For many years, the Apple iPhone has been considered one of the most secure smart phones available. But despite this reputation, security issues that might affect millions of users came to light last week, when researchers at Google revealed they had discovered websites that can infect iPhones, iPads, and iPods with...
The range and number of “things” connected to the internet is truly astounding, including security cameras, ovens, alarm systems, baby monitors and cars. They’re are all going online, so they can be remotely monitored and controlled over the internet.
Internet of Things (IoT) devices typically incorporate sensors, switches and logging capabilities that...
Tech disrupts most industries – just look at Spotify and music or Uber and taxis. But at least it has the good manners to smash them up one at a time.
So even in this disruptive era, one innovation stands out because it risks damaging three 20th-century industries at once: retail, advertising and commercial...
Africa’s growing digital economy is fast changing how business is done on the continent. Trading of goods and services online, for example, is estimated to be worth USD$24 billion. It’s growing at around 25% a year.
This rapid growth has been supported by the continent’s burgeoning mobile phone industry. Africa is home to 1.28...
In developed countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, mobile banking — describing the use of mobile phones to make financial transactions — is transforming banking from a physical (requiring visits to a bank branch) to non-physical activity.
Visits to banks to deposit cheques, and cheques more...
Islamic banks are less risky and more resilient than their counter parts in terms of bank capital requirement and mobilisation of deposits.
Somewhat perversely, the global financial crisis presented a big opportunity to the Islamic banking and finance industry. In 2008-2009, the Islamic banking industry was estimated to have experienced asset growth...
The impact of climate change on the stability of individual financial institutions and the financial system in general is growing. It influences the types of activities that financial institutions will fund and the cost of finance.
For example, the increased frequency and intensity of floods, storms and droughts is complicating...
Banks borrow short and lend long. So if all of a bank’s depositors suddenly want their money, the bank would be unable to pay them. A bank may have made great loans but it can only unwind these loans slowly over time.
In most situations this doesn’t matter. Banks know...
In April, Ford announced that it will be phasing out nearly all of its passenger cars in the United States.
If all goes according to plan, 90 percent of Ford’s portfolio in North America will be trucks, SUVs and commercial vehicles. Its F-150 – the most popular vehicle in America – is now poised to build...
A lot of discussion and ethical thought about self-driving cars have focused on tragic dilemmas, like hypotheticals in which a car has to decide whether to run over a group of schoolchildren or plunge off a cliff, killing its own occupants. But those sorts of situations are extreme cases.
As the most recent crash – in...