ThinkTWENTY20

By David Balaban

David Balaban is a computer security researcher with over 17 years of experience in malware analysis and antivirus software evaluation. David runs MacSecurity.net and Privacy-PC.com projects that present expert opinions on contemporary information security matters, including social engineering, malware, penetration testing, threat intelligence, online privacy, and white hat hacking. David has a strong malware troubleshooting background, with a recent focus on ransomware countermeasures.

Most of us visit numerous websites every single day, including online stores, social networks, email services and e-banking resources. To interact with some of these sites as a customer or simply a registered user, you need to enter a login and a password. Since it is impossible, however, to remember those numerous combos of letters, numbers and special characters, some people reuse passwords in different sign-in scenarios.

Auditors have been put on notice: artificial intelligence (AI) is here and it’s here to stay. The possibility of AI-enabled machines replacing human auditors is creating some angst. Are people right to be worried, and if so, what can they do to prepare for an AI takeover?

BlackRock Corporation, which represents U.S.$25 trillion in assets under management, recently surveyed clients around the world, to understand the shift towards sustainable assets and how the pandemic may affect it. They came to some clear conclusions – principally that the extant trend towards raising the importance of sustainability as an investment objective along with profitability is not going away.

At the beginning of 2020, BlackRock laid out a series of steps to make sustainability a key component of its investment approach, driven by an investment conviction that an understanding of sustainability issues is essential to long-term investment performance. In mid-2020, they surveyed their clients to better understand their attitudes to sustainable investing, how the pandemic has affected implementation, and how innovation can spur adoption.

They found that 54% of the 425 investors surveyed, representing as estimated U.S.$25 trillion in assets under management, consider sustainable investing to be fundamental to investment processes and outcomes, 

The pronouncements of Blackrock add substance to the growth of sustainability investing and the need for ESG disclosures by corporations.