Who knows where branding will go in the future? However, for many of us working in the creative industries, it's our job to know. So it's something we need to start talking about, and Frontify Futures wants to be the platform where that conversation unfolds. This ambitious new thought leadership initiative from Frontify brings together an extraordinary coalition of voices—CMOs who've scaled global brands, creative leaders reimagining possibilities, strategy directors pioneering new approaches, and cultural forecasters mapping emerging opportunities—to explore how effectiveness, innovation, and scale will shape tomorrow's brand-building landscape. But Frontify Futures isn't just another content platform. Excitingly, from a design perspective, it's also a living experiment in what brand identity can become when technology meets craft, when systems embrace chaos, and when the future itself becomes a design material. Endless variation What makes Frontify Futures' typography unique isn't just its custom foundation: it's how that foundation enables endless variation and evolution. This was primarily achieved, reveals developer and digital art director Daniel Powell, by building bespoke tools for the project. "Rather than rely solely on streamlined tools built for speed and production, we started building our own," he explains. "The first was a node-based design tool that takes our custom Frame and Hairline fonts as a base and uses them as the foundations for our type generator. With it, we can generate unique type variations for each content strand—each article, even—and create both static and animated type, exportable as video or rendered live in the browser." Each of these tools included what Daniel calls a "chaos element: a small but intentional glitch in the system. A microstatement about the nature of the future: that it can be anticipated but never fully known. It's our way of keeping gesture alive inside the system." One of the clearest examples of this is the colour palette generator. "It samples from a dynamic photo grid tied to a rotating colour wheel that completes one full revolution per year," Daniel explains. "But here's the twist: wind speed and direction in St. Gallen, Switzerland—Frontify's HQ—nudges the wheel unpredictably off-centre. It's a subtle, living mechanic; each article contains a log of the wind data in its code as a kind of Easter Egg." Another favourite of Daniel's—yet to be released—is an expanded version of Conway's Game of Life. "It's been running continuously for over a month now, evolving patterns used in one of the content strand headers," he reveals. "The designer becomes a kind of photographer, capturing moments from a petri dish of generative motion." Core Philosophy In developing this unique identity, two phrases stood out to Daniel as guiding lights from the outset. The first was, 'We will show, not tell.' "This became the foundation for how we approached the identity," recalls Daniel. "It had to feel like a playground: open, experimental, and fluid. Not overly precious or prescriptive. A system the Frontify team could truly own, shape, and evolve. A platform, not a final product. A foundation, just as the future is always built on the past." The second guiding phrase, pulled directly from Frontify's rebrand materials, felt like "a call to action," says Daniel. "'Gestural and geometric. Human and machine. Art and science.' It's a tension that feels especially relevant in the creative industries today. As technology accelerates, we ask ourselves: how do we still hold onto our craft? What does it mean to be expressive in an increasingly systemised world?" Stripped back and skeletal typography The identity that Daniel and his team created reflects these themes through typography that literally embodies the platform's core philosophy. It really started from this idea of the past being built upon the 'foundations' of the past," he explains. "At the time Frontify Futures was being created, Frontify itself was going through a rebrand. With that, they'd started using a new variable typeface called Cranny, a custom cut of Azurio by Narrow Type." Daniel's team took Cranny and "pushed it into a stripped-back and almost skeletal take". The result was Crany-Frame and Crany-Hairline. "These fonts then served as our base scaffolding," he continues. "They were never seen in design, but instead, we applied decoration them to produce new typefaces for each content strand, giving the identity the space to grow and allow new ideas and shapes to form." As Daniel saw it, the demands on the typeface were pretty simple. "It needed to set an atmosphere. We needed it needed to feel alive. We wanted it to be something shifting and repositioning. And so, while we have a bunch of static cuts of each base style, we rarely use them; the typefaces you see on the website and social only exist at the moment as a string of parameters to create a general style that we use to create live animating versions of the font generated on the fly." In addition to setting the atmosphere, it needed to be extremely flexible and feature live inputs, as a significant part of the branding is about the unpredictability of the future. "So Daniel's team built in those aforementioned "chaos moments where everything from user interaction to live windspeeds can affect the font." Design Process The process of creating the typefaces is a fascinating one. "We started by working with the custom cut of Azuriofrom Narrow Type. We then redrew it to take inspiration from how a frame and a hairline could be produced from this original cut. From there, we built a type generation tool that uses them as a base. "It's a custom node-based system that lets us really get in there and play with the overlays for everything from grid-sizing, shapes and timing for the animation," he outlines. "We used this tool to design the variants for different content strands. We weren't just designing letterforms; we were designing a comprehensive toolset that could evolve in tandem with the content. "That became a big part of the process: designing systems that designers could actually use, not just look at; again, it was a wider conversation and concept around the future and how designers and machines can work together." In short, the evolution of the typeface system reflects the platform's broader commitment to continuous growth and adaptation." The whole idea was to make something open enough to keep building on," Daniel stresses. "We've already got tools in place to generate new weights, shapes and animated variants, and the tool itself still has a ton of unused functionality. "I can see that growing as new content strands emerge; we'll keep adapting the type with them," he adds. "It's less about version numbers and more about ongoing movement. The system's alive; that's the point. A provocation for the industry In this context, the Frontify Futures identity represents more than smart visual branding; it's also a manifesto for how creative systems might evolve in an age of increasing automation and systematisation. By building unpredictability into their tools, embracing the tension between human craft and machine precision, and creating systems that grow and adapt rather than merely scale, Daniel and the Frontify team have created something that feels genuinely forward-looking. For creatives grappling with similar questions about the future of their craft, Frontify Futures offers both inspiration and practical demonstration. It shows how brands can remain human while embracing technological capability, how systems can be both consistent and surprising, and how the future itself can become a creative medium. This clever approach suggests that the future of branding lies not in choosing between human creativity and systematic efficiency but in finding new ways to make them work together, creating something neither could achieve alone. #inside #thinking #behind #frontify #futures039

12 June, 2025 In our turning points series, design studios share some of the key moments that shaped their business. This week, we meet Accept & Proceed. Accept & Proceed is a London based brand and design studio that works with clients like NASA, Nike and LEGO. Founder David Johnston talks us through some of the decisions that defined his business. In 2006, Johnston took the leap to start his own business, armed with a good name and a willingness to bend the truth about his team… I’d gone through my career learning from big organisations, and one small organisation, and I felt like I wasn’t happy where I was. It was my dad who encouraged me to take a leap of faith and try and go it alone. With nothing more than a month’s wages in the bank and a lot of energy, I decided to go and set up an agency. That really just means giving yourself a name and starting to promote yourself in the world. Accept & Proceed founder David Johnston I think the name itself is a very important thing. I wanted something that was memorable but also layered in meaning. A name that starts with an “a” is very beneficial when you’re being listed in the index of books and things like that. But it became a bit of a compass for the way that we wanted to create work, around accepting the status quo for what it is, but with a continual commitment to proceed nonetheless. Because I didn’t have anyone to work with, in those early months I just made up email addresses of people that didn’t exist. That allowed me to cost projects up for multiple people. That’s obviously a degree of hustle I wouldn’t encourage in everyone, but it meant I was able to charge multiple day rates for projects where I was playing the role of four or five people. Self-initiated projects have long been part of the studio’s DNA and played a key role in building key client relationships. A&P by… was a brief to explore these letterforms without any commercial intent apart from the joy of creative expression. I started reaching out to illustrators and artists and photographers and designers that I really rated, and the things that started coming back were incredible. I was overwhelmed by the amount of energy and passion that people like Mr Bingo and Jason Evans were bringing to this. I think in so many ways, the answer to everything is community. I’ve gone on to work with a lot of the people that created these, and they also became friends. It was an early example of dissolving these illusionary boundaries around what an agency might be, but also expanding and amplifying your potential. The first of Accept & Proceed’s Light Calendars Then in 2006, I was trying to establish our portfolio and I wanted something to send out into the world that would also be an example of how Accept & Proceed thinks about design. I landed on these data visualisations that show the amount of light and darkness that would happen in London in the year ahead. I worked with a freelance designer called Stephen Heath on the first one – he is now our creative director. This kickstarted a 10-year exploration, and they became a rite of passage for new designers that came into the studio, to take that very similar data and express it in completely new ways. It culminated in an exhibition in London in 2016, showing ten years’ of prints. They were a labour of love, but they also meant that every single year we had a number of prints that we could send out to new potential contacts. Still when I go to the global headquarters of Nike in Beaverton in Portland, I’m amazed at how many of these sit in leaders’ offices there. When we first got a finance director, they couldn’t believe how much we’d invested as a business in things like this – we even had our own gallery for a while. It doesn’t make sense from a purely numbers mindset, but if you put things out there for authentic reasons, there are ripple effects over time. In 2017, the studio became a B-corp, the fourth creative agency in the UK to get this accreditation. Around 2016, I couldn’t help but look around – as we probably all have at varying points over the last 10 years – and wondered, what the fuck is going on? All these systems are not fit for purpose for the future – financial systems, food systems, relationship systems, energy systems. They’re not working. And I was like shit, are we part of the problem? Accept & Proceed’s work for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory I’ve always thought of brand as a piece of technology that can fundamentally change our actions and the world around us. That comes with a huge responsibility. We probably paid four months’ wages of two people full-time just to get accredited, so it’s quite a high bar. But I like that the programme shackles you to this idea of improvement. You can’t rest on your laurels if you want to be re-accredited. It’s like the way design works as an iterative process – you have to keep getting better. In 2019, Johnston and his team started thinking seriously about the studio’s own brand, and created a punchy, nuanced new positioning. We got to a point where we’d proven we could help brands achieve their commercial aims. But we wanted to hold a position ourselves, not just be a conduit between a brand and its audience. It still amazes me that so few agencies actually stand for anything. We realised that all the things – vision, mission, principles – that we’ve been creating for brands for years, we hadn’t done for ourselves. It’s a bit like when you see a hairdresser with a really dodgy haircut. But it’s hard to cut your own hair. So we went through that process, which was really difficult, and we landed on “Design for the future” as our promise to the world. And if you’re going to have that as a promise, you better be able to describe the world you’re creating through your work, which we call “the together world.” Accept & Proceed’s work for Second Sea We stand at this most incredible moment in history where the latest technology and science is catching up with ancient wisdom, to know that we must become more entangled, more together, more whole. And we’ve assessed five global shifts that are happening in order to be able to take us towards a more together world through our work – interbeing, reciprocity, healing, resilience and liberation. The year before last, we lost three global rebrand projects based on our positioning. Every one of them said to me, “You’re right but we’re not ready.” But this year, I think the product market fit of what we’ve been saying for the last five years is really starting to mesh. We’re working with Arc’teryx on their 2030 landscape, evolving Nike’s move to zero, and working with LEGO on what their next 100 years might look like, which is mind-boggling work. I don’t think we could have won any of those opportunities had we not been talking for quite a long time about design for the future. In 2023, Johnston started a sunrise gathering on Hackney Marshes, which became a very significant part of his life. I had the flu and I had a vision in my dreamy fluey state of a particular spot on Hackney Marshes where people were gathering and watching the sunrise. I happened to tell my friend, the poet Thomas Sharp this, and he said, “That’s a premonition. You have to make it happen.” The first year there were five of us – this year there were 300 people for the spring equinox in March. I don’t fully know what these gatherings will lead to. Will Accept & Proceed start to introduce the seasons to the way we operate as a business? It’s a thought I’ve had percolating, but I don’t know. Will it be something else? One of the 2024 sunrise gatherings organised by Accept & Proceed founder David Johnston I do know that there’s major learnings around authentic community building for brands. We should do away with these buckets we put people into, of age group and location. They aren’t very true. It’s fascinating to see the breadth of people who come to these gatherings. Me and Laura were thinking at some point of moving out of London, but I think these sunrise gatherings are now my reason to stay. It’s the thing I didn’t know I needed until I had it. They have made London complete for me. There’s something so ancient about watching our star rise, and the reminder that we are actually just animals crawling upon the surface of a planet of mud. That’s what’s real. But it can be hard to remember that when you’re sitting at your computer in the studio. These gatherings help me better understand creativity’s true potential, for brands, for the world, and for us. Design disciplines in this article Brands in this article What to read next Features Turning Points: Cultural branding agency EDIT Brand Identity 20 Nov, 2024 #turning #points #accept #ampamp #proceed

8 Stunning Sunset Color Palettes Zoe Santoro •  In this article:See more ▼Post may contain affiliate links which give us commissions at no cost to you.There’s something absolutely magical about watching the sun dip below the horizon, painting the sky in breathtaking hues that seem almost too beautiful to be real. As a designer, I find myself constantly inspired by these natural masterpieces that unfold before us every evening. The way warm oranges melt into soft pinks, how deep purples blend seamlessly with golden yellows – it’s like nature’s own masterclass in color theory. If you’re looking to infuse your next project with the warmth, romance, and natural beauty of a perfect sunset, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve curated eight of the most captivating sunset color palettes that will bring that golden hour magic directly into your designs. 👋 Psst... Did you know you can get unlimited downloads of 59,000+ fonts and millions of other creative assets for just /mo? Learn more »The 8 Most Breathtaking Sunset Color Palettes 1. Golden Hour Glow #FFD700 #FF8C00 #FF6347 #CD5C5C Download this color palette 735×1102 Pinterest image 2160×3840 Vertical wallpaper 900×900 Square 3840×2160 4K Wallpaper This palette captures that perfect moment when everything seems to be touched by liquid gold. The warm yellows transition beautifully into rich oranges and soft coral reds, creating a sense of warmth and optimism that’s impossible to ignore. I find this combination works wonderfully for brands that want to evoke feelings of happiness, energy, and positivity. 2. Tropical Paradise #FF69B4 #FF1493 #FF8C00 #FFD700 Download this color palette 735×1102 Pinterest image 2160×3840 Vertical wallpaper 900×900 Square 3840×2160 4K Wallpaper Inspired by those incredible sunsets you see in tropical destinations, this vibrant palette combines hot pinks with brilliant oranges and golden yellows. It’s bold, it’s energetic, and it’s perfect for projects that need to make a statement. I love using these colors for summer campaigns or anything that needs to capture that vacation feeling. 3. Desert Dreams #CD853F #D2691E #B22222 #8B0000 Download this color palette 735×1102 Pinterest image 2160×3840 Vertical wallpaper 900×900 Square 3840×2160 4K Wallpaper Get 300+ Fonts for FREEEnter your email to download our 100% free "Font Lover's Bundle". For commercial & personal use. No royalties. No fees. No attribution. 100% free to use anywhere. The American Southwest produces some of the most spectacular sunsets on earth, and this palette pays homage to those incredible desert skies. The earthy browns blend into warm oranges before deepening into rich reds and burgundies. This combination brings a sense of grounding and authenticity that works beautifully for rustic or heritage brands. 4. Pastel Evening #FFE4E1 #FFA07A #F0E68C #DDA0DD Download this color palette 735×1102 Pinterest image 2160×3840 Vertical wallpaper 900×900 Square 3840×2160 4K Wallpaper Not every sunset needs to be bold and dramatic. This softer palette captures those gentle, dreamy evenings when the sky looks like it’s been painted with watercolors. The delicate pinks, peaches, and lavenders create a romantic, ethereal feeling that’s perfect for wedding designs, beauty brands, or any project that needs a touch of feminine elegance. 5. Coastal Sunset #fae991 #FF7F50 #FF6347 #4169E1 #1E90FF Download this color palette 735×1102 Pinterest image 2160×3840 Vertical wallpaper 900×900 Square 3840×2160 4K Wallpaper There’s something special about watching the sun set over the ocean, where warm oranges and corals meet the deep blues of the sea and sky. This palette captures that perfect contrast between warm and cool tones. I find it creates a sense of adventure and wanderlust that’s ideal for travel brands or outdoor companies. 6. Urban Twilight #ffeda3 #fdad52 #fc8a6e #575475 #111f2a Download this color palette 735×1102 Pinterest image 2160×3840 Vertical wallpaper 900×900 Square 3840×2160 4K Wallpaper As the sun sets behind city skylines, you get these incredible contrasts between deep purples and vibrant oranges. This sophisticated palette brings together the mystery of twilight with the warmth of the setting sun. It’s perfect for creating designs that feel both modern and dramatic. 7. Autumn Harvest #FF4500 #FF8C00 #DAA520 #8B4513 Download this color palette 735×1102 Pinterest image 2160×3840 Vertical wallpaper 900×900 Square 3840×2160 4K Wallpaper This palette captures those perfect fall evenings when the sunset seems to echo the changing leaves. The deep oranges and golden yellows create a cozy, inviting feeling that’s perfect for seasonal campaigns or brands that want to evoke comfort and tradition. 8. Fire Sky #652220 #DC143C #FF0000 #FF4500 #FF8C00 Download this color palette 735×1102 Pinterest image 2160×3840 Vertical wallpaper 900×900 Square 3840×2160 4K Wallpaper Sometimes nature puts on a show that’s so intense it takes your breath away. This bold, fiery palette captures those dramatic sunsets that look like the sky is literally on fire. It’s not for the faint of heart, but when you need maximum impact and energy, these colors deliver in spades. Why Sunset Colors Never Go Out of Style Before we explore how to use these palettes effectively, let’s talk about why sunset colors have such enduring appeal in design. There’s something deeply ingrained in human psychology that responds to these warm, glowing hues. They remind us of endings and beginnings, of peaceful moments and natural beauty. From a design perspective, sunset colors offer incredible versatility. They can be bold and energetic or soft and romantic. They work equally well for corporate branding and personal projects. And perhaps most importantly, they’re inherently optimistic – they make people feel good. I’ve found that incorporating sunset-inspired colors into modern projects adds an instant sense of warmth and approachability that resonates with audiences across all demographics. Whether you’re working on packaging design, web interfaces, or environmental graphics, these palettes can help create an emotional connection that goes beyond mere aesthetics. How to Master Sunset Palettes in Contemporary Design Using sunset colors effectively requires more than just picking pretty hues and hoping for the best. Here are some strategies I’ve developed for incorporating these palettes into modern design work: Start with Temperature Balance One of the most important aspects of working with sunset palettes is understanding color temperature. Most sunset combinations naturally include both warm and cool elements – the warm oranges and yellows of the sun itself, balanced by the cooler purples and blues of the surrounding sky. Maintaining this temperature balance keeps your designs from feeling flat or monotonous. Layer for Depth Real sunsets have incredible depth and dimension, with colors layering and blending into each other. Try to recreate this in your designs by using gradients, overlays, or layered elements rather than flat blocks of color. This approach creates visual interest and mimics the natural way these colors appear in nature. Consider Context and Contrast While sunset colors are beautiful, they need to work within the context of your overall design. Pay attention to readability – text needs sufficient contrast against sunset backgrounds. Consider using neutrals like deep charcoal or cream to provide breathing room and ensure your message remains clear. Embrace Gradual Transitions The magic of a sunset lies in how colors flow seamlessly from one to another. Incorporate this principle into your designs through smooth gradients, subtle color shifts, or elements that bridge between different hues in your palette. The Science Behind Our Sunset Obsession As someone who’s spent years studying color psychology, I’m fascinated by why sunset colors have such universal appeal. Research suggests that warm colors like those found in sunsets trigger positive emotional responses and can even increase feelings of comfort and security. There’s also the association factor – sunsets are linked in our minds with relaxation, beauty, and positive experiences. When we see these colors in design, we unconsciously associate them with those same positive feelings. This makes sunset palettes particularly effective for brands that want to create emotional connections with their audiences. The cyclical nature of sunsets also plays a role. They happen every day, marking the transition from activity to rest, from work to leisure. This gives sunset colors a sense of familiarity and comfort that few other color combinations can match. Applying Sunset Palettes Across Design Disciplines One of the things I love most about sunset color palettes is how adaptable they are across different types of design work: Brand Identity Design Sunset colors can help brands convey warmth, optimism, and approachability. I’ve used variations of these palettes for everything from artisanal food companies to wellness brands. The key is choosing the right intensity level for your brand’s personality – softer palettes for more refined brands, bolder combinations for companies that want to make a statement. Digital Design In web and app design, sunset colors can create interfaces that feel warm and inviting rather than cold and clinical. I often use these palettes for backgrounds, accent elements, or call-to-action buttons. The natural flow between colors makes them perfect for creating smooth user experiences that guide the eye naturally through content. Print and Packaging Sunset palettes really shine in print applications where you can take advantage of rich, saturated colors. They work beautifully for packaging design, particularly for products associated with warmth, comfort, or natural ingredients. The key is ensuring your color reproduction is accurate – sunset colors can look muddy if not handled properly in print. Environmental Design In spaces, sunset colors can create incredibly welcoming environments. I’ve seen these palettes used effectively in restaurants, retail spaces, and even corporate offices where the goal is to create a sense of warmth and community. Seasonal Considerations and Trending Applications While sunset colors are timeless, they do have natural seasonal associations that smart designers can leverage. The warmer, more intense sunset palettes work beautifully for fall and winter campaigns, while the softer, more pastel variations are perfect for spring and summer applications. I’ve noticed a growing trend toward using sunset palettes in unexpected contexts – tech companies embracing warm gradients, financial services using sunset colors to appear more approachable, and healthcare brands incorporating these hues to create more comforting environments. Conclusion: Bringing Natural Beauty Into Modern Design As we’ve explored these eight stunning sunset color palettes, I hope you’ve gained new appreciation for the incredible design potential that nature provides us every single day. These colors aren’t just beautiful – they’re powerful tools for creating emotional connections, conveying brand values, and making designs that truly resonate with people. The secret to successfully using sunset palettes lies in understanding both their emotional impact and their technical requirements. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different combinations and intensities, but always keep your audience and context in mind. Remember, the best sunset colors aren’t just about picking the prettiest hues – they’re about capturing the feeling of those magical moments when day transitions to night. Whether you’re creating a logo that needs to convey warmth and trust, designing a website that should feel welcoming and approachable, or developing packaging that needs to stand out on crowded shelves, these sunset-inspired palettes offer endless possibilities. So the next time you catch yourself stopped in your tracks by a particularly stunning sunset, take a moment to really study those colors. Notice how they blend and flow, how they make you feel, and how they change as the light shifts. Then bring that natural magic into your next design project. After all, if nature can create such breathtaking color combinations every single day, imagine what we can achieve when we learn from the master. Happy designing! Zoe Santoro Zoe is an art student and graphic designer with a passion for creativity and adventure. Whether she’s sketching in a cozy café or capturing inspiration from vibrant cityscapes, she finds beauty in every corner of the world. With a love for bold colors, clean design, and storytelling through visuals, Zoe blends her artistic skills with her wanderlust to create stunning, travel-inspired designs. Follow her journey as she explores new places, discovers fresh inspiration, and shares her creative process along the way. 10 Warm Color Palettes That’ll Brighten Your DayThere’s nothing quite like the embracing quality of warm colors to make a design feel inviting and alive. As someone...These 1920s Color Palettes are ‘Greater than Gatsby’There’s something undeniably captivating about the color schemes of the Roaring Twenties. As a designer with a passion for historical...How Fonts Influence Tone and Clarity in Animated VideosAudiences interact differently with messages based on which fonts designers choose to use within a text presentation. Fonts shape how... #stunning #sunset #color #palettes

Originally published at EasyDMARC Integrates With Pax8 Marketplace To Simplify Email Security For MSPs by Anush Yolyan. The integration will deliver simple, accessible, and streamlined email security for vulnerable inboxes Global, 4 November 2024 – US-based email security firm EasyDMARC has today announced its integration with Pax8 Marketplace, the leading cloud commerce marketplace. As one of the first DMARC solution providers on the Pax8 Marketplace, EasyDMARC is expanding its mission to protect inboxes from the rising threat of phishing attacks with a rigorous, user-friendly DMARC solution. The integration comes as Google highlights the impressive results of recently implemented email authentication measures for bulk senders: a 65% reduction in unauthenticated messages to Gmail users, a 50% increase in bulk senders following best security practices, and 265 billion fewer unauthenticated messages sent in 2024. With email being such a crucial communication channel for businesses, email authentication measures are an essential part of any business’s cybersecurity offering.  Key features of the integration include: Centralized billing With centralized billing, customers can now streamline their cloud services under a single pane of glass, simplifying the management and billing of their EasyDMARC solution. This consolidated approach enables partners to reduce administrative complexity and manage all cloud expenses through one interface, providing a seamless billing and support experience. Automated provisioning  Through automated provisioning, Pax8’s automation capabilities make deploying DMARC across client accounts quick and hassle-free. By eliminating manual configurations, this integration ensures that customers can implement email security solutions rapidly, allowing them to safeguard client inboxes without delay. Bundled offerings The bundled offerings available through Pax8 allow partners to enhance their service portfolios by combining EasyDMARC with complementary security solutions. By creating all-in-one security packages, partners can offer their clients more robust protection, addressing a broader range of security needs from a single, trusted platform. Gerasim Hovhannisyan, Co-Founder and CEO of EasyDMARC, said: “We’re thrilled to be working with Pax8  to provide MSPs with a streamlined, effective way to deliver top-tier email security to their clients, all within a platform that equips them with everything needed to stay secure.  As phishing attacks grow in frequency and sophistication, businesses can no longer afford to overlook the importance of email security. Email authentication is a vital defense against the evolving threat of phishing and is crucial in preserving the integrity of email communication. This integration is designed to allow businesses of all sizes to benefit from DMARC’s extensive capabilities.” Ryan Burton, Vice President of Marketplace Vendor Strategy, at Pax8 said:  “We’re delighted to welcome EasyDMARC to the Pax8 Marketplace as an enterprise-class DMARC solution provider. This integration gives MSPs the tools they need to meet the growing demand for email security, with simplified deployment, billing, and bundling benefits. With EasyDMARC’s technical capabilities and intelligence, MSPs can deliver robust protection against phishing threats without the technical hassle that often holds businesses back.” About EasyDMARC EasyDMARC is a cloud-native B2B SaaS solution that addresses email security and deliverability problems with just a few clicks. For Managed Service Providers seeking to increase their revenue, EasyDMARC presents an ideal solution. The email authentication platform streamlines domain management, providing capabilities such as organizational control, domain grouping, and access management. Additionally, EasyDMARC offers a comprehensive sales and marketing enablement program designed to boost DMARC sales. All of these features are available for MSPs on a scalable platform with a flexible pay-as-you-go pricing model. For more information on the EasyDMARC, visit: / About Pax8  Pax8 is the technology marketplace of the future, linking partners, vendors, and small to midsized businessesthrough AI-powered insights and comprehensive product support. With a global partner ecosystem of over 38,000 managed service providers, Pax8 empowers SMBs worldwide by providing software and services that unlock their growth potential and enhance their security. Committed to innovating cloud commerce at scale, Pax8 drives customer acquisition and solution consumption across its entire ecosystem. Find out more: / The post EasyDMARC Integrates With Pax8 Marketplace To Simplify Email Security For MSPs appeared first on EasyDMARC. #easydmarc #integrates #with #pax8 #marketplace

Posted on : June 13, 2025 By Tech World Times Uncategorized  Rate this post Sorting is important in programming. It helps organize data. Sorting improves performance in searching, analysis, and reporting. There are many sorting algorithms. One of the simplest is Insertion Sort. In this article, we will learn how to implement Insertion Sort in Java. We will explain each step in simple words. You will see examples and understand how it works. What Is Insertion Sort? Insertion Sort is a simple sorting algorithm. It works like how you sort playing cards. You take one card at a time and place it in the right position. It compares the current element with those before it. If needed, it shifts elements to the right. Then, it inserts the current element at the correct place. How Insertion Sort Works Let’s understand with a small list: Example List:Steps: First elementis already sorted. Compare 3 with 8. Move 8 right. Insert 3 before it →Compare 5 with 8. Move 8 right. Insert 5 after 3 →Compare 1 with 8, 5, 3. Move them right. Insert 1 at start →Now the list is sorted! Why Use Insertion Sort? Insertion Sort is simple and easy to code. It works well for: Small datasets Nearly sorted lists Educational purposes and practice However, it is not good for large datasets. It has a time complexity of O. Time Complexity of Insertion Sort Best Case: OAverage Case: OWorst Case: OIt performs fewer steps in nearly sorted data. How to Implement Insertion Sort in Java Now let’s write the code for Insertion Sort in Java. We will explain each part. Step 1: Define a Class javaCopyEditpublic class InsertionSortExample { // Code goes here } We create a class named InsertionSortExample. Step 2: Create the Sorting Method javaCopyEditpublic static void insertionSort{ int n = arr.length; for{ int key = arr; int j = i - 1; while{ arr= arr; j = j - 1; } arr= key; } } Let’s break it down: arris the current value. j starts from the previous index. While arr> key, shift arrto the right. Insert the key at the correct position. This logic sorts the array step by step. Step 3: Create the Main Method Now we test the code. javaCopyEditpublic static void main{ intnumbers = {9, 5, 1, 4, 3}; System.out.println; printArray; insertionSort; System.out.println; printArray; } This method: Creates an array of numbers Prints the array before sorting Calls the sort method Prints the array after sorting Step 4: Print the Array Let’s add a helper method to print the array. javaCopyEditpublic static void printArray{ for{ System.out.print; } System.out.println; } Now you can see how the array changes before and after sorting. Full Code Example javaCopyEditpublic class InsertionSortExample { public static void insertionSort{ int n = arr.length; for{ int key = arr; int j = i - 1; while{ arr= arr; j = j - 1; } arr= key; } } public static void printArray{ for{ System.out.print; } System.out.println; } public static void main{ intnumbers = {9, 5, 1, 4, 3}; System.out.println; printArray; insertionSort; System.out.println; printArray; } } Sample Output yamlCopyEditBefore sorting: 9 5 1 4 3 After sorting: 1 3 4 5 9 This confirms that the sorting works correctly. Advantages of Insertion Sort in Java Easy to implement Works well with small inputs Stable sortGood for educational use When Not to Use Insertion Sort Avoid Insertion Sort when: The dataset is large Performance is critical Better algorithms like Merge Sort or Quick Sort are available Real-World Uses Sorting small records in a database Teaching algorithm basics Handling partially sorted arrays Even though it is not the fastest, it is useful in many simple tasks. Final Tips Practice with different inputs Add print statements to see how it works Try sorting strings or objects Use Java’s built-in sort methods for large arrays Conclusion Insertion Sort in Java is a great way to learn sorting. It is simple and easy to understand. In this guide, we showed how to implement it step-by-step. We covered the logic, code, and output. We also explained when to use it. Now you can try it yourself. Understanding sorting helps in coding interviews and software development. Keep practicing and exploring other sorting methods too. The more you practice, the better you understand algorithms. Tech World TimesTech World Times, a global collective focusing on the latest tech news and trends in blockchain, Fintech, Development & Testing, AI and Startups. If you are looking for the guest post then contact at techworldtimes@gmail.com #how #implement #insertion #sort #java

A few months ago, at the SmallSat Symposium, a panel issued a sobering warning to space startups: do not chase defence dollars at the expense of long-term sustainability. Why? Because companies, particularly in the space sector, might be tempted to follow the money rather than focus on producing valuable products and services with broader, longer-term applications. It’s of course true that any company should be wary of “leaning in” too closely to what seem like passing fads. But the warning overlooks an important reality: the shift towards defence investing is not a trend. It’s a transformation in space and space investment, and one that will have positive — albeit unintended — consequences. Across the space sector, there has been a noticeable shift towards focusing on pure defence investing. Companies that once prioritised commercial applications, or at most maintained dual-use business models, are now making full-scale pivots to defence. Needless to say, that move isn’t random. It’s the product of geopolitical changes, such as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, and a widespread belief that the world is changing. As Michael Gove, who served in the Cabinets of four British prime ministers, put it recently: “The ideal of a rules-based international order, where multilateral institutions restrain states pursuing their self-interest, has proved to be a false hope… we are back to a world closer to that of Thucydides in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” The change is happening at the public sector level, too. In 2024, global governmental expenditure on space programmes surged to billion— up 10% from the year before. The primary driver was rising defence budgets. A recent Bruegel report concluded that without support from the United States, “Europe could need 300,000 more troops and an annual defence spending hike of at least €250 billion” to keep the continent safe. As geopolitical tensions rise, governments worldwide have been funnelling money into space-based defence technology, a recognition that the sector is the cornerstone of any modern military. One of the unintended yet highly beneficial consequences of this shift among startups is its impact on the private space sector. Increased defence investment is breathing new life into aerospace and deep-tech innovation. Companies that previously struggled to secure commercial funding are now benefiting from sustained government investment, allowing them to work on cutting-edge technologies. These includeoptical communications, needed for secure and high-speed space-based data transmission; Earth observation, crucial for climate monitoring, disaster response, and resource management; and synthetic aperture radar, enabling all-weather, day-and-night imaging capabilities with high precision. Register Now Despite the opportunities that await here, moving from purely commercial to defence markets is not without its hurdles. Startups can face significant challenges. Government contracts often come with delayed payments and long procurement cycles, creating cashflow issues for smaller firms that lack financial reserves. Defence-related technologies are subject to stringent export controls and compliance requirements, heaping bureaucratic burdens on startups that many are ill-equipped to bear. But for those companies that make the pivot successfully, the rewards far outweigh these obstacles. Defence funding provides long-term stability and a runway for companies to develop world-class technology that may later be commercialised in other sectors. In other words, to pivot into space isn’t necessarily to leave behind the commercial world. Some startups are making full-blown pivots to defence, but the real sweet spot remains in the world of dual-use technology — those innovations that serve both commercial and defence markets. Companies that maintain this balance benefit from diverse revenue streams, greater resilience to market fluctuations, and the ability to shift emphasis as commercial demand evolves. The success of this dual-use approach is plain to see in the companies that have seamlessly integrated their offerings across sectors. Take the SAR satellite company ICEYE, whose data is used in flood response, maritime activity monitoring, and conflict zones like Ukraine. Or FibreCoat, whose advanced materials protect satellites from the harsh conditions of space, regardless of what those satellites are used for. Given the scale of government investment, as well as the ongoing volatility in the broader geopolitical landscape, it’s highly unlikely that the present shift in focus towards defence is merely a fad. There is a new world order in place, and national security considerations will play a defining role in geopolitics for years to come. However, the space sector’s ultimate goal should be a balanced ecosystem where defence and commercial efforts reinforce one another. The current surge in defence spending is helping accelerate technological innovation, funding infrastructure that will benefit the commercial sector in the long run. As companies continue to develop dual-use applications, they can ensure that the innovations sparked by defence priorities also drive broader commercial progress. That’s good news because space touches almost every area of modern life. It’s the backbone of the world economy. It plays a vital role in navigation, communication, connectivity, and sustainability. The space economy is projected to reach trillionby 2035, according to a report by McKinsey and the World Economic Forum. We may well be entering a new golden age for the industry, one in which entrepreneurs have access to more capital, investors are more willing to back high-risk ventures, and technology development is progressing at an unprecedented pace. If companies can navigate the challenges of defence contracting while remaining mindful of the broader commercial applications of their products, the entire space ecosystem stands to benefit. For startups, the key will be balancing short-term defence opportunities with long-term strategic growth, so ensuring that today’s pivot does not become tomorrow’s dead end. But if the evolution towards greater defence investing is managed wisely by all involved parties, it could propel the space industry into its most vibrant era yet. Defence tech will be a hot topic at TNW Conference, which takes place in Amsterdam on June 19-20. Tickets for the event are now on sale — use the code TNWXMEDIA2025 at the checkout to get 30% off. Story by Bogdan Gogulan Bogdan Gogulan is the CEO and Managing Partner of NewSpace Capital, the world’s first private equity firm devoted exclusively to growth-stagBogdan Gogulan is the CEO and Managing Partner of NewSpace Capital, the world’s first private equity firm devoted exclusively to growth-stage companies working in the space technology sector. By backing these companies, NewSpace Capital helps them to tackle some of the greatest challenges facing us today, from sluggish productivity to the climate crisis. With two decades' experience in finance and defence, Bogdan has held business development and strategy positions at AT Communication, American Express, and Deutsche Bank, and managed projects for security and defence agencies. Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week. Also tagged with #opinion #space #startups #are #pivoting

Mario Kart World is one of the year's hottest games, but its pivot to an open world setting, while peeling back kart customization options, opened a massive rift for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds to drift into. And Sega is determined to do everything possible to make its kart racer the one to beat by including numerous guest characters and cross-platform, multiplayer contests. I took Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds for a test drive at the Summer Game Fest, and it's a strong contender racing game of the year.Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' Deep Kart CustomizationThe biggest difference between Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Mario Kart World is that Sega's title focuses on kart customization. I'm not just talking about colors and tires; CrossWorlds introduces Gadgets, add-ons that augment your car, giving your whip helpful abilities to bring into the race. Each ride has a license plate with six slots where you can slot your chosen Gadgets. A Gadget can take up one, two, or three slots, so the idea is to find a mix that pairs well with character traits. There's a surprising amount of depth for people who want to min/max their favorite anthropomorphic animal.I chose Sonic, a speed character, and added a Gadget that started him with two boosts, a Gadget that improved his speed while trailing an opponent, and a Gadget that improved acceleration. There were so many Gadgets that I could have easily spent my entire demo session building a car to match my playstyle. I envision people happily getting lost in the weeds before participating in their first race.Gameplay: This Ain't Mario Kart WorldAlthough it's not an open world like Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds injects a unique spin on traditional kart racing. The familiar trappings are all here, such as rings to boost your top speed. Each Grand Prix consists of three maps, but the gimmick at play is stage transitions. Recommended by Our EditorsAbout a third of the way down a course, a giant ring-portal opens, presenting a new world and track. The shift in tone and terrain keeps the races fast-paced and unpredictable. I particularly liked how whoever is in first place can sometimes choose which CrossWorlds track to go down, controlling the tempo. With every race completion, you earn credits based on your performance that you can cash in for new car parts.In a stark contrast to Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is far more aggressive, even on lower difficulties. At the start of each grand prix, the game assigns you a rival—this is the character to beat, and the one who taunts you all match. Beat them all, and you can race high-powered Super variants.Just about everything caused you to lose rings: bumping into other players, the walls, and, of course, getting hit by items. The series' trademark rubberband AI is still in place, too. Even in the press demo, I wasn't safe from taking four items back to back and being knocked off the stage mere feet away from the finish line.The demo didn't include the new characters that debuted at the Summer Game Fest, but I studied the character screen to see who else could be coming to the game. Including the 12 Sonic characters available in the demo, I counted a whopping 64 character slots. They include Hatsune Miku, Joker, Ichiban Kasuga, and Steve. However, I hope to see other classic Sega IPs like in previous Sonic Racing titles.Platforms and Release DateWill Sega do what Nintendon't? I had an exhilarating time playing Sonic Racing: CrossWorld, and I can't wait to see more wild track compositions. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds will be available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on Sept. 25, 2025. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is planned for later in the year. #can #sonic #racing #crossworlds #outrun

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more Headlines have been blaring it for years: Large language modelscan not only pass medical licensing exams but also outperform humans. GPT-4 could correctly answer U.S. medical exam licensing questions 90% of the time, even in the prehistoric AI days of 2023. Since then, LLMs have gone on to best the residents taking those exams and licensed physicians. Move over, Doctor Google, make way for ChatGPT, M.D. But you may want more than a diploma from the LLM you deploy for patients. Like an ace medical student who can rattle off the name of every bone in the hand but faints at the first sight of real blood, an LLM’s mastery of medicine does not always translate directly into the real world. A paper by researchers at the University of Oxford found that while LLMs could correctly identify relevant conditions 94.9% of the time when directly presented with test scenarios, human participants using LLMs to diagnose the same scenarios identified the correct conditions less than 34.5% of the time. Perhaps even more notably, patients using LLMs performed even worse than a control group that was merely instructed to diagnose themselves using “any methods they would typically employ at home.” The group left to their own devices was 76% more likely to identify the correct conditions than the group assisted by LLMs. The Oxford study raises questions about the suitability of LLMs for medical advice and the benchmarks we use to evaluate chatbot deployments for various applications. Guess your malady Led by Dr. Adam Mahdi, researchers at Oxford recruited 1,298 participants to present themselves as patients to an LLM. They were tasked with both attempting to figure out what ailed them and the appropriate level of care to seek for it, ranging from self-care to calling an ambulance. Each participant received a detailed scenario, representing conditions from pneumonia to the common cold, along with general life details and medical history. For instance, one scenario describes a 20-year-old engineering student who develops a crippling headache on a night out with friends. It includes important medical detailsand red herrings. The study tested three different LLMs. The researchers selected GPT-4o on account of its popularity, Llama 3 for its open weights and Command R+ for its retrieval-augmented generationabilities, which allow it to search the open web for help. Participants were asked to interact with the LLM at least once using the details provided, but could use it as many times as they wanted to arrive at their self-diagnosis and intended action. Behind the scenes, a team of physicians unanimously decided on the “gold standard” conditions they sought in every scenario, and the corresponding course of action. Our engineering student, for example, is suffering from a subarachnoid haemorrhage, which should entail an immediate visit to the ER. A game of telephone While you might assume an LLM that can ace a medical exam would be the perfect tool to help ordinary people self-diagnose and figure out what to do, it didn’t work out that way. “Participants using an LLM identified relevant conditions less consistently than those in the control group, identifying at least one relevant condition in at most 34.5% of cases compared to 47.0% for the control,” the study states. They also failed to deduce the correct course of action, selecting it just 44.2% of the time, compared to 56.3% for an LLM acting independently. What went wrong? Looking back at transcripts, researchers found that participants both provided incomplete information to the LLMs and the LLMs misinterpreted their prompts. For instance, one user who was supposed to exhibit symptoms of gallstones merely told the LLM: “I get severe stomach pains lasting up to an hour, It can make me vomit and seems to coincide with a takeaway,” omitting the location of the pain, the severity, and the frequency. Command R+ incorrectly suggested that the participant was experiencing indigestion, and the participant incorrectly guessed that condition. Even when LLMs delivered the correct information, participants didn’t always follow its recommendations. The study found that 65.7% of GPT-4o conversations suggested at least one relevant condition for the scenario, but somehow less than 34.5% of final answers from participants reflected those relevant conditions. The human variable This study is useful, but not surprising, according to Nathalie Volkheimer, a user experience specialist at the Renaissance Computing Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “For those of us old enough to remember the early days of internet search, this is déjà vu,” she says. “As a tool, large language models require prompts to be written with a particular degree of quality, especially when expecting a quality output.” She points out that someone experiencing blinding pain wouldn’t offer great prompts. Although participants in a lab experiment weren’t experiencing the symptoms directly, they weren’t relaying every detail. “There is also a reason why clinicians who deal with patients on the front line are trained to ask questions in a certain way and a certain repetitiveness,” Volkheimer goes on. Patients omit information because they don’t know what’s relevant, or at worst, lie because they’re embarrassed or ashamed. Can chatbots be better designed to address them? “I wouldn’t put the emphasis on the machinery here,” Volkheimer cautions. “I would consider the emphasis should be on the human-technology interaction.” The car, she analogizes, was built to get people from point A to B, but many other factors play a role. “It’s about the driver, the roads, the weather, and the general safety of the route. It isn’t just up to the machine.” A better yardstick The Oxford study highlights one problem, not with humans or even LLMs, but with the way we sometimes measure them—in a vacuum. When we say an LLM can pass a medical licensing test, real estate licensing exam, or a state bar exam, we’re probing the depths of its knowledge base using tools designed to evaluate humans. However, these measures tell us very little about how successfully these chatbots will interact with humans. “The prompts were textbook, but life and people are not textbook,” explains Dr. Volkheimer. Imagine an enterprise about to deploy a support chatbot trained on its internal knowledge base. One seemingly logical way to test that bot might simply be to have it take the same test the company uses for customer support trainees: answering prewritten “customer” support questions and selecting multiple-choice answers. An accuracy of 95% would certainly look pretty promising. Then comes deployment: Real customers use vague terms, express frustration, or describe problems in unexpected ways. The LLM, benchmarked only on clear-cut questions, gets confused and provides incorrect or unhelpful answers. It hasn’t been trained or evaluated on de-escalating situations or seeking clarification effectively. Angry reviews pile up. The launch is a disaster, despite the LLM sailing through tests that seemed robust for its human counterparts. This study serves as a critical reminder for AI engineers and orchestration specialists: if an LLM is designed to interact with humans, relying solely on non-interactive benchmarks can create a dangerous false sense of security about its real-world capabilities. If you’re designing an LLM to interact with humans, you need to test it with humans – not tests for humans. But is there a better way? Using AI to test AI The Oxford researchers recruited nearly 1,300 people for their study, but most enterprises don’t have a pool of test subjects sitting around waiting to play with a new LLM agent. So why not just substitute AI testers for human testers? Mahdi and his team tried that, too, with simulated participants. “You are a patient,” they prompted an LLM, separate from the one that would provide the advice. “You have to self-assess your symptoms from the given case vignette and assistance from an AI model. Simplify terminology used in the given paragraph to layman language and keep your questions or statements reasonably short.” The LLM was also instructed not to use medical knowledge or generate new symptoms. These simulated participants then chatted with the same LLMs the human participants used. But they performed much better. On average, simulated participants using the same LLM tools nailed the relevant conditions 60.7% of the time, compared to below 34.5% in humans. In this case, it turns out LLMs play nicer with other LLMs than humans do, which makes them a poor predictor of real-life performance. Don’t blame the user Given the scores LLMs could attain on their own, it might be tempting to blame the participants here. After all, in many cases, they received the right diagnoses in their conversations with LLMs, but still failed to correctly guess it. But that would be a foolhardy conclusion for any business, Volkheimer warns. “In every customer environment, if your customers aren’t doing the thing you want them to, the last thing you do is blame the customer,” says Volkheimer. “The first thing you do is ask why. And not the ‘why’ off the top of your head: but a deep investigative, specific, anthropological, psychological, examined ‘why.’ That’s your starting point.” You need to understand your audience, their goals, and the customer experience before deploying a chatbot, Volkheimer suggests. All of these will inform the thorough, specialized documentation that will ultimately make an LLM useful. Without carefully curated training materials, “It’s going to spit out some generic answer everyone hates, which is why people hate chatbots,” she says. When that happens, “It’s not because chatbots are terrible or because there’s something technically wrong with them. It’s because the stuff that went in them is bad.” “The people designing technology, developing the information to go in there and the processes and systems are, well, people,” says Volkheimer. “They also have background, assumptions, flaws and blindspots, as well as strengths. And all those things can get built into any technological solution.” Daily insights on business use cases with VB Daily If you want to impress your boss, VB Daily has you covered. We give you the inside scoop on what companies are doing with generative AI, from regulatory shifts to practical deployments, so you can share insights for maximum ROI. Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured. #just #add #humans #oxford #medical

Outdated coding practices and memory-unsafe languages like C are putting software, including cryptographic libraries, at risk. Fortunately, memory-safe languages like Rust, along with formal verification tools, are now mature enough to be used at scale, helping prevent issues like crashes, data corruption, flawed implementation, and side-channel attacks. To address these vulnerabilities and improve memory safety, we’re rewriting SymCrypt—Microsoft’s open-source cryptographic library—in Rust. We’re also incorporating formal verification methods. SymCrypt is used in Windows, Azure Linux, Xbox, and other platforms. Currently, SymCrypt is primarily written in cross-platform C, with limited use of hardware-specific optimizations through intrinsicsand assembly language. It provides a wide range of algorithms, including AES-GCM, SHA, ECDSA, and the more recent post-quantum algorithms ML-KEM and ML-DSA.  Formal verification will confirm that implementations behave as intended and don’t deviate from algorithm specifications, critical for preventing attacks. We’ll also analyze compiled code to detect side-channel leaks caused by timing or hardware-level behavior. Proving Rust program properties with Aeneas Program verification is the process of proving that a piece of code will always satisfy a given property, no matter the input. Rust’s type system profoundly improves the prospects for program verification by providing strong ownership guarantees, by construction, using a discipline known as “aliasing xor mutability”. For example, reasoning about C code often requires proving that two non-const pointers are live and non-overlapping, a property that can depend on external client code. In contrast, Rust’s type system guarantees this property for any two mutably borrowed references. As a result, new tools have emerged specifically for verifying Rust code. We chose Aeneasbecause it helps provide a clean separation between code and proofs. Developed by Microsoft Azure Research in partnership with Inria, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, Aeneas connects to proof assistants like Lean, allowing us to draw on a large body of mathematical proofs—especially valuable given the mathematical nature of cryptographic algorithms—and benefit from Lean’s active user community. Compiling Rust to C supports backward compatibility   We recognize that switching to Rust isn’t feasible for all use cases, so we’ll continue to support, extend, and certify C-based APIs as long as users need them. Users won’t see any changes, as Rust runs underneath the existing C APIs. Some users compile our C code directly and may rely on specific toolchains or compiler features that complicate the adoption of Rust code. To address this, we will use Eurydice, a Rust-to-C compiler developed by Microsoft Azure Research, to replace handwritten C code with C generated from formally verified Rust. Eurydicecompiles directly from Rust’s MIR intermediate language, and the resulting C code will be checked into the SymCrypt repository alongside the original Rust source code. As more users adopt Rust, we’ll continue supporting this compilation path for those who build SymCrypt from source code but aren’t ready to use the Rust compiler. In the long term, we hope to transition users to either use precompiled SymCrypt binaries, or compile from source code in Rust, at which point the Rust-to-C compilation path will no longer be needed. Microsoft research podcast Ideas: AI and democracy with Madeleine Daepp and Robert Osazuwa Ness As the “biggest election year in history” comes to an end, researchers Madeleine Daepp and Robert Osazuwa Ness and Democracy Forward GM Ginny Badanes discuss AI’s impact on democracy, including the tech’s use in Taiwan and India. Listen now Opens in a new tab Timing analysis with Revizor  Even software that has been verified for functional correctness can remain vulnerable to low-level security threats, such as side channels caused by timing leaks or speculative execution. These threats operate at the hardware level and can leak private information, such as memory load addresses, branch targets, or division operands, even when the source code is provably correct.  To address this, we’re extending Revizor, a tool developed by Microsoft Azure Research, to more effectively analyze SymCrypt binaries. Revizor models microarchitectural leakage and uses fuzzing techniques to systematically uncover instructions that may expose private information through known hardware-level effects.   Earlier cryptographic libraries relied on constant-time programming to avoid operations on secret data. However, recent research has shown that this alone is insufficient with today’s CPUs, where every new optimization may open a new side channel.  By analyzing binary code for specific compilers and platforms, our extended Revizor tool enables deeper scrutiny of vulnerabilities that aren’t visible in the source code. Verified Rust implementations begin with ML-KEM This long-term effort is in alignment with the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative and brings together experts across Microsoft, building on decades of Microsoft Research investment in program verification and security tooling. A preliminary version of ML-KEM in Rust is now available on the preview feature/verifiedcryptobranch of the SymCrypt repository. We encourage users to try the Rust build and share feedback. Looking ahead, we plan to support direct use of the same cryptographic library in Rust without requiring C bindings.  Over the coming months, we plan to rewrite, verify, and ship several algorithms in Rust as part of SymCrypt. As our investment in Rust deepens, we expect to gain new insights into how to best leverage the language for high-assurance cryptographic implementations with low-level optimizations.  As performance is key to scalability and sustainability, we’re holding new implementations to a high bar using our benchmarking tools to match or exceed existing systems. Looking forward  This is a pivotal moment for high-assurance software. Microsoft’s investment in Rust and formal verification presents a rare opportunity to advance one of our key libraries. We’re excited to scale this work and ultimately deliver an industrial-grade, Rust-based, FIPS-certified cryptographic library. Opens in a new tab #rewriting #symcrypt #rust #modernize #microsofts

Reading Time: 9 minutes In the ever-evolving landscape of customer engagement, staying ahead of the curve is not just advantageous, it’s essential. That’s why, for Chapter 7 of “The Customer Engagement Book: Adapt or Die,” we sat down with Mirela Cialai, a seasoned expert in CRM and Martech strategies at brands like Equinox. Mirela brings a wealth of knowledge in aligning technology roadmaps with business goals, shifting organizational focuses from acquisition to retention, and leveraging hyper-personalization to drive success. In this interview, Mirela dives deep into building robust customer engagement technology roadmaps. She unveils the “PAPER” framework—Plan, Audit, Prioritize, Execute, Refine—a simple yet effective strategy for marketers. You’ll gain insights into identifying gaps in your Martech stack, ensuring data accuracy, and prioritizing initiatives that deliver the greatest impact and ROI. Whether you’re navigating data silos, striving for cross-functional alignment, or aiming for seamless tech integration, Mirela’s expertise provides practical solutions and actionable takeaways.   Mirela Cialai Q&A Interview 1. How do you define the vision for a customer engagement platform roadmap in alignment with the broader business goals? Can you share any examples of successful visions from your experience? Defining the vision for the roadmap in alignment with the broader business goals involves creating a strategic framework that connects the team’s objectives with the organization’s overarching mission or primary objectives. This could be revenue growth, customer retention, market expansion, or operational efficiency. We then break down these goals into actionable areas where the team can contribute, such as improving engagement, increasing lifetime value, or driving acquisition. We articulate how the team will support business goals by defining the KPIs that link CRM outcomes — the team’s outcomes — to business goals. In a previous role, the CRM team I was leading faced significant challenges due to the lack of attribution capabilities and a reliance on surface-level metrics such as open rates and click-through rates to measure performance. This approach made it difficult to quantify the impact of our efforts on broader business objectives such as revenue growth. Recognizing this gap, I worked on defining a vision for the CRM team to address these shortcomings. Our vision was to drive measurable growth through enhanced data accuracy and improved attribution capabilities, which allowed us to deliver targeted, data-driven, and personalized customer experiences. To bring this vision to life, I developed a roadmap that focused on first improving data accuracy, building our attribution capabilities, and delivering personalization at scale. By aligning the vision with these strategic priorities, we were able to demonstrate the tangible impact of our efforts on the key business goals. 2. What steps did you take to ensure data accuracy? The data team was very diligent in ensuring that our data warehouse had accurate data. So taking that as the source of truth, we started cleaning the data in all the other platforms that were integrated with our data warehouse — our CRM platform, our attribution analytics platform, etc. That’s where we started, looking at all the different integrations and ensuring that the data flows were correct and that we had all the right flows in place. And also validating and cleaning our email database — that helped, having more accurate data. 3. How do you recommend shifting organizational focus from acquisition to retention within a customer engagement strategy? Shifting an organization’s focus from acquisition to retention requires a cultural and strategic shift, emphasizing the immense value that existing customers bring to long-term growth and profitability. I would start by quantifying the value of retention, showcasing how retaining customers is significantly more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Research consistently shows that increasing retention rates by just 5% can boost profits by at least 25 to 95%. This data helps make a compelling case to stakeholders about the importance of prioritizing retention. Next, I would link retention to core business goals by demonstrating how enhancing customer lifetime value and loyalty can directly drive revenue growth. This involves shifting the organization’s focus to retention-specific metrics such as churn rate, repeat purchase rate, and customer LTV. These metrics provide actionable insights into customer behaviors and highlight the financial impact of retention initiatives, ensuring alignment with the broader company objectives. By framing retention as a driver of sustainable growth, the organization can see it not as a competing priority, but as a complementary strategy to acquisition, ultimately leading to a more balanced and effective customer engagement strategy. 4. What are the key steps in analyzing a brand’s current Martech stack capabilities to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement? Developing a clear understanding of the Martech stack’s current state and ensuring it aligns with a brand’s strategic needs and future goals requires a structured and strategic approach. The process begins with defining what success looks like in terms of technology capabilities such as scalability, integration, automation, and data accessibility, and linking these capabilities directly to the brand’s broader business objectives. I start by doing an inventory of all tools currently in use, including their purpose, owner, and key functionalities, assessing if these tools are being used to their full potential or if there are features that remain unused, and reviewing how well tools integrate with one another and with our core systems, the data warehouse. Also, comparing the capabilities of each tool and results against industry standards and competitor practices and looking for missing functionalities such as personalization, omnichannel orchestration, or advanced analytics, and identifying overlapping tools that could be consolidated to save costs and streamline workflows. Finally, review the costs of the current tools against their impact on business outcomes and identify technologies that could reduce costs, increase efficiency, or deliver higher ROI through enhanced capabilities. Establish a regular review cycle for the Martech stack to ensure it evolves alongside the business and the technological landscape. 5. How do you evaluate whether a company’s tech stack can support innovative customer-focused campaigns, and what red flags should marketers look out for? I recommend taking a structured approach and first ensure there is seamless integration across all tools to support a unified customer view and data sharing across the different channels. Determine if the stack can handle increasing data volumes, larger audiences, and additional channels as the campaigns grow, and check if it supports dynamic content, behavior-based triggers, and advanced segmentation and can process and act on data in real time through emerging technologies like AI/ML predictive analytics to enable marketers to launch responsive and timely campaigns. Most importantly, we need to ensure that the stack offers robust reporting tools that provide actionable insights, allowing teams to track performance and optimize campaigns. Some of the red flags are: data silos where customer data is fragmented across platforms and not easily accessible or integrated, inability to process or respond to customer behavior in real time, a reliance on manual intervention for tasks like segmentation, data extraction, campaign deployment, and poor scalability. If the stack struggles with growing data volumes or expanding to new channels, it won’t support the company’s evolving needs. 6. What role do hyper-personalization and timely communication play in a successful customer engagement strategy? How do you ensure they’re built into the technology roadmap? Hyper-personalization and timely communication are essential components of a successful customer engagement strategy because they create meaningful, relevant, and impactful experiences that deepen the relationship with customers, enhance loyalty, and drive business outcomes. Hyper-personalization leverages data to deliver tailored content that resonates with each individual based on their preferences, behavior, or past interactions, and timely communication ensures these personalized interactions occur at the most relevant moments, which ultimately increases their impact. Customers are more likely to engage with messages that feel relevant and align with their needs, and real-time triggers such as cart abandonment or post-purchase upsells capitalize on moments when customers are most likely to convert. By embedding these capabilities into the roadmap through data integration, AI-driven insights, automation, and continuous optimization, we can deliver impactful, relevant, and timely experiences that foster deeper customer relationships and drive long-term success. 7. What’s your approach to breaking down the customer engagement technology roadmap into manageable phases? How do you prioritize the initiatives? To create a manageable roadmap, we need to divide it into distinct phases, starting with building the foundation by addressing data cleanup, system integrations, and establishing metrics, which lays the groundwork for success. Next, we can focus on early wins and quick impact by launching behavior-based campaigns, automating workflows, and improving personalization to drive immediate value. Then we can move to optimization and expansion, incorporating predictive analytics, cross-channel orchestration, and refined attribution models to enhance our capabilities. Finally, prioritize innovation and scalability, leveraging AI/ML for hyper-personalization, scaling campaigns to new markets, and ensuring the system is equipped for future growth. By starting with foundational projects, delivering quick wins, and building towards scalable innovation, we can drive measurable outcomes while maintaining our agility to adapt to evolving needs. In terms of prioritizing initiatives effectively, I would focus on projects that deliver the greatest impact on business goals, on customer experience and ROI, while we consider feasibility, urgency, and resource availability. In the past, I’ve used frameworks like Impact Effort Matrix to identify the high-impact, low-effort initiatives and ensure that the most critical projects are addressed first. 8. How do you ensure cross-functional alignment around this roadmap? What processes have worked best for you? Ensuring cross-functional alignment requires clear communication, collaborative planning, and shared accountability. We need to establish a shared understanding of the roadmap’s purpose and how it ties to the company’s overall goals by clearly articulating the “why” behind the roadmap and how each team can contribute to its success. To foster buy-in and ensure the roadmap reflects diverse perspectives and needs, we need to involve all stakeholders early on during the roadmap development and clearly outline each team’s role in executing the roadmap to ensure accountability across the different teams. To keep teams informed and aligned, we use meetings such as roadmap kickoff sessions and regular check-ins to share updates, address challenges collaboratively, and celebrate milestones together. 9. If you were to outline a simple framework for marketers to follow when building a customer engagement technology roadmap, what would it look like? A simple framework for marketers to follow when building the roadmap can be summarized in five clear steps: Plan, Audit, Prioritize, Execute, and Refine. In one word: PAPER. Here’s how it breaks down. Plan: We lay the groundwork for the roadmap by defining the CRM strategy and aligning it with the business goals. Audit: We evaluate the current state of our CRM capabilities. We conduct a comprehensive assessment of our tools, our data, the processes, and team workflows to identify any potential gaps. Prioritize: initiatives based on impact, feasibility, and ROI potential. Execute: by implementing the roadmap in manageable phases. Refine: by continuously improving CRM performance and refining the roadmap. So the PAPER framework — Plan, Audit, Prioritize, Execute, and Refine — provides a structured, iterative approach allowing marketers to create a scalable and impactful customer engagement strategy. 10. What are the most common challenges marketers face in creating or executing a customer engagement strategy, and how can they address these effectively? The most critical is when the customer data is siloed across different tools and platforms, making it very difficult to get a unified view of the customer. This limits the ability to deliver personalized and consistent experiences. The solution is to invest in tools that can centralize data from all touchpoints and ensure seamless integration between different platforms to create a single source of truth. Another challenge is the lack of clear metrics and ROI measurement and the inability to connect engagement efforts to tangible business outcomes, making it very hard to justify investment or optimize strategies. The solution for that is to define clear KPIs at the outset and use attribution models to link customer interactions to revenue and other key outcomes. Overcoming internal silos is another challenge where there is misalignment between teams, which can lead to inconsistent messaging and delayed execution. A solution to this is to foster cross-functional collaboration through shared goals, regular communication, and joint planning sessions. Besides these, other challenges marketers can face are delivering personalization at scale, keeping up with changing customer expectations, resource and budget constraints, resistance to change, and others. While creating and executing a customer engagement strategy can be challenging, these obstacles can be addressed through strategic planning, leveraging the right tools, fostering collaboration, and staying adaptable to customer needs and industry trends. By tackling these challenges proactively, marketers can deliver impactful customer-centric strategies that drive long-term success. 11. What are the top takeaways or lessons that you’ve learned from building customer engagement technology roadmaps that others should keep in mind? I would say one of the most important takeaways is to ensure that the roadmap directly supports the company’s broader objectives. Whether the focus is on retention, customer lifetime value, or revenue growth, the roadmap must bridge the gap between high-level business goals and actionable initiatives. Another important lesson: The roadmap is only as effective as the data and systems it’s built upon. I’ve learned the importance of prioritizing foundational elements like data cleanup, integrations, and governance before tackling advanced initiatives like personalization or predictive analytics. Skipping this step can lead to inefficiencies or missed opportunities later on. A Customer Engagement Roadmap is a strategic tool that evolves alongside the business and its customers. So by aligning with business goals, building a solid foundation, focusing on impact, fostering collaboration, and remaining adaptable, you can create a roadmap that delivers measurable results and meaningful customer experiences.     This interview Q&A was hosted with Mirela Cialai, Director of CRM & MarTech at Equinox, for Chapter 7 of The Customer Engagement Book: Adapt or Die. Download the PDF or request a physical copy of the book here. The post Mirela Cialai Q&A: Customer Engagement Book Interview appeared first on MoEngage. #mirela #cialai #qampampa #customer #engagement