Making strides in May – client coverage roundup

The Babel team was hard at work, once again, to get our clients involved in the all-important conversations that were dominating the media last month. To hear more about how our clients added to conversations surrounding ransomware, open banking and the switch to hydrogen, keep reading… 

Cybercrime is a hot topic in the news at the moment, with ransomware groups such as Conti and Hive wreaking havoc on critical national infrastructure using ransomware attacks. In light of the current cybercrime wave, the Global Head of Security Research at Orange Cyberdefense, Charl van der Walt, spoke with Ian Murphy at the Enterprise Times about how crime theory can be applied to cyber extortion. But let’s start with the basics… what is crime theory? In response, Charl disclosed that they were interested in the problem of ransomware or cyber extortion and that the issue was not down to technology, and therefore cannot be solved by technology. The team came to the conclusion that cyber extortion is a type of crime and took a look at what information could be learnt if we applied the same principles of crime theory to it. The conversation then progressed to discussing how a community approach can be used to tackle cybercrime. To hear more about this, you can listen to the full podcast interview here. 

Open banking adoption has not always been a smooth ride. The technology has faced criticism from industry players and PSD2 regulations caused concerns and triggered a slow uptake of open banking technology, coupled with a heightened risk of exposing consumers’ data. Tom Greenwood, CEO at London-based open payments gateway, Volt, spoke with PYMNTS about the adoption of open banking technology and recent growth and expansions in the industry. In his interview, Tom acknowledged that the regulatory schemes experienced a rather turbulent start, but he countered this by explaining that there have been significant improvements in terms of the quality of APIs and interfaces which lead to open banking reaching five million users in 2021, and adoption is now increasing at a rate of around one million new users every six months. These figures put the adoption of open banking technologies above the adoption of contactless payments at the same point in time. Tom stated that open banking is more global than many may think, with companies such as Pix (Brazil) and PayNow (Singapore) expected to launch in 2023, and this global adoption speaks volumes about the importance of this technology. Tom concluded by stating that he believes that four or five years from now, real-time payments will be the only option as a result of increased consumer expectations for a faster financial process.

Continuing the cybercrime theme…Raconteur has stated that digital supply chains have become the latest target for cyberattacks. Global supply chains have been under fire and exposed to a great number of risks over the past few years. Businesses have experienced significant growth due to increased digitalisation and the strong reliance on third-party digital products which have opened the door even wider for threat actors. According to Ilkka Turunen, field CTO at Sonatype, there has been an increase in these next-generation cyberattacks over the past few years and these attacks involve attackers inserting new vulnerabilities into open source projects. In order to combat these growing threats, companies should ensure that they have full visibility over their third-party relationships which could involve reducing the number of third-party providers.

Finally, as the world becomes more concerned about the state of the environment and race to meet the net-zero goals that were set out at COP26, Rami Reshef, CEO of hydrogen fuel cell manufacturer, GenCell, speaks to GB News about hydrogen use in the UK. Many individuals question why hydrogen is needed when we have electric vehicles. In response to this, Rami explained that there is not enough electricity to power this new wave of vehicles and if we want to ensure that our lives in the digital world can continue, we must consume renewable and clean energy. He explained that GenCell is offering the car manufacturers’ industry clean off-grid electrical power stations that can be used to charge cars using green fuel. Rami then went on to explain that in order for us to meet our sustainability goals, a more holistic view needs to be taken of our current energy strategy and hydrogen should be part of the energy that we are using to power our lives.

And there you have it… another roundup of a successful month of client messaging appearing in the right media places. If you are interested in hearing more about how Babel can help your company to be positioned as thought leaders within your industry, please do not hesitate to get in touch.