Software development is at the heart of any business now

Software development is at the heart of any business now, and managing IT risk is an ever increasing challenge. The pace of change, together with powerful tooling in the cloud, open source, and AI space pose new threats that can’t be managed in the old ways. Ahead of being a silver sponsor at Fintech Connect Europe 2023, we caught up with Mike Long, who is the co-founder of Kosli to explore his thoughts on the most exciting technologies in FinTech, Kolsi’s three biggest priorities in 2024 and the questions he’d put forward given the opportunity to talk directoly to a regulator.

Please give us a little introduction on your current role and what you do

I’m Mike Long, co-founder of Kosli. Kosli is a start-up/scale-up in the devops compliance and security space, helping developers in regulated industries deliver compliant, secure changes without delays. As CEO, my role requires a real mix of focus areas, covering everything from technology leadership, market positioning, and sales, through to handling the routine day-to-day operational tasks that need to be done. I’m really passionate about our mission at Kosli, so regardless of the task my day is filled with joy.

What do you consider your biggest professional achievement to date?

If I’m really honest (and why shouldn’t I be- this is just us speaking, right? ;-)) I think I’m still climbing the mountain. I’ve been part of deep-tech teams building mechatronic systems, and helped build a devops consultancy organically up to 7 offices through to acquisition as CTO. These were truly great experiences, but nothing compares to the challenge and ambition of what we are doing at Kosli. It is *so hard* to build a technology company from the ground up, and the learning curve keeps you humble. So I hope that this moment, right now, is the beginning of the achievement.

What are your/your companies top 3 priorities for 2023/24?

I have recently moved with my family to the US, to help support our expansion plans and support our new customers. With that in mind, our top priority is to support our existing customers and introduce new customers to the latest techniques available in automated governance. This is a fast paced environment, and working closely with the market will be key in the next 12 months.

Next, people are everything. Ensuring that we are cultivating a good culture, making good hiring decisions and giving everyone in the team the support and leadership they need to thrive in Kosli is imperative.

Finally, in order to realise our vision of being the best solution for devops compliance, audit & security tooling in the market requires a laser focus on product management. Sweating the details and ensuring we solve the right problems for our customers is a full time job.

What are the most exciting technologies you see emerging within RegTech

  • I’m going to stick to my home turf and talk about securing the internal software supply chain with automated governance.
  • Software development is at the heart of any business now, and managing IT risk is an ever increasing challenge. The pace of change, together with powerful tooling in the cloud, open source, and AI space pose new threats that can’t be managed in the old ways.
  • The rising trend of implementing policy as code, especially in the software development realm, will have a significant impact on engineering speed as well as significantly improving risk practices. I’m excited to see how broadly FI’s can replace manual, point-in-time controls with continuous compliance automation.

If you had the opportunity to talk directly to a regulator, what 3 2 questions would you ask them?

  • The Swedish financial regulator recently fined Swedbank over $80MUSD for an unauthorized change leading to a customer incident because it “did not have suitable control mechanisms in place to be able to capture the deviation”. My question for regulators is: who does? When I look across technical organizations (outside of Kosli customers) very few have any production workload monitoring that could catch this. I happen to agree that this is a critical control, so how will the regulator press more on this issue?

Hear From Mike At FinTech Connect Europe

Catch Mike Long at FinTech Connect Europe:

Mike Long, Co-Founder and CEO of Kosli will be speaking on Day 2 of FinTech Connect Europe, 7th December, on the RegTech & Security stage. The panel will be a deep dive conversation between:

  • Susana Ponce-Fremont, Global Head of Financial and Credit Risk, Tide
  • Erik Morgan, Group Financial Crime Prevention - Lead Global Risk Model, SEB
  • Mike Long, Co-Founder and CEO, Kosli
  • Moderated by Robin Amlôt, Managing Editor, IBS Intelligence

With key discussion points exploring:

  • Automating regulatory procedures for optimum tracking and monitoring Increasing collaboration and knowledge sharing with regulators to remain compliant – how are companies navigated the changes of 2023? Integration of technology to effectively work with RegTechs – what do compliance teams need to consider?
  • Increasing collaboration and knowledge sharing with regulators to remain compliant – how are companies navigated the changes of 2023?
  • Integration of technology to effectively work with RegTechs – what do compliance teams need to consider?

To hear from Mike Long at FinTech Connect Europe on the 7th December, save your seat here today.

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