Singapore Drops to 4th Spot in Global Fintech Rankings
In the recent Global Fintech Rankings, Singapore is still the Asia Pacific’s top fintech country despite slipping to the fourth spot in the overall rankings. Internationally, the US retained the top spot, followed by the UK. Israel made the biggest move into the top ten worldwide, taking Singapore’s old slot in third.
Australia trailed just behind Singapore in the Asia Pacific, followed by China, Japan, and India. In the city rankings, Singapore dropped to 10th overall and 2nd in the region, with Hong Kong overtaking the city-state for the top spot in Asia.
Singapore also led in the talent and engagement segment, according to the report, which noted that 40 innovation labs in the city-state launched almost 500 innovation projects as of last year.
Reliance Expands Google Tie-up with Big 5G Push and Smartphone Launch
Reliance has deepened its partnership with Google Cloud with an ultra-affordable smartphone and a cloud tie-up to boost Jio’s 5G push.
The Jio-Google Cloud tie-up gives Jio the expertise of a global tech giant as it expands digital services to small and medium businesses as well as millions of individual customers. It also gives Google the unmatched scale of Reliance whose new-age businesses range from telecom to e-commerce.
Jio is conducting 5G trials in Mumbai and has unveiled a low-cost 4G phone co-developed with Google, which will go on sale in India starting September 10, 2021.
The JioPhone Next runs on a special version of Android, and is a full-fledged smartphone that comes with the Google Play Store.
96 Percent Security Professionals See Cybersecurity as a Barrier to Cloud Adoption
Cloud security continues to be a significant concern for cybersecurity professionals as 96 percent are moderately concerned and 32 percent are extremely concerned, according to the new Fortinet 2021 Cloud Security Report survey conducted by Security Insiders.
The report indicates that 33 percent of organizations are running more than half of their workloads in the cloud today, and that number is set to rise to 56 percent in the next 12–18 months.
Among the key barriers to faster cloud adoption, survey participants mentioned lack of visibility (53 percent), lack of control (46 percent), lack of staff resources or expertise (39 percent), and high cost (35 percent) as the most significant negative factors.
Misconfiguration of cloud security remains the biggest security risk according to 67 percent of cybersecurity professionals in the survey. This is followed by exfiltration of sensitive data (59 percent) and tying at 49 percent are unauthorized access and insecure interfaces/APIs.
Multi-cloud environments add complexity and security challenges as organizations are most concerned with data protection (58 percent) followed by a lack of security skills (57 percent) and understanding how different solutions fit together (52 percent).
