Banks have mostly been tight-lipped about what rising interest rates would mean for their bottom lines. They will soon have to open up a little more to regulators and investors.

For the first time this year, the Federal Reserve is requiring the nation’s 18 largest banks to submit mid-year stress tests, showing how they [...]]]>

Banks have mostly been tight-lipped about what rising interest rates would mean for their bottom lines. They will soon have to open up a little more to regulators and investors.

For the first time this year, the Federal Reserve is requiring the nation’s 18 largest banks to submit mid-year stress tests, showing how they would perform if they were hit with a negative economic shock, like a spike in unemployment or interest rates. The results are due to the Fed by July 5th. Unlike the bank stress tests conducted at the beginning of the year, though, the Fed will not run its own test, or publicly critique the results. However, the banks will be required to make the results public at the end of September.

Bankers are meeting with Fed officials behind closed doors next week in Boston to discuss the stress tests. There has been some contention over the process in the past. Bank executives have expressed frustration that the Fed won’t say how it gets its results. At a similar conference last year, Wells Fargo’s (WFC) treasurer, Paul Ackerman, reportedly drew applause from bankers when he said he still didn’t get how the Fed’s loss estimates could be so different than his bank’s.

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A group of criminals using the popular Zeus banking Trojan have started advertising for accomplices, displaying ads for job scams whenever the victim visits a popular job site, financial security firm Trusteer said on June 13.

Typically, victims whose computers are infected with Zeus have to worry about their banks accounts being drained. Yet [...]]]>

A group of criminals using the popular Zeus banking Trojan have started advertising for accomplices, displaying ads for job scams whenever the victim visits a popular job site, financial security firm Trusteer said on June 13.

Typically, victims whose computers are infected with Zeus have to worry about their banks accounts being drained. Yet if a victim visits the popular job site, CareerBuilder.com, some variants of Zeus will also display an ad for a job with a fraudulent company, Trusteer stated in a blog post. In reality, the job is to help criminals transfer stolen cash to another country or cash out goods bought with stolen funds—in other words, a “money mule.”

Finding people to help—usually unwittingly—is an ongoing challenge for criminals, but a critical need. Without money mules, cybercriminals would have a very hard time moving stolen money, Etay Maor, fraud prevention solution manager with Trusteer, told eWEEK.

“Money mules are always a scarce resource and whenever criminals do recruit them, they keep a pretty good eye on them,” he said. “At the end of the day, you really can’t cash out unless you have a mule.”

According to the Alliance@IBM Website, a round of job cuts began June 12 and has thus far affected 2,286 positions. Alliance@IBM identifies itself [...]]]>

Image via CrunchBase

IBM is in the midst of a round of layoffs that has hit at least 2,000 positions and may reach upwards of 6,000 to 8,000, according to reports.

According to the Alliance@IBM Website, a round of job cuts began June 12 and has thus far affected 2,286 positions. Alliance@IBM identifies itself as an IBM employee organization that gleans information from data provided by sources close to the company as well as from former employees.

Lee Conrad, national coordinator for Alliance@IBM, said some IBM workers in the U.S. began receiving layoff notifications on the evening of June 11, according to a Bloomberg report. Conrad also said the cuts are coming across the board, in several IBM divisions and locations.

“From a broad financial point of view, since the layoffs are part of a larger restructuring related to the company’s tough Q1 earnings results, they seem designed to bolster the company’s long-term profitability and share price,” said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. “The number of layoffs occurring in the company’s Hudson Valley home area could also strain IBM’s relations with local communities. In the current economy, any job losses hurt but reducing well-paid professional positions is especially painful.”

According to the Alliance@IBM Website, some of the hardest-hit groups have been IBM Software Group marketing, which lost 222 positions; Systems and Technology Group semiconductor research and development lost 165; the Software Group’s information management unit lost 137; and the Software Group’s industry solutions unit lost 126 positions.

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Eighteen months in the works, the top-secret project was announced Saturday in New Zealand, where up to 50 volunteer households are already beginning to receive the Internet briefly on [...]]]>

Image via CrunchBase

Google is launching Internet-beaming antennas into the stratosphere aboard giant, jellyfish-shaped balloons with the lofty goal of getting the entire planet online.

Eighteen months in the works, the top-secret project was announced Saturday in New Zealand, where up to 50 volunteer households are already beginning to receive the Internet briefly on their home computers via translucent helium balloons that sail by on the wind 12 miles above Earth.

While the project is still in the very early testing stages, Google hopes eventually to launch thousands of the thin, polyethylene-film inflatables and bring the Internet to some of the more remote parts of the globe, narrowing the digital divide between the 2.2 billion people who are online and the 4.8 billion who aren’t.

If successful, the technology might allow countries to leapfrog the expense of installing fiber-optic cable, dramatically increasing Internet usage in places such as Africa and Southeast Asia.

“It’s a huge moonshot, a really big goal to go after,” said project leader Mike Cassidy. “The power of the Internet is probably one of the most transformative technologies of our time.”

The so-called Project Loon was developed in the clandestine Google X lab that also came up with a driverless car and Google’s Web-surfing eyeglasses.

Google would not say how much it is investing in the project or how much customers will be charged when it is up and running.

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The protection of client information has helped to make Switzerland the world’s biggest offshore financial center, with $2 [...]]]> Switzerland‘s upper house of parliament has given its backing to a bill that would allow the country’s banks to sidestep strict secrecy laws to end the threat of criminal charges for helping wealthy Americans to evade tax.

The protection of client information has helped to make Switzerland the world’s biggest offshore financial center, with $2 trillion in assets. But that tradition has come under fire as other countries have sought to ease budget deficits by clamping down on tax evasion.

After U.S. action led to the closure of Switzerland’s oldest private bank this year, and with some of its biggest institutions facing formal investigations, the Swiss government is seeking a swift compromise to limit the damage to such a vital industry.

“Even if this bill violates our understanding of constitutional law, it is vital for our country. Switzerland’s reputation as a financial center is at stake,” said Ivo Bischofberger, of the Christian People’s Party, after voting in favor.

The bill, which goes to the lower chamber next week, would allow banks to hand over information and strike settlement deals with U.S. prosecutors. Though such deals would avert the threat of criminal prosecution, they are expected to include heavy fines that could cost the industry as much as $10 billion.

The upper house passed the draft law by 24 votes to 15, but opposition to the bill has been vocal from left to right as lawmakers chafe at what some describe as U.S. blackmail. It is likely to face far tougher debate in the lower house.

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The dispute, during which both sides threatened legal action at one point, stems from complex hedging products sold by various banks to companies such as the Lisbon [...]]]> Portugal has reached an agreement with JP Morgan (JPM.N) in a row over costly interest rate hedging contracts sold to state companies, the finance ministry said on Wednesday.

The dispute, during which both sides threatened legal action at one point, stems from complex hedging products sold by various banks to companies such as the Lisbon and Porto metro operators. The government has been trying to stem losses of up to 3 billion euros from these deals.

The government entered into talks with JP Morgan over the dispute and said in a statement on Wednesday that it could “confirm that the negotiating process was concluded last week.”

The contracts between JP Morgan and public sector companies have now been closed and relations with the bank have been “normalized,” it said.

The row had echoes of similar battles in countries such as Italy where bank clients said they were missold products.

Portuguese treasury secretary Maria Luiz Albuquerque said in April the government had managed to renegotiate interest rate swap contracts containing “highly speculative elements” with some banks, cutting by 20 percent the potential liabilities from swaps that could total 3 billion euros.

The proposal would see the chief executives from Britain’s biggest six banks – Barclays (BARC.L), HSBC (HSBA.L), Royal Bank of Scotland [...]]]> Executives at Britain’s top banks may form a task force to respond to a report due this week from an influential committee of lawmakers examining standards within the industry, banking sources said on Wednesday.

The proposal would see the chief executives from Britain’s biggest six banks – Barclays (BARC.L), HSBC (HSBA.L), Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L), Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L), Standard Chartered (STAN.L) and Santander UK (SAN.MC) – produce a coordinated response to the report, which is expected to be published on Friday, the sources said.

The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards (PCBS) was set up by the government last July with a remit to examine ethics within the industry after Barclays (BARC.L) was fined for attempting to manipulate global interest rate benchmarks.

Bank executives have discussed the task force plan with the industry’s lobby group, the British Bankers Association (BBA), but will not make a final decision on whether to proceed until after the commission’s report is published, the sources said.

The task force would be chaired by Nigel Wicks, the BBA chairman.

The 600-page PCBS report is expected to make sweeping recommendations, including changes to bankers’ bonuses, a new professional register for bankers and the inclusion of criminal sanctions in tougher penalties against executives at failed banks.

It is also likely to reiterate the commission’s previous call for legislation enabling regulators to break up banks that don’t stick to rules ring-fencing their routine retail operations form riskier investment banking activities.

The transaction was rumored in various reports on June 10, but Google unveiled the finished deal on June 11 in a post on the Official Google Blog.

“To help you outsmart traffic, today [...]]]> Google is expanding its mapping services with the acquisition of the Waze crowd-based traffic and navigation app for mobile devices.

The transaction was rumored in various reports on June 10, but Google unveiled the finished deal on June 11 in a post on the Official Google Blog.

“To help you outsmart traffic, today we’re excited to announce we’ve closed the acquisition of Waze,” wrote Brian McClendon, vice president of Google’s Geo unit, in the post.

“We’ve all been there: stuck in traffic, frustrated that you chose the wrong route on the drive to work,” wrote McClendon. “But imagine if you could see real-time traffic updates from friends and fellow travelers ahead of you, calling out ‘fender bender … totally stuck in left lane!’ and showing faster routes that others are taking.”

Gartner analysts outlined three main trends shaping the security [...]]]> The worldwide security technology and services market is forecast to reach $67.2 billion in 2013, up 8.7 percent from $61.8 billion in 2012, as companies continue to expand the technologies they use to improve their overall security, according to a report from IT research firm Gartner.

Gartner analysts outlined three main trends shaping the security market moving forward—mobile security, big data and advanced targeted attacks—and the firm projected the market would grow to more than $86 billion in 2016. In addition, the report noted the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend is expected to have a far-reaching influence on the entire security industry.

“With security being one of the top IT concern areas, the prospect of strong continued growth is assured,” Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner, said in a statement. “The consistent increases in the complexity and volume of targeted attacks, coupled with the necessity of companies to address regulatory or compliance-related issues, continue to support healthy security market growth.”

When examining the advanced targeted attack (ATA), and the new methods being used to breach today’s security controls, Gartner found attackers, especially those who have significant financial motivation, have devised effective attack strategies centered on penetrating some of the most commonly deployed security controls, notably signature-based antivirus and signature-based intrusion prevention.