Blog

What a very interesting experiment: Researches randomly deposited 297 USB drives (aka USB stick, flash drive, thumb drive) around the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. They wanted to see just how many, and how soon after dropping them off, they’d be collected by people.

Turns out that 48 percent of the drives were taken and inserted into computers. The report at theregister.co.uk says that in some cases, this was done minutes after the drives were left in the public spots.

Picking up

By this point, the Volkswagen scandal is old news (we first blogged about it last October). Yet details about the case continue to emerge, most recently about board accountability. As of last week, a Volkswagen “internal probe into its emissions-cheating scandal found no evidence of wrongdoing by members of senior management…” In other words, VW’s Board didn’t know about the deception until it was too late.

This might appear to be a good thing, but actually VW is making its situation worse. Why?

Domestic Focus May Limit Clout of $2 Trillion Saudi Fund

Source:

DUBAI | Andrew Torchia

REUTERS

 Saudi Arabia aims to create the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund, a $2 trillion behemoth that can throw its weight around global markets, but the fund's growth abroad is likely to be slowed by its responsibility for aiding the economy at home.

Building the Public Investment Fund (PIF) into "the largest fund in the world by far" is a cornerstone of radical economic reforms announced by Deputy Crown

Interview with Daniel Damon, Managing Director, Loan Capital Markets, US Bank

A number of new challenges and issues affecting leveraged finance have recently emerged. The continued pressure of the Interagency Guidance means institutions are concerned of falling foul of the regulators. In addition, the current market trends of rising interest rates and falling oil prices have heavily impacted the creation and funding of leveraged loans, making it harder and harder to manage them in the current reg

Yes, believe it or not, you CAN get by in life with a wallet that just has a little cash, a store card or two, one to two credit cards and your ID. Unless you absolutely need your insurance card or Social Security card, leave those items at home.

For years now, wallets have been on the market that you can stuff everything into, save for the kitchen sink. This doesn’t mean you must carry a ridiculous bulging wallet everywhere you go.

Now you may not mind having to dig through your wallet for five m

4 lessons from Bhutan on the pursuit of happiness above GDP

From Safety to Profit Tool: Collateral Optimization

Interview with Judson Baker, Senior Vice President and Product Manager of Derivatives at Northern Trust.

The past year and a half has seen collateral management evolve from a back-office concern, to a middle and front-office operation. The Dodd-Frank Act, devised as a solution to the financial crisis, has had a profound effect on the market, which many are still learning to manage effectively. The threat of new uncleared margin rules (taking ef

Beware of the B.E.C. scam, says a report at fbi.gov. The hackers target businesses and are good at getting what they want.

The hackers first learn the name of a company’s CEO or other key figure such as the company’s lawyer or a vendor. They then figure out a way to make an e-mail, coming from them, appear to come from this CEO, and send it to employees.

The recipients aren’t just randomly selected, either. The hackers do their homework to find out which employees handle money. They even learn the

Craigslist is one of my favorite sites on the Internet, though I admittedly have a love/hate relationship with it. One reason I love it is because of the deals and variety of items and services available, but I hate it because some of the people who use it are scammers and the site has some major security issues.

Once, I listed a property on on Craigslist for rent. Scammers relisted the property for a third of the asking price. People came to my home and would knock on my door to see the property

marcus evans to host Model Risk & ERM for Insurers conference July 2016

Join leaders in model risk management, model design, and risk modeling to achieve a concrete model risk framework through optimal validation procedures, reporting, and independent reviews.

New York, NY – April 8, 2016 – marcus evans will host the Model Risk & ERM for Insurers Conference on July 17-18, 2016 in New York City, New York. Insurance professionals attend this meeting to learn from their experienced peers in how to

Cyberattack prevention measures will always be necessary. The constant threat of data breaches and other hacks is simply a fact of business. Priority targets are no longer limited to retailers and banks; insurers, hospitals, energy producers, and (most recently) a host of law firms are all at risk.

“Hackers broke into the computer networks at some of the country’s most prestigious law firms,” according to The Wall Street Journal. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise: What do organizations like

Each year, researchers in security take the time to rate some of the worst passwords found on the Internet. While popular pop culture events have caused waves with the list of the worst passwords of 2015 – think “solo,” “starwars,” and “princess” – the worst passwords of last year were still the usual suspects, “password,” “123456,” and “qwerty.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that researchers estimate as many as 90 percent of all user-generated passwords are subject to hacking. However, it

The Risk EMEA 2016 Summit, EMEA’s premier banking risk and regulation gathering, returns to London for it’s fifth year after extensive research, conducted by the Center for Financial Professionals and 200 senior tier 1 banking risk professionals, finely illustrated the key regulatory challenges facing EMEA risk professionals over the coming year.

This year, the Risk EMEA Summit will be the gathering for banking risk and regulation professionals to gain insights and network with over 250 like-min

So Macs can be infected with malware. Who would have ever thought? The malware at issue here is the dreaded ransomware. Ransomware scrambles up your files, and the hacker at the helm says he’ll give you the cyber “key” in exchange for a handsome payment.

Ransomware historically has primarily impacted Windows users, but recently it got into OS X—its latest version, Transmission.

• The virus cyber-incubates for three days.
• Then with a Tor client, it connects to an Internet server and locks vulnerable f

Someone else might file your taxes if you don’t get to it. And they won’t be doing it as a favor; they’ll be doing it to steal your identity.

Here’s how it works:

• Cyber thieves send fraudulent e-mails to a business’s employees.
• The e-mails are designed to look like they came from the big wigs at the company.
• As a result, the targeted employees are tricked into revealing sensitive data about the company’s employees.
• The crooks end up with all this valuable data—enough to file phony tax returns.
• This pl

Earth Day 2016: Humans Are The Most Destructive Species On Earth

Source:

Pratap Antony

 Counter Currents

April 22, 2016

We humans have been in existence for less than 1% of life on Earth – In the short time of our existence, we have impacted everything; every part of our small blue planet. Our home!

We have been around for only 200,000 years – Archaeologists have calculated that humans originated about 200,000 years ago in the Middle Palaeolithic period in southern Africa, and migrated out of Africa

Based on research with almost 200,000 consumers in 40 countries, the ad agency Young & Rubicam developed a Brand Value framework called the Brand Asset Valuator (BAV).  BAV is based on one of the most extensive research programs on branding ever conducted.

Here is the essence of BAV.  Brand Value can be measured by applying understanding and analysis to 4 pillars:

1. Differentiation,
2. Relevance,
3. Esteem, and
4. Knowledge.

As a brand forms and grows, it develops strengths across these 4 pillars, typically in t

Let’s Ditch the Economy of the 1% and Replace it with a Human Economy

Written by:

Winnie Byanyima

Executive Director, Oxfam International

If we want an economy of the 1%, then GDP is very useful. It tells us all we need to know. But if we want an economy that works for us all, we have to pay attention to what it is not telling us.

In the face of a growing inequality crisis, GDP tells us nothing about the distribution of growth. When just 62 people have the same wealth as half the world’s population,