Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Kaspersky Blog | Hugh Aver | Aug 12, 2021
Loss or leaks of sensitive information can be serious problems for small businesses. Here’s how to keep confidential data safe.
There’s no such thing as a business that doesn’t have sensitive data. Even a small retail company has documents with employees’ personal details that legally must remain confidential, for example. Bank documents would be hard to restore. Supplier and contractor contracts could include trade secrets.
To protect important data from loss or inappropriate disclosure, follow these seven tips.
On devices where confidential data is stored or transmitted (i.e., most of them), be sure to enable full disk encryption (FDE). Encryption protects the data in case the device falls into the wrong hands. In Windows, the FDE tool is called BitLocker. The macOS equivalent is FileVault. FDE is enabled by default on most iOS and Android phones; don’t disable it unless absolutely necessary.
Another way important data can fall into the wrong hands is through the loss (or theft) of physical media: external hard disks or flash drives. Ideally, they should never leave the office. In fact, if you must write to an external medium, you should encrypt the data beforehand. For example, many security solutions for small businesses support encrypted storage in the form of cryptocontainers.
Sometimes you might need to send confidential data online, by e-mail or a file-sharing service. We strongly recommend avoiding it whenever possible, but if you absolutely have to send information, at least encrypt it first, in case of interception. The easiest way is to create a password-protected archive. Almost all archive utilities have this option. After you encrypt the information, send the password to the recipient through a different channel — for example, attach the information to an e-mail, but send the password through a messaging app that supports end-to-end encryption.
Even information that’s fallen out of use can still cause problems, so get rid of it. For less-sensitive information, at the very least, delete it and then empty your Recycle Bin so the data can’t be restored with a simple click. For anything even vaguely sensitive, use a file-shredder utility to prevent recovery.
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Insurtech Insights | Sep 24, 2021
From bogus claims to reputational damage, the ability of synthetic media to seemingly bend reality is an emerging menace with a far reach.If you are familiar with photo and video editing tools, then you have probably heard of deepfakes, an emerging breed of artificial intelligence-enhanced videos that have demonstrated the ability to blur reality in ways that are extremely difficult for humans or even machines to detect.
Unlike conventional video editing, deepfakes utilize artificial intelligence(AI) to alter or synthetically generate videos, bringing a new level of realism without the forensic traces present in edited digital media.
While these advanced fakes may sound like science fiction, many researchers have concluded it is only a matter of time before deepfakes become nearly undetectable to the human eye and subsequently undetectable even to elaborate forensic tools.
Earlier this year, the FBI sounded the alarm that deepfakes are a new cyberattack threat targeting businesses. As a result, many organizations are pondering strategies to mitigate the risks and potentially undesirable outcomes that may result.
Deepfakes or synthetic media can effectively be used to file fraudulent claims, create fraudulent inspection reports, and even establish the existence and condition of assets that do not exist.
Think claims for exaggerated damage from a nearby hurricane or tornado or claims for items that don’t even exist, i.e., a non-existent Rolex watch that got insured and mysteriously went missing.
Does this suggest going back to using human adjusters and inspectors for important claims? While taking a step backward to manual inspection might help to eliminate the deepfake threat, a layer of protection against the deepfakes in self-service processes would serve better without undoing years of digital transformation.
Moreover, with many claims processes moving to straight-through processing, with no human intervention required aside from exceptional cases, two in-line approaches are suggested for implementing a layer of defense:
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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The Register | Tim Richardson | Sep 21, 2021
Platform and individuals charged in first case of its kindUS financial watchdogs have launched legal action against a cannabis-related investment scheme said to be the first case involving crowdfunding regulation.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a complaint against three people – named as Robert Shumake Jr, Willard Jackson, and Nicole Birch – and Texan firm 420 Real Estate in the Eastern District court in Michigan, claiming the trio had been involved in selling nearly $2m in unregistered securities through two crowdfunding schemes.
The SEC also charged the registered funding portal that hosted the offerings – TruCrowd – and its CEO Vicent Petrescu (name spelled as listed), with violating Section 4A(a)(5) of the Securities Act and violating crowdfunding rules, alleging they "served as gatekeepers and, as such, were responsible for taking measures to reduce the risk of fraud."
In papers filed yesterday [PDF], Shumake, Jackson and Birch were accused of marketing both offerings as "opportunities for investors to share in bountiful profits from the cannabis industry, by acquiring real estate and leasing it to companies engaged in the business of growing cannabis."
However, the complaint lodged by the SEC claimed that none of the money raised had been used to "acquire or improve cannabis real estate" as set out.
"None of the investors in either crowdfunding offering has received any return on their investment, and few investors have recovered any of the funds they invested," the watchdog said.
Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement said:
"As companies continue to raise funds through crowdfunding, it will continue to make sure all involved are "accountable" and, if needs be, "enforce the protections in place for all investors."
Last year, the SEC relaxed the rules around crowdfunding limits, raising the ceiling from $1m to $5m.
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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GlobalRisk Community | Enrique Raul Suarez | Sep 3, 2021
A report published last year by the WEF-Carnegie Cyber Policy Initiative calls for the merging of Wall Street banks, their regulators and intelligence agencies as necessary to confront an allegedly imminent cyber attack that will collapse the existing financial system.
In November 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace co-produced a report that warned that the global financial system was increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks. Advisors to the group that produced the report included representatives from the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund, Wall Street giants likes JP Morgan Chase and Silicon Valley behemoths like Amazon.
The ominous report was published just months after the World Economic Forum had conducted a simulation of that very event – a cyber attack that brings the global financial system to its knees – in partnership with Russia’s largest bank, which is due to jumpstart that country’s economic “digital transformation” with the launch of its own central bank-backed digital currency.
More recently, last Tuesday, the largest information sharing organization of the financial industry, whose known members include Bank of America, Wells Fargo and CitiGroup, have again warned that nation-state hackers and cybercriminals were poised to work together to attack the global financial system in the short term. The CEO of this organization, known as the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), had previously advised the WEF-Carnegie report that had warned much the same.
“Not a Question of If but When“
The Cyber Policy Initiative’s November 2020 report is officially titled “International Strategy to Better Protect the Financial System.” It begins by noting that the global financial system, like many other systems, are “going through unprecedented digital transformation, which is being accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic.”
Given the inevitability of this destructive event predicted by the report’s authors, it is important to focus in on the solutions proposed in the WEF-Carnegie report as they will become immediately relevant if this event, as predicted by the WEF and Carnegie Endowment, does come to pass.
Some of the solutions proposed are to be expected from a WEF-linked policy document, such as the calls for increased public-private partnerships and greater coordination among regional and international organizations as well as increased coordination between national governments.
However, the main “solution” at the heart of this report, and also at the heart of the WEF-Carnegie initiative’s other endeavors, is a call to fuse corporate banks, the financial authorities that essentially oversee them, tech companies and the national security state.
“This requires countries not only to better organize themselves domestically but also to strengthen international cooperation to defend against, investigate, prosecute and ideally prevent future attacks. This implies that the financial sector and financial authorities must regularly interact with law enforcement and other national security agencies in unprecedented ways, both domestically and internationally.”
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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