A … botnet?

Academics

IE Focus | By Enrique Dans, Professor at IE Business School 

You may not know this, but your computer could have a secret life of its own. It may form part of a network that takes advantage of chinks in your computer’s security system to commit fraud. Such a network is called a botnet.The news of the recent arrest of three Spanish citizens responsible for the “Butterfly Network”, described as one of the largest botnets in the world, was received with great interest by Spain’s technology sector. But exactly what is a botnet and what is it used for? What is a zombie computer? What are we talking about?

A botnet, or “robot network”, is a group of computers which, after being infected by a specific person or group, remain under his or its control and can be used for fraudulent purposes. The owners of the computers are usually unaware of the infection and do not know that their machine is being used, together with many more, for some type of generally criminal purpose. The person who manages to control a botnet has many options on the table: collecting sensitive user data, launching distributed denial-of-service attacks and even ordering the computers to click on websites with advertising contracted by a third party. The possibilities are manifold: the botmaster has an army of computers ready to execute a certain command at his/her will, with the profit resulting from any fraudulent behaviour being very difficult to identify as a result of the distribution.

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Out of sync at 40

Academics

IE Focus | By Celia de Anca, Director Centre of Global Diversity Management at IE

The midlife crisis affects both men and women, but while men tend to seek an emotional answer, women often need a more rational approach. It would be to business corporations’ advantage to provide women with just that.According to Jewish mysticism, a man can only start his learning of the cabbala after his 40th birthday, when life starts to fall apart and needs to be rebuilt, not so much from the outside, but rather from within, from a connection with his true nature. In our more prosaic civilisation, we speak of the midlife crisis, which, as Tony Judt pointed out not long ago, is that crucial moment when many men either get a new wife or buy a motorbike. 

A woman could not study the cabbala so there was apparently no reason for speaking about when her life starts to fall apart in mystic terms, and women have not traditionally changed their husband for one who was 20 years younger when reaching the age of 40. Her crisis, at least in our society, used to be the empty nest syndrome, which left a woman waiting to refill it with grandchildren.
Our society has changed, even if the midlife crisis is still with us. A woman no longer cries when her chicks fly the nest. Indeed, many of them are happy to see them go and become hungry for a professional career with some kind of meaning. A male friend once told me that after 20 years in the same profession, the time had come to change his life. At the same time, his wife, after 5 years at home looking after the children, had reached a point where she really needed to go back to work. Hence pure logic led them to change their roles, whereby he stayed at home for a few years enjoying his time with his children, who were still small, while she went back to work to enjoy the pleasures (yes, there are some) of a full professional life.

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Alternative Financing

Academics

IE Focus | By Ignacio de la Torre, Academic Director of Master in Finance, Master in Advanced Finance

The credit crunch could go on for years. That’s why alternative funding is on the rise, and it looks like it is here to stay.In 2009 more European companies financed their businesses using bonds rather than banks. This has never happened before, so what’s going on? The current situation means that banks are having to clean up their balance sheets, build up equity and write off toxic assets, which makes it difficult for them to offer companies competitive interest rates. Plus, Basel III will penalize bank loans to companies, which further exacerbates the current liquidity crunch. This scenario has forced companies to do their homework and to seek alternative sources of funding for expansion.

What is alternative financing? It’s the kind that does not depend on the banks. Traditionally, risk capital has played a major role in financing companies undergoing growth. It is normally broken down into two types: venture capital, which finances startups (often technology-related businesses) and private equity, which is generally used by more mature companies with a lower growth rate and a higher debt volume.

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