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The tragedy in Brussels shocked the world this week—but the aftershocks of the March 22 terrorist bombings are likely to include follow-on cyber-threats.

These attacks typically involve hackers targeting critical infrastructure in order to cause chaos and physical damage, alongside fear and financial damage.

“We have been able to identify a pattern of behavior of cyber attackers and attack methods surrounding major terrorist events in Western Europe, the latest such pattern was identified after the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks,” Cytegic noted in an intelligence brief shared with Infosecurity.

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LONDON & MIAMI–()–Blue Prism, the pioneering developer of enterprise Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software, today announced its debut on AIM of the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The first developer of software robots to trade on the public markets, Blue Prism, working closely with its global network of partners, grew 35% last year and has deployments with more than 74 customers, including a number of the world’s largest banks, insurers, utilities, healthcare, telecommunications, service providers and other regulated industries. The initial public offering (IPO) will allow Blue Prism to support its global growth plans and enhance its profile within the RPA marketplace.

“Today’s milestone follows a successful year for the company, and marks a shift in acceptance for software robots as a mainstream choice for the enterprise digital workforce,” said Alastair Bathgate, co-founder and CEO of Blue Prism. “Software robots have been deployed successfully and strategically by large, blue chip organizations that have derived tremendous value from this new solution to the labor market, it’s not science fiction.”

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Nice concept; however, given the recent warnings for 2016; I hope that IDC and others are not overwhelmed as well as able to meet their client’s expectations. My concern is expectations by policy holders as well as leaders operating in a mode of false sense of security and ignoring warnings that they would have focused on closely without the insurance.

New report offers insight into some of the tools and models available today to help insurers expand into this emerging market, balance their risk portfolios, and maintain a positive outlook

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., March 15, 2016 – Increased digitization and interconnectivity have catapulted the risk of cyber threats as one of the top global perils of 2016 and beyond. To combat this risk, many companies will look to insurance as a critical risk management technique that complements improved cyber security measures. IDC Financial Insights outlines the tremendous opportunities for insurers to capitalize on this largely untapped market in a new report, Perspective: Cyber Insurance — Can Technology Help Insurers Overcome Their Skepticism? (Doc #EMEA41044816), and emphasizes some of the tools and models that can help insurers effectively penetrate the emerging market while balancing their risk portfolios.

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Automated online advice platforms, the so-called robo advisors, have long implied the use of algorithms eliminates conflicts of interest. It’s a premise that’s gained traction with both consumers and regulators. But a new report by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority casts doubt on their ability to do just that.

With robo advisors like Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, Betterment and Wealthfront now managing billions of dollars worth of client assets, FINRA investigated these online advice providers. The regulator released a report Tuesday that evaluated several key service areas including governance and supervision, the suitability of recommendations, conflicts of interest, customer risk profiles and portfolio rebalancing.

FINRA found that while digital advice will likely play an increasingly important role in wealth management, investors should be aware that conflicts of interest can exist even in providers powered by algorithms. Specifically, the advice consumers receive depends largely on the digital advice provider’s investment approach and the underlying assumptions used.

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Very concerning: 72% of all India companies were hacked in 2015. How many were hosting consumer and business data for non-Indian companies say US or European companies?

According to KPMG’s, Cyber Crime Survey Report 2015, around 72 per cent of the companies in India have faced cyber-attacks in the year 2015. In India a spate of cyber security issues have been witnessed like the Gaana.com or Ola Cabs apps being hacked. Such issues have raised the alarm for the whole enterprise community. And it doesn’t seem to be stopping here. According to a report from McAfee Labs, the number of cyber attacks where malware holds user data hostage is expected to grow in 2016 as hackers target more companies and advanced software is able to compromise more types of data. In many cases the objective would be financial gain or corporate espionage, either ways, resulting in heavy losses for the enterprise.

Today, no single new age enterprise is immune to cyber threats. The humongous amount of information popping out of various social and mobile platforms continues to add to organizations’ vulnerabilities, making them attractive targets for complex cyber crimes.

For today’s digital businesses, a lot of value is tied to data and any loss to it can put their whole reputation at stake. Hence more and more companies are finding themselves terrorized by cyber threat agents who are looking for new, sophisticated routes to gain access to confidential business data. Burgess Cooper, Partner, Information & Cyber Security Advisory Services, EY, points out, “Technology is increasing a company’s vulnerability to be attacked through increased online presence, broader use of social media, mass adoption of mobile devices, increased usage of cloud services and the collection/analysis of big data.”

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I do believe we’re within a 7 to 8 yr window at this point with Quantum hitting the broader main stream computing infrastructure. However, we have banks in Europe that have been using the technology for network communications, Los Alamos Labs experimenting since late 2011 with Quantum Internet, now China is launching their own Quantum Satellite for wireless communications; so I do suggest a strategy needs to be developed over the next 2 to 3 yrs for government & industry around how to manage & plan for deployment of Quantum especially with China & Russia’s interest.

New research demonstrating that quantum computing is now just an engineering challenge moves the possibility of encryption-cracking machines to the front burner.

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High-resolution satellite imagery can be used to monitor the flow of goods and commodities to measure global economic indicators. Our imagery can help economists, supply chain managers, hedge fund traders, and logistics operators identify operational inefficiencies and anticipate supply chain bottlenecks from above.

Here’s an example of our imagery in action, depicting supply chain changes in the Port of Long Beach, the second-busiest container port in the United States. The time lapse imagery shows dynamic fluctuations in features including shipping containers, cars and ships.

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There finally comes a point that you have to question why even have unique identity cards or numbers anymore.

The United States Internal Revenue Services have been battling a huge hacking scandal for nearly a year now. In the month of May last year, the Internal Revenue Services discovered that their security system shad been compromised along with the account details and personal information of over 100,000 people.

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Interesting Question to ask.

The battle between the FBI and Apple over the unlocking of a terrorist’s iPhone will likely require Congress to create new legislation. That’s because there really aren’t any existing laws which encompass technologies such as these. The battle is between security and privacy, with Silicon Valley fighting for privacy. The debates in Congress will be ugly, uninformed, and emotional. Lawmakers won’t know which side to pick and will flip flop between what lobbyists ask and the public’s fear du jour. And because there is no consensus on what is right or wrong, any decision they make today will likely be changed tomorrow.

This is a prelude of things to come, not only with encryption technologies, but everything from artificial intelligence to drones, robotics, and synthetic biology. Technology is moving faster than our ability to understand it, and there is no consensus on what is ethical. It isn’t just the lawmakers who are not well-informed, the originators of the technologies themselves don’t understand the full ramifications of what they are creating. They may take strong positions today based on their emotions and financial interests, but as they learn more, they too will change their views.

Imagine if there was a terror attack in Silicon Valley — at the headquarters of Facebook or Apple. Do you think that Tim Cook or Mark Zuckerberg would continue to put privacy ahead of national security?

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More great news on Quantum Networks; some banks in Europe are leveraging the technology to communicate among themselves.

Light is everywhere. Even the darkest of rooms in our homes contain a handful of blinking LEDs. But what is light? Few of us ever stop to think about this question. Around a hundred years ago scientists discovered that light comes in granules, much like the sand on a beach, which we now call photons.

These are truly bizarre objects that obey the rules of the quantum world. The rules allow some pairs of photons to share a property called entanglement. After being entangled, two photons behave as one object. Changing one photon will affect the other at exactly the same time, no matter how far apart they are.

Far from being a strange but useless property, this is now being put to good use to build computer networks that cannot be hacked. Imagine the scenario where you’re buying a gift over the internet. You will need to input your credit card details, hoping nobody steals them. But what happens if there is a smart criminal tapping your line, listening in to all your communications? Well, there is nothing stopping that eavesdropper from making off with your credit card details and using them on their next shopping spree.

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