Monday 3 January 2022
10 worst password snafus of 2021
For its 2021's Worst Password Offenders list, Dashlane looked at the year's 10 worst security mishaps that involved hacked or stolen passwords. These fiascos show that advice about creating a strong password is still being ignored by too many individuals and too many organizations.
Read the full list HERE.
Sunday 2 January 2022
Building better blockchains is surprisingly hard
The foundations of this structure are shaky, however. Today’s blockchains may be masterworks of coding, but they are also fiendishly complex, energy-hungry and, perhaps counterintuitively, centralized. Despite years of work, crypto developers are still trying to fully overcome the trade-offs inherent in the technology.
Read the the full article in The Economist HERE.
Saturday 1 January 2022
Deutsche Bank’s ESG executive slams industry’s greenwashing practices
Kamran Khan, Deutsche Bank’s head of ESG for Asia Pacific, urged the financial services industry to step up its game and take responsibility for its use of ESG and net-zero labels.
At a time when the possible ramifications of greenwashing practices multiply rapidly, Khan said there is a growing need to put a “reality check” and impose the authority of “saying no” to colleagues or clients trying to misleadingly attach the ESG label to their products.
“When you look at it, any company can make a net-zero commitment, and come up with a nice little PowerPoint on how they’re going to move from today to 2030 or 2050,” Khan said at a Sibos 2021 panel last October.
Read the full article on bobsguide. HERE.
Friday 31 December 2021
Bitcoin is setting the world on fire
Bitcoin was really hot in 2021, but not the way you might think.
I'm talking about the massive energy and carbon footprint that has bloomed up as the Bitcoin network continues to grow. We've finally started to pay attention to it in 2021, with Elon Musk calling its energy consumption "insane," and calling into question its usefulness (and interestingly neither Tesla nor Musk have divested themselves of Bitcoin holdings).
It's true that Bitcoin uses an absurd amount of energy, and 2021 was the year that it truly skyrocketed, rising from somewhere around a 77 TWh/year forecast in the beginning of the year to more than 200 TWh/year by December 25. At this point, the Bitcoin network is burning through the same amount of power and fuel as some medium-sized countries, and an individual transaction eats up more power than an average U.S. household uses in 70 days!
Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, need something big, like a transition to proof-of-stake, if they're going to survive a larger global transition to greener energy.
Top 10 tech trends that will shape the coming decade, according to McKinsey
Conti Ransomware Gang Has Full Log4Shell Attack Chain
The sophisticated Russia-based Conti group – which Palo Alto Networks has called “one of the most ruthless” of dozens of ransomware groups currently known to be active – was in the right place at the right time with the right tools when Log4Shell hit the scene 10 days ago, security firm Advanced Intelligence (AdvIntel) said in a report shared with Threatpost on Thursday.
You can read the Threatpost story HERE.
Kenya Looks to FinTech, Credit Union Convergence to Advance Growth
The savings and credit cooperative organization (SACCO) sector in Africa is aggressively stepping up its digitalization efforts to not only drive financial inclusion to the last mile, but ensure that underserved consumers have access to financial services that had been previously unavailable to them or hard to obtain.
The Kenyan FinTech Kwara, founded in 2018 by Cynthia Wandia and David Hwan, was developed to help the unbanked and underbanked build wealth in a frictionless way. Kwara also strives to assist credit unions in East Africa transition to digital platforms.
Read the full story on PAYMENTS. com - click HERE.