Ph.D., Dean of the College of Business, sees Shanahan’s appointment as an important investment and opportunity for Bryant. “Our undergraduate Data Science program is rapidly evolving as one of the most distinguished in the country for students who want to pursue a career in this area.”

An accomplished entrepreneur and business leader, Shanahan has co-founded companies that leverage AI, machine learning, deep learning, and computer vision in areas such as digital advertising, web search, and smart cameras. These firms include Church and Duncan Group, Inc., a boutique consultancy in large scale data science founded in 2007 in San Francisco, CA; RTBFast, a real-time bidding engine infrastructure play for digital advertising systems founded in 2012 in San Francisco, CA; and Document Souls, an anticipatory information system founded in 1999 in Grenoble, France. He has also served as SVP of Data Science and Chief Scientist at NativeX in San Francisco, CA, a mobile ad network that was acquired by MobVista. In addition, he has held positions at Adobe Research, Turn Inc., Xerox Research, Mitsubishi Research, and Clairvoyance Corp. He’s been part of 20 U.S. patent filings at Xerox, AT&T, Just Systems, and InferSystems.

A prolific scholar, Shanahan has published eight books, including “Soft computing for knowledge discovery: introducing Cartesian granule features” in 2000, which is considered one of the seminal texts for advanced undergraduates, professionals and researchers in computer science.His newest book is “Machine Learning at Scale.” He has published more than 45 peer-reviewed articles in prestigious publications such as the Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems; seven book chapters including “Digital Advertising: an information science perspective” in the textbook “Advanced Topics in Information Retrieval;” and scores of conference papers including “Parsing Spoken Local Queries using Committees” at the Fourth ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining. Shanahan is a sought-after expert speaker at conferences, businesses, and universities around the world.

Shanahan completed his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at University of Limerick in Ireland, and earned his Ph.D. in Engineering and Mathematics at University of Bristol in the U.K. He is an EU Marie Curie Fellow, and in 2011, he was selected as a member of the Silicon Valley 50 (Top 50 Irish Americans in Technology).

 

SOURCE Bryant University

Artificial Intelligence

vcita Completes Full Rollout of BizAI, the First AI-driven SMB Business Advisor

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After months of research and beta testing, BizAI is now available to all vcita customers, bringing the promise of AI within reach for the SMB ecosystem
SEATTLE, May 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — vcita, the technology platform designed to serve the needs of SMBs and the organizations that serve them, announced today that it has completed the full rollout of its AI-powered SMB business advisor, BizAI. During beta testing over the last several months, vcita saw the significant success and impact of BizAI, and is now making it available to all SMB users, including SMBs using partner solutions, built on its inTandem platform.

BizAI is different from other generative AI tools as it combines the wide perspectives of the market’s best practices with the deep familiarity with each individual businesses’ successes and failures, bespoke data that it is able to obtain exclusively through vcita. This enables BizAI to identify growth opportunities and diagnose areas for improvement, translating insights into actionable recommendations for immediate implementation. SMBs can use BizAI to build business growth plans, optimize their pricing and product offerings according to their competitors, generate converting marketing assets, analyze staff performance, and more.
“BizAI is a pioneering AI-driven business advisor created specifically for the SMB sector,” said Itzik Levy, CEO and founder at vcita. “BizAI brings the strategic prowess of top-tier consulting into the hands of small business owners, empowering SMBs to navigate their unique challenges with tailored, actionable insights derived from a blend of external data, their own operational metrics, and industry benchmarks. The enthusiastic feedback from our beta testers has been incredibly affirming, and this is only the beginning of what BizAI can deliver.”
A common challenge in the adoption of AI is that SMBs don’t always know where AI might help them so BizAI is integrated into the everyday tasks of the business owner, offering them tailored insights and suggestions with contextual relevance. BizAI is completely embedded within the business management solution offered by vcita, with many touch points that are presented to SMBs throughout their workday. For example, SMBs will be prompted to use BizAI when creating and pricing a new service, while writing their cancellation policy, or when answering an inquiry from a promising prospect.
“Our roadmap is packed with plans to further expand BizAI and make it available across all components of our platform. As a platform company, we will soon offer our partners the opportunity to leverage BizAI in two additional ways: the first is their ability to launch AI-enriched applications of their own, and the second is to draw AI-driven insights that help them better understand their SMB clients, detect risks such as churn and identify new business opportunities in real-time,” continued Levy.
A recent survey of BizAI beta users highlights the value they’re gaining from the tool with 43% returning to BizAI within a week of their first usage. 63% used BizAI to seek critical business advice, such as how to position and price their services and products, highlighting the trust users have in BizAI. 32% of users copied the chat’s answers to the clipboard, indicating they were happy with the output and chose to use it. To see a full report with this data please click here.
vcita has spent the past 13 years providing SMBs with advanced technology solutions and is committed to digital inclusion in the SMB community. vcita’s technology solutions include popular digital tools like online billing, CRM, online scheduling, marketing, and online presence, and the company is now bringing the promise of AI within reach for small businesses. Armed with BizAI’s personalized insights and recommendations, vcita is revolutionizing the way SMBs manage their operations and seize growth opportunities within a competitive market. With inTandem, vcita’s partner platform, organizations that serve the SMB market can join vcita’s partner ecosystem and expand their own SMB proposition to include these digital tools and AI driven insights, increase engagement among their SMB customers, and unlock new revenue potential.
About vcita
vcita is an SMB tech company dedicated to helping small and medium businesses thrive in today’s digital world by providing them with the tools to manage and grow their business. With vcita’s solution, small businesses can manage all aspects of their day-to-day operations and client engagement including scheduling, billing, payment collection, client management, email and SMS marketing. inTandem by vcita is a platform designed to serve the needs of SMB service providers, offering a customizable, white-label, platform that allows organizations that serve SMBs to bring their clients all the essential vcita tools under their own brand. With inTandem, partners can deliver great service and value to their SMB customers and unlock new revenue streams, reduce churn, and increase customer loyalty. With hundreds of thousands of small business users worldwide and partnerships including marketing agencies, banks, financial service providers, telcos, MSPs, and fintechs, vcita delivers an innovative digital solution uniquely designed to serve the needs of SMBs and the companies that support them.
For more information, visit www.vcita.com or follow us on LinkedIn.
Media Contact
Sarah SchlossHeadline Media [email protected] 914.506.5105
 
 

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Stamus Networks Recognized in 2024 Gartner® Market Guide for Network Detection and Response

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Company recognized as a Representative Vendor for the second consecutive time
INDIANAPOLIS and PARIS, May 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Stamus Networks, a global provider of high-performance network-based threat detection and response (NDR) systems, today announced it has been recognized as a Representative Vendor in the 2024 Gartner “Market Guide for Network Detection and Response.” This is the second consecutive time Stamus Networks has been named in the report.

“For now, stand-alone NDR vendors provide a breadth of network analytics and efficacy not available with multifunction security platforms (SIEM, XDR),” wrote Gartner Analysts Jeremy D’Hoinne, Thomas Lintemuth, Nahim Fazal and Charanpal Bhogal.
The report continues, “NDR providers continue to improve their detection capabilities and improve incident response workflows, highlighting the identified root causes of an incident. With this success and confidence, enterprises are experimenting with new NDR features and expanding their coverage to include areas of the network not initially exposed to NDR, especially to see all lateral movement between different types of infrastructure.”
The Stamus Security Platform (SSP) is an open NDR that delivers actionable network visibility and high-fidelity threat detection to enterprise security teams around the world. SSP prioritizes advanced detection – using machine learning and statistical anomaly detection, advanced heuristics, and more traditional signature and IoC based detection – with explainable attack timelines. Its transparency, openness and extensibility empower security teams to quickly respond to serious threats and unauthorized activity.
“As a pure-play NDR solution vendor, we are uniquely focused on delivering the best threat detection possible with the lowest rate of false positives in the industry, enabling organizations to automate their response to serious and imminent threats,” said Stamus Networks CEO Ken Gramley. “We take great pride in being recognized by Gartner, once again, and believe our inclusion in this report is validation of our approach to helping defenders around the world secure their organizations.”
Learn more and download the Gartner “Market Guide for Network Detection and Response.”
To learn more about SSP, go to: https://www.stamus-networks.com/stamus-security-platform.
Gartner Disclaimer:Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
About Stamus Networks:Stamus Networks believes in a world where defenders are heroes, and a future where those they protect remain safe. As organizations face threats from well-funded adversaries, we relentlessly pursue solutions that make the defender’s job easier and more impactful. The global leader in Suricata-based network security solutions, Stamus Networks helps enterprise security teams know more, respond sooner and mitigate their risk with insights gathered from cloud and on-premise network activity. Our Stamus Security Platform combines the best of intrusion detection (IDS), network security monitoring (NSM), and network detection and response (NDR) systems into a single solution that exposes serious and imminent threats to critical assets and empowers rapid response. For more information visit: stamus-networks.com.
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StrongDM Secures $34 Million Series C Funding to Expand into Europe and Asia, and Establish Zero Trust PAM for Enterprise Security

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New funding to fuel global expansion and a pioneering approach to preemptive, action-based cybersecurity
PALO ALTO, Calif., May 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — StrongDM, the Zero Trust privileged access company, today announced the closure of a $34 million Series C funding round led by Anchor Capital, with participation from new investors Capital One Ventures, Cisco Investments, Frontline Ventures, and Singtel Innov8, as well as existing investors including GV, Sequoia Capital, and True Ventures. This investment underscores StrongDM’s commitment to reshaping enterprise security with its revolutionary Zero Trust privileged access management (PAM) solution. The Series C funding round brings StrongDM’s total funding to $96 million.

Revolutionizing PAM
StrongDM introduces a next-generation PAM solution that shifts from traditional role- or attribute-based security models to one that emphasizes continuous, fine-grained, and context-aware policy enforcement. This approach scrutinizes each user action and context in real-time, enabling immediate blocking or additional verification for activities that pose security risks. By focusing on preemptive measures rather than reactive responses, StrongDM aims to halt breaches as they are attempted, setting a new standard in cybersecurity.
Global Expansion and Innovation
With the new funds, StrongDM will expand its operations into the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions, addressing the growing demand for modern security solutions. The company is also establishing an engineering center of excellence in Poland, bringing its innovations closer to global customers.
A Word from Leadership
Tim Prendergast, chief executive officer of StrongDM, emphasizes the transformative nature of its Zero Trust PAM solution: “Our Zero Trust approach extends beyond initial access, offering continuous protection throughout the entire session. This isn’t just about reducing identification times; it’s about preventing breaches before they even happen. We’re setting new standards that legacy access management providers have failed to achieve over the past decade.”
Enhancing Enterprise Operations
StrongDM’s solution integrates security directly into operational workflows, enhancing agility and productivity without sacrificing protection. Amol Kabe, chief product officer of StrongDM, said: “StrongDM provides a way for users to create and apply policies that govern authorization in real time, which simplifies the process of proving regulatory compliance. By integrating comprehensive audit trails, we ensure that every action is recorded with precision. This provides unprecedented oversight and enforcement of security policies, creating an environment that is simple, agile, and secure.”
Kabe adds, “StrongDM can also trigger policy-based MFA or administrator-defined workflows natively or in Slack or ServiceNow to implement multi-party authorization for risky actions.”
Upcoming Features
In the coming months, StrongDM will roll out advanced policy-based control features that further enhance security for critical infrastructure. These include micro-authorizations and contextual enforcement capabilities designed to meet the specific needs of CISOs and security teams.
About StrongDM
StrongDM is at the forefront of cybersecurity, specializing in Zero Trust Privileged Access Management (PAM). Our innovative solutions focus on continuous, policy-based controls that leverage actions and context to enhance enterprise security. StrongDM’s technology scrutinizes each interaction in real time, preventing breaches before they occur and ensuring secure, frustration-free access across all platforms.
Supported by leading investors, including GV, Sequoia Capital, True Ventures, and Anchor Capital, StrongDM operates across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, dedicated to setting new standards in cybersecurity and providing top-tier protection for today’s digital enterprises.
For more information, visit the StrongDM website.
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