Игроки всегда ценят удобный и стабильный доступ к играм. Для этого идеально подходит зеркало Вавады, которое позволяет обходить любые ограничения, обеспечивая доступ ко всем бонусам и слотам.

A Breach a Day…Or More

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More and more we are hearing of the increased frequency with which data breaches are occurring. You read about it the newspaper, see it on the news and sometimes you get notices in your inbox in real-time, like I do. What used to be a once-a-week data breach email alert from DataLossDB.org, an open security foundation, now comes as multiple emails, several times a day.

Quite frightening.

Here are some of the most recent data breach events:

February 27, 2013: TEKsystems, a company affiliated with Bank of America, was charged with monitoring hacker activity from groups targeting the bank — most likely, the collective hacking group known as Anonymous. Not liking the sound of that, a group affiliated with Anonymous released what it claims is “14GB of data belonging to the bank and other organizations, including Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg and TEKsystems.”

February 27, 2013: I thought the first email I received with the title “Laptop of Head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission Stolen” was bad, but then I received one the very next day that was even worse. According to various news reports, a second laptop belonging to Shaul Horev was stolen from his home in just one week. It might be time for tighter security.

February 26, 2013: Though this only counts as a potential data breach, it’s still quite alarming. According to the same open security foundation (OSF) from which I receive data breach email alerts, a hospital has left sensitive data belonging to patients and staff exposed on the internet. The worst part is, OSF has made “multiple phone calls, filled out a formal (outsourced) service desk ticket addressed to the hospital’s sysadmin and technical analyst, and sent a direct email to the hospital’s CEO.” Still, they’ve received no response.

February 25, 2013: We’ll head to Canada for this one. According to news reports from the great white north, the loss of a thumb drive has prompted an investigation that has widened to include the Justice Department. The drive contained information regarding Canada Pension Plan disability benefits related to more than 5,000 individuals.

February 21, 2013: Even peacocks are not immune. Last week, NBC announced it was the victim of an attack. Hackers added links to malware on the site, using the Citadel Trojan worm, the same one that plagued the websites of U.S. banks recently.

February 21, 2013: Zendesk, a customer service software provider, announced a security breach that allowed hackers into its system, where they had access to information from three customers — Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr.

February 5, 2013: The U.S. government seems to be no match for sophisticated system spies. Earlier this month, The U.S. Department of Energy revealed that hackers breached 14 of its servers and 20 of its workstations, making off with personal information belonging to several hundred employees. “It’s a continuing story of negligence,” Ed McCallum, former director of the department’s office of safeguards and security, told the Free Beacon. “[The department] is on the cutting edge of some of the most sophisticated military and intelligence technology the country owns and it is being treated frivolously by the Department of Energy and its political masters.”

These are just a few of the many, many data breach alerts I’ve received in the month of February alone. It leaves one questioning whether we will ever win the war against hackers.

Mouse Bombs to the Rescue

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Guam seems like a creepy place. Back in 2010, I wrote about how the island had become infested with hordes of brown tree snakes that cause millions of dollars in property damage and frequent power outages every year. On top of that, the snakes have wiped out most of the native bird population and, in doing so, have allowed the spider population to thrive to the point that Guam now has 40 times more spiders than any neighboring Pacific island. Tourism has obviously suffered because, well, snakes and spiders are everywhere. It’s basically nightmare fuel.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a plan though. This spring they plan to drop a bunch of dead mice from helicopters into the jungles in Guam’s Andersen Air Force base. The mice will be laced with acetaminophen, which is deadly to the snakes, and attached to cardboard and streamers so they can float down into the jungle canopy where the snakes live and deliver a last meal right to their doorstep. They did a smaller mouse bomb drop over the naval base in 2010 and evidently it was successful enough to try again in the larger, 110-acre area. It sounds crazy but, hey, anything that works.

And if nothing else, you have to give them points for creative risk management.

The Biggest Risks and Opportunities Ahead

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For the remainder of 2013 we are likely to see pricing pressure and cost cutting, along with innovation in products, services, operations and rapid-growth market demand. These are the top risks and opportunities, respectively, as presented by Ernst & Young’s lastest study, Business Pulse: Exploring the Dual Perspectives of the Top 10 Risks and Opportunities in 2013 and Beyond.

The top three risks for the remainder of 2013 and projected for 2015:

  • Pricing pressure — Ernst & Young reports that the strength of low-cost competition and online shopping has intensified the battle for market share and that “brand-driven price premiums have become difficult and expensive to maintain.” Other factors include regulatory actions and its effects on profitability; worsening terms of trade for goods; and high wages and benefits in mature economies.
  • Cost cutting and profit pressure — Companies have cut just about all they can since the 2008 global economic crisis. This puts firms under extreme pressure to continue cutting without damaging company performance. “These pressures have intesified in recent years, reflecting the narrower margin that firms can absorb and still remain operations,” the report states.
  • Market risks — Commodity price volatility, interest and exchange rates, and equity risk are all market risks influencing cost cutting and profit pressures.
The Top 10 Risks

The top three opportunities for 2013 and beyond:

  • Innovation in products, services and operations
  • Emerging market demand growth
  • Investing in process, tools and training to achieve greater productivity

Top 10 Opportunities

What are some emerging challenges that firms may face in the future? Ernst & Young points to the following specific and possible events:

  1. The U.S. enters a deflationary trap
  2. Deep recession in the Eurozone
  3. The end of rapid growth in the BRICS
  4. A full-scale interstate war in the Middle East
  5. Cyber conflict that disrupts infrastructure and business operations

Greatest Challenges to Corporate Growth in 2013

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Over at the Innovation Excellence, they are posting a multi-part series on a recent survey of chief strategy officers. The latest part looks at how the average CSO spends their day. There is some bad news for those risk managers who continue to hope that the siloed mentality of companies may be changing: The survey found that chief strategy officers spend just 8% of their time thinking about cultural change.

Well, if they aren’t thinking about it, who would be?

Alas, while great strategy can continue to spur growth, it seems that the status quo is tough to change.

Additionally, however, risk managers should be able to benefit from understanding what CSOs view as the toughest challenges to corporate growth in 2013. The chart above shows that, yet again, changing behavior (this time, customers’) is the biggest hurdle while volatility (chiefly in the political environment followed by uncertainty in the financial markets) makes up the next two largest challenges.

Increased competition and changing technologies round out the top five.