Tag: Enterprise

Amazon Career Choice X Flatiron School Partnership

Posted on by Rhiana Ricciotti

Amazon’s Career Choice program empowers its employees by providing them access to the education and training needed to grow their careers at Amazon and beyond.

In the U.S., the company will invest $1.2 billion to upskill more than 300,000 employees by 2025 to help move them into higher-paying, in-demand jobs. For this investment, Amazon selected Flatiron School as one of its education partners to develop a customized technical training program for its hourly employees to help them access better-paying, skilled positions in software engineering, cybersecurity, and other tech fields.

The Challenge

Amazon has been rapidly growing its workforce over the past several years to meet increasing demand, hiring hundreds of thousands of front-line employees across the U.S.

As a company, Amazon believes that everyone should have the opportunity to learn new skills and build their career. A job with Amazon may be a springboard into a long-term career in another field, so they want to provide the training employees need to grow their careers.

In addition to the coursework and classes, they are focused on outcomes for employees, providing them with support services throughout their education and career journey. They want partners who share this focus on outcomes.

Why Amazon Selected Flatiron School

Since the first cohort in 2021, Flatiron School has offered the technical and instructional expertise, program design experience, job-placement track record, and ability to deliver at the scale that Amazon needed for the Career Choice programs.

This is why Amazon has partnered with Flatiron School to develop curriculum programs across cybersecurity, software development, data analytics, and web development for nine cohorts and counting. 

Amazon’s Challenge

With demand for tech workers soaring, Amazon wanted to offer transformative technical programs, with strong job placement outcomes, as part of Career Choice. Amazon needed a partner with the ability to both teach in-demand technical skills and drive high job placement rates.

Flatiron School’s Solution

Scalable, Customized Courses Paired with A Proven Job-Placement Approach

  1. Flatiron School developed six part-time, customized tech programs for Amazon employees to drive deep technical learning. 
  2. All programs were 32 weeks and provided students with the flexibility to learn new skills…
  3. …while still working full-time, dedicating 12-15 hours per week to the program.

The Results

During the first year of the partnership, 270 Amazon employees from across 38 fulfillment centers used their Career Choice benefits to become Software Engineers and Cybersecurity Analysts.

The Amazon Career Choice program also increased warehouse worker tenure, retention, and employee satisfaction.

The inaugural cohort wrapped up in October 2021. Within less than a week of graduation, two Amazon employees had already landed jobs in tech, with significant increases to their salaries. Because of its success and the benefits they saw with the program, Amazon expanded the program in 2022 and internationally for 2023, enrolling over 800 Amazon Associates each year.

In 2023, 9 cohorts across Amazon Cybersecurity Analytics, Amazon Data Analytics, Amazon Software Development, and Amazon Web Development have been developed.

For more information on the Amazon Career Choice program, visit the program application page.

How Financial Services Prepares For The Holiday Season

Posted on by Anna Van Deusen

With the holidays right around the corner, financial service companies are preparing for a busy shopping season. 

Public trust in the security of digital purchases has had a hand in the boom of online shopping. Consumers are now more likely to visit digital storefronts, instead of brick-and-mortar locations. As of 2022, an estimated 2.14 billion purchase goods online and at least 75% of consumers shop online at least once a month.

With every online transaction, gift purchase, or swipe of a card, financial services are tasked with keeping data secure.

So, with holiday shopping ramping up, what challenges should financial services be prepared to tackle?

Problem #1: How To Prevent Data Breaches?

A data breach can cost millions, tarnish a company’s reputation, and leave customers doubting that their information is safe. In fact, according to the Ponemon Institute and IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average total cost of a data breach increased from $3.86 million to $4.24 million in 2021.

Cybersecurity can feel like an endless game of one-upping bad actors. Even large companies struggle to keep up with digital innovation which has resulted in an ever-increasing number and complexity of cyber attacks. 

In a digital world where automated attacks can quickly overwhelm manual monitoring attempts, having adept and skilled professionals in place is critical to a company’s continued prosperity and longevity.

Solution: Invest In Cybersecurity Preparation and Plan Ahead

To tackle the cybersecurity threats attempting to infiltrate your organization, it’s crucial to develop a two-pronged plan – a prevention strategy and a response procedure.

Prevention Strategy

You’ve likely heard that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of treatment, which is particularly relevant to preventing cybercrime. 

Financial services should reinforce their cyber protocols and ensure that their team is skilled, supplied with appropriate software and platforms, and has the bandwidth necessary to handle the deluge of attacks. This can be accomplished either by outsourcing to third-party providers or investing in internal infrastructure and employees by hiring new employees with up-to-date skills or upskilling your existing workforce. 

Response Procedure

Should bad actors breach your organization’s data stores, it’s vital to have a plan of action in place. 

Shockingly few companies have a solid breach response plan in place, and time wasted scrambling to decide what to do, who has access to what, and which files may have been compromised lets whoever has infiltrated run amock in your system. 

To be fully prepared, financial services should develop, test, and implement an incident response plan to minimize the potential fallout of a breach. 

Related reading: Top 3 Cybersecurity Pain Points in 2022

Problem #2: How To Reach New Customers?

No matter the industry, product, or company size, the goal is ultimately the same – growth.

But for financial services, a saturated market can make it difficult to differentiate themselves from competitors and attract new customers. Many organizations find themselves pondering as the biggest shopping season ramps up, “how do we stay ahead of the competition and reach new customers who prefer online experiences?”

Solution: Leverage The Power of Data

To attract new customers, financial services can use the data they collect, which we discussed protecting above. 

Invest in Data Scientists who are able to decipher actionable insights from data collected about existing customers and use models to forecast emerging market trends. By making data-backed, research-based decisions, your organization can develop targeted promotions and bring in new customers, all with information you already had on hand.

Related reading: The (Data) Science Behind Netflix Recommendations

Tech Talent Solutions Made For Financial Services

Whether it’s the holiday shopping season or not, financial services have no shortage of challenges: legacy technology, cybercrime, and connecting data across brick-and-mortar and digital products. 

Let Flatiron School help modernize your business with training and talent services across Cybersecurity, Data Science, Software Engineering, and Product Design.

Contact us to get started.

How Retailers Prepare For The Holiday Season

Posted on by Anna Van Deusen

With the holidays right around the corner, retailers are preparing for a busy shopping season. Each year, more consumers are shopping online. As a result, retailers must invest in their digital storefronts, backend security, and supporting software to keep customers coming back.

So, with holiday shopping ramping up, what challenges should retailers be prepared to tackle this year?

Problem #1: How To Prevent Data Breaches?

A data breach can cost millions of dollars, tarnish a company’s reputation, and leave customers with little trust that their information will be kept safe. In fact, according to the Ponemon Institute and IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average total cost of a data breach increased from $3.86 million to $4.24 million in 2021.

Cybersecurity can feel like an endless game of one-upping bad actors, with even large companies struggling to keep up with digital innovation that has resulted in an ever-increasing number and complexity of cyber attacks. 

In a digital world where automated attacks can quickly overwhelm manual monitoring attempts, having adept and skilled professionals in place is critical to a company’s continued prosperity and longevity.

Solution: Invest In Cybersecurity Preparation and Plan Ahead

To tackle the cybersecurity threats attempting to infiltrate your organization, it’s crucial to develop a two-pronged plan – a prevention strategy and a response procedure.

Prevention Strategy

You’ve likely heard that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of treatment, which is particularly relevant to preventing cybercrime. 

Retailers should reinforce their cyber protocols and ensure that their team is skilled, supplied with appropriate software and platforms, and has the bandwidth necessary to handle the deluge of attacks. This can be accomplished either by outsourcing to third-party providers or investing in internal infrastructure and employees by hiring new employees with up-to-date skills or upskilling your existing workforce. 

Response Procedure

Should bad actors breach your organization’s data stores, it’s vital to have a plan of action in place. 

Shockingly few companies have a solid breach response plan in place, and time wasted scrambling to decide what to do, who has access to what, and which files may have been compromised lets whoever has infiltrated run amok in your system. 

To be fully prepared, retailers should develop, test, and implement an incident response plan to minimize the potential fallout of a breach. 

Related reading: Top 3 Cybersecurity Pain Points in 2022

Problem #2: How To Increase Customer Loyalty?

With the rise of the digital-first era, shoppers are no longer walking into physical stores for their goods. Instead, they are logging onto their computers or opening a mobile app, credit card in hand.

Customer touch points now feature everything from brand-owned mobile apps to traditional website storefronts and social media platforms. Each channel is a chance for retailers’ brand messaging to reinforce customer loyalty.

So, how do retailers elevate the customer experience across all these touchpoints?

Solution: Develop Supportive Software

With so many brand touchpoints across multiple platforms and channels, delivering a seamless, omnichannel experience is key. To achieve this, retailers can invest in software engineering to develop custom retail software. 

Company-specific software creates IT solutions that automate the retail business process, streamlining offerings and product delivery. Everything from sales notification, invoice delivery, shipping, and returns/refunds can be accomplished by one, overarching system. 

That way, no matter where a customer interacts with your brand, they’ll be met with a consistent, pleasant, and easy-to-navigate system they know well. 

Related reading: Top 3 Retail Tech Trends in 2022

Problem #3: How To Quantify Consumer Behavior?

With trends that change at the pace of social media algorithms, it can feel just about impossible to predict trends. What was trendy one moment can be “last season” the next, with product and marketing teams struggling to keep up. 

Many retailers are asking, “how can we quantify customers’ behavior and translate it into sales?”

Solution: Leverage The Power Of Data

To predict consumer behavior and deliver tailored experiences that convert, retailers need simply to harness the power of data. 

Without a doubt, somewhere in every retailer’s system is a mountain of data. This data is generated by customers each time they interact with a brand. Data Scientists use models and machine learning to connect data points from multiple sources and generate actionable insights that can be incorporated into a retailer’s strategy at scale. 

To improve conversion rates, retailers should invest in a team of skilled data scientists – or upskill their current team. Data Scientists can use data-driven insights to create recommendations catered to each customer. That way, they’ll keep them coming back to the company that, somehow, knows them so well.  

Related reading: The (Data) Science Behind Netflix Recommendations

Tech Talent Solutions Made For Retailers

The tech that powers digital shopping is only as effective as the talent behind the scenes. 

For 10 years, Flatiron School has been teaching the tech skills that retailers need most. Let us help accelerate your business with our talent and training solutions.

Contact us today to get started.

Flatiron School Launches 5-Day Enterprise Cybersecurity Program

Posted on by Rhiana Ricciotti

Flatiron School, a top provider of technical education and talent, has launched its 5-day Enterprise Cybersecurity Program, a comprehensive learning experience designed to equip organizations’ entry-level tech talent with essential cybersecurity skills and the capacity to act as a unit. 

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a fitting acknowledgment of one of today’s top worldwide business concerns. Studies show over 300,000 new pieces of malware are created daily, posing major threats to organizations’ data, security, and reputations. 

To help prevent and protect against these threats, Flatiron School created an accelerated 5-Day Enterprise Cybersecurity program to provide employees with the skills needed to mitigate or avert cybersecurity risks altogether.

Program Overview

The program focuses on solidifying foundational cybersecurity knowledge and providing learning in topics relevant to an organization’s cyber function, thus enabling talent to deliver the most advanced, cutting-edge work products to their organization and end clients.

“Now more than ever, businesses must equip their teams with the expertise needed to prevent and respond to the ever-growing amount of cyber attacks occurring worldwide,” said Nancy Ziser, Executive Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Flatiron School. “The goal of this program is to jumpstart learning essential cybersecurity skills for employees responsible for protecting data and minimizing threats to various organizations. We are excited to offer this kind of education to people who are continuously fielding cybersecurity issues on the ground.” 

Program participants receive 40 hours of instruction either remotely or in person over five days. Participants will receive foundational knowledge in:

  • Computer networking, including common network devices and common threats to each layer of the OSI model.
  • Identity and access management (IAM), including knowledge of LDAP and Active Directory (AD).
  • Vulnerabilities and the purpose of red, blue, and purple teams in securing an organization
  • Governance, risk, and compliance, including familiarity with NIST and ISO frameworks.
  • Internet of Things (IoT) and operational technology (OT) security risks.
  • Cloud computing and common security threats to cloud deployments.
  • SIEM tools and logging.
  • Cyber threat intel, including MITRE ATT&CK and the Diamond Mode.

To learn more about Flatiron School’s 5-day Enterprise Cybersecurity Program, please click here.