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Cryptographic technologies are ensuring data integrity

Regulations such as GDPR in Europe and the misuse of personal information on social media highlight the importance of trust in a system where data is shared between different parties. Yet data needs to be protected in a way that adds value to the end user. Financial firms’ data is often shared internally and externally. Many workflows are regulated, and firms must follow a proof of process when it comes to the custody and provenance of data. They must demonstrate to auditors, regulators and customers that systems are functioning as prescribed, workflows are completely auditable, repeatable and immutable, and measures are established to prevent security breaches. Data lineage, a data lifecycle that includes the data’s origins and where it moves over time, is becoming more critical and can become a competitive advantage. A recent trend is to leverage cryptographic libraries, public key infrastructure, blockchain and zero knowledge proofs to record who did what, when and where in workflows in an immutable, persistent, auditable and impermeable fashion. These technologies ensure integrity starting with the first person who enters data through all its transfers and transformations. Potential applications include managing the publication of earnings reports, anti-money-laundering and know-yourcustomer compliance, risk and surveillance. The technologies could also help to improve customer service. For example, money that is held captive on margin could be freed up by allowing a prime broker and executing broker to contribute data to a secure multiparty compute service that calculates a credit score. That could help to reduce the margin requirement. The technologies could be used to create a certificate authority in the cloud, so users could verify that the service that they are about to run came from the correct source and was unmodified in transit. Together, they could also be used as a formative technology to create a data marketplace where the fidelity, integrity and lineage is guaranteed. A zero knowledge proof is a severable technology, allowing for secure multiparty computation to occur. Let’s say two people each have a dataset that neither wants to share. But they would like a mechanism so they can contribute those datasets into a piece of compute that would transform it privately into a result that both people would find mutually beneficial. This technology would prevent data sharing, and the result would redact all information that would prescribe the origin, who owned it, or any details of it. One can imagine valuable use cases in research and development work across many industries and functions including healthcare clinical trials and supply chain management.

2019

NASDAQ DECODES: TECH TRENDS 2019 -The technology trends that are driving the world of markets forward

Nasdaq

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Cybersecurity technologies and processes are helping to combat unabated threats

Advances in technology reduce the risk of a bad actor penetrating systems, but the threat is still there, and is not going away. To this end, cybersecurity remains in the limelight, and with newer regulatory disclosure requirements, 2019 could be a tumultuous year. Over the past few years, several high-profile events caused by cyberattacks and geopolitical tensions have elevated the threat of cyber warfare. Significantly, public perspective has shifted from identity theft to general privacy and the misuse of personal information obtainable on social media. With increased public awareness, there is also concern about breach fatigue: people could become so accustomed to cybersecurity events that they lower their defense against them. Training, engaging and testing employees is the cornerstone of any cybersecurity strategy. This helps to breed a culture of security so people do not fall victim to phishing or violate policies by clicking on links embedded by hackers. From a technology perspective, employees are being empowered to operate securely without impacting their productivity. Newer authentication technologies such as YubiKey, one-touch single sign on and one-touch multifactor authentication are driving down the poor user experience associated with legacy security products. With YubiKey, the user inserts a USB device into a port and presses a button to send a code to the service that the user is authenticating. Some apps on iOS and Android offer a similar experience where the user receives prompts during the authentication process. The user clicks allow, and if that device is trusted, the authentication succeeds. Another notable trend is security feature development being moved toward the beginning of the development lifecycle instead of tacking it on at the end, known as “shift left”. This is being driven partially by the adoption of the development and operations (DevOps) model, in which there is an agile relationship between product development and IT operations. Another driver is the use of application containers and container automation, which provides isolated environments for running software services and the means to maintain security governance with fewer costly and time consuming manual reviews. Ultimately, the time to remediation for vulnerabilities is being reduced dramatically, making it easier for organizations to maintain a secure posture on their network perimeter.

2019

NASDAQ DECODES: TECH TRENDS 2019 -The technology trends that are driving the world of markets forward

Nasdaq

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Quantum computing continues to advance

Quantum computing continues to make strides toward quantum supremacy – the point at which a quantum computer does something faster than an ordinary computer. The race to build commercially viable quantum computers is largely motivated by the shear amount of technological disruption this machine is expected to bring. Yet, several breakthroughs will be necessary before construction of a faulttolerant universal quantum processor capable of surpassing present-day supercomputers can be built. It is possible, however, that “imperfect” quantum computers can find interesting applications long before fully fault-tolerant quantum computers are available. In fact, the quest for “quantum supremacy” has paradoxically led to a boom in quasi-quantum classical algorithms. Further, hybrid approaches using both a classical and quantum computer in parallel will allow for running algorithms that demonstrate quantum advantage. Quantum computers may never perform some functions as well as classical computers. For example, no one anticipates streaming a film with a quantum computer. To this end, certain classes of problems will likely remain in the classical domain, and other classes of problems will be handled by quantum computers, such as cryptography, modeling and optimization, machine learning and prediction, and searching big data. Similar to the GPU co-processors that operate alongside classical CPUs, a quantum computer may take on much the same role for co-processing of problems that they are good at. As such, we may be headed toward a landscape of specific purpose quantum computing where classical machines do much of the heavy lifting and sub-portions of problems are handled by quantum machines. This capability is expected to initially be available in the cloud - Quantum Computing as a Service - which will lower the barrier to entry and provide an ability to quickly climb the learning curve. As with all disruptive technologies, quantum computers are both an opportunity and a threat, and Nasdaq is doing R&D to understand their impact on financial services. Our analysis indicates that concerns about quantum computers disrupting existing security solutions are real, and the time to prepare is now. Moreover, programming of quantum computers requires a significant learning curve and a different technical skill set. Finally, there is a need to identify business solutions and design quantum algorithms to solve them.

2019

NASDAQ DECODES: TECH TRENDS 2019 -The technology trends that are driving the world of markets forward

Nasdaq

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UI/UX and VR/AR are improving productivity and the customer experience

Financial firms, as well as companies in other industries, are allocating significant resources to improve the online presentation of, and interaction with, their products. To this end, they are investing in User Interface (UI) Design technology to improve the look of their site and User Experience (UX) Design technology to improve how the site works. There have been major advancements in UI and UX over the last 10 to 15 years. Several frontend frameworks compete with each other nowadays, although JavaScript is among the most popular ones. Many products that were initially developed for commercial use are now open source, and this has accelerated adoption. React, Vue.Js and AngularJs are examples of this trend. They make applications faster, more attractive and userfriendly, and designers have to write less code. The UI/UX design process has been taken to the middle tier instead of full-stack development where the front end would be connected to the back end, and debugging was a challenge. Designers are using Single Page Applications (SPAs), which load a single HTML page and dynamically update that page as the user interacts with the web app. There is no need for constant page reloads, it is mobile responsive, and multiple teams can work on it simultaneously. With componentization in the JavaScript framework, multiple teams can work on different components of an application at the same time, and a common component can be reused by different applications. The JavaScript frameworks were initially created for the web development, but now they are extended to support building native mobile applications. Many companies have built their entire mobile applications using a JavaScript framework to further reduce the cost and accelerate the development. Further, these component-based frameworks support serverless application development running in the edge. These advancements in UI/UX have improved performance and enabled more consistency, resulting in higher employee productivity and a better customer experience. Yet this comes with some challenges. Transforming legacy products into the new way of doing development involves a multi-disciplinary team and a different mindset. Moreover, the toolsets change constantly, so firms need to be very adaptable and create a flexible, evolutionary architecture – thus the shift toward microservices. The emergence of Web Component standards is making it possible to simplify composing applications from microservices and enabling User Interface as a Service architectural models, which can help further facilitate reuse. Companies are also experimenting with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) solutions to develop marketing applications that bring experiences to life. Inexpensive solutions such as Google Cardboard can be used to create 360-degree videos, which bring a whole company into the emotional IPO Listing experience, for example. Microsoft HoloLens and Unity could enable users to more deeply and efficiently explore datasets. In 3D, users can experience another dimension of complex datasets and explore them in new ways to drive new insight. UI/UX and VR/AR offer huge opportunities for innovation, and it will be an exciting space to watch over the next few years.

2019

NASDAQ DECODES: TECH TRENDS 2019 -The technology trends that are driving the world of markets forward

Nasdaq

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Machine learning

“Machine learning has the potential to be one of the biggest disruptors over the next decade,” says DeLaney.

2017