The search is on for the best work in the world that has enhanced quality of life for older people.

Entries are now open for the 2018 Ryman Prize, the only award of its kind which is targeted at the health of older people.

The prize winner is selected by an international jury and entry is open to the brightest and best engineers, thinkers, scientists, clinicians or inventors anywhere in the world.

The prize will go to the best discovery, invention, medical advance, idea or initiative anywhere on earth that enhances quality of life for older people.

The Ryman Prize has been awarded three times since its launch in 2015.

Last year’s winner was Professor Peter St George-Hyslop, who was delighted to be recognised for his more than 30 years of research into neuro-degenerative diseases.

Professor Peter St George-Hyslop leads research teams at Cambridge in the United Kingdom and the University of Toronto in Canada.

His research work has focused on discovering the key genes and proteins that cause cells to degenerate, causing early onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

Professor St George-Hyslop said he was delighted for two reasons.

“At a personal level, it is obviously thrilling to have one’s professional work and the work of one’s colleagues publicly recognised.

“However, there is a much larger importance to this prize. It signifies a sea-change in how society perceives disorders affecting the health and well-being of their older members.

“It signals a growing understanding of the urgency of getting to grips with these increasingly common, devastating conditions that impact not only those individuals affected by them, but also their family and their caregivers, and the state in which they live.”

The 2016 prize went to Professor Henry Brodaty, a leading Alzheimer’s researcher, and in 2015 the award went to Gabi Hollows, the founding director of the Fred Hollows Foundation, who was recognised for her work to help restore sight to more than a million people.

Ryman Prize director David King is expecting a large number of entries from all around the world for the 2018 prize.

“The aim of the prize is to reward great work so we’re looking forward to seeing what innovations come forward this year. We also hope that the idea of winning the prize will mean that a whole lot of people out there with great ideas to help older people will put them into action.

“We are now entering the greatest period of demographic change the world has ever seen. As the number of people aged 75+ in the world grows, so too do the issues they face. People are living longer and their health needs are becoming more complex. We hope the prize will help address these issues.”

The prize could go to an initiative or invention as simple as a new walking cane or mobility device, or as complex as a medical advance. In Peter’s case, it was for more than 30 years of dedicated work into diseases of old age.

While there are plenty of prizes for medicine, there are none specifically aimed at the area of the health of older people. The Ryman Prize, which is modelled on the Nobel Prize for medicine and the Pritzker Prize, aims to fill that gap.

Entry forms for the 2018 Ryman Prize are available at www.rymanprize.com. Entries close at midnight on Friday, August 31, 2018.

About the Ryman Prize:

The Ryman Prize is administered by the Ryman Foundation. The annual prize consists of a NZ$250,000 grant which is awarded to the best invention, idea, research concept or initiative that has enhanced quality of life for older people.

The Ryman Prize is awarded in New Zealand but is open to anyone, anywhere in the world with a bright idea.

The prize is a philanthropic initiative aimed at improving the lot of those over 75 years of age. In Western countries, such as New Zealand and Australia, this is a significant demographic, which is set to more than double over the next 30 years. The rapid ageing of the population will be even more pronounced in the developing world.

The Ryman Prize jury includes:
• Professor Brian Draper, Conjoint Professor in the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales.
• Professor Sarah Harper, Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing.
• Professor Tim Wilkinson, consulting geriatrician and Associate Dean of Medical Education, Otago School of Medicine.
• Dr Naoko Muramatsu, health and ageing research specialist, University of Illinois at Chicago.
• Professor Erwin Neher, Nobel Laureate and Professor at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Dr Neher is a biophysicist who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1991.
• Dr David Kerr, Ryman Healthcare Chairman, Fellow and Past President of the New Zealand Medical Association, Fellow with Distinction of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners.

www.rymanprize.com

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• First ever IT industry initiative to bring competitive training content together on one platform to serve the greater good
• Initiative targeting 1 million people for training and resource opportunities on the World Economic Forum SkillSET portal

For more information, watch this video and visit www.weforum.org

Davos, Switzerland, 23 January 2018 – The World Economic Forum launched the IT Industry Skills Initiative to meet the global skills gap challenge and address job displacement arising from automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The initiative is committed to reaching 1 million people with resources and training opportunities on the SkillSET portal by January 2021.

The initiative was conceived by the Forum’s IT Governors community under the chairmanship of Chuck Robbins, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Cisco. The founding partners are Accenture, CA Technologies, Cisco, Cognizant, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Infosys, Pegasystems, PwC, Salesforce, SAP and Tata Consultancy Services.

“We need responsive solutions and coordination from all parts of society – governments, citizens and private industry alike – to re-envision an educational system based on lifelong learning that can fully prepare workers for the jobs of the future,” said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum. “This initiative is a clear example of industry leaders taking concerted, collective action to address a major social challenge at scale.”

According to a World Economic Forum report on workforce reskilling, one in four adults reported a mismatch between the skills they have and the skills they need for their current job. Therefore, enabling and empowering workers to transform and update their skills is a key concern for businesses and societies across the globe.

“In our dynamic world, technology has opened up many avenues for growth. However, we are also seeing how innovations such as artificial intelligence and automation can impact the workforce. It is important for all of us to recognize that without the talent we need, none of us would be successful,” said Chuck Robbins, Chairman and CEO, Cisco. “This initiative brings together the capabilities and strengths of all of our companies to help educate the high-skilled workers needed for jobs now and into the future. It is our obligation to make sure that people with jobs across every industry are given the means to learn new skills and remain competitive.”

The coalition has created a free platform of online tools to streamline the process of reskilling adults. The initial iteration of the portal will be available in April 2018.

To empower people to address fast-changing skill requirements, initiative partner companies are opening up key elements of their individual training libraries into one centralized portal. Users will have access, free of charge, to the most up-to-date, self-paced training materials from leading global IT companies, ranging from general business skills to introductory digital literacy to more advanced topics such as cybersecurity, big data or internet of things. The portal will offer a tailored Skills Assessment, developed by PwC, and based on the Fourth Industrial Revolution skills research, to help users determine which coursework and/or learning pathways best fit their current skillset and learning goals.

In creating this platform, the coalition hopes to recast continued education to a more engaging, ongoing and educationally reaffirming experience. They also hope to motivate adults of all backgrounds to use the platform, especially those from low-resource communities or under-represented groups who have historically had less access to the IT industry. SkillSET is hosted on the award-winning EdCast AI-powered Knowledge Cloud platform, accessible to anyone using desktop or mobile versions.

The coalition, which continues to add members, will be working over the next few months to develop tools and processes intended to address many of the barriers that prevent adults from reskilling or successfully completing trainings. The initiative will initially target the US market, with plans to scale to other geographies and build industry and public-sector partnerships in 2018 and beyond. Under the chairmanship of Mike Gregoire, Chief Executive Officer, CA Technologies, the coalition will report on progress at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019.

The World Economic Forum’s 48th Annual Meeting will take place on 23-26 January 2018 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. Three thousand leaders from around the world will gather in a collaborative effort to shape the global, regional and industry agendas, with a commitment to improve the state of the world.

The Annual Meeting brings together governments, international organizations, business, civil society, cultural leaders, media, foremost experts and the young generation from all over the world, at the highest level and in representative ways. For further information, click here.

Founding Partners Speak Out:

Pierre Nanterme, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Accenture: “People need innovative ways to learn new skills in order to remain relevant and adaptive as the pace of technology change accelerates. For example, AI offers enormous opportunities for growth, but success will increasingly depend on humans collaborating with intelligent technologies. By accessing a broad range of ‘new skilling’ techniques, people will be better placed to work with machines and help businesses pivot to new growth models.”

Michael Gregoire, Chief Executive Officer, CA Technologies: “Technology is both the tool and the canvas and carries the huge promise of improving how we live and work. The counter side, however, is some degree of wariness by those who fear it disrupting their livelihoods, which is both understandable and expected. We are focused on a large-scale, proactive solution that encourages continuing education to empower and inspire today’s and tomorrow’s workforce. We must engage with technology in a way that creates new opportunities, both at an individual level and in the aggregate.”

Francisco D’Souza, Chief Executive Officer, Cognizant Technology Solutions: “The workplace issue of the 21st century is a worldwide shortage of qualified technology talent driven by a massive skills gap, which we must address together on a global scale. The pace of technological change has education systems struggling to keep up in delivering learning experiences that are relevant, immersive and readily available as workers seek to expand their skills. The future of talent development depends on new models, ways of thinking and initiatives like this one that engage individuals as lifelong learners and provide them with opportunities for continuous reinvention.”

Salil Parekh, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Infosys Ltd: “Our relevance, in an increasingly digital future, will depend on our ability to learn and evolve lifelong at the pace of technology. Democratizing digital literacy is an essential first step to make technology a force for good that moves us all forward.”

Alan Trefler, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Pegasystems Inc.: “Throughout history, we’ve seen technological advancement bring both opportunities and challenges as society adapts. With technology so central to how we live and work today, it’s critical that we enable people to acquire the skills required to be successful and to help society move forward in a positive direction.

Robert E. Moritz, Global Chairman, PwC International, PwC: “All over the world, people are asking themselves how they are going to prepare for their future, whether it’s a new job, new responsibilities, or needed new skills. By working together across the public and private sectors, our hope is to enable new opportunities for people to carve their own paths, develop new skills, and future-proof themselves. By sharing our Skills Assessment, we believe more people around the world will be empowered to learn and grow professionally throughout their lives.”

Keith Block, Vice Chairman, President and COO, Salesforce: “As the Fourth Industrial Revolution spurs incredible innovation, it is our responsibility as business leaders to ensure that the benefits created by this opportunity – now and in the future – are accessible to all.”

Bill McDermott, Chief Executive Officer, SAP: “Our focus on building digital skills will unleash amazing potential in dreamers from all backgrounds. Instead of fearing automation, we should be optimistic about the exciting possibilities when people and machines work together. Bigger than artificial intelligence, we are entering a new frontier of ‘augmented humanity’.”

Rajesh Gopinathan, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd: With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, enterprises are leveraging the combined effect of emerging technologies to transform their businesses. Employees will also have to transform their skills and adopt newer ways of working to participate in today’s opportunities that are as enormous as in any of the previous generations. It is important for enterprises to make investments in reskilling and upskilling employees and prepare them for digital-age careers.”

The World Economic Forum, committed to improving the state of the world, is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. (www.weforum.org).

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Bangalore, June 16, 2017 – Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity solutions detected a new Internet of Things (IoT) botnet malware called Persirai. It was recently discovered targeting over 120,000 Internet Protocol (IP) cameras that are vulnerable to Persirai via Shodan. Many of these vulnerable users are unaware that their IP Cameras are exposed to the internet which makes it significantly easier for the perpetrators behind the malware to gain access to the IP Camera web interface via TCP Port 81. Trend Micro also provides solutions to protect against this threat.

IP Cameras typically use Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), which are network protocols that allow devices to open a port on the router and act like a server, making them highly visible targets for IoT malware. After logging into the vulnerable interface, the attacker can perform a command injection to force the IP Camera to connect to a download site via commands. After receiving commands from the server, the IP Camera will then start automatically attacking other IP Cameras by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability that was made public a few months ago. Attackers exploiting this vulnerability will be able to get the password file from the user, providing them the means to do command injections regardless of password strength.

Moreover, the affected IP Camera receives a command from the C&C server, instructing it to perform a DDoS attack on other computers via User Datagram Protocol (UDP) floods. Notably, Persirai can perform User Datagram Protocol (UDP) DDoS attack with SSDP packets without spoofing IP address.Trend Micro found that the C&C servers were using the .IR country code. This specific country code is managed by an Iranian research institute which restricts it to Iranians only and some special Persian characters which the malware author used.

The targeted IP Camera models are based on various Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) products. This development comes on the heels of Mirai—an open-source backdoor malware that caused some of the most notable incidents of 2016 via Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks that compromised IoT devices such as Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) and CCTV cameras—as well as the Hajime botnet.

In this event, a large number of these attacks are caused by the use of the default password in the device interface. Thus, users should change their default password as soon as possible and use a strong password for their devices. A strong password alone does not guarantee device security. IP Camera owners should also implement other steps to ensure that their devices are protected from external attacks. In addition to using a strong password, users should also disable UPnP on their routers to prevent devices within the network from opening ports to the external Internet without any warning.

“The burden of IoT security does not rest on the user alone—it’s also dependent on the vendors themselves, as they should be the ones responsible for making sure that their devices are secure and always updated. In line with this, users should make sure that their devices are always updated with the latest firmware to minimize the chance of vulnerability exploits. Users can look into solutions such as Trend Micro Security and Trend Micro Internet Security, which offer effective protection for threat’s to IoT devices using security features that can detect malware at the endpoint level,” said Mr. Nilesh Jain, Country Manager (India and SAARC), Trend Micro. “Connected devices are protected by security solutions such as Trend Micro Home Network Security, which can check internet traffic between the router and all connected devices. In addition, enterprises can monitor all ports and network protocols to detect advanced threats and protect from targeted attacks via Trend Micro Deep Discovery Inspector.”

About Trend Micro

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, helps to make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Our innovative solutions for consumers, businesses, and governments provide layered security for data centers, cloud environments, networks and endpoints. All our products work together to seamlessly share threat intelligence and provide a connected threat defense with centralized visibility and control, enabling better, faster protection. With more than 5,000 employees in over 50 countries and the world’s most advanced global threat intelligence, Trend Micro enables organizations to secure their journey to the cloud.  For more information, visit www.trendmicro.com.

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• International destination of Mumbai gets the thumbs up as the right venue for this niche expo

Giving a major impetus to the Tea, Coffee & Allied sectors, the 4^th World Tea & Coffee Expo concluded successfully on 22^nd Oct 2016 witnessing striking of bulk deals, joint ventures/alliances, franchise enquiries, appointment of marketing agents and generation of large number of business leads. India’s only globally recognized tea and coffee show – www.worldteacoffeeexpo.com – was held at Mumbai from 20th – 22nd October 2016 and showcased innovative products, machineries, equipment, technologies, vending solutions etc from 67 companies to over 3400 decision makers visiting from countries like Russia, Singapore, Iran, USA, China, Sri Lanka, Nepal and UAE in addition to buyers from across India. Apart from India, companies from Italy, USA, China, UK, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka also participated as exhibitors.

The 2016 edition had Pavilions from Tea Board of India and Sri Lanka Tea Board and also had a 2-day hi level conference discussing issues facing the sector and skill imparting workshops on last day. Visitors included senior level decision makers comprising of Retailers, Wholesalers, Distributors, hypermarkets/multi-product retail chains, Tea/Coffee Estate owners, potential franchisees, HoReCa sector professionals many of whom placed large orders with exhibitors.

“Further to positive reviews from Exhibitors and visitors alike, the 5^th Edition of the expo in 2017 is also planned to be held at Mumbai – the commercial capital of India and a centre which attracts serious buyers from all parts of the country and the globe.” said Ms Priti Kapadia, Director, Sentinel Exhibitions Asia Pvt. Ltd, the organizers of this unique trade show.

World Tea & Coffee Expo thus fulfilled the need for an organized event for Tea & Coffee Companies to come together under one roof to showcase their products, network, share learning and experiences and find suitable solutions to the industry’s problems. This niche trade fair was inaugurated by Her Excellency Ms Saroja Sirisena, Consul General of Sri Lanka in Mumbai who remarked that, “India and Sri Lanka can share their natural advantage to ensure leadership in global tea and coffee markets. Organized trade platforms like World Tea & Coffee Expo can go a long way in forging larger business partnerships”

Most of the exhibitors were upbeat about the expo and expressed satisfaction at having taken part. Mr Mansour Aldawood, Arab Dalla Trading Est., from Saudi Arabia said, “For unique & exclusive products like ours we could not have asked for a better platform than WTCE. We got statistics of customer needs and can implement a best-in-class demand planning strategy.” According to Mr. Grahame Hackney, Instantina Ltd. UK, “We have been participating since the last 2 editions displaying our unique coffee products and it can be said that there is no better expo that gives such focused & quality visitors. WTCE is heading in the right direction as far as Tea & Coffee industries are concerned.” In the words of Mr. Bhuman Dani, TGL Co., “For a start-up tea company like ours, WTCE turned out to be an excellent platform to launch our innovative products and in turn get national recognition among the stalwarts of the Indian Tea industry.”

Echoing similar sentiments is Mr. Uday Udani, Pacific Plastics Industries P. L., who stated “We never expected such tremendous footfalls & have generated a good number enquiries for our packaging machineries which we hope to convert into actual business.” Anil Chandhok, Chenab Impex P Ltd, expressed “We had a good experience in the Exhibition and displayed imported Teas. We had many visitors from different buyer sectors, which we would not have met otherwise.”

Mr. Piyush Monga, Synergy, Infrastructure Solution P Ltd.,, said, “WTCE is a perfect place for our all our products, we not only got good branding but also a lot of genuine business visitors who were interested in our Tea & Coffee premixes. Ms. Rekha Agarwal, Sira Impex P Ltd, “For our slimming tea – which we had also exhibited in the 2015 edition – we can say that the 2016 expo has matured in terms of size, exhibitors and visitors.” Mr. Rajesh Surana, Tetrahedron Beverages P Ltd., “We have been a part of WTCE for 3 Editions and we can give our verdict that this has been one of the best in terms of visitor quality, publicity & branding.”

Sanjay Gupta, Budwhite Teas P Ltd., “Being a 3^rd time exhibitor, WTCE this year has surpassed all our expectations in terms of visitors & leads generated. The quality of the visitors this year was business oriented.” Mr. Aditya Agarwal, Lajwab Tulsi Tea, “It was a right decision to exhibit for the first times at WTCE & we are sure with such great management & perfection, this show is bound to grow larger year after year.”

The organizers are planning to make the 5th Edition of WTCE in 2017 much larger in terms of content and size and are likely to announce the dates very soon.

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Outotec introduced an efficiency improvement program on October 17, 2013 targeting up to EUR 50 million annualized savings in operating costs by the end of 2014 compared to the Q3/2013 situation. The company has achieved the targeted savings at the end of September 2014 and closes now the program. The one-time costs from the program were EUR 28 million.

As a result of the efficiency improvement program, voluntary resignations and retirements Outotec’s personnel has been reduced in total by 570 persons (212 in services, 358 in capex business and shared functions). The services personnel reductions relate to ramp-down of some low profitability service contracts. At the same time, recruitments to service business (468), especially to operation and maintenance at new customer sites, as well as product development (49) and acquisitions (23) increased the headcount by 540 persons. In total, this resulted in a net reduction of 30 persons since September 2013.

Outotec provides leading technologies and services for the Sustainable use of Earth’s natural resources. As the global leader in minerals and metals processing technology, we have developed many breakthrough technologies over the decades for our customers in metals and mining industry. We also provide innovative solutions for industrial water treatment, the utilization of alternative energy sources and the chemical industry. Outotec shares are listed on NASDAQ OMX Helsinki. www.outotec.com

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ESET has been maliciously named as Win32/Syndicasec.A malware

BANGALORE / MUMBAI, India – July 11, 2013

ESET, global provider of security solutions for businesses and consumers, says malware researchers of ESET found one of the malicious code samples in the name of ESET i.e. ESET named Win32/Syndicasec.A. ESET telemetry systems show that the infection scale is extremely small and strictly limited to Nepal and China. Previous versions of this threat were identified dating back to 2010.

The main payload is a piece of Javascript code registered in the Windows WMI subsystem. The threat uses fake blogs to discover its C&C servers, which are hosted on Tibet-related domains. The commands sent to ESET test machine infected for the purpose of this investigation were sent manually by the attacker and consisted in collecting information from the file system and the registry. The characteristics of this operation are very similar to previous campaigns of espionage against Tibetan activists such as OS X Lamadai and others.

Win32/Syndicasec uses an exploit to get access to a target computer in the first instance. ESET engine successfully stopped the exploitation attempt but was unable to capture the original exploit itself. ESET looks at the malicious script contained in the ‘__EventConsumer‘ object. The code is straightforward to analyze and almost self-documenting once properly formatted.

Observed activity

In parallel with analysis of the code, ESET started to monitor the behavior of a test machine that ESET infected with Win32/Syndicasec. The first few days of monitoring showed no activity whatsoever. ESET then started receiving commands from the C&C. The interaction between the C&C and the bot did not look to be automated at all. Every day would bring different commands sent at non-regular time intervals, making it look just as if someone was sitting behind a console and manually controlling infected hosts.

ESET have included the entire code for only a few interesting calls for the sake of brevity. Basically, the operator was browsing ESET filesystem and looking at detailed settings and operations on the infected machine, such as network settings, attached drives and running programs. The day after this visit, the operator sent another set of commands to gather some system information specific to our infected system.In this session, the commands sent by the operator had roughly the same purpose, but were done differently, strongly suggesting a different operator to the previous day.

Conclusion

This analysis showed an implementation of rather unusual techniques to build a stealthy and flexible backdoor. The lack of built-in commands prevents ESET from discovering the real end-goal of this operation. However, ESET can affirm that the various characteristics observed around this threat are similar to other espionage campaigns against Tibetan activists that ESET have observed.

About ESET

Founded in 1992, ESET is a global provider of security solutions for businesses and consumers. ESET’s flagship products ESET NOD32 Antivirus, ESET Smart Security and ESET Cyber security for Mac are trusted by millions of global users. ESET NOD32 Antivirus holds the world record for the number of Virus Bulletin “VB100” Awards, and has never missed a single “In-the-Wild” worm or virus since the inception of testing in 1998.

The Company has global headquarters in Bratislava (Slovakia), with regional distribution headquarters in San Diego (U.S.), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and Singapore. ESET has malware research centers in Bratislava, San Diego, Buenos Aires, Prague (Czech Republic), Krakow (Poland), Montreal (Canada), Moscow (Russia), and an extensive partner network in 180 countries.

In India ESET products are exclusively supplied and supported by “ESS Distribution Pvt Ltd”.  The sales of ESET products are executed through the Channel Partners across India.

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