AI

Nigel Biggar: British Empire unfairly maligned

Colin Henderson

Non-European colonialist empires existed for millennia. No one seems interested in those, though Published Feb 28, 2025  •  Last updated 3 days ago  •  9 minute read Nigel Biggar. Esteemed ethicist and theologian Nigel Biggar, regius professor emeritus of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford, says he’s “ashamed to be an alumnus” of Regent College, which called off his March 6 lecture. Photo by Tom Pilston An empire is a single state that contains a variety of peoples, one of which is dominant. As a form of political organization, it has been around for millennia and has … Continue reading Nigel Biggar: British Empire unfairly maligned

AI

Navigating Cybersecurity and AI

Colin Henderson

Starting to think abut AI in context of Cybersecurity. Courtesy of Koat.ai Summary AI plays a dual role in cybersecurity, enhancing threat detection and response while also being exploited by cybercriminals. Businesses can leverage AI to automate tasks, provide real-time threat analysis, and enable scalable security measures. However, they must address data privacy, compliance, and bias concerns while ensuring ethical AI use. The Art of Staying Secure with AI Cybersecurity defends against digital attacks on systems, networks, and data. AI changes how these defences are deployed. By leveraging AI, businesses can automate processes and enhance threat detection. This synergy offers … Continue reading Navigating Cybersecurity and AI

Cybersecurity

Evolution and Nature of Cyber Attacks on Banks (1998–2025)

Colin Henderson

The financial sector has been a prime target for cybercriminals due to the high-value data and assets it manages. Over the past 27 years, cyberattacks on banks and their customers have evolved in sophistication, scale, and impact. Below is a detailed examination of this evolution, categorized by key time periods. The evolution highlights the characteristic that this report will focus on, and that is proactivity vs reactivity. Banks have become adept at reacting to new threats, usually following experience with an attack or intelligence from communal discussion groups between banks. This reflects in internal approaches, which is largely based on … Continue reading Evolution and Nature of Cyber Attacks on Banks (1998–2025)

US

The Great Emboldening – The Atlantic

Colin Henderson

The parallels with Elon Musk are dramatically highlighted in this Atlantic piece. The Trump administration are reshaping the US administration and of this there is no doubt. Of deeper meaning what will this mean for society, business and economy? The impacts will affect business, stock values and society. This requires additional thought and risk assessment. The Great Emboldening – The Atlantic Whatever Bezos’s personal reasons are, equally important is the fact that he is emboldened to interfere so brazenly. And he’s not alone. A broader change has been under way among the tech and political elite over the past year … Continue reading The Great Emboldening – The Atlantic

AI, strategy

How AI is transforming strategy development – McKinsey

Colin Henderson

Citation: About the authors This article is a collaborative effort by Alexander D’Amico, Bruce Delteil, and Eric Hazan, with Andrea Tricoli and Antoine Montard, representing views from McKinsey’s Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice. At its core, strategy entails deriving insights from facts and data, developing real options based on those insights, making hard-to-reverse choices, and executing initiatives that convert those choices into value. Data analytics has assisted in this work for several decades, but never before has technology been able to not only augment and partially automate inputs into strategy but also combine them into complex analyses. In time, it may even recommend … Continue reading How AI is transforming strategy development – McKinsey

Cybersecurity, Geopolitics

Update from Sifted on Ukraine impacts

Colin Henderson

Sifted reports on start ups in Ukraine and Eastern Europe three years on and the threat and startup environment. —- —- Three years of war in Europe Good morning Colin, Today marks the third anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, and while the US and Russia remain focused on finding solutions that suit them, the conflict looks set to continue a while longer. A year on from war breaking out, Sifted spoke to several startups and operators who either tried to keep their companies running or shifted from coding to producing military equipment. Three years on, Sifted once again interviewed Ukrainian founders to … Continue reading Update from Sifted on Ukraine impacts

Economy, EU, Geopolitics

Germany’s Economy Was Once the Envy of Europe. Not Anymore

Colin Henderson

This from NY Times confirms we are collectively in a state of chaos in terms of ‘world order’. In this blog one of my primary focus is on business and banking risk. Canada is a classic forerunner to what we see in Germany in today’s election. There was a time where my primary focus was bad actors and criminal elements including bad actor governments. The notion of risk has moved inward and banks must take care of their own risk management and deploy their own mitigation factors. That means isolating and understanding risks to their bank and taking arbitrary actions … Continue reading Germany’s Economy Was Once the Envy of Europe. Not Anymore

Cybersecurity

BlackBasta ransomeware lo

Colin Henderson

BlackBasta ransomeware logs leaked # Insights into Black Basta’s Organizational Structure Revealed Through Leaked Chat Logs The unprecedented leak of over 200,000 internal chat logs from the Black Basta ransomware group has provided cybersecurity researchers and law enforcement agencies with critical insights into the organizational structure of one of the world’s most prolific cybercriminal enterprises. Spanning communications from September 2023 to September 2024, these logs reveal a sophisticated hierarchy, operational divisions, and internal dynamics that underscore the group’s adaptability and vulnerabilities[1][3][4]. — ## Hierarchical Leadership and Core Command Structure At the apex of Black Basta’s organizational structure sits **Oleg Nefedovaka**, … Continue reading BlackBasta ransomeware lo

AI

Smaller is better – shifts in hiring suggest AI impacts and productivity shifts

Colin Henderson

Source: Gergely Orosz Last updated 21 FEBRUARY 2025. Originally published 20 Feb 2025. Writing The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter. Author of The Software Engineer’s Guidebook. Previously at Uber, Microsoft, Skype, Skyscanner. Amsterdam, Netherlands ——/——-//——-/——- Interesting data from jobs site Indeed shows the change in the number of active software developer job listings on the site. For context, Indeed is the largest job aggregator portal in the US and in several countries, and it crawls vacancies on other sites, too. This means that Indeed aims to track most of the posted jobs across a given region (via crawling and processing them) – not just the … Continue reading Smaller is better – shifts in hiring suggest AI impacts and productivity shifts