At the beginning of March we held a new edition of our event “How to accelerate the digital transformation of your company” in Barcelona, this year focused on all the security news and discovering the new modern workplace with Microsoft 365.
In this new edition held in Barcelona at La Pedrera, we completely filled the auditorium with almost 200 attendees, who had the opportunity to discover in an understandable way not only how the Microsoft cloud stimulates digital transformation, but how companies can benefit from it and grow, collaborating and working safely and protecting your confidential information.
Welcome and opening
The day began with a talk by Santi Oller, Microsoft’s director of business development. In his welcome speech, he highlighted Softeng as one of the main partners with the most knowledge and experience in cloud solutions. Next, we leave you a part of Santi’s talk, in which he talks about Softeng:
“To approach the digital transformation safely, it is important to have travel companions who know how to guide and help you and for that reason, I want to highlight and recognize Softeng as one of the partners with the most Gold competencies of Microsoft that demonstrates its continuous effort in being up to date day in all the technology and innovation that Microsoft brings to the market. It is also one of the few partners worldwide to have the Gold security competence, in fact, when they got it last October, they were one of the only two partners in the world to get it. “
Next, we leave you a summary with the key aspects of the presentations:
KeyNote – What executives need to know to safely simplify and accelerate the digital transformation of their company
Carlos Colell, CEO of SOFTENG and Imma Rasero, Partner & Customer Advisor, began their KeyNote explaining why digital transformation should be a priority for companies, highlighting that it is basically the help that companies have to increase their competitive advantage and make a difference .
The transformation is based on 4 main pillars that are represented in this image on the right. Carlos commented that by carrying out this process continuously, companies will be able to attract and retain talent, grow and, above all, last over time.
What is the role of security in digital transformation?
Although security is not one of the “pillars” of digital transformation, it is an imperative that is implicit in each of the axes of digital transformation. To facilitate understanding why, today the concept of digital trust is gaining importance, which is the set of security and privacy measures that companies carry out to guarantee:
- To clients: That their information will be safe and will be treated with confidentiality
- To employees: That they will work in a modern and safe environment, without compromising their productivity.
- To Partners: Who will work in collaborative environments where they will be able to share information safely.
Carlos commented that the basis of digital trust is security, but despite this, unfortunately many companies are still not sufficiently protected. So far this year, the percentage of attacks has increased considerably compared to previous years and in most cases these incidents are initiated by compromised credentials.
In this sense, they told us about the incidents that we usually encounter in the
companies and their consequences, which we represent in the following image:
In addition to this, a security incident in the company can cause serious damage to our clients, since their data and even their secrets can be compromised and loss of reputation since we lose the trust of our clients and therefore they can leave.
Carlos then spoke to us about the most common security errors in companies, among which is having a security strategy based on passwords; emphasizing that companies must understand that the passwords of some user will be exposed for sure, sooner or later and therefore new measures must be taken such as, for example, the double authentication factor. Likewise, another of the common mistakes is having several security solutions from different manufacturers that results in a lack of communication between products, requires more dedication and causes a longer reaction time.
Finally, they told us about the strategy and specific recommendations to overcome the most common challenges. At this point Imma stressed that traditional security is insufficient when we work in modern environments, where information is distributed in many places and users access from anywhere. For this reason, companies need a new security model that protects: people, applications, devices and data regardless of where they are located. For this they told us about adopting the Zero Trust strategy that does not take anything for granted, nor does it trust anything or anyone.
Carlos commented that both in the following presentation and in the demos that would come later, the attendees would discover how Microsoft 365 and Azure is the solution to land everything discussed in this presentation.
Microsoft’s Holistic Solution for a Modern and Secure Work Environment: The Evolution of Microsoft 365 and Azure
This presentation was led by Antonio García, Cloud Technology Strategist of Microsoft in Spain. In his presentation, he showed the attendees how the novelties in Microsoft 365 and Azure simplify the workplace in a single platform to promote collaboration, legal compliance and security, comprehensively protecting people, applications, data, devices and infrastructure (at home or in the cloud) of your entire organization.
In it, he told us about Microsoft’s commitment to offering a single, secure and intelligent collaboration platform designed to meet the needs of all companies, Microsoft 365.
Microsoft 365 was born to encompass and simplify in a single product the modernization of the workplace of companies, including tools for collaboration, security and legal compliance, analysis and intelligence.
“Modern Work Environment” DEMO: Find out how what’s new in Microsoft 365, Power Platform and AI will drive your business productivity to the next level
We started the demo part with the session of our experts in productivity and collaboration , Ramón Masuet and Claudia Casas. In it, they talked to us about how the job should be redefined through the digital transformation process, something that goes far beyond a technological change, based on these processes:
Ramon commented that, although the theory may seem easy, the reality is that, if we do not have a cross-cutting solution, with communicated services that understand each other, we could have many problems in this process. We must provide solutions to ensure that users’ ideas can be carried out, that applications communicate and that we can access company resources with personal and business devices without any problem and without depending on the IT department.
During the session, attendees were able to see through a fantastic DEMO and real cases, how all these obstacles can be overcome with Microsoft 365 solutions. Attendees were able to see how communication and employee productivity improves thanks to the most advanced capabilities. Advanced Teams and business process automation with new Power Platform capabilities. They also showed attendees how to get valuable information for their company by analyzing large amounts of data using Microsoft’s cloud artificial intelligence solutions.
To end Ramon and Claudia told us that in the next session the attendees could see how everything they had seen up to now was extremely safe.
Security Demo: Discover the difference … between a protected company and another that is not
The security demo was starred by Jordi Fernández, David Rangel and Álex Imbernon, all of them security experts from Softeng. The aim of the session was to show in a practical way everything that had been discussed so far about safety.
Jordi began by commenting that today many companies already have security solutions implemented that go beyond an antivirus and a firewall, they probably have solutions that protect identity, device management solutions, etc … but, even so, Jordi threw a question to the public.
What if they are already inside?
In Carlos and Imma’s keynote they gave the example of companies that had discovered a breach more than 100 days after the intrusion and, faced with a similar situation, Jordi posed this series of questions:
- How long?
- They have done?
- What information has been compromised?
- What will happen if it is made public?
- Do I have a system that can notify me instantly?
- Do I have tools to make a diagnosis?
He then commented that we need answers to these questions quickly, easily and concisely. The goal is to be able to detect a breach before it can escalate into the company network and to do so, the key to efficiently protecting ourselves against today’s attacks is to have:
- A secure platform by design offering security solutions
- Artificial intelligence to take automatic actions
- An integrated system. At this point he stressed that all solutions need to be able to talk to each other so that they can detect a gap quickly and act automatically.
After this introduction, they began the DEMO, initially showing a scenario of a real case of what happens to a company that does not protect the identity of its users, nor the devices they use, nor the information they access and then they showed the scenario of what happens to a correctly protected company when employees, devices, data & applications and infrastructure are attacked (on-premise or in the cloud), thanks to services and solutions such as double factor authentication, attack simulator, the AIP, Windows Autopilot or Azure Sentinel automatic tagging among many other solutions included in Microsoft 365 and Azure.
DEMO “Government and change management”: The tools you have been waiting for to overcome the challenges of your organization and accelerate its transformation.
In the last demo of the Conference, Marc Jordana and Miquel Castelló began their presentation by commenting that digital transformation is not an IT project, it is an organizational process that does involve technology but that also implies changing the organization, the way of working. The keys to the process are:
- Determine the objectives of the change.
- Choose the right tools.
- Empower users.
- Maintain control and security.
During the session, Marc and Miquel showed the attendees in a DEMO with real scenarios of a company, how with the Microsoft 365 tools and the Softeng CSP portal they can know with one click the risk of suffering a security incident automatically calculated according to the company’s active defenses, the attacks it is receiving, and the indications that an intruder is already in the organization. They also showed how it is possible to continuously encourage people in the company to take advantage of the current and future capabilities of Microsoft 365 and, finally, they showed how the management time of the most common processes of the company can be drastically reduced as : The government of employee registrations / cancellations and their data, licensing optimization, cost distribution by locations and much more.
Finally, they reviewed the points that, thanks to Microsoft and Softeng solutions, the demo company had achieved:
- A clear vision of the entire process carried out in the company to define an optimization strategy.
- Get much more out of Microsoft 365 tools.
- Make change management and governance something that does not take up too much budget, not too much time, or too many resources.
Final clasp
To end the day, attendees had the opportunity to participate in a round table with our experts in security, productivity, compliance, as well as with our legal experts. In it they were able to solve all their doubts and later, enjoy a buffet lunch where they could network with the rest of the guests and exchange doubts and experience with specialists from both Microsoft and Softeng.
Below, you can view some of the interviews we did with our attendees about what they thought of our event. There are many more that we will share on our social networks
Alejandro Moreno – Resp. Systems and security. INDUKERN GROUP
Antonio López – Head of SSII. ADAM FOODS
Ruben Raso – CIO IDILIA FOODS
German Rothemund – CTO IBERIA GRUPO BIMBO
Thanks to all the presents! both for their participation and for the great results we have obtained in the surveys again, as they drive us to continue working and striving to offer the best service and quality.
For those of you who have been wanting to know more, we invite you to contact us to find out how we can help you protect your company. Do you want to know more?