WMC IT Solutions AG 

1. the Bro­ker­Star report­ing system

What dig­i­tal skills will we need in the future? What are dig­i­tal busi­ness models?

Com­pa­nies and organ­i­sa­tions are mak­ing progress with dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion at dif­fer­ent speeds. While some lim­it them­selves to dig­i­tal­is­ing exist­ing busi­ness process­es, oth­ers proac­tive­ly devel­op dig­i­tal con­cepts and busi­ness mod­els. The deci­sive fac­tor for suc­cess in dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is the so-called „dig­i­tal matu­ri­ty lev­el“. This is a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly based 360-degree instru­ment that is used to analyse all the fac­tors that are impor­tant for change.

Digi­ti­sa­tion explained simply

Over the past 20 years or so, var­i­ous dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies (mobile inter­net, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, inter­net of things, etc.) have been dras­ti­cal­ly devel­oped and have made the leap from expert appli­ca­tions to every­day life. Just as the inno­va­tion of the steam engine has changed soci­ety, so too has the dig­i­tal transformation.

Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is dri­ven by tech­nol­o­gy. Dig­i­tal inno­va­tions are cre­at­ed on the basis of the dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies devel­oped: New use cas­es dri­ven by exist­ing com­pa­nies and start-ups with ven­ture cap­i­tal. This leads to dif­fer­ent speeds. While pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion, for exam­ple, often only accepts paper doc­u­ments and works with files, mar­kets are chang­ing much faster. All sec­tors are now affect­ed by dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion. Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is also influ­enc­ing the future of the finance and insur­ance indus­try. New forms are only pos­si­ble thanks to dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion tech­nolo­gies, which will con­tin­ue to spread in the future.

Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is chang­ing the future of tra­di­tion­al pro­fes­sions. In future, doc­tors will be increas­ing­ly sup­port­ed by e‑health appli­ca­tions, espe­cial­ly in diag­nos­tics. Legal ser­vices (cur­rent­ly pri­mar­i­ly pro­vid­ed by lawyers) will be sup­ple­ment­ed or replaced by dig­i­tal ser­vices from the legal tech sec­tor. And the term Insuretech has already been established.

In the future, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion will make new demands on schools, edu­ca­tion and train­ing in all areas. It is the task of busi­ness, asso­ci­a­tions and pol­i­tics to pre­pare soci­ety for the com­ing changes.

Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and companies

Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion has an impact on com­pa­nies of all sizes. On the one hand, com­pa­nies are using dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to dig­i­talise their busi­ness process­es, i.e. for process opti­mi­sa­tion and process inno­va­tion. This is also being dri­ven by dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and in some cas­es realised by start-ups. The chal­lenge for com­pa­nies in dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is to iden­ti­fy new cus­tomer needs that arise due to the grow­ing spread of dig­i­tal ser­vices and apps.

The so-called „dig­i­tal natives“ have also cre­at­ed new tar­get groups. Com­pa­nies often need dif­fer­ent mar­ket­ing and sales strate­gies to increase their cus­tomer focus on these tar­get groups. Action must be adapt­ed in order to be suc­cess­ful in the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion Com­pa­nies must address the ques­tion: How do we want to reach cus­tomers tomor­row? What role do new trends play? How do we deal with the increas­ing­ly indi­vid­u­alised needs of our customers?

Devel­op­ment of dig­i­tal work­flows and process­es: Say­ing good­bye to paper files by intro­duc­ing process­es and work­flows in the com­pa­ny, some of which need to be rad­i­cal­ly rethought as a result of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, such as the han­dling of data that is gen­er­at­ed with­in the com­pa­ny, in con­nec­tion with a company’s activ­i­ties and by cus­tomers. Data can be used to devel­op new ser­vices and busi­ness mod­els. Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion presents us all with the chal­lenge of per­ma­nent­ly chang­ing and adapt­ing. Com­pet­i­tive advan­tages from the past only exist to a lim­it­ed extent. To achieve this, com­pa­nies need to dri­ve dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion with­in the organ­i­sa­tion and increase their dig­i­tal readiness.

Mul­ti-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion for more secure connections

Mul­ti-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion cor­re­sponds to two-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion, where­by dif­fer­ent tokens can be used. This allows the user to choose which method suits them best. Mod­ern secu­ri­ty process­es often con­sist of a pass­word and bio­met­ric data such as a fin­ger­print or voice recognition.

An attack­er may suc­ceed in crack­ing a sin­gle authen­ti­ca­tion fac­tor, for exam­ple. For exam­ple, a thor­ough search of the victim’s envi­ron­ment can lead to the dis­cov­ery of an employ­ee ID card or a user ID with the cor­re­spond­ing pass­word that has end­ed up in the rub­bish. Or a care­less­ly dis­card­ed hard dri­ve may con­tain a pass­word data­base. How­ev­er, if oth­er fac­tors are required for authen­ti­ca­tion, the attack­er faces at least one more hur­dle to overcome.

The major­i­ty of today’s attacks are car­ried out via inter­net con­nec­tions. Mul­ti-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion can make these remote attacks far less dan­ger­ous because sim­ply crack­ing the pass­word is no longer enough to gain access. This is because it is very unlike­ly that the attack­er will also gain pos­ses­sion of the phys­i­cal device or code linked to the user account. Each addi­tion­al authen­ti­ca­tion fac­tor there­fore makes a sys­tem more secure. This is because the indi­vid­ual fac­tors are inde­pen­dent of each oth­er. If one of the fac­tors is com­pro­mised, this does not affect the others.

Bro­ker­Star and iOf­fice by WMC use mul­ti-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion from ver­sion 2.4.