Some argue that targeted cyberattacks and acts of cyberterrorism may be over-sensationalized, but with real-life incidents occurring regularly can we afford to ignore it?

We live in a world that has become used to spectacular and daring acts of conventional terrorism. But, as with the world around us, terrorism, and the threat it poses, is constantly evolving. We understand the power of the bullet and the bomb but now we also face exposure to a new, complex and potentially devastating form of terror: cyberterrorism. Increasingly, our societies are becoming wired together beyond national borders through a complex link of information and communication technology (ICT) networks and systems. Utilizing the same links that bind us together globally, a new generation of terrorists is able to strike from virtually anywhere in the world, causing catastrophic social and economic harm to countries thousands of miles away And due to their decentralized nature, these attacks are difficult to detect with traditional detection methods alone. A co-ordinated and sustained cyberattack against Estonia in March 2007 crippled banking and governmental IT systems, disrupting the lives of its citizens.

In 2015, credit-checking company Experian was hacked and 15 million T-Mobile customers had their information stolen. In the last year 300 million records were leaked and over USD1 billion stolen online. Chances are that you or someone you know has been affected by a cyberattack within the last few years, which is why it is essential for governments worldwide to do more than ensure our physical security. There is a need to come together and share the information and resources that will guarantee our cybersecurity. Governments cannot contain the threat of cyberterrorism through domestic measures alone. Without expert collaboration and knowledge sharing individual countries lessen their ability to respond to cyberattacks, as well as exposing other countries to even greater risks as cyber terrorists learn to exploit nations’ ICT weaknesses one-by-one. No single government possesses all the expertise to counter cyberterrorism.

Chances are that you or someone you know has been affected by a cyberattack within the last few years.

The talent pool of experts needed to meet disparate threats is dispersed across the globe, and in most instances, it is to be found in the private sector and academia rather than in government hands. The ability to respond quickly to contain and learn from cyberattacks is critical if damage is to be limited and the threat to other nations reduced. However, governments generally hesitate to collaborate with others on security related matters, thus adding to the challenge. To meet this growing threat, former Malaysian Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi, launched a global initiative called IMPACT (the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats). It’s the first global public-private initiative, and allows countries to interact between themselves, the private sector and academia. Inspired by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), IMPACT seeks to offer the global community the best brains and the best facilities to complement the nations of the world to counter cyber threats.

In 2011, IMPACT became the cybersecurity executing arm of the U.N. Many ICT systems – in both the public and private sector – face daily threats from hackers and their bots – networks of zombie computers, millions strong, bombarding scanning and probing their websites with the aim of exploiting the vulnerable ones. For the most part, the probes come from criminal groups intent on stealing identities, credit details, passwords and other information they can turn to financial gain. As well as groups of so-called ‘black hats’ trying to break in simply for the thrill and kudos of breaching multi-million dollar security networks. But as many recent, well-publicized, hacks have shown, these same skills can be used for political purposes, to create a breakdown in a country’s social and economic fabric. These attacks prove very publicly that cyberterrorism is neither a game, nor a hoax, and that these nightmare scenarios are a very real threat. We are all at risk from cyberterrorism. Even those of us who have never touched a mouse or keyboard.

It could be something as simple as disabling the banking networks, halting ATM withdrawals and credit card payments, or manipulating the stock markets and causing banks and other institutions to fail, taking jobs, pensions and savings with them. In an address at the e-Crime Congress in London as far back as 2008, Suleyman Anil, Head of NATO’s Computer Incident Response Capability Co-Ordination Centre, stated that “Cyberdefence is now mentioned at the highest level along with missile defense and energy security. We have seen more of these attacks and we don’t think this problem will disappear soon.” With dozens of international bodies and organizations jostling for position and power in the cybersecurity sector, the problems of legal jurisdiction and national interest are boundless. Yet, as systems and software become ever more complex and connected, allowing hackers to breach so-called ‘soft targets’ and find a back door into more crucial and secure systems, the race to find a coordinating body becomes ever more desperate, and the need to cooperate across borders and jurisdictions becomes more urgent.

 

The Global Opportunity Network shows us how to turn risk into opportunity.

How we see the world

The Global Opportunity Network Report is rooted in the tension between global risks and opportunities. The concept of opportunity offers a perspective of the world where change is beneficial, even on a large societal scale. From the two concepts of risk and opportunity emerges the third and final ingredient  – opportunity leadership. In combination, these three ideas inspire a fundamentally new way of looking at the world and exercising leadership. Opportunity leaders are what we call those who react to risks from the perspective of opportunities. Systemic risks are fueled by globalization and the rapid rise of technology. Opportunities create value for societies and the planet, not just for individuals or businesses.

Business leaders see social challenges as among the most pressing risks they face. Of the more than 5,500 leaders surveyed worldwide, 42 percent answered that wasting an entire generation of youth to unemployment was at the top of their concerns among this year’s five risks. Looking at the broader risk landscape, a similar trend emerges, most notably unemployment, poverty, and hunger. We tend to assume that business leaders are concerned only with short-term profits and not with societal well-being. However, the above findings demonstrate that social unrest and economic disparity damage everyone’s prosperity.

Indeed, today’s most pressing risks are all concerned with human need that we all share; a job for a life without poverty. It is the social glue of our societies. Poverty, hunger, and youth unemployment are eroding the foundation of progress – not only in the world’s poorest countries, but within almost every country around the world. More than ever before, businesses must keep an eye on the wider risk and opportunity landscape in order to ensure current and future profits. Business leaders can be the change makers that COP21 asked for. The message from Paris was clear – that we need to mobilise new drivers of change. Also, that business holds important keys to solving a major global challenge like climate change. Businesses have broadened their view on what is best for both society and for business.

Systemic risks present global opportunities

As with every risk, there are opportunities to be pursued in this apparent crisis – indeed, this is the foundation of the Global Opportunity Network. Pursuing these opportunities is not simply a matter of making a bad situation a little better, it is a matter of turning it around. Our future depends on the opportunity mindset. Youth unemployment is an urgent example of the threatening ripple effects of a generation without prospects. Unemployment rates have reached particularly alarming heights in the Middle East and North Africa, where the lack of prospects for young people threatens to waste an entire generation.

The untapped potential of millions of people has repercussions far beyond their immediate societies. The good news is that opportunities for change can be found if a systemic approach is applied to solving the youth unemployment crisis. Tomorrow’s professionals are today’s children. A systemic approach looks at how schools and higher education systems interact with youth and how policies and corporations mold youth and their skills and culture of working. With new thinking about education, knowledge-sharing, and entrepreneurship, aided by digital innovations, entire societies can be uplifted and several global risks mitigated.

Businesses are the new activists

So where do we go to pursue these opportunities for systemic change? The survey data shows that business leaders are perceived to be the new advocates for systemic changes, alongside civil society. While the task of tackling entrenched social problems once firmly belonged to the realm of government, a clear shift is taking place: progressive businesses are working for the society they want to operate in. This is not motivated simply by altruism, but rather by an increasing recognition that social risks are detrimental to the bottom line and may present business opportunities in addressing them. A growing number of businesses must take the long view and look beyond their immediate interests to thrive.

To this end, a new alliance is emerging between progressive businesses and civil society actors, who strive to achieve the same sustainable goals. This promises to strengthen the social bottom line on the sustainability agenda, together with the environmental and economic bottom lines, and is ushering in a new kind of social capitalism. It’s large scale societal change from the bottom up. Conventional thinking sees entrepreneurship as an alternative to the conventional corporate world, but bringing the two worlds together through corporate incubators is an opportunity to generate jobs and futurepreneurs. Futurepreneurship empowers youth to take charge of their employment situation with the support of more experienced entrepreneurs.

 

Bankers are happy to loan you money as long as you can prove that you don’t need it.

Roger Ying found a better way and is making traditional banking obsolete with technology-driven tools that empower the 99 percent.

Ying stepped into this brave new world and founded financial services company Pandai in 2011, after seeing a fundamental shift in what people expected from their banks, but weren’t getting. Occupy Wall Street and the anti-globalization movement may have been the catalyst for ordinary people to demand change in world finances, but increased political interference by governments has also created inefficiencies in banks that have stifled the flow of money to billions of consumers.

“The average consumer started to realize how crony capitalism can come about,” says Ying “It’s become clearer how banks choose to finance some people over others, and many people have woken up to how big banks use and spend their money.”

Ying attributes the increased awareness and demand for change to the Internet, where shared information and experience has resulted in a more educated consumer. A rise in the concept of a shared economy has disrupted what traditional banking and finance is all about, and has people questioning what currency they still believe in. It has become an increasingly difficult question to answer.

“The rise of crypto-currencies, such as Bitcoin, have raised an interesting point. Would you rather believe in something that has been manipulated by a central government or bank, or a system with firm and fixed rules that technology has enabled – that are clear, decentralized and transparent?” asks Ying.

When the global banking crisis began in 2008 and people in Iceland, Spain, Ireland, Russia and the United Kingdom began losing their savings, there was one unbelievable detail: no one knew how they’d lost their money. Money had been entrusted, but no one knew what the bank was actually doing with it.  A result of this has been a demand for greater transparency and has seen the emergence of crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending. “This is essentially saying that you’d prefer to meet the cow that will become your steak,” says Ying. “Knowing who has your money, and how they’re using it, is an important consideration in the new world of finance.

“Financial services before the crisis had an attitude of, ‘Just trust me. If I lose your money, I don’t owe you an explanation,’” explains Ying. “Added to this were layers of legal complexities that a banking client could never hope to understand.”

Pandai’s approach is to connect credit-worthy borrowers with lenders, which may sound like a familiar lending model, until you realize how many people might become involved in a USD10,000 loan. In this model, hundreds, or even thousands, of lenders will each lend USD10 or more to make up the total loan amount.

The lender can now become their own “banker” by diversifying their investment over hundreds of borrowers (customers) financing their loan.

“It’s reverse banking,” says Ying. “And turns the borrower into the banker.” It’s an idea that Pandai is rolling out to the Chinese rural agricultural sector – 800 million farmers that make up more than half of China’s 1.3 billion population. It’s a huge, untapped market.

“In 2009 the peer-to-peer lending market in China stood at USD4.5 million, a figure that grew to USD66 billion last year,” says Ying. Crowdfunding, or crowdlending, diversifies the risk by spreading it among many people and essentially doing what a bank does: collecting many deposits from many customers. The lender  can now become their own “banker” by diversifying their investment over hundreds of borrowers  (customers) financing their loan. For skeptics who think this way of banking is unrealistic, 100 percent of Pandai’s lenders have received returns of between 7-15 percent.

This approach may seem innovative, but is actually nothing new. “Over 100 years ago, banking was a community business,” says Ying. “A bank manager knew every customer – who was doing well and who was doing poorly. With the advent of central credit bureaus and big data, risk formulas were developed that didn’t always acknowledge a person’s true earning potential, or ability to repay.”

“I see increasing numbers of people taking financial matters into their own hands and not feeling they need large corporations to think for them anymore,” explains Ying. “Technology has allowed people to buy into concepts, rather than big brands, and the emergence of robo-advisor’s, online portfolio management services that use algorithms to manage portfolios without the use of human financial planners, has empowered many investors.

“Banks usually look after their own interests,” says Ying. “In China, for example, state-owned banks are not incentivized to take risks, but rather to lend to other state-owned enterprises, effectively freezing out the general public from cheap access to capital.”

The Chinese banks won’t touch the farmers and truck drivers that Pandai finances, and Ying acknowledges that self-interest is still a problem. Stifling bureaucracy and a conflicting agenda between state and private enterprise are just two obstacles that need to change.

“There’s no reason for many banks to change as they exist as an arm of government,” he says. So, will banks die out like the dinosaurs one day? Ying thinks banks can change and are being forced to become more consumer-centric. Partnerships between banks and companies such as Pandai have shown banks how to expand their product range.

The future of banking is an increased transparency and having all your financial information on your mobile phone – all your accounts, policies and portfolios instantly accessible from anywhere. On a recent trip to India, Ying witnessed how transparency can still play a central role, despite the lack of technology. “Some peer-to-peer lending platforms allow the lender to call up the borrower at any time and have a conversation,” he says. Private banking used to be a term reserved for the wealthy, but now it seems that a private phone call between any one of 800 million farmers and their benefactors represents a whole new way of defining wealth.