How cybercrime affects your profits.

Over the years, the computation of intellectual property has been hard to evaluate. However, some ways of determining the value will comprise estimating the worth of it on the market or determining the capability of such property and correctly evaluating it value on the market.

Other relevant means maybe computation of value of inputs into the said product. Evident is this quote from the Economic impact of cybercrime and cyber espionage. “The international Maritime Bureau estimated the annual cost of piracy as somewhere between 1billion US dollars and 16billionin 2005. To put these figures in context, the annual value of maritime trade in 2005 was $7.8 trillion, which means piracy cost equalled at most 0.02% of the total.”

Cybercrime, what the heck is that?

Cybercrime, has the prefix cyber which means internet or an activity relating to internet. Hence by derivation it basically means activities over the internet that are considered as criminal. Espionage on the other hand denotes spying. Someone may as well ask how spying cab be illegal and therefore criminal. For a simple and brute answer, I would say invading the privacy of an individual or groups is illegal in most countries and violates their fundamental human rights to privacy. But of course, there are some countries that disregard this and spy on its citizens with the excuse of protecting them.

How does it occur?

Just as criminal activity occurs in any human setting or community, the internet cannot be an exception. It can occur in a number of ways. Some of which may include

1.      Extortion gimmicks; individuals hack into website sand demand ransom. They threaten the owners or companies involved to extort money from them to carry out other insidious activities, some countries regard some these issues as terrorism especially when it involves powerful countries.

2.      Deny relevant services; some of these people who engage in cybercrime do what they do best to simply stage a protest. As happened in Estonia 2007. Imagine the loss of revenue that will clamp down online retail businesses should their services be denied to their customers by unwarranted third parties.

3.      Stealing financial information or customers or proprietary property. These individuals engage in these activities to filch financial information for numerous purposes which mostly include business confidential information such as trade secrets and private intellectual properties. In extreme cases, sensitive business negotiations data or even insider stock trading information are accessed.

This palpably is the most evil form of hacking which invariably harms financial markets, enables individuals or groups of individuals to manipulate stock prices or automated trading systems, peddle false information that disturbs the market price.

4.      Installation of virus for monitoring and damage; most of us are fond of downloading so many things that we are not exactly sure of its security implications. Hackers being sneaky for their own nefarious dealings explore this vulnerability. We download things that later turns out to be virus. Then it infiltrates our files and monitors the activities that goes on. Most often, they not only monitor you and your company but manipulate data, and eventually damages them.

How does this affect my business?

The implications of these activities are numerous and varied. Among them are the following. We all know that in competitive market, consumers are good at searching for the best lowest price with great satisfaction. Therefore if a company incurs so much in protecting itself from such criminal activities. These cost would be passed on to the consumers and that would in turn affect their gains due to competitions. That is not to say that companies must not make an effort to protect itself.

Loss of sales; In December 2010, PayPal was attacked and lost huge sum of revenue when customers decided not to transact any business with them because they believed that by continuing to engage in business activity activity with a firm that had being involved in a cyber-attack will equally make them (the customers) vulnerable.

Damage of reputation; when PayPal was attacked, its customers deserted it not because they had changed their mode of delivery of service but because it reputation had been tarnished. The trust the customers had had being broken and that took them a long time and considerable effort coupled with huge cost to build it. The respect the brand commanded at the time was disregarded and I believe no company would want to fall prey to this canker. One can imagine the high cost of repair that would be needed here.

Loss of financial assets or intellectual property and business confidential information

Supposed a company is attacked, the consequence are mostly huge and disheartening. Among them maybe its financial assets or intellectual property that it hopes to bring to the market in the near future. Confidential information of customers could be exposed and they would be susceptible to these hackers as well. Information from Bloomberg.com specifically by Keith Collins indicates the information that was taken when numerous cooperate institutions were hacked. Below are the firms and their various information.

ü  Premera Blue Cross. Announced: 03/18/2015. The company, which discovered the breach in January, says hackers may have accessed Social Security numbers, bank accounts and medical information. Private company, N/A .11Million records

ü  Anthem (Announced: 02/05/2015) Sources familiar with the investigation tell Bloomberg News that the details of this attack include “fingerprints” of a nation-state, and that China is the main suspect. Stock fell 1.1% 80Million records such as Social Security numbers, Email addresses and Physical addresses

ü  Sony Announced: 11/25/2014. Hackers broke into its network and exposed employment and salary records, documents and embarrassing private emails between Hollywood executives. Stock fell 1.1% 47,000 records such as Proprietary information and Employee details

ü  Home Depot Announced: 09/02/2014 The Company said 56 million payment cards had been stolen, and later disclosed 53 million e-mail addresses had also been pilfered. Stock fell 2.4% 109Million records such as Credit card numbers and email addresses.

ü  JPMorgan Announced: 08/27/2014 .The biggest U.S. bank said a data breach affected 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. Stock fell 0.7% 83Milion records such as Email addresses and Physical addresses

ü  EBay Announced: 05/21/2014 in a massive attack, hackers took customers’ personal information, affecting up to 145 million active users. Stock fell 0.7% 145Milion records including Email addresses, Physical addresses and Login credentials

ü  Target Announced: 12/13/2013 though announced at the end of 2013, the effects of this breach carried into 2014. Target said its U.S. sales were "meaningfully weaker" after the data theft was disclosed. Stock fell 0.3% 110Milion records including Credit card numbers.

These are just but few victims. There could also be high cost of effective security, and sometimes creation of competition from people who lay their hands on proprietary information or intellectual property.

The world is moving towards the age of information and technology, everything happens by the touch of a screen or click of a button. The level of privacy continues to decline at amazingly rapid rate. Hence just beware.

RAMPANT STRIKES OF PEOPLE WHO DESERVE BETTER.

Over the years the nation has being crippled with harsh economic situations that are continually disabling people financially, physically and psychologically.

We are all hoping for better days ahead but for how long shall we wait?

The people of Ghana have endured enough and hence cannot bear anymore hardship.

People are painfully wailing but what is the leadership of the country doing about it?

It sad and awful to hear that majority of Ghanaians cannot even afford three square meals a day.

(picture credits:bbci.co.uk)

It is no news that corruption, economic mismanagement and poor leadership have now become the nation’s major hallmark.

How disgusting it was to know that the Justice Apau Judgment Debt commission  unveiled the enormous judgment debt that has plagued the government as a result of utter negligence and failure of some public officials to safeguard the nation against vampires that seeks to suck taxpayers’ blood from their veins.

On June, 30 2014. It was reported that the government was to be hit with judgment debt of GH¢135.5 million.  How can this be?

Far from these, it is reported that the president has distributed free vehicles for chiefs under this dire economic situation whereas those monies could have being used for other relevant projects that are collapsing.

I wonder the road where they will be driving those cars because most of the roads in country are in extremely deplorable state.

Aside all these problems, the government found no fault in airlifting of USD3.5 million to Brazil for our national players.

An act which made the country to become an object of ridicule around the world.

Since the beginning of the year 2014, the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) started the adjustment of utility prices through the Automatic Adjustment Formula which according to them was driven by key variables which includes the; Ghana cedi USD exchange rate where the cedi is known to be depreciating at a faster rate, inflation, price of crude oil and natural gas, fuel mix, generation mix(hydro and thermal), power purchase cost, demand forecast(currently 12% per annum and still rising),chemical cost(water) and electricity cost(water) .

Recent hikes in petroleum prices which not long ago led to shortages of fuel in the country cannot be overlooked.

This has consequently led to increase in prices of public transport fares making the lives of ordinary Ghanaian a living hell.

Aside all these policies and implementation that the Bank Of Ghana instituted the cedi continues to fall, there continues to be delayed and unpaid allowances  increasingly  affecting the pockets of Ghanaians and in this  regard the organized labor decided to organize a nationwide strike and demonstration against what they described as rising economic conditions.

The organized labor which constitutes the Trade Union Congress and the Ghana Federation of Labor declared a nationwide strike on Friday July 18, 2014 with the intent to hit the streets in protest on Thursday July 24, 2014.

The protest was set to begin at the Obra spot at the Kwame Nkrumah circle in Accra through the Trade Union Congress office to the ministries and to the Black star  square where they presented the petition to the Minister of Employment and Labour relations Haruna Iddrisu.

“while we thank them, I will convey their specific concerns to the higher authority”, said by Haruna Iddrisu whiles he received the petition from the spokesperson of Organized labour Dr. Kofi Asamoah.

Similar protest where organized in all ten (10) regional capitals of the country.

It is important to know that before this nationwide strike, similar demonstrations had been organized over recent months. Notable amongst them are the “occupy flagstaff house demo” and the “Red Friday”

Smaller unions have also embarked on demonstrations pertaining to similar agitations.

Polytechnic Teachers Association of Ghana (POTAG) for instance was already on strike for two weeks before the nationwide strike and even after the nationwide strike the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has declared an indefinite strike until their research and book allowances are paid.

As to whether the grievances of these people will be addressed still remained uncertain, not to talk of the recent strikes and agitations that has being going on.

The country is still ailing, with its numerous deplorable roads across the 

(Photo credits:kessbenfm.com)

country that does not improve the economic conditions of the country in any way. Now, the heat on the floor is the strike of the Civil and Local Government Service Staff Association of Ghana (CLOGSSAG) who few days ago declared a strike to force government to pay its members their interim premium allowances, and has refused to rescind the decision until the demands are met. If the whole machinery of government decides to strike owing to failed leadership and incapability. How can the country progress.

June 3,a page in history books of Ghana

photo credit:ghanaman.com

It's obvious that the government deosn't always carry out its responsibilities as required of them. However, if we are always going to  play the blame game. Then I am afraid nothing is ever going to work in this country. Common sense would dictate that an individual must keep his or her environment clean. But here we are, in  a country that has being engulfed in filth in all our major cities with no measures being put in place to curb the menace. It's indeed a very lamentable situation when it comes to waste management systems in Ghana. If you walk down a major street in the ten regional capitals of Ghana and doesn't find any heaps of garbage, then you must be dreaming. June 3rd, 2015 was an explicit consequence of what happens when people become negligent of their responsibilities and the leaders in the society equally shirk their duties. An estimated number of 180 people dying on single day owing not to war but sheer negligence.

In case, you are unaware of the causes of June 3 disaster, then let me brief you. It happened at the Kwame Nkrumah circle interchange. I had rained for hours and as usual the place began to flood. As the level of the flood increased, a fuel station nearby had left it fuel storage open leading to the  leaking of fuels to  commingle with the flood. A man who had decided to smoke threw the cigarette with the fire into the flood and there it began, igniting an explosion one could never think of. This was what the fire service indicated in its report.
Now, taking into consideration the deplorable state of our waste management systems in the country, your guess is as good as mine as to what would cause the flood in the first place. Then comes the carelessness of the workers of the fuel station to properly seal their fuel storage tanks.

This issue is relevant due to various implications that it brings to bare.
 Poor people only become poorer, some die, and a whole lot of implications that one cannot phantom.
If only the people of this country will, for once contribute to the solution of this problem, and if the government will provide the requisite facilities to help manage this waste and control and construct proper drainage system.
But with the nature of politics going on this country, we can only pray that leaders of the country  get the political will to implement policies and effective management regardless of what the mass would say. If it's good, no one with proper conscience would reject anyway.
Heavy rains are natural phenomena we can not prevent, however  flooding is something we can control if effective management are put in place.