2 simple things you can do to fight hackers-By Cadie Thompson

(Thomson Reuters) Most successful cyber attacks against companies stem from human error.
Another day, another major cyber attack.

The pro-cheating dating website Ashley Madison is just the latest company to suffer a huge security breach possibly exposing the personal details of millions of users worldwide.

As these types of incidents become more common, companies are increasingly investing in cyber security protections. But even with the best systems in place, hackers can still easily break into a company’s network if workers aren’t also being diligent about security.

There are two things that every employee should be doing to help keep their company safe from cyber criminals, Chris Young, general manager of Intel’s Security Group, told Business Insider.

“Think before you click. That is the number one thing that every average employee in an organization can do,” Young said.

Humans are still the weakest link when it comes to an organization’s security, according to a survey of security professionals by Intel published Monday. According to the report, successful attacks against companies most often stem from three things: User errors caused by lack of awareness, unofficial use of online services, and using social media sites at work.

Basically, employees are clicking links they shouldn’t be, which can give attackers a way in. One way attackers get in is through the inbox.
“Emails are the number one way that attackers are getting in," Young said. "They [cyber criminals] are crafting emails and attaching malicious files to those emails and their entry points into these organizations is often through tricking the average user or click on an email attachment and launch a malicious file.”

But these dangerous emails are not as easy to spot as they once were. Cyber criminals have gotten much better at disguising malicious email to make it look more legitimate. So employees need to be vigilant and ask questions about all of the email they receive that raises even the slightest suspicion, Young said.

“You should ask why am I getting the email? Why is there a file attached to it? Why am I being asked to click on it? And you should ask all of this before clicking,” he said.

The second big thing that employees should do to help keep their company safe is to make sure to report any suspicious emails or attachments. And if someone does click on a link or download a file that raises eyebrows, report it as soon as possible so that the company’s security team can investigate quickly.

“There is a huge element that if you are good at quickly identifying a breach and are able to do something about it you can potentially contain it and possibly stop it before the attackers are able to achieve their goal,” Young said. “So if the average employee smells something they should report it.

Culled from Business Insider

Greece starts paying back $6.8B to ECB, IMF-By Holly Ellyat

Matthew Lloyd | Bloomberg | Getty Image. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has advocated debt relief …

Greece has begun to repay the 6.25 billion euros ($6.8 billion) it owes to the European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), finance ministry officials told Reuters Monday.

However, experts are worried that the next round of bailout talks is skating over one vital subject: debt relief.
According to Reuters, Athens on Monday began paying back 4.2 billion euros in principal and interest to the ECB and 2.05 billion euros in arrears it has owed the IMF since it stopped repaying its debts at the end of June.
It is also repaying a 500 million euro loan to the Greek central bank.
The country is paying its bills using a 7.16 billion bridging loan secured last week after it agreed to a series of harsh reforms. The measures, which have to be put into law, should result in the country receiving its third bailout.
#Talks over the details of a third, 86-billion-euro ($93 billion) bailout for Greece are due to start in earnest on Monday after euro zone parliaments gave them the green light last week.
However one thorny topic is likely to dominate discussions: that of debt relief for Greece. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has advocated such a move - but the fund's former deputy director told CNBC that it should make the first move.
"If the IMF is serious about debt relief then the right thing for the IMF to do is to write off its own debt - the debt that Greeks owes the IMF," Ashoka Mody told CNBC Monday. "The IMF has adopted the position that Greece needs debt relief, but somebody else should pay for that."
Mody's comments come at a time when the IMF has raised concerns over debt relief for Greece, with Managing Director Christine Lagarde advocating extending the maturities on Greek loans. The country is already battling soaring debt levels, and debt is expected to hit 180 percent of GDP this year, according to the European Commission.
In an interview with French radio on Friday, Lagarde said that a third bailout plan for Greece would "categorically" not succeed without debt restructuring.
The issue of debt relief is a thorny subject, however, particularly for countries like Germany, which feel that debt forgiveness could set a precedent for other indebted members of the single currency region.


Despite this, there were some signs at the weekend that even Germany - Greece's largest euro zone lender -- could be succumbing to growing pressure over debt relief. On Sunday, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with German broadcaster ARD that discussions over changing the maturities of Greece's debt or reducing interest payments would be possible after the first successful review of the new bailout package.
She reiterated that a major debt haircut could not happen within a currency union, however.
Despite some apparent softening of Germany's stance towards debt relief, Volker Wieland, one of Merkel's economic advisers who are known as the "wise men," told CNBC on Monday that the chancellor's comments did not signal a change of tack by Germany.
"I think there can be debt relief in terms of postponing interest but that's a different message from a debt haircut which would involve taxpayers in Europe (losing money)," he told CNBC Europe's "Squawk Box" Monday.
Mody was critical of lenders' demands on Greece -- a country he likened to being like a "trauma patient."
"The right thing to do is to have more debt relief and less austerity, but when that penny will drop and how it will drop is an open question. Ultimately, the route being pursued by the IMF, ECB and the Germans is bound to make everyone a loser," he said.
The Greek crisis appears to be nearing a resolution, with Greek banks open once again on Monday after three weeks of closures and talk turning to the finer points of an aid package which, it is hoped, will keep the country in the euro zone. But Mody warned that Greece was not out of danger.
"This program has again, like the last ones, been set up for failure. Greece is essentially like a trauma patient - it's going through a debt deflation cycle where the more debt you pay, the more indebted you become because your incomes fall but the debt burden does not fall as fast," he said.
Against the backdrop of such debt dynamics, Mody forecast that Greece's problems would re-emerge in six to nine months' time. "Then we'll begin to see numbers on Greek GDP growth...which will show that: 'Oops, this is not working.' But the 'oops' will be only from those that have constructed this program -- everyone else is predicting it now."

Culled from CNBC

Manage, meddle or magnify? China's corporate debt threat Reuters

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View photo

A man walks past an electronic board showing the benchmark Shanghai and Shenzhen stock indices, on a pedestrian overpass at the Pudong financial district in Shanghai, China, in this June 26, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Aly Song/FIles

By Umesh Desai

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Beijing may have averted a crisis in its stock markets with heavy-handed intervention, but the world's biggest corporate debt pile - $16.1 trillion and rising - is a much greater threat to its slowing economy and will not be so easily managed.
Corporate China's debts, at 160 percent of GDP, are twice that of the United States, having sharply deteriorated in the past five years, a Thomson Reuters study of over 1,400 companies shows.
And the debt mountain is set to climb 77 percent to $28.8 trillion over the next five years, credit rating agency Standard & Poor's estimates. [ID:nL4N0ZV68I]
Beijing's policy interventions affecting corporate credit have so far been mostly designed to address a different goal - supporting economic growth, which is set to fall to a 25-year low this year.
It has cut interest rates four times since November, reduced the level of reserves banks must hold and removed limits on how much of their deposits they can lend.
Though it wants more of that credit going to smaller companies and innovative areas of the economy, such measures are blunt instruments.
   "When the credit taps are opened, risks rise that the money is going to 'problematic' companies or entities," said Louis Kuijs, RBS chief economist for Greater China.
    China's banks made 1.28 trillion yuan ($206 billion) in new loans in June, well up on May's 900.8 billion yuan.
The effect of policy easing has been to reduce short-term interest costs, so lending for stock speculation has boomed, but there is little evidence loans are being used for profitable investment in the real economy, where long-term borrowing costs remain high, and banks are reluctant to take risks.
Manufacturers' debts are increasingly dwarfing their profits. The Thomson Reuters study found that in 2010, materials companies' debts were 2.8 times their core profit. At end-2014 they were 5.3 times. For energy companies, indebtedness has risen from 1.1 to 4.4 times core profit. For industrials, from 2.5 to 4.2.
LOW RETURNS
Gao Hong, investor relationship principal at railway equipment maker Jinxi Axle Co , which has seen its debt-to-core profit multiple triple to 10.25 between 2010 and 2014, said the company struggled to find profitable capital projects to invest in, so put money into short-term bank products that guaranteed returns.
    "The risk for these (capital) programmes is so high and the rate of return so low that we have to make the best decision for our investors (by) purchasing bank products. Last year, we made profits thanks to the sale of CNR shares," said Gao.
Much of the new lending is going to China's notoriously inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as part of the government's fiscal stimulus.
    “They are lending more to fund infrastructure projects, and some may be done by SOEs where leverage is increasing as a result," said Tao Wang, UBS head of China research.
    "Prices are declining and revenue is slowing, and in this environment you cannot force too quick a deleverage – that would lead to a hard landing," said Wang.
S&P expects China's companies to account for 40 percent of the world's new corporate lending in the period through 2019.
But quantity is not the only problem.
Getting credit to the most efficient companies, where it has the most impact on the economy, would be easier if inefficient companies were allowed to fail, so markets can price debt effectively.
Policymakers have said they want market mechanisms to play a bigger role in credit pricing, but in practice have baulked at the consequences, effectively bailing out companies in trouble, as it did last year when state-backed Shanghai Chaori Solar Energy Science and Technology Co Ltd defaulted on a bond coupon payment.
Rapid debt growth, opacity of risk and pricing and very high debt to GDP are a hazardous combination, Standard & Poor's says.
It took an unprecedented series of measures to arrest the plunge in China's stock markets, which are worth just over $8 trillion and are a minority pursuit for the relatively wealthy.
Tackling corporate debt might make that seem like child's play.

    "Managing the debt market is probably more dangerous than the stock market because the scale of the debt market is bigger, and without any high-profile default, the moral hazard is a significant issue," said David Cui, BofA Merrill Lynch analyst.

($1 = 6.2084 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Editing by Will Waterman; Additional reporting by Tripti Kalro in BANGALORE and Beijing bureau)

Culled from Reuters