Category:

Technology

Remote work leads to massive surge in hacking globally: Report

Among Financial and insurance industries, 83 per cent of data compromised in breaches was personal data, while in Professional, Scientific and Technical services industries only 49 per cent was personal.

“As the number of companies switching business-critical functions to the cloud increases, the potential threat to their operations may become more pronounced, as malicious actors look to exploit human vulnerabilities and leverage an increased dependency on digital infrastructures” said Tami Erwin, CEO, Verizon Business, in a statement. .

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Colonial Pipeline has cyber insurance policy, paid hackers nearly $5 Million in ransom

The cover was for at least $15 million.

Cyber insurance typically covers ransom payments and insurers often provide staff to negotiate with the hackers, in addition to IT and public relations services.

Swiss Re CEO Christian Mumenthaler argues that the private insurance market is simply not large enough to offer full cyber protection to vulnerable organisations, due to the systemic nature of cyber risk.

He observed that the cyber insurance market is currently worth around $5.5 billion in premium, compared to “gigantic” yearly losses that extend into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

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 Amazon-backed Acko seeks new funds at $1 billion value

The funding round, if successful, will make Acko the latest unicorn in India, where there’s been a boom for the technology industry. In April, the country minted at least six new startups with a valuation of $1 billion or more in a week’s time.

Acko, founded in 2016, is among India’s first digital insurers that provides coverage for cars, motorbikes and even taxi passengers as well as health insurance, according to its website. It has more than 400 employees and has sold policies to over 50 million customers. Besides Amazon, the startup also counts Accel, Catamaran Ventures and SAIF Partners among its investors.

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Gig-economy riders in Spain must become staff within 90 days under new rule

The decree, which was agreed on with trade unions and business associations, aims to clarify the legal situation of thousands of riders after Spain’s Supreme Court ruled last year that companies must hire them as employees.

A debate on how to regulate workers’ rights in the gig economy is unfolding globally. The European Commission has opened a public consultation period on potential EU-wide rules.

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Apple stopped over $1.5B in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2020

Apple said it relies on a sophisticated system that combines machine learning, artificial intelligence, and human review by expert teams to moderate these ratings and reviews to help ensure accuracy and maintain trust.

Since 2020, Apple has processed over 1 billion ratings and over 100 million reviews, and over 250 million ratings and reviews were removed for not meeting moderation standards.

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Users not accepting privacy terms to face limited functionality: WhatsApp

Explaining the course of action after ‘persistent’ reminders are sent to users, WhatsApp said: At that time, you’ll encounter limited functionality on WhatsApp until you accept the updates.

This will not happen to all users at the same time. You won’t be able to access your chat list, but you can still answer incoming phone and video calls. If you have notifications enabled, you can tap on them to read or respond to a message or call back a missed phone or video call, it said.

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Toyota-backed self-driving car Pony.ai partners with Luminar

James Peng, Pony.ai CEO said the startup chose Luminar’s Iris lidar for its performance but also as it can be integrated into the car better than traditional lidars.

“It’s actually starting to blur the line between what you see as a very well designed passenger vehicle and the monstrosities that have been on top of some of the AV test vehicles,” said Austin Russell, founder and CEO of Luminar.

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Driverless taxis to cancer drugs: Google’s moonshots are serious business

More than half of that “Other Bets” valuation, though, would come from Waymo LLC, the self-driving taxi company whose chief executive officer John Krafcik stepped down last month after it became clear the promise of self-driving wouldn’t be fulfilled as soon as many tech optimists expected a few years ago. Time was when some investors valued Waymo above $100 billion; that number has reportedly melted to about $30 billion. How the business can make money in the near future is still unclear.

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