Published
- 01:00 am
Allen & Overy is opening Fuse, a new tech innovation space where tech companies, Allen & Overy lawyers, technologists and their clients will collaborate to explore, develop and test legal, regulatory and deal-related solutions.
• legaltech: technology supporting legal advice, law firms and in-house legal functions;
• regtech: technology supporting regulatory compliance; and
• dealtech: technology that transforms how companies and financial institutions transact and negotiate deals with each other.
Early-stage and more mature tech companies can apply to work in a specially-designed area for 60 individuals housed within Allen & Overy’s London offices on the boundary of Shoreditch and the City of London. Once in residence, companies will have access to the expertise of Allen & Overy lawyers, technologists and clients to co-create practical solutions to some of the challenges faced by companies, financial institutions and law firms today.
The launch of this space builds on other Allen & Overy advanced delivery projects aimed at developing both the wider legal market and its own business model to meet the changing needs of its clients. They include aosphere, its online subscription business, and MarginMatrix™, a digital derivatives compliance system. It also complements Allen & Overy’s well-established engagement with the fintech sector.
Applications will open in April 2017 and applicants will undergo a selection process before successful companies move into the space in September 2017.
Wim Dejonghe, Allen & Overy’s senior partner, commented: “Developments in tech are rapidly transforming our industry and we are determined to play a lead role in harnessing the power of new solutions for the benefit of our clients.
“Fuse offers us a fantastic opportunity to collaborate with both our clients and some of the brightest minds in the tech sector, particularly those who have synergies with our business. I’m convinced this will not only put us at the forefront of developments in this field but will also be a key differentiator for Allen & Overy in the years to come.”
- 09:00 am
- 02:00 am
Today Cognizant announced that it has been selected by the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), to enhance the efficiency, reliability and scalability of core IT applications and quality assurance processes related to the agency's market surveillance, supervisory analysis, reporting and risk management functions. The FCA is the conduct regulator for 56,000 financial services firms and financial markets in the United Kingdom.
This three-year agreement builds on the FCA's ongoing relationship with Cognizant which began in 2011, when Cognizant was selected as one of the agency's key IT services suppliers. Under the new agreement, Cognizant will expand its scope of work with the FCA, upgrading core IT applications, developing and implementing new software, leveraging automation across the enterprise, and driving best practices for agile development. Cognizant will also support the FCA as the regulator increases its use of digital analytics to manage data and inform business decisions.
As the demands on the FCA in regulating the UK financial services industry become ever more rigorous with the rise of digital technologies, cyber-security considerations and other market challenges, Cognizant is pleased to be the FCA's partner of choice in transforming its applications portfolio for greater efficiency, effectiveness and agility. We are committed to helping the FCA meet its objective of ensuring that the financial markets are operating in a fair, honest, and effective manner," said Vivek Daga, Vice President and Head of the United Kingdom and Ireland at Cognizant. "Cognizant will combine its deep understanding of the financial services industry and the UK regulatory landscape with proven expertise in digital systems and technology to deliver tangible outcomes for the FCA.
Lee Murphy
CEO at Pandle
Though it may prompt some UK SMES to start thinking about the implications of Brexit on their business, the triggering of Article 50 this Wednesday should be nothing to fear and if I’m ho see more
- 05:00 am
Coupa Software, a leading provider of cloud-based spend management solutions, announced today that Pearson, the world’s learning company, has selected Coupa’s Source to Pay (S2P) solution to operationalise contracts, improve user experience and provide greater transparency.
“We selected Coupa to help us increase effectiveness, enhance compliance and improve efficiency across the organisation,” said Daniel Cameron CPO at Pearson.
“We are excited to drive measurable business results for Pearson and all of our customers leveraging Coupa’s unified platform,” said Coupa CEO Rob Bernshteyn. “This partnership with Pearson underscores Coupa’s commitment to deliver value as a service on an open and interconnected solution centred on our customers’ long term success.”
A British-owned company, Pearson is the world’s learning company with expertise in educational courseware and assessment, and a range of teaching and learning services powered by technology. Their mission is to help people make progress through access to better learning. Pearson believes that learning opens up opportunities, creating fulfilling careers and better lives.
- 08:00 am
WHISHWORKS, the global IT services company that designs, builds and supports technology for the data-driven enterprise, has achieved gold reseller and consulting partner status with Hortonworks, a leading innovator of the connected data platforms that allow customers to create actionable intelligence for business transformation.
WHISHWORKS attained gold partner status by demonstrating increased skill and knowledge and earning accreditations and certifications through its Big Data Centre of Excellence. The WHISHWORKS approach to Big Data benefits business in a variety of ways. From strategy and infrastructure, to data governance and the creation of tools and assets for predictive modelling.
"Hortonworks and WHISHWORKS have delivered a number of successful joint engagements, ensuring customers are successful in realising the value of all their data with connected data platforms. We congratulate WHISHWORKS for investing in Hadoop skills and therefore reaching the elevated status of gold partner," said John Kreisa, VP International Marketing at Hortonworks.
WHISHWORKS provides services to a number of industries, each with its own unique requirements for data-driven intelligence. Whether they are a retailer seeking to build loyalty, a healthcare company seeking a single view of the patient, or a manufacturer looking to sharpen their quality control, WHISHWORKS is there to help them monetise their data.
Suman Konkumalla, Chief Strategy Officer at WHISHWORKS, said, "Hortonworks manages the world's data by creating, distributing and supporting enterprise-ready open data platforms and modern data applications. It is entirely open source and focused on driving innovation in open source communities such as Apache Hadoop, NiFi, and Spark. Together WHISHWORKS and Hortonworks help clients harness the business intelligence that Big Data delivers, allowing them to grow and operate efficiently."
- 05:00 am
Super Micro Computer, Inc., the world leader in computer, storage and networking technologies, including green computing, announces participation at World Hosting Days, the global event for cloud services and internet infrastructure providers being held in Europa-Park, Germany from March 25 to 31. Supermicro will showcase enterprise and data center solutions in the Arena exhibitor space, Booth #F09.
Supermicro will feature the 3U MicroBlade™, a high-density compute solution developed to provide optimized performance for scale-out workloads such as dedicated hosting, web front-end, social media/content delivery, or highly parallel workloads demanded by non-relational databases and business intelligence reporting. MicroBlade is designed from the ground up to provide easy remote management, industry-leading energy efficiency, and superior cable reduction vs. 1U rack servers.
Supermicro will be showcasing the latest GPU-optimized platforms featuring the highly scalable 1U 4 CPU 1028GQ-TXR(T) and the 4U 4028GR-TXR(T) with 8 GPU support. The Supermicro GPU portfolio enables cloud service providers to host rendering/modeling-as-a-service, delivering rich user experience and high-performance to multiple clients from a single server.
Additional exhibits include a proof of concept solution, based on the 1U Ultra SuperServer and supporting 10 all hot-swappable U.2 NVMe drives with software-defined memory technology licensed from ScaleMP to accelerate in-memory applications, and a Supermicro BigTwin™ 2U 4 DP node server system, supporting both current and next generation (codename Skylake) Intel® Xeon® processor product families. Supermicro also announces a wide range of server, workstation and embedded motherboards and systems supporting new generation Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 product family (codename Kaby Lake).
At Intel Booth #D02, Supermicro will showcase Supermicro RSD, a rack-scale total solution built on industry standard Redfish APIs and open source Rack Scale Design software framework from Intel, that maximizes data center utilization through disaggregating compute, networking and storage resources distributed within a rack or across multiple racks, enabling companies of any size to build and manage cloud-scale infrastructures easily and efficiently.
- 04:00 am
ThinkMarkets, an advanced financial services provider of forex, CFDs and financial spread betting has enhanced its ThinkTrader mobile trading app through the implementation of Neumob’s SDK, an app acceleration framework, to significantly reduce latency for global forex and CFD traders.
Through the partnership, ThinkMarkets’ mobile app users will see a drastic change in the performance of the platform. Traders will be able to access the numerous functionalities on ThinkTrader, from reviewing charts & live-market-pricing, placing orders and executing trades, in a much faster manner. The firm’s analytics & data shows that ThinkTrader had a swifter load-speed & quicker interactions between every transaction, with the results showing that traders in several countries saw a substantial increase in the performance of the app, Malaysian users benefited by a 42% uptake in speed, thus supporting a low-latency trading environment.
Neumob, founded in 2014, has positioned itself as a leader in mobile app acceleration, speed, and performance. Neumob’s signature SDK solution connects users to its global app acceleration network, which enhances an app’s performance worldwide.
Nauman Anees, founder and CEO of ThinkMarkets commented about the mobile app solution: “We are seeing a sharp increase in the number of traders executing trades on the ThinkTrader mobile app, particularly from emerging markets where mobile-networks are traditionally sluggish and congested, however with the technological enhancements ThinkTrader is now considerably faster.”
The mobile-app development supports ThinkMarkets’ international growth and expansion plans. The ThinkTrader mobile app saw a massive spike in the app’s agility, pace & performance, with faster load times in India increasing by 37%, 25% in both the United Arab Emirates & the UK, and by 20% in China.
Joe Rundle, Head of Trading said: “Our clients have given excellent feedback with impressive gains in load times and in-app performance for the ThinkTrader iOS app.”
Neumob CEO Jeff Kim stated that: "ThinkTrader is a forward-thinking app committed to delivering a high availability, low latency experience for its traders around the world. We're delighted to see the positive impact that Neumob mobile app acceleration is having on ThinkMarkets' customer experience, and on ensuring that traders in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere have a first-rate mobile trading platform they can rely on."
- 02:00 am
SDK.finance is proud to announce a white-label RESTful API release. SDK.finance offers payments and transaction management solution which allows banks & other financial institutions accelerate their digital growth.
The current 1.24.70 version grants access to 90 APIs for transaction-related products. It enables developers of banks and other financial institutions to operate with Client Profiles management, Business process management, Accounts, E-wallets, Invoices, Payments, Recurring payments, P2P money transfers, Prepaid & Mass Payments. A number of back-offices for different business actors like CFO, Compliance & Anti-fraud are available from the box. Depending on the user’s need multiple products can be built on the top of SDK.finance API: Mobile Bank, Payment Services, Digital wallet, P2P Money Transfer, Currency Exchange and many others.
CTO of SDK.finance, Pavlo Sidelov said: “Transformation of backend in line with front-end innovation is a burning issue for the vast majority of banks and financial institutions. This is the challenge we are addressing with the launch of our APIs. Product teams & developers can easily integrate our APIs into the existing infrastructure linking the core banking system with its innovative front-end components. This is the first version and we are planning to expand our set of APIs within the next two months. Loyalty API will be the first added to the list”.
- 06:00 am
Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, today released the findings of the Breach Level Index revealing that 1,792 data breaches led to almost 1.4 billion data records being compromised worldwide during 2016, an increase of 86% compared to 2015. Identity theft was the leading type of data breach in 2016, accounting for 59% of all data breaches. In addition, 52% of the data breaches in 2016 did not disclose the number of compromised records at the time they were reported.
The Breach Level Index is a global database that tracks data breaches and measures their severity based on multiple dimensions, including the number of records compromised, the type of data, the source of the breach, how the data was used, and whether or not the data was encrypted. By assigning a severity score to each breach, the Breach Level Index provides a comparative list of breaches, distinguishing data breaches that are a not serious versus those that are truly impactful (scores run 1-10). According to the Breach Level Index, more than 7 billion data records have been exposed since 2013 when the index began benchmarking publicly disclosed data breaches. Breaking it down that is over 3 million records compromised every day or roughly 44 records every second.
Last year, the account access based attack on AdultFriend Finder exposing 400 million records scored a 10 in terms of severity on the Breach Level Index. Other notable breaches in 2016 included Fling (BLI: 9.8), Philippines' Commission on Elections (COMELEC) (BLI: 9.8), 17 Media (BLI: 9.7) and Dailymotion (BLI: 9.5). In fact the top 10 breaches in terms of severity accounted for over half of all compromised records. In 2016, Yahoo! reported two major data breaches involving 1.5 billion user accounts, but are not accounted for in the BLI's 2016 numbers since they occurred in 2013 and 2014.
"The Breach Level Index highlights four major cybercriminal trends over the past year. Hackers are casting a wider net and are using easily-attainable account and identity information as a starting point for high value targets. Clearly, fraudsters are also shifting from attacks targeted at financial organizations to infiltrating large data bases such as entertainment and social media sites. Lastly, fraudsters have been using encryption to make breached data unreadable, then hold it for ransom and decrypting once they are paid", said Jason Hart, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Data Protection at Gemalto.
Data Breaches by Type
In 2016, identity theft was the leading type of data breach, accounting for 59% of all data breaches, up by 5% from 2015. The second most prevalent type of breach in 2016 is account access based breaches. While the incidence of this type of data breach decreased by 3%, it made up 54 % of all breached records, which is an increase of 336% from the previous year. This highlights the cybercriminal trend from financial information attacks to bigger databases with large volumes of personally identifiable information. Another notable data point is the nuisance category with an increase of 101% accounting for 18% of all breached records up 1474% since 2015.
Data Breaches by Source
Malicious outsiders were the leading source of data breaches, accounting for 68% of breaches, up from 13% in 2015. The number of records breached in malicious outsider attacks increased by 286% from 2015. Hacktivist data breaches also increased in 2016 by 31%, but only account for 3% of all breaches that occurred last year.
Data Breaches by Industry
Across industries, the technology sector had the largest increase in data breaches in 2016. Breaches rose 55%, but only accounted for 11% of all breaches last year. Almost 80% of the breaches in this sector were account access and identity theft related. They also represented 28% of compromised records in 2016, an increase of 278% from 2015.
The healthcare industry accounted for 28% of data breaches, rising 11% compared to 2015. However, the number of compromised data records in healthcare decreased by 75% since 2015. Education saw a 5% decrease in data breaches between 2015 and 2016 and a drop of 78% in compromised data records. Government accounted for 15% of all data breaches in 2016. However the number of compromised data records increased 27% from 2015. Financial services companies accounted for 12% of all data breaches, a 23% decline compared to the previous year.
All industries listed in the 'Other' category represented 13% of data breaches and 36% of compromised data records. In this category, the overall number of data breaches decreased by 29%, while the number of compromised records jumped by 300% since 2015. Social media and entertainment industry related data breaches made up the majority.
Last year 4.2% of the total number of breach incidents involved data that had been encrypted in part or in full, compared to 4% in 2015. In some of these instances, the password was encrypted, but other information was left unencrypted. However of the almost 1.4 billion records compromised, lost or stolen in 2016, only 6% were encrypted partially or in full (compared to 2% in 2015).
