SOC.OS, the security investigation and triage automation company, today announced new research revealing that organisations have work to do if they want to attract and retain diverse talent in their security operations (SecOps) teams.

SOC.OS commissioned Sapio Research to interview over 100 IT security decision makers in the UK, to compile its latest study, The State of SecOps.

One of the key pieces of feedback that we heard was echoed by a quarter (23%) or our respondents. They told us that they’re struggling to incentivise, motivate and retain their SecOps teams.

Budget was noted as a key source of these staffing challenges, according to a third (31%) of responding security leaders:

• A vicious cycle: 36% said that because SecOps teams are understaffed and overworked, job satisfaction and wellbeing is low. This inevitably leads to even more talent leaving.
• Churn: According to two-fifths (38%) of respondents, high churn also means time and money spent on training new recruits is not recouped, punching a further hole in budgets.

Hiring issues: 38% suggested that hiring managers struggled to fully understand the requirements of SOC roles and so are not hiring from the full talent pool.

“Diversity and inclusion is widely understood to drive improved results, create a better working environment and help tackle industry skills shortages”, said Dave Mareels, CEO of SOC.OS.

To rectify the situation and find and hold on to diverse talent, the industry should be educating younger people about their SecOps job prospects, according to over half (55%) of respondents. It should also create more transparency around career path and training opportunities, they said.

Two-fifths (41%) agreed that organisations need to remove misconceptions about required skills sets, and a similar number (39%) argued that they need to commit to avoiding unconscious bias when recruiting.

Among the essential skills identified for SecOps staff were:

• Critical thinking (66%)
• An eye for detail (58%)
• Communication and collaboration (38%, rising to 54% for organisations with 1000+ employees)

“Skills shortages are problem across the cybersecurity industry and SecOps is no different. While technology can take some of the strain off by automating processes, you still need hungry, motivated analysts to drill down into those alerts,” added Dave Mareels.

“The new year traditionally sees a flurry of job-hunting activity, and in 2022 this will be exacerbated by the pandemic. We’re calling on employers to up their game on diversity, in order to build the skilled SecOps teams they need to protect the organisation from spiralling cyber-threats.”

 Ingenico, a Worldline brand, confirms its leadership in unattended payments with the launch of its Self-Modular, world-first unattended terminal PCI PTS v6 certified, and takes its portfolio to be the most comprehensive and innovative solution, covering all verticals - such as vending, EV charging, transportation, parking and ticketing kiosks, for both indoor and outdoor use cases.

Growing strongly for years, the self-service market has further increased with the sanitary crisis, which has seen the emergence of new use cases and ever-stronger user demand for efficiency, convenience, speed and safety. In parallel, the growth of contactless and its rapid adoption in the world and the raising of the maximum amount, brings new opportunities for evolution of unattended payment sector.

The latest of those evolution is the Self-Modular POS, a modular configuration with only 2 highly ruggedized modules (instead of 3 modules usually), designed to face harsh environment for outdoor and/or intensive usages. Many patented innovations contribute to ease implementation for integrators and ergonomics for users.

Based on the robust TETRA OS and sharing the same environment than the rest of the Self range, the Self-Modular can be easily integrated into any existing kiosks thanks to its compactness and its two flexible form factors.

The Self/8000 (EPP and contactless) and Self/7000 (smart hybrid contact reader) join the Self Series which includes 3 "all in one" terminals (Self/2000, Self/4000 et Self/5000) successfully launched last year.

These range now offers integrators and customers a complete, coherent, and versatile range of solutions for equipping their kiosks, whatever their constraints.

“The Self Series, which includes innovative unattended devices and an unrivalled suite of payment and business services, is unique in a rapidly growing market by addressing all self-service use cases. Thanks to its PCI PTSv6 certification and its scalable architecture, the Self Series is truly future proof" says Vincent Bernard, Head of Self-Service Products at Worldline TSS.

Michel Léger, EVP Solutions and Innovation at Worldline TSS confirms the importance of unattended devices in today’s market trends: “The next step will be to facilitate the deployment and remote management of these unattended payment terminals in all the countries where the integrators want to deploy their kiosks. This is why the integration of the Self Series into our innovative and powerful PPaaS platform will be a natural evolution to support the growth of the self-service market and scale it in the most simple and efficient way.”

Zero Hash, the leading B2B digital-asset-as-a-service infrastructure that offers the turnkey solution to allow any platform the ability for their customers to buy/sell, send/receive, reward, earn and stake digital assets, today announced its $105 million Series D funding round. Zero Hash’s investors now include Bain Capital, NYCA, and Steve Cohen’s Point72 Ventures.

The Zero Hash’s Series D fundraise follows the announcement of its Series C three-months ago in September 2021.

“Zero Hash has defined a new Fintech vertical of ‘digital-assets-as-a-service’. Our thesis is very simple - every financial services firm and a wide variety of customer businesses will offer a crypto or NFT product within the next twelve-months,” said Edward Woodford, Founder and CEO.

Zero Hash enables any business to natively embed crypto and NFTs into their own customer experience quickly and easily. Zero Hash now powers some of the largest neo-banks (including MoneyLion and Wirex), fastest-growing payment processors (including MoonPay, Ramp, and Transak), and prominent retail brokers (including tastyworks, TradeZero, and TradeStation).

Zero Hash’s APIs currently power some of the largest and fastest growing platforms as well as millions of end customers. The Company’s product suite includes crypto buy & sell, send & receive on-chain, P2P transfers, rewards, round-ups and staking. Zero Hash handles the entire back-end complexity and regulatory licensing required to offer these digital asset experiences to millions of customers globally.

Zero Hash now powers a significant portion of the world’s entire on-chain transaction volume. The company will use the proceeds of the round to continue to expand its global team across compliance, marketing, product, and engineering. The Company also intends on enhancing its support for Layer 2 protocols as well as doubling the number of assets it supports to over eighty by the end of the year. Aside from opportunistically looking at strategic acquisitions, the capital injection will enable the Company to expand its international licensing framework to provide the one-stop infrastructure for the largest global firms.

Kristal.AI enables instant LRS remittances for Indian investors

Partners with cross border remittance service, FlyRemit, to offer low-cost and faster global remittances to bank & wealth management partners and investors

Kristal.AI, a digital-first global private wealth management platform, has today announced its partnership with FlyRemit to offer low-cost, faster global remittances to ease global investing. This partnership will enable investors to secure the best foreign exchange remittances at low transaction charges and forex mark-ups, solving a major bottleneck in the process of global investing.

Traditionally, fund transfer process has involved offline transfer with the investor having to visit the bank and then carry out the physical process of sending the funds. While some banks now offer online LRS, remittances can still take between 3-5 business days along with high forex mark-up and interbank transfer charges.

The partnership with FlyRemit aims at making global investing seamless, accessible, and convenient. Following are some of the features of this offering:

·         Highly competitive forex rates with charges as low as 0.5% to 1% by Kristal.AI as compared to 2% to 3% industry standard

·         So far, clients transferring their money internationally face a fixed charge of Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 2,000. Kristal.AI has Zero Fixed Charges.

·         With the partnership with FlyRemit, customers might save up to Rs. 5000 per transaction

·         Ease of transferring up to USD 5,000 immediately

·         Investors can make multiple transactions in a day, without having to open a new bank account

·         No transaction charges and a fully digital experience

Commenting on this development, Mr. Vineeth Narasimhan, CTO and Co-Founder, Kristal.AI, said,

“As a digital private bank working with leading Banks & Wealth institutions in India, we at Kristal.AI always strive to make the investor and advisor experience 100% seamless. The current LRS remittances experience was nowhere near what Kristal.AI wants to offer its clients. We set three goals to transform the remittances experience: End-to-end digital experience, completing the remittance process within 1-minute, and offering highly competitive FX rates. We found the right solution with FlyRemit, and together, are happy to offer a completely digital, fast, and competitively-priced solution to our partners and investors.”

Mr. Abdul Hadi Sheikh, CEO & Co-Founder of FlyRemit, said,

“Working under the RBI's sandbox for cross-border remittances, FlyRemit has made the global remittance process frictionless. Our 100% digital KYC process and up to 50% saving compared to conventional remittances through banks, is a game-changer for the market. Kristal.AI has been at the forefront of innovation in democratizing overseas investments for Indians. While integrating, we saw the same enthusiasm of customer-first approach using technology displayed by team Kristal.AI. The ethos of both the firms matched and it was one of the fastest and seamless integrations we've done.”

Kristal.AI offers avenues for Indian and foreign investors to diversify their investments into global assets. It has crossed a major milestone having acquired over USD 400 million as assets under management in December, 2021. The platform witnessed 5X annual growth in its AUM, since its launch in 2016 in Singapore and has partnered with over 75 family offices and partners.

Key appointments made to support growing international client base

Iliad Solutions, a global leader in payments testing, is pleased to announce two new appointments to support its growing financial services client base. Phil Grainger has been appointed as Senior Business Analyst and Kaye Mayhew joins as Programme Manager.

Phil Grainger brings over 30 years’ developer, project manager and business analyst experience primarily in the card payments industry. His role will help expand the functionality of Iliad’s product suite, supporting its product and customer services teams. He will be specifically responsible for defining new features and functionality for t3 Switch, Iliad’s third generation payments testing software solution and its t3 Portal, the response-based presentation and orchestration engine.

Kaye Mayhew joins Iliad’s Professional Services team bringing more than 18 years’ experience in software development and delivery disciplines within the Government, Financial and FinTech sectors. She will be responsible for delivering strategic work programmes to Iliad clients monitoring adherence to service delivery objectives and SLAs post-production, lead project management process improvement and best practice assignments.  

Iliad Solutions CEO Anthony Walton comments: “As the business continues to deliver a world leading electronic payments testing, QA & certification solution to many of the globe’s largest banks, payment processors, and card schemes it is important to bring in strong people with a good payments background to support our growing customer base. We are delighted that Phil and Kaye are joining the Iliad team. Our aim is to ensure we continually develop best working practices and provide delivery excellence for all our clients. This latest recruitment drive is an important step in helping us achieve this.”

Curve is the only UK-based solution that can offset the decision by Amazon to ban Visa Credit cards

Curve, the financial super app which combines all of your debit, credit and loyalty cards into one, easy-to-use smart card, is the only solution which allows Visa Credit card holders to continue spending on Amazon after the ban comes in on Wednesday 19th January.

From Wednesday, Amazon will no longer accept Visa credit cards issued in the UK but the Curve solution does allow customers to pay via their Visa Credit cards with Amazon.

Curve brings all of your debit, credit and loyalty cards into one, easy-to-use smart card, meaning users can still pay with Visa Credit cards through Curve. 

Through Curve, customers can spend from any of their accounts via one card, with one pin, and seamlessly manage or move money within the Curve app. 

Adding debit and credit cards is safe and easy. Curve use’s bank-level security and no sensitive data is ever saved on your phone. The customer needs to enter their card details or scan their card to upload it to their digital Curve Wallet.

Shachar Bialick, Founder and CEO of Curve, comments: “We’re proud to enable customers to continue paying with their Visa Credit cards after the changes come in on Wednesday. Amazon’s decision to stop accepting payments using UK-issued Visa credit cards will harm a huge number of customers. Consumers without a Financial super-app are losing choice and flexibility when it comes to their finances. Curve is the only solution in the UK that can offset this decision by Amazon. Users will still be able to use their Visa Credit via Curve to shop at Amazon while continuing to earn their Bank's rewards.”

CODI Finance is announcing the listing of $CODI on the P2pb2b exchange to commemorate the new year. Given that the project only launched in September 2021, CODI has grown at an incredible pace. The CODI Ecosystem was rebranded in order to realize the project's vision for the entire DeFi industry. CODI has successfully scaled its features to meet the needs of its users while also revolutionizing the DeFi industry as a whole.

The platform has given its community the power to vote on new features, partnerships, and integrations by utilizing the DAO governance structure. In essence, users manage the fully decentralized Ecosystem.
Among the updates to the rebranded Ecosystem are:

• COpad - Premier IDO Launchpad
• CODIswap- Limit-Order based DEX
• NFT Marketplace

The first product the CODI ecosystem plans to release is a powerful launchpad DEX built on the fast and scalable Solana Blockchain. The CODI community would be able to invest in the most promising new DeFi projects. At the same time, new DeFi projects will be able to raise funds from passionate CODI investors. CODI's IDO Launchpad, COpad, recognizes that there are numerous DeFi projects on the market today, but there is a "trust barrier" in determining which DeFi project to invest in. Many new DeFi projects prey on investors by posing as legitimate and trustworthy projects in order to steal their money. CODI has developed a vetting procedure for DeFi products before they are listed on the launchpad DEX.

$CODI listing on P2pb2b

Every protocol and feature on the CODI Ecosystem was designed to be compatible with the project's native token, $CODI. Every member of the community must obtain CODI tokens in order to take advantage of the many benefits that the Ecosystem has to offer.

$CODI listed on the p2pb2b exchange on January 15^th at 11AM UTC. The upcoming listing of the CODI token demonstrates that the project is ambitious, which increases its chances of success. The CODI project also enables early investors to reap the benefits of early adopters by purchasing $CODI at this early stage.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6c743d4d-f75b-4e8e-a422-888b431d8265

If you would like to learn more about this project, visit www.codi.finance

~Aims to further strengthen its suite of world-class financial products and boost innovation~

Zaggle, a leading SaaS Fintech company that helps businesses digitize their spending, today announced the appointment of Sathish N as its Chief Product Officer. The company aims to further strengthen its suite of world-class financial products that help businesses digitize and aggregate their spending through automated and innovative workflows.

Sathish is a seasoned FinTech product leader with 25+ years of experience in launching multiple enterprise-scale Products & Platforms to global markets out of India in the areas of Digital transformation, Omni-Channel Engagement, Payments, FinTech, Digital Lending, Customer Centricity, Revenue Management, Enterprise Product Catalog, and Digital Core Banking. A Strategic, Design thinking and Data led product person who has a strong sense of customer empathy in his design of products and platforms addressing hard business problems and has established himself as a sought-after thought leader in the FinTech space.  Sathish joins Zaggle from FSS where he was working as the Deputy Chief Product Officer. He is an Electronics & Communication Engineer from Bharathiar University and has participated in the Leadership program at the prestigious INSEAD business school.

Innovation is at the core of everything that Zaggle does and the company always strives to provide better experience to its customers through its unified platform. At Zaggle, Sathish will work closely with the Fintech’s MD and CEO, Mr. Avinash Godkhindi, and lead product innovation besides being in charge of all overall product strategy, design and development.

Commenting on the new appointment, Mr. Raj N., Founder and Chairman, Zaggle, said,

“I am thrilled to welcome Sathish to the Zaggle family. We aim to build several industry-first products and significantly accelerate our rate of growth in the coming years. Sathish’s presence in the senior leadership team will considerably boost our endeavor towards significantly enhancing our spend management platform.”

Welcoming Sathish, Mr. Avinash Godkhindi, MD and CEO, Zaggle, said,

“I am certain, Sathish will continue to drive innovation and help in maintaining product superiority across all our business segments. With him at the helm, Zaggle will be able to provide even better experiences to its corporate customers and users. We are delighted to have a product-savvy and people-focused leader as Sathish joins the Zaggle team.”

Mr. Sathish N, Chief Product Officer, Zaggle, said,

“Zaggle is at an exciting phase in its journey and throwing open a huge possibility of seamlessly addressing the financial needs in both B2B and B2B2C space. Every facet of business today is being disrupted and potential to build high impact adjacencies to the segment that Zaggle caters today looks super exciting. Digital Banking, Platform Ecosystem around the spend management offering is the space to look for and I am looking forward to bring my global experience in DX, BFSI Domain and Enterprise product to this space, as I work closely with the senior leadership team and drive the innovation and growth agenda through state-of-the-art product development.”

Zaggle has been strengthening its leadership team with a focus on long term growth strategy. The company recently on-boarded Vidyaniwas Khetawat as Chief Financial Officer and Raghav Hari Choudhary as VP - Investor Relations & Corporate Development.

Tonner-One World Holdings, Inc “the Company”, an aggressive FinTech development company, announces the acquisition of Cryptopro, a Lithuania based Artificial-Intelligence-powered Cryptocurrency, investment management platform that serve clients across the globe.

Cryptopro, a 7 months project that turned profitable since December 2021, started generating revenue from subscription fees. Subscribers/clients follow Ai-powered signals to ensure optimal portfolio performance. Cryptopro derives revenue from transactions fees, subscription fees and consultancy from clients across the globe who uses its platform to build generational wealth via cryptocurrency investments. Since going live, Cryptopro has been consistently increasing its client base and revenue generation capabilities. In a control-stake acquisition transaction, the company bought 60% control of Cryptopro.to. The current management of Cryptopro who controls 40% of the company will continue to manage, grow and build the business in Lithuania to serve clients from around the world.

Ejike Arinze, TONR’s Chief Executive Officer, stated “we’re aggressively seeking opportunities in the Crypto, Metaverse industries to invest in hungry entrepreneur and Web3 projects across the globe that meets our investment/acquisition criteria. We’re also actively reviewing merger and acquisition candidates for actions in operating Cryptocurrency, Metaverse, Web3, Defi or Fintec businesses.”

Background Information

Tonner-One World Holdings, Inc. is a developmental company that used to be a provider of multi-cultural doll products to the specialty, affinity and mass merchandise retail marketplace via a focus of direct and online sales platforms. Late 2021, new management shifted the company’s focus from doll design and marketing to operating cryptocurrency exchange, Defi or Fintec and Metaverse assets and businesses. New management also pledged to prevent Reverse Splits and curtail dilutions and except to finance acquisitions or hire important talent.