Tag Archive for: Epidemic

Billions required to prevent next pandemic, warns epidemic expert

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Governments must invest billions of dollars to prevent the next pandemic and begin constructing a library of vaccines for every single family of viruses, says the organisation charged with preparing the world for emerging infectious diseases.

Richard Hatchett, chief executive of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, said it could take as little as five years to create the vaccine bank that could be adapted when a threat was detected, to ensure the world could start vaccinating within 100 days.

Vaccine makers were able to deliver Covid-19 vaccines in record time partly because they were already developing jabs for Mers, another coronavirus. But Hatchett said that unless shots were prepared for other virus families, the world might not be as lucky next time.

“The core of the 100-day mission is built on this idea of looking at prototype viruses from the different viral families and doing as much of the work . . . in advance as possible. That’s a large but finite task,” he told the Financial Times ahead of a global pandemic preparedness summit next week in London.

The event comes as western countries ease restrictions to try to live with the virus and politicians are focused on the war in Ukraine.

Hatchett warned against “pandemic fatigue”, saying an outbreak was “not like a volcano where the eruption discharges the risk”. In fact, the increasingly interconnected world had created conditions ripe for disease outbreaks, including for other coronaviruses.

“Why would we take this to be the last [coronavirus]? We know there are other coronaviruses out there in the wild,” he said. “Some could be theoretically as infectious as Sars-Cov-2 and possibly with a mortality that is closer to Sars-Cov-1, or Mers. That would be truly terrifying.”

© Richard Cannon/FT

Hatchett said governments, business and citizens should think about protecting against pathogens like the world treated computer viruses. “We don’t think about computer threats as, ‘Oh, Stuxnet, it’s gone, we have the patch and we don’t need to worry about cyber security any more’,” he said, referring to the computer worm originally aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Cepi…

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The Financial Times and McKinsey’s best business books of 2021 cover pressing topics like global cybersecurity, climate change, and the opioid epidemic

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  • The Financial Times & McKinsey announced the best business book of 2021 on December 1.
  • Judges chose “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends” by journalist Nicole Perlroth.
  • Below, find this year’s shortlist — ranging in topics from the opioid epidemic to climate change.

The Financial Times and McKinsey have announced the winner and finalists for the 2021 Business Book of the Year award.

This year’s winner, “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends” by “New York Times” reporter Nicole Perlroth, delivers a crucial and thorough analysis of the cyber arms race, encountering hackers, spies, and criminals clamoring to infiltrate essential computer systems.

Intrepid journalist Nicole Perloth delves into cyber crime to create an urgent, alarming analysis of the threat posed by the cybercriminals arms race.

Originally $21.00 | Save 57%

“Nicole Perlroth has done something that hasn’t been done before: going this deep into the mysterious world of hackers,” Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf said in a press release. “Cyber security isn’t featuring highly enough on CEOs’ agenda. I hope this award will prompt them to read this book and pay attention.”

McKinsey’s Managing Partner Europe, Magnus Tyeman, echoed the importance and singularity of Perlroth’s book. “Nicole Perlroth has written a book that is more than just a timely wake-up call to the fact that the world has largely ignored the realities and profound implications of the arms race between hackers, cybercriminals and businesses and national governments,” Tyeman said. “It is an alarming book, one in which the author makes a compelling, granular and matter-of-fact case for how vulnerable global computer systems have become, even as it also comes with an urgent plea for specific and systematic action.”

Below, you’ll find the six books listed on this year’s shortlist — stacked with journalists and ranging in topics from the opioid epidemic (by the prolific author of “Say Nothing“) to racism, climate change, and meritocracy. 

The winner of the Business Book of the Year…

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There’s no easy fix to the worsening ransomware epidemic

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Ransomware attacks will continue as long criminals find them profitable — but cutting off this revenue stream is easier said than done, according to experts speaking during an Aug 25 Institute for Security and Technology (IST) panel.

Policymakers need to work to reduce the frequency with which ransomware sufferers give in to extortion demands, but should avoid jumping straight to banning payments, panellists suggested.

Lawmakers instead may need to start by putting in place a variety of progressive steps that can discourage many payments and blunt the pain victims, and those who depend on them, are likely to experience as they try to resist giving in to cyber criminals.

During the discussion, panellists examined factors that make certain victims most likely to pay and the measures that gradually reduce ransomware’s appeal to attackers.

Need versus caution

Victims may know that paying ransom means rewarding criminals and funding their future exploits, but those who — accurately or not — see it as the quickest or most affordable way to get up and running again may still feel compelled to hand over the money.

Disruptions to health-care providers and utilities’ operations can put lives at risk, prompting these firms to pay up in hopes of more quickly restoring their systems. Small family businesses, too, are likely to feel pressure to give in because they rarely have the finances to survive temporary closures without shutting down for good, said Jen Ellis, IST Ransomware Task Force working group co-chair.

“For them, a ransom incident can mean an end-of-business event. If you don’t pay, you have no recourse,” Ellis said. “If they can’t recover their business and do so quickly, they’re done, they’re sunk.”

On the flip side are better resourced companies that hand over ransom without fully exploring other options. Josephine Wolff, associate professor of cybersecurity policy at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, viewed Colonial Pipeline as one of these, stating that its choice to shut down systems following a ransomware attack seemed to be driven from “an excess of caution” rather than true…

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Colonial Pipeline latest in ballooning ransomware epidemic

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The international nature of ransomware crime is also an impediment to bringing it under control. The Justice Department and FBI are working with allies and partners overseas to investigate criminal rings, disrupt their operations and online infrastructure, and prosecute hackers, officials said. In January, the department joined Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain in dismantling the botnet known as Emotet, which had infected hundreds of thousands of computers in the United States and caused millions of dollars in damage worldwide. The botnet, an army of hijacked computers, could also be used to spread ransomware.

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