largely occur due to it systems hardware failure, application systems crashes, non - availability of infra resources such as power, bandwidth etc. all these factors could completely halt the business process with all - round negative fallouts. to address the unintended failures, an institution is expected to take several steps such as adoption of board - approved it governance policies, establishing data centres, third party contracts, robust service level agreements, is audit etc. as far as the risk of unintended failure is concerned, the it management policy framework that has evolved over a period of time along with corporate governance has addressed the risk factors to a large extent. all these have come at a huge cost, but a definite resilience has been achieved. however the intended intrusions to disrupt business, misuse the information available at the institutional level and to perpetrate fraud at the customer level continue to be orchestrated largely by a sophisticated group of cyber criminals. tackling cyber threats 5. while vulnerabilities in software and network continue to be the target of cyber attackers and defending these resources remain the focus of every organisation, the weakest link continues to be the user. data breach arising from phishing attacks and social engineering continues to be on the rise. no doubt banks have made significant efforts to educate the user on safe banking, but it is often found to be inadequate in the face of a targeted attack. social media provides the platform required for an attacker to mine information on an individual. this information is then used to make the user believe that he is communicating with a legitimate source. with easier access to social media and the tendency to share personal information, the number of users that are exposed to such attacks will continue to increase. internet of things is no longer just a catch phrase. today, a typical indian home has mobile phones, tablets, laptops, smart tvs and gaming devices all connected to the internet and with each other. it is estimated that by 2020 there would be 30 billion wireless devices connected to the internet of things. most of these devices have not been principally designed with security in mind. the issue that i am trying to flag is that as we acquire more and more modern electronic gadgets, there will be a large number of insecure devices that co - exist on the same network with more secure ones. since in an interconnected world, security is as good as the weakest link, the criminals will attempt to exploit a less secure but trusted device to attack the critical and well protected

senior loan officer opinion survey on bank lending practices, conducted most recently in october, indicates that banks generally tightened loan terms for all types of business borrowers over the previous three months. the most recent monthly survey of small business conditions sponsored by the national federation of independent business ( nfib ), conducted in early september, finds that the net percentage of small business respondents that had found credit harder to obtain over the previous three months and the net percentage that expected credit conditions to tighten over the next three months both reached levels not seen since the early 1990s. 2 likewise, the duke university / cfo business outlook survey for september reported that about one - fourth of the chief financial officers ( cfos ) of small businesses that responded found credit to be more costly, or less available, or both following august's financial market turmoil. 3 while these survey data certainly suggest that some tightening has occurred, it is important to observe that they also suggest that, at least for now, the effects have generally been quite limited. for example, a deeper look at our october senior loan officer opinion survey data reveals that the tightening of terms on loans to small businesses was typically less severe than the tightening on loans to larger firms. moreover, our survey indicates that small business loan demand held up rather well between our july and september surveys. in the nfib survey, only a very small fraction of business owners cited the cost and availability of credit as their principal business concern. indeed, in the commentary on its survey results, the nfib has continually emphasized that borrowing to finance normal production is still running smoothly. in addition, both the nfib's index of small business optimism and the fraction of firms in the survey that consider the next three months " a good time to expand " have remained at levels similar to those seen in the first half of this year. about two - thirds of survey responses were collected before the september 18 policy easing by the fomc. the survey was concluded on september 7. perhaps one of the most important concerns about the prospects for small business access to credit is that many small businesses use real estate assets to secure their loans. for example, data from our 2003 ssbf indicate that 45 percent of the total dollar amount of small business loans outstanding in 2003 was collateralized by some type of real estate asset. about 37 percent was collateralized by business real estate assets, and 15 percent was secured with " personal " real estate. 4 looking forward, a reduction in the value of their