Category:

Risk Management

Aviation deaths rise worldwide in 2020 even as fatal incidents, flights fall

Large commercial airplanes had 0.27 fatal accidents per million flights in 2020, To70 said, or one fatal crash every 3.7 million flights — up from 0.18 fatal accidents per million flights in 2019.

The decline in crashes came amid a sharp decline in flights due to the coronavirus pandemic. Flightradar24 reported commercial flights it tracked worldwide in 2020 fell 42% to 24.4 million.

More than half of all deaths in the To70 review were the 176 people killed in January 2020 when a Ukrainian plane was shot down in Iranian airspace.

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SolarWinds hackers accessed Microsoft source code, the company says

The SolarWinds hack is among the most ambitious cyber operations ever disclosed, compromising at least half-a-dozen federal agencies and potentially thousands of companies and other institutions. U.S. and private sector investigators have spent the holidays combing through logs to try to understand whether their data has been stolen or modified.

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US court shuts down fraud scheme targeting elderly Americans via India-based call centers

The pop-up messages fraudulently claimed that the consumer’s computer was infected by a virus, purported to run a scan of the consumer’s computer, falsely confirmed the presence of a virus and malware, and then provided a toll-free number to call for assistance.

The Justice Department said that when victims called the toll-free number, they were connected to India-based call centers participating in the fraud scheme.

Call center workers asked victims to give them remote access to their computers and told victims that they detected viruses or other malware on their computers.

Eventually, the call center workers would falsely diagnose non-existent problems and ask victims to pay hundreds of dollars for unnecessary services and software.

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California nurse tests Covid positive week after receiving Pfizer vaccine

Christian Ramers, an infectious disease specialist with Family Health Centers of San Diego, told the ABC News affiliate that this scenario was not unexpected.

“We know from the vaccine clinical trials that it’s going to take about 10 to 14 days for you to start to develop protection from the vaccine,” Ramers said.

“That first dose we think gives you somewhere around 50%, and you need that second dose to get up to 95%,” Ramers added.

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2021 will witness lot of regulatory efforts channelled towards virtual assets: SBI official

” The use of crowdfunding websites, although not entirely new, create an additional risk as these are specially designed to solicit funding and can be misused for terror financing,” he said.

Varma also noted that crypto currencies and its potential means to finance terrorism is a significant threat especially when is anonymous in nature.

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Cyber crime has cost Russia $49 billion in 2020, Sberbank says

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Stanislav Kuznetsov, Sberbank’s deputy chairman, who oversees security and services, told Reuters private business and ordinary Russians were the main targets of cyber attacks, as the state security services are better protected.

“The private sector is the most vulnerable: everything from the clients’ accounts to financial data and tender documents are targeted: there are 2.3 million darknet accounts operating in Russian and offering the stolen data,” he said.

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Hungry for change: Faulty food systems laid bare by COVID-19 and climate crises

Farmers and poor urban residents have so far borne the brunt of the pandemic, meaning inequality between and within countries could deepen further in 2021, said Ismahane Elouafi, chief scientist at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“Even before COVID-19 hit, 135 million people were marching towards the brink of starvation. This could double to 270 million within a few short months,” warned David Beasley, head of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), in emailed comments.

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Ransomware 2.0: India and Australia logged the highest number of incidents across APAC region

Vitaly Kamluk, Director of Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) for APAC at Kaspersky, revealed that at least 61 entities from the region were breached by a targeted ransomware group in 2020. India and Australia logged the highest number of incidents across APAC.
Dubbed as “Ransomware 2.0”, this type of attack goes beyond kidnapping a company’s or an organization’s data. These groups are now utilizing the increasingly valued digital reputation to force their preys to pay hefty ransom.

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