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XAG Joins the Responsible Business Forum to Elaborate the Power of Agriculture Innovations on Building a Climate-resilient Future

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XAG has been invited to participate in the Responsible Business Forum on Climate Innovation held in Haikou on May 23-24, sharing its latest progress and experience on how to structure a sustainable, low-carbon agroecosystem. As a global leading agri-tech company, XAG has always been committed to shaping a smart future of sustainability, with technological innovations and corporate social responsibility invariably being its core values. Justin Gong, Co-Founder and Vice President of XAG, gave a keynote speech on XAG’s Intelligent solutions, explaining the critical role of technology as a catalyst for transformative change within the agriculture sector. In addition, Gong attended the forum’s parallel session on Food and Agriculture as a panel expert to discuss the symbiotic relationship between food production and climate resilience.

The Responsible Business Forum (RBF), sponsored by Global Initiatives, is a leading international forum with the objective of accelerating solutions for a more sustainable world through business innovation and public-private sector cooperation. The RBF event series have been held across 14 countries in the past 12 years, successfully facilitating partnerships among businesses, governments and international agencies from over 50 countries.

This year, under the broad theme of “Building a Zero-Carbon, Climate-Resilient Future”, the first ever RBF on Climate Innovation debuted in China and brought together more than 300 leaders from government, businesses, investors, international organisations and academia to present actionable, cutting-edge solutions on circular economy and scale collaborative innovations for a climate positive future. Big corporations, such as Mars, AB InBev, SIG, BASF, Alibaba, Apple, IBM and SAP, and international NGOs, such as United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, have attended the forum.

At the parallel session on Food and Agriculture, discussions were structured around the critical role of climate solutions for the global food system to build a climate adaptive future. Agriculture and food system accounts for nearly one third of the world’s human-made greenhouse gas emission. Kevin Rabinovitch, Global Vice President Sustainability of Mars, talked about his views on deforestation for agricultural purposes. “Fighting against deforestation requires not only direct collaboration between companies but also government in the countries where the forests stand to get involved.” For example, Mars is very active in the Consumer Goods Forum where it has been leading a project “what is the future of consumer actions on deforestation” and cooperating with some of its biggest competitors to establish a sustainable cocoa supply chain.

Agriculture is also a sector most easily susceptible to climate change, as rising temperature and extreme weathers would reduce crop yields and undermine food safety. To transform the global food system, all stakeholders must come together to find new ways to nutritiously feed the growing population with limited arable lands while minimising carbon emissions.

XAG, tapped into the frontier of agriculture technology in 2013, has been involving in this long-term battle against climate change and developing smart agriculture solutions for a zero-carbon, circular economy. Speaking on stage at the RBF presentation, Justin Gong explained that XAG starts with building digital farming infrastructures such as RTK navigation networks and HD field maps to pave the way for auto agri-machines. Through applying UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) to the fields for precision farming (e.g., seeding, spraying, fertilisation and pollination), XAG has improved production efficiency and produce quality while reducing 30% of pesticides and 90% of water resources. For instance, since drones do not touch the ground, soil compaction is avoided and fertile soils are maintained to better hold microorganisms which break down organic matters and recycle nutrients in a form that plants can absorb. This results in a well-functioning ecosystem in the fields with abundant biodiversity. Also, with precision spraying technology and artificial intelligence, farmers can plant more with less chemicals and harvest fruits and vegetables with little pesticide residue.

“When we think even further in the future, farmlands will be automated and you would see robots running without human assistance. We want to make farming cool again,” emphasized by Gong.

Currently, XAG’s drones in operation generate a large amount of agriculture production data every day. With big data and IoT technology connecting land, crop, farmer and consumers, XAG helps manage the farmland more scientifically and makes agriculture production traceable, building trust between the supply and demand side. And with XAG Agriculture Intelligence (XAI), farming data can be collected and fully utilised to enable AI prescription service, identify crop diseases and predict yields.

“By using technologies, we can minimise the ecological footprints of agricultural production, improve the quality of food and farmers’ livelihood, and protect biological diversity,” said Justin Gong. In 2018, XAG started the Sustainable Farming Programme with Bayer and Alibaba, to educate farmers on sustainable agriculture, to drive the use of safer, greener chemicals and to connect buyers and consumers with guaranteed channels.

XAG has also involved in a series of ecological projects. The Ruoergai Grassland located in Sichuan Aba, China has been severely degraded in the past 20 years, and with drone seeding technology controlled by AI, XAG helps the local herdsmen spread grass seeds precisely into the destroyed areas to restore the ecosystem without disturbing other local wildlife. In the desert areas of Alxa, China, XAG joins Alipay’s Ant Forest Program on afforestation by utilising intelligent sensors and AI-driven cameras behind every session of the trees to monitor the weather and the tree growth. XAG has also used drones to pollinate almond trees in Australia and fragrant pears in Xinjiang, China to tackle the global pollination crisis resulted from bee population decline.

All the climate-smart agriculture solutions developed by XAG not only dwindle natural resource inputs and remove environmental stressors but also empower farmers to make scientific decisions to shrink the yield gap and increase income. As Justin Going pointed out, “technology is the greatest equaliser in our society, and it is doing more things than we expect, even in the most remote areas.”

SOURCE XAG

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.
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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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