Articles about Money

Banks and other financial institutions spend three times the amount non-financial organizations are spending on cyber security, a new report by Kaspersky Lab has shown.

According to the Financial Institutions Security Risks research from Kaspersky Lab and B2B International, cyber security is a high priority for financial institutions, as they're coming under increased pressure from the government, top management and customers.

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AgileBits, the company behind popular password manager 1Password, is raising the top bug bounty reward from $25,000 to $100,000, following the discovery of serious vulnerabilities in popular password managers, including its own service, that could have allowed attackers to gain access to user data.

To receive the highest reward in its bug bounty program, AgileBits says that a researcher would have to access an unencrypted "bad poetry" flag that is stored in a 1Password vault.

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On February 17, Bill Gates set the news agenda around the world by declaring that a so-called "robot tax" should be introduced in order to counteract job losses caused by automation. "Right now," he told online publication Quartz, "the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory has that income taxed. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level."

There is no doubting that Gates' vision of job displacement is not of a distant dystopian future, but today's reality: in 2015 expenditure on robotics climbed to $46 billion, globally. A hotel in Japan, Nagasaki, is staffed entirely by robots. Even heritage British cake brand Mr Kipling has enlisted the help of 46 robots to pack its cakes.

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SoftBank is looking to invest between $3 billion and $4 billion into WeWork. According to a CNBC report, the deal is "close to finalizing".

At first, there will be a $2 billion primary tranche, followed by a secondary round worth anywhere between $1 and $2 billion. CNBC also says there is a "tender offer" for WeWork insiders, around $44.10 per internal share.

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Eighteen percent of UK businesses have been the target of a cyber-attack in the last 12 months, according to a new report by Altodigital. These attacks cost the economy £1.9 billion.

Back in 2013 33 percent of companies were hacked, so Altodigital sees the current figure of 18 percent as a "welcome improvement." Each individual attack cost more than £2,000 last year.

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The global public cloud services market is expected to grow 18 percent this year, according to Gartner’s latest report. Totaling $246.8 billion (up from $209.2bn last year), the growth will mostly come from IaaS, which is expected to grow 36.8 percent and reach $34.6 billion.

The growth will also be fueled by SaaS (20.1 percent increase, to $46.3 billion).

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Less than a fifth (17 percent) of customer relationship managers believe their CRM is generating revenue. This is according to a new report by marketing technology company Wiraya, based on a poll of 500 CRM managers.

Despite not having a great image, CRM is still perceived as a key business driver in a third of businesses. The problems, according to the report, lie in the fact that many lack a clear direction and customer insight to support their goals. Without these things, it’s hard to create direct business profitability.

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Top messaging services have evolved past their basic role, as the major players in this market look to differentiate their offerings from the rest of the crowd. Facebook, for instance, added a bot platform to Messenger last year to make it more relevant to businesses and consumers.

Through bots, businesses provide better customer service while consumers can more easily get in touch with service providers. The platform has quickly gained traction, with the latest addition to the fold being international money transfer service TransferWise.

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IBM and Visa want every Internet-connected device you own to be its own point of sale. The two companies announced the industry’s first collaboration to achieve this, through IBM’s Watson for IoT platform and Visa’s token technology.

Visa is currently powering 60 percent of the entire world’s payments and IBM’s Watson really needs no particular introduction.

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This year, the UK will spend more than £27 billion on mobile devices, new figures from VoucherCodes.co.uk and the Center for Retail Research show. This means there will be a 26 percent jump compared to last year.

Consequently, online retail sales will also grow, by 11.5 percent compared to 2016. British shoppers are expected to be quite the spenders this year, spending a total of £1.428.39 per head online. That’s a third higher than the EU average of £1,003.54.

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Server downtime -- it happens. Most large companies have at least once experienced the frustration that is having their servers down, whether it’s for a few minutes, hours or even days. It’s regarded as a part of life, something that happens that you can’t quite prevent, but in fact, server downtime costs companies millions of dollars yearly, either in lost business or in the distraction and psychological toll it takes on employees who have to deal with the problem.

But actually, these can be prevented by avoiding common server issues, implementing agile working practices and creating a plan should emergencies happen.

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There are lots of really successful paid apps, but which one generates the most net revenue? According to a Sensor Tower report, Spotify comes out on top overall in 2016. The music streaming service only led the pack on the App Store, but that was enough to push it all the way to the top. On Google Play, it was messaging service Line which took top honors in this category.

Line actually came second overall, and in third place on the App Store. It is interesting that Spotify managed to come out ahead despite the fact that it is nowhere to be found in the top ten grossing apps on Google Play. This suggests that iOS users spent far more than Google Play users did on Spotify subscriptions.

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Gartner has tweaked its IT spending predictions for 2017, and now says the three percent increase in spending is not exactly realistic. It's going to be less -- 2.7 percent to be exact, which is still a positive prognosis, keeping in mind we're talking about growth.

The reduced spending is mostly to blame on the "wait-and-see" approach many companies are taking, caused by political and economic uncertainty.

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Profits made by YouTube creators can vary wildly. One way these people earn money is from views -- every time a viewer watches a video with an advertisement, the person gets a very small sum. On there own, each view is worth less than a penny. This can ad up, however, and some creators -- such as PewDiePie -- can earn millions of dollars each year.

Today, Google is introducing Super Chat, which is a new way for YouTube content creators to generate money. When a creator is hosting a live stream with chat, they can sell a "Super Chat" to viewers. It is essentially a highlighted chat message, allowing the viewer to stand out from the non-paid users. In theory, this will help the viewer get noticed by the streamer, so that they can get a shout-out, or more easily get a question answered.

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Could 2017 be any more turbulent than 2016? Some would argue that because of last year’s unprecedented surprises, fluctuating markets and politics and real-world events, this year couldn’t possibly offer any more shocks.

In the midst of all of this, the technology world continues unabated, with the FinTech sector holding some exciting new developments for the year ahead. Here are four themes within the FinTech sector to keep an eye on in 2017:

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