Cohen Capital Group’s NYSE Amex Designated Market Maker (DMM) business has been acquired by Virtu Financial making it the largest DMM by number of assignments on the NYSE Amex.
The acquisition also marks Virtu’s entry as a registered floor-based market maker at NYSE and NYSE Amex, which are wholly owned subsidiaries of NYSE Euronext (NYX) and responsibilities for its new DMM assignments will be assumed immediately.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed, however, Virtu will act as the DMM for about 170 companies and 80 closed-end funds, for a total of about 250 listed securities at the NYSE Amex.
Virtu Financial Chairman and CEO Vincent Viola said that this acquisition is consistent with Virtu’s primary business objective of providing highly efficient, fully obligated, customized liquidity to investors across all markets."
Currently, the firm is a Supplemental Liquidity Provider (SLP) on the NYSE, a Lead Market Maker on the NYSE Arca and a liquidity provider on more than 100 exchanges and trading venues worldwide.
Cyber threats are evolving with DDoS attacks - distributed denial of service - now becoming more commonplace as a means of holding companies to ransom, even finding popularity among a digitised Mafia. One company trying to mitigate the danger is German firm Link11, Dorothy Musariri reports
Remember the days when a cyber attack was just through phishing emails, when someone pretending to be a trusted brand tried to trick you into handing over personal details?
It’s a threat that remains omnipresent but hackers are now upping their game – with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks becoming an increasingly online weapon.
It relies on multiple comprised computer systems to attack a target, such as a server or website, to disrupt service or serve as a mask to hide more targeted intrusions into an organisation’s infrastructure.
The cyber security sector is one that’s constantly maturing and there’s now a growing trend towards automation, simplification and real-time protection.
Link11, which is often referred to as the “digital bouncer” for its approach to cyber threats and attacks, says there’s now more companies talking about going completely digital.
But the side-effects of this is that organisations are exposing themselves to greater risk because of their dependency on IT.
Marc Wilczek, managing director of Link11, says: “We provide a global cloud platform across multiple data centres worldwide.
“We are monitoring and filtering incoming traffic traffic in real time and if an organisation is under attack, we use algorithms to detect this attack.
“We mitigate the attacks instantly so customers will only be notified after the event and they don’t need to worry about anything.
Marc adds: “These DDoS attacks are getting bigger and bigger because bad guys can hijack servers to produce a real data tsunami, hitting an organisation and cause it to collapse.”
A report from January 2018 suggests 53% of businesses surveyed by professional services firm EY said their cyber security budget has increased since the previous year.
For many firms, customer data is vital, with 65% saying its customers’ personal information is the most valuable asset to protect.
According to Gov.uk, businesses in the UK spend more than £4,000 on cyber security – a seemingly worthwhile expense given that a breach could cost up to £19,000 for larger companies.
This is not surprising as hackers have been working overtime and operating like the companies they’re hacking.
Aatish Pattni, UK and Ireland regional director at Link11, says: “The other motivation we are seeing increasingly is extortion.
“Now, companies are receiving messages from the attacker saying ‘we are taking down your business down right now, unless you pay me in bitcoin’, or they’ll mention some sort of cyber currency that’s easy to hide.
“Every business has this mental arithmetic of minutes of business downtime means times the loss of revenue.
“They just weigh that up against the ransom money and they’d rather pay up. That’s why we are seeing a lot of DDoS attacks being used as extortion.
“We’ve also got highly sophisticated organised gangs like the Mafia moving into this space because they’re too are digitising.”
The cyber security firm, founded in Germany back in 2005, started as a hosting site for businesses and was very much focused on the gaming space.
Over time, it noticed most of its clients were on the receiving end of cyber attacks and they asked for Link11’s assistance.
The company now has offices in Germany, Switzerland and London, and plans to open a US office at the beginning of 2019. There are also hopes of expanding into the Benelux region and Scandinavia.
Aatish says: “It’s quite interesting because when I look at our competitors because they have solutions but, in terms of delivery, they only focus on the high-end businesses, including tier one retail companies, banking and e-commerce companies.
“The way we are doing things is different and we heavily rely on information and delivering a low TCO [total cost of ownership].
“The threats we are facing affect every industry and organisation so we can’t just say ‘let’s build a solution for one industry’ – it has to work for all companies.”
While the recent growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence has equipped businesses with more tools with which to innovate, they also pose major cyber security challenges.
According to Statista, an online market research portal, more than 23 billion IoT devices could already be in use today, and the number is likely to grow to 75 billion by 2025.
Marc is eager to point out his company has no wish to “demonise” these technologies and believes they present huge economic potential to affect our daily lives.
“Unfortunately these devices can be hijacked and used as demons to reduce IP traffic, and that’s a real threat.”
Aatish points out the dependence people now have on smart technology and believes its good for an easier life but it also introduces a new vulnerability to every day life.
“While we use machine learning to protect our clients, bad guys are investing in machine learning and artificial intelligence to automate their attacks and increase the frequency.”
There is plenty of innovation coming out of the cyber security space but there is still plenty of room for improvement, believes Marc.
“It’s about real-time because at the moment to a very large extent, there are organisations or vendors that are trying to distract a world where real-time is really important,” he says.
The first 100MW of Haughton solar farm is expected to be commissioned in 2019. Image courtesy of Burdekin Shire Council.
NuCryo Vascular, Lokai Medical sign commercialization deal for peripheral arterial disease treatment
Claros developed a microfluidics-based test system consisting of a disposable test cassette and a small desktop analyzer.
The test system utilizes a technology which requires a finger stick drop of blood introduced into the cassette and provides test results within minutes and can also multiplex up to 20 separate tests.
The test system also permits to transit complex immunoassays and other tests from the centralized reference laboratory to the physician’s office or hospital nurses station.
Claros designed the technology for urology and infectious disease and also validates other test panels for infectious disease, cardiology, women’s health, companion diagnostics, and any field of blood diagnostics.
Opko Health chairman and CEO Phillip Frost said it is presently developing antibody based tests for early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s’ disease, Parkinson’s disease, and lung, pancreatic and other cancers.
"The combined OPKO-Claros technology will also provide a platform for use as companion diagnostics," Frost said.