About Hilary Tuttle

Hilary Tuttle is the managing editor of the Risk Management Monitor and Risk Management magazine.
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Flurry-Down Economics: The Real Cost of Blizzards

Winter Storm Juno New York City

Despite predictions of a “historic” snowstorm this week, the Northeast – and the insurance industry – largely dodged the blizzard bullet. Over the past 20 years, winter storms have caused an average of $1.2 billion in insurable losses every year, the Insurance Information Institute reported. Last year’s polar vortex and significant snow accumulations came with a price tag between $15 and $50 billion, and winter weather caused $3.7 billion in overall losses, of which an estimated $2.3 billion was insured, according to MunichRe.

NATURAL DISASTER LOSSES IN THE UNITED STATES, 2014

Ahead of what could have been record snow, seven states preemptively declared a state of emergency for what some dubbed Winter Storm Juno. Authorities shut down many major cities, canceling thousands of flights and closing major roads and mass transit systems.

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Though Boston was pummeled by about two feet of snow, New York City and most of the region emerged relatively unscathed.

“We think the economic impact of the storm is going to be relatively small,” said Evan Gold, senior vice president at weather advisory firm Planalytics. “We’re estimating at about 0 million, and that’s simply based on the duration of the storm, the timing of the storm and the population centers that are impacted.”

Others estimate the cost may be closer to $1 billion, considering the lost business, wages and taxes, and snow removal costs. According to a new report from City Comptroller Scott Stringer, in the past 12 years, every inch of snow cost New York City an average of $1.8 million to remove. From 2003 through 2014, the city spent $663.2 million just to clear the snow. Lighter snowfall actually takes a greater toll per-inch. “It’s a lot more expensive on a per-inch basis when we get a little snow because we have startup costs and we have fixed costs. We have to have plows and salt,” Stringer said. As a result, the city saw 55.5 inches of snow in 2003 and paid $740,000 per inch in cleanup costs, while the city had 6.8 inches of snow in 2012 and paid $4 million per inch.

In a press conference on Tuesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo shrugged off the financial implications of preparations for and recovery from Juno, calling it one of the “costs of doing business.” He explained, “We factor that in—things like snow removal, salt purchases, overtime for crew to handle storms, these are factored in the budget and this was not exceptional to that process.”

The cost of overpreparation is hefty, however, and it primarily falls upon the public. A one-day storm in Massachusetts costs the state economy about $265 million, while the total cost in New York is around $700 million, according to the Boston Globe. A significant portion of that is due to lost wages for hourly workers, who tend to be hit the worst by snow-related shutdowns.

Travel cancellations have a similar impact.

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According to research firm masFlight, it costs an airline about ,000 to cancel a typical domestic flight on a full-size jet, but the total tab for all the passengers who were supposed to be on board is about ,000, due to the additional costs of lodging and meals.

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More than 4,700 flights were cancelled Tuesday after about 2,800 on Monday ahead of the storm, CNN reported. Amtrak also suspended service between New York and Boston because of the weather.

Biggest Bank Robberies of the 21st Century

Many of the top perceived risks in the banking industry are focused on new developments. According to last year’s Protiviti survey “Executive Perspective on Top Risks for 2014,” financial services industry professionals projected that the biggest risks would be regulatory changes, cyber threats, and protecting the privacy and security of their customers amid greater use of cloud computing, social media and mobile technology.

One of the oldest threats banks face, however, still packs quite a punch for the bottom line. As Ross Smith of Fast Locksmith illustrates in the infographic below, bank robberies may be more closely associated with the days of Bonnie and Clyde and Old West sheriffs, but they have cost the industry billions since 2000. Check out some of the biggest bank robberies of the 21st century:

Bank Robbery Infographic

 

Human Error Caused 93% of Data Breaches

Despite tremendous increased attention, the number of reported cyberbreach incidents rapidly escalated in 2014. According to Information Commissioner’s Office data collected by Egress Software Technologies, U.K. businesses saw substantially more breaches last year, with industry-wide increases of 101% in healthcare, 200% in insurance, 44% among financial advisers, 200% among lenders 200%, 56% in education and 143% in general business. As a result, these industries also saw notable increases in fines for data protection violations.

The role of employees was equally alarming.

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“Only 7% of breaches for the period occurred as a result of technical failings,” Egress reported.

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“The remaining 93% were down to human error, poor processes and systems in place, and lack of care when handling data.

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Check out more of the findings from Egress’ review in the infographic below:

Infographic: Human error causes alarming rise in data breaches

McAfee Labs Predicts Top Cybersecurity Threats for 2015

2015 cybersecurity trends

In 2015, cybercriminals will increasingly be non-state actors who monitor and collect data through extended, targeted attack campaigns, McAfee Labs predicts. In the group’s 2015 Threats Predictions, Intel Security identified internet trust exploits, mobile, internet of things and cyber espionage as the key vulnerabilities on next year’s threat landscape.

“The year 2014 will be remembered as ‘the Year of Shaken Trust,’” said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs. “This unprecedented series of events shook industry confidence in long-standing Internet trust models, consumer confidence in organizations’ abilities to protect their data, and organizations’ confidence in their ability to detect and deflect targeted attacks in a timely manner. Restoring trust in 2015 will require stronger industry collaboration, new standards for a new threat landscape, and new security postures that shrink time-to-detection through the superior use of threat data. Ultimately, we need to get to a security model that’s built-in by design, seamlessly integrated into every device at every layer of the compute stack.”

McAfee Labs predicts the top cybersecurity threats in 2015 will be:

1. Increased use of cyber warfare and espionage tactics. Cyber espionage attacks will continue to increase in frequency as long-term players will become stealthier information gatherers, while newcomers to cyber-attack capabilities will look for ways to steal sensitive information and disrupt their adversaries.

  • Established nation-state actors will work to enhance their ability to remain hidden on victim systems and networks.
  • Cybercriminals will continue to act more like nation-state cyber espionage actors, focusing on monitoring systems and gathering high-value intelligence on individuals, intellectual property, and operational intelligence.
  • McAfee Labs predicts that more small nation states and terror groups will use cyber warfare.

2. Greater Internet of Things attack frequency, profitability, and severity. Unless security controls are built-in to their architectures from the beginning, the rush to deploy IoT devices at scale will outpace the priorities of security and privacy. This rush and the increasing value of data gathered, processed, and shared by these devices will draw the first notable IoT paradigm attacks in 2015.

  • The increasing proliferation of IoT devices in environments such as health care could provide malicious parties access to personal data even more valuable than credit card data. For instance, according to the McAfee Labs report entitled Cybercrime Exposed: Cybercrime-as-a-Service, the cybercrime community currently values stolen health credentials at around $10 each, which is about 10 to 20 times the value of a stolen U.S. credit card number.

3. Privacy debates intensify. Data privacy will continue to be a hot topic as governments and businesses continue to grapple with what is fair and authorized access to inconsistently defined “personal information.”

  • In 2015 we will see continued discussion and lack of clarity around what constitutes “personal information” and to what extent that information may be accessed and shared by state or private actors.
  • We will see a continued evolution in scope and content of data privacy rules and regulations, we may even see laws begin to regulate the use of previously anonymous data sets.
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  • The European Union, countries in Latin America, as well as Australia, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and many others may enact more stringent data privacy laws and regulations.

4. Ransomware evolves into the cloud. Ransomware will evolve its methods of propagation, encryption, and the targets it seeks. More mobile devices are likely to suffer attacks.

  • We predict ransomware variants that manage to evade security software installed on a system will specifically target endpoints that subscribe to cloud-based storage solutions.
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  • Once the endpoint has been infected, the ransomware will attempt to exploit the logged-on user’s stored credentials to also infect backed-up cloud storage data.
  • We expect the technique of ransomware targeting cloud-backed-up data to be repeated in the mobile space.
  • We expect a continued rise in mobile ransomware using virtual currency as the ransom payment method.

5. New mobile attack surfaces and capabilities. Mobile attacks will continue to grow rapidly as new mobile technologies expand the attack surface.

  • The growing availability of malware-generation kits and malware source code for mobile devices will lower the barrier to entry for cybercriminals targeting these devices.
  • Untrusted app stores will continue to be a major source of mobile malware. Traffic to these stores will be driven by “malvertising,” which has grown quickly on mobile platforms.

6. POS attacks increase and evolve with digital payments. Point of sale (POS) attacks will remain lucrative, and a significant upturn in consumer adoption of digital payment systems on mobile devices will provide new attack surfaces that cybercriminals will exploit.

  • Despite current efforts by retailers to deploy more chip-and-pin cards and card readers, McAfee Labs sees continued growth in POS system breaches in 2015 based on the sheer numbers of POS devices that will need to be upgraded in North America.
  • Near field communications (NFC) digital payment technology will become an entirely new attack surface to exploit, unless user education can successfully guide users in taking control of NFC features on their mobile devices.

7. Shellshock sparks Unix, Linux attacks. Non-Windows malware attacks will increase as a result of the Shellshock vulnerability.

  • McAfee Labs predicts that the aftershocks of Shellshock with be felt for many years given the number of potentially vulnerable Unix or Linux devices, from routers to TVs, industrial controllers, flight systems, and critical infrastructure.
  • In 2015, this will drive a significant increase in non-Windows malware as attackers look to exploit the vulnerability.

8. Growing exploitation of software flaws. The exploitation of vulnerabilities is likely to increase as new flaws are discovered in popular software products.

  • McAfee Labs predicts that exploitation techniques such as stack pivoting, return- and jump-oriented programming, and a deeper understanding of 64-bit software will continue to drive the growth in the number of newly discovered vulnerabilities, as will the volume of malware that exploits those newly discovered vulnerabilities.

9. New evasion tactics for sandboxing. Escaping the sandbox will become a significant IT security battlefield.

  • Vulnerabilities have been identified in the sandboxing technologies implemented with critical and popular applications. McAfee Labs predicts a growth in the number of techniques to exploit those vulnerabilities and escape application sandboxes.
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  • Beyond application sandboxing, McAfee Labs predicts that 2015 will bring malware that can successfully exploit hypervisor vulnerabilities to break out of some security vendors’ standalone sandbox systems.