phalse phace writes: Chinese regulators on Tuesday issued a lengthy set of draft regulations for the internet sector, banning unfair competition and restricting the use of user data, the latest move in a crackdown on the country's powerful tech companies.

According to a document published on China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) website, business operators should not use data, algorithms or other technical means to hijack traffic or influence users' choices. They may also not use technical means to illegally capture or use other business operators' data.

The regulator also said firms cannot use technological means to maliciously impose incompatible barriers to other legal internet products and services. It added that in cases involving violations, third-party institutions may be hired to audit data. The proposed regulations come after SAMR imposed various restrictions and punishments on tech giants in an effort to restrict anti-competitive or monopolistic behaviour.

As California approaches the biggest state tax rebate in U.S. history, Bloomberg News co-founder Matthew A. Winkler questions its reputation as a state doomed by over-regulation and high taxes.

In fact, California "has no peers among developed economies for expanding GDP, creating jobs, raising household income, manufacturing growth, investment in innovation, producing clean energy and unprecedented wealth through its stocks and bonds." By adding 1.3 million people to its non-farm payrolls since April last year — equal to the entire workforce of Nevada — California easily surpassed also-rans Texas and New York. At the same time, California household income increased $164 billion, almost as much as Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania combined, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. No wonder California's operating budget surplus, fueled by its surging economy and capital gains taxes, swelled to a record $75 billion...

While pundits have long insisted California policies are bad for business, reality belies them. In a sign of investor demand, the weight of California companies in the benchmark S&P 500 Index increased 3 percentage points since a year ago, the most among all states, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Faith in California credit was similarly superlative, with the weight of corporate bonds sold by companies based in the state rising the most among all states, to 12.5 percentage points from 11.7 percentage points, according to the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Corporate Bond Index. Translation: Investors had the greatest confidence in California companies during the pandemic. The most trusted measure of economic strength says California is the world-beater among democracies. The state's gross domestic product increased 21% during the past five years, dwarfing No. 2 New York (14%) and No. 3 Texas (12%), according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The gains added $530 billion to the Golden State, 30% more than the increase for New York and Texas combined and equivalent to the entire economy of Sweden.

Among the five largest economies, California outperforms the U.S., Japan and Germany with a growth rate exceeded only by China...

Corporate California also is the undisputed leader in renewable energy, with 26 companies worth $897 billion, or 36% of the U.S. industry, having reported 10% or more of their revenues derived from clean technology. No state comes close to matching the 21% of electricity derived from solar energy. Shares of these firms appreciated 282% during the past 12 months and 1,003%, 1,140% and 9,330% over two, five and 10 years, respectively, with no comparable rivals anywhere in the world, according to BloombergNEF. The same companies also increased their workforce 35% since 2019, almost tripling the rate for the rest U.S. overall and four times the global rate...

California companies invested 16% of their revenues in R&D, or their future, when the rest of the U.S. put aside just 1%...

Much has been made of the state reporting its first yearly loss in population, or 182,000 last year. Had it not been for the Trump administration preventing new visas, depriving as many as 150,000 people from moving to California from other countries annually, the 2020 outcome would have been more favorable.

The US has warned the EU against pursuing "protectionist" technology policies that exclusively target American companies, ahead of Joe Biden's first presidential visit to Brussels. From a report: The National Security Council, an arm of the White House, wrote last week to complain about the tone of recent comments about the EU's flagship tech regulation, as debates are about to begin in the European parliament. "We are particularly concerned about recent comments by the European Parliament rapporteur for the Digital Markets Act, Andreas Schwab, who suggested the DMA should unquestionably target only the five biggest US firms," said the email, seen by the Financial Times and dated June 9. It added: "Comments and approaches such as this make regulatory co-operation between the US and Europe extremely difficult and send a message that the [European] Commission is not interested in engaging with the United States in good faith to address these common challenges in a way that serves our shared interests. Protectionist measures could disadvantage European citizens and hold back innovation in member-state economies. Such policies will also hinder our ability to work together to harmonize our regulatory systems," it said. The note was sent by the NSC to staff at the EU's delegation in the US capital, according to several people familiar with it, as part of routine communications between Washington and Brussels. It comes at a time when both the US and EU are keen to rebuild a relationship that was marred by acrimony during Donald Trump's presidency. On Tuesday Biden will attend an EU-US summit in Brussels to discuss trade, tech, and China.

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Gary Gensler to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, putting in place a battle-tested Wall Street watchdog at a moment when Democrats are looking to rein in financial market risk. From a report: The Senate confirmed Gensler in a 53-45 vote. The MIT professor and former Goldman Sachs partner is returning to government after serving as a top regulator in the Obama administration, when he cracked down on big bank trading activities that fueled the 2008 global financial crisis. Gensler will lead work on sweeping new federal regulations that would require companies to disclose their contributions and exposure to climate change, which is poised to trigger a huge lobbying fight and is already stirring deep partisan tensions. The effort will be in focus next week when President Joe Biden holds an international climate summit. And following four years of light-touch regulation under Trump, Democrats are urging the SEC to step up oversight of major financial firms after a series of high-profile market snafus this year. In recent days, for example, international banks with operations in the U.S. suffered billions of dollars in losses after a little-known investment fund collapsed and sent shockwaves through the markets.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: US President Joe Biden is reportedly planning to nominate antitrust scholar Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, a move that would indicate his administration is open to aggressive antitrust regulation not only generally but specifically against Amazon and other Big Tech firms. At present, Khan is an associate law professor at Columbia Law School. Khan vaulted directly to antitrust superstardom in 2017 while she was still a law student, when she published her blockbuster paper "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" in the Yale Law Journal.

In "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," Khan argued that using consumer pricing as the key benchmark for determining whether a company or a merger is anticompetitive is not sufficient and that Amazon's size and scale make it anticompetitive. "Specifically," she wrote in the abstract, "current doctrine underappreciates the risk of predatory pricing and how integration across distinct business lines may prove anticompetitive." Her work made an enormous splash. FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra, a Democrat, sought her as an advisor in 2018, when the commission was kicking off an antitrust enforcement review. "It's rare to come across a legal prodigy like Lina Khan," Chopra told The New York Times in 2018. "Nothing about her career is typical. You don't see many law students publish groundbreaking legal research, or research that had such a deep impact so quickly." Critics, on the other hand, dubbed her theories "hipster antitrust."

During 2019 and 2020, Khan served as one of the House subcommittee staffers who compiled a massive, blockbuster report digging into the antitrust implications of Big Tech. After 16 months of hearings, research, and analysis, the committee determined last fall that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google were all in some way breaking competition law and needed to be reined in. The news comes only a few days after the Biden administration announced it was bringing on Tim Wu as special advisor on technology and competition policy. Wu is one of the most outspoken critics of Big Tech, arguing in his most recent book, 2018's The Curse of Bigness, that unchecked market concentration was leading to a new Gilded Age and all the problems that come with it.

Popular "buy now, pay later" shopping services like Klarna will face stricter regulation under proposals announced by the U.K. government Tuesday. From a report: The Treasury said buy now, pay later (BNPL) firms would come under the supervision of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which regulates financial services firms and markets in Britain. Such firms will be required to conduct affordability checks before lending to customers, the government said, while people will also be allowed to escalate complaints to the U.K.'s financial ombudsman. BNPL products are used as an alternative to credit cards and have exploded in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic, as people turned to online shopping due to lockdown restrictions. Popularized by the Swedish start-up Klarna, these services let customers spread out the cost of their purchases over a period of interest-free instalments. Other companies in the space include Australia's Afterpay, which operates the Clearpay brand in the U.K., and Laybuy.

hackingbear writes: People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, said on Wednesday that any non-bank payment company with half of the market in online transactions or two entities with a combined two-thirds share could be subject to antitrust probes, potentially dealing another blow to financial technology giant Ant Group Co. and its biggest rival Tencent Holdings Ltd. Ant's Alipay accounts of 55.6% of the Chinese online payment market, while Tencent's WeChat accounts for 38.8%, according to iResearch data.

"If a monopoly is confirmed, the central bank can suggest the cabinet impose restrictive measures including breaking up the entity by its business type," reports Yahoo Finance. "Firms already with payment licenses would have a one-year grace period to comply with the new rules, the PBOC said." Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba and Ant Groups, emerged in public as he spoke to 100 rural teachers through a video call on Wednesday for the first time since China began clamping down on his businesses, ending several months of speculation over his whereabouts. Ma last appeared publicly at a conference where he castigated China's (and that of the world's) financial regulatory systems in front of a room of high-ranked officials. His controversial remark, according to reports, prompted the Chinese regulator to abruptly halt Ant's initial public offering, which would have been the biggest public share sale of all time.

Bloomberg Editorial Board: Amid raging wildfires, rolling blackouts and a worsening coronavirus outbreak, it has not been a great year for California. Unfortunately, the state is also reeling from a manmade disaster: an exodus of thriving companies to other states. In just the past few months, Hewlett Packard Enterprise said it was leaving for Houston. Oracle said it would decamp for Austin. Palantir, Charles Schwab and McKesson are all bound for greener pastures. No less an information-age avatar than Elon Musk has had enough. He thinks regulators have grown "complacent" and "entitled" about the state's world-class tech companies. No doubt, he has a point. Silicon Valley's high-tech cluster has been the envy of the world for decades, but there's nothing inevitable about its success. As many cities have found in recent years, building such agglomerations is exceedingly hard, as much art as science. Low taxes, modest regulation, sound infrastructure and good education systems all help, but aren't always sufficient. Once squandered, moreover, such dynamism can't easily be revived. With competition rising across the U.S., the area's policy makers need to recognize the dangers ahead.

In recent years, San Francisco has seemed to be begging for companies to leave. In addition to familiar failures of governance -- widespread homelessness, inadequate transit, soaring property crime -- it has also imposed more idiosyncratic hindrances. Far from welcoming experimentation, it has sought to undermine or stamp out home-rental services, food-delivery apps, ride-hailing firms, electric-scooter companies, facial-recognition technology, delivery robots and more, even as the pioneers in each of those fields attempted to set up shop in the city. It tried to ban corporate cafeterias -- a major tech-industry perk -- on the not-so-sound theory that this would protect local restaurants. It created an "Office of Emerging Technology" that will only grant permission to test new products if they're deemed, in a city bureaucrat's view, to provide a "net common good." Whatever the merits of such meddling, it's hardly a formula for unbounded inventiveness.

These two traits -- poor governance and animosity toward business -- have collided calamitously with respect to the city's housing market. Even as officials offered tax breaks for tech companies to headquarter themselves downtown, they mostly refused to lift residential height limits, modify zoning rules or allow significant new construction to accommodate the influx of new workers. They then expressed shock that rents and home prices were soaring -- and blamed the tech companies. California's legislature has only made matters worse. A bill it enacted in 2019, ostensibly intended to protect gig workers, threatened to undo the business models of some of the state's biggest tech companies until voters granted them a reprieve in a November referendum. A new privacy law has imposed immense compliance burdens -- amounting to as much as 1.8% of state output in 2018 -- while conferring almost no consumer benefits. An 8.8% state corporate tax rate and 13.3% top income-tax rate (the nation's highest) haven't helped.

Google chief Sundar Pichai has warned that "regulation can get it wrong" as his firm is increasingly targeted by antitrust moves. From a report: Last week, the European Commission set out new regulation to curb the power of big tech. The Digital Services Act hopes to increase transparency and competition for tech firms. The legislation will force firms, such as Google, to publish the algorithms used for rankings, as well as to police their own content. Big firms could be fined between six per cent and 10 per cent of global annual turnover if they fail to comply. In the interview with the FT, Pichai gave a guarded welcome to the regulation. He said: "I think it's an important regulation to think through and get right." However, he warns that "Governments need to think through these important principles. Sometimes we can design very open ecosystems, they can have security implications." He added that the failure of GDPR to break down the monopoly of big tech "shows that for a lot of these things, the answers are nuanced, and regulation can get it wrong."

Chinese technology companies including Huawei have expressed strong concerns to local regulators about Nvidia's proposed acquisition of Arm, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter said, potentially jeopardizing the $40 billion semiconductor deal. From a report: Several of the country's most influential tech firms have been lobbying the State Administration for Market Regulation to either reject the transaction or impose conditions to ensure their access to Arm technology, the people said. Chief among their concerns is that Nvidia may force the British firm to cut off Chinese clients, they said, asking not to be identified discussing private deliberations. China's fear is that Arm -- whose semiconductor designs and architecture are central to most of the world's electronics from smartphones to supercomputers -- will become yet another pawn in a U.S.-Chinese struggle for tech supremacy. Nvidia is buying the British firm from Japan's SoftBank, bringing it under American jurisdiction and theoretically threatening its cherished status as a neutral party in the chip industry.

France and the Netherlands have proposed stricter EU rules to oversee large technology firms, such as Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon. From a report: In a joint document, seen by CNBC and due to be sent to the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, the two countries suggested that an EU authority should be able to control the market position of these large tech platforms. "Our common ambition is to design a framework that will be efficient enough to address the economic footprint of such actors on the European economy and to be able to 'break them open,'" Cedric O, the secretary of state for digital transition in France, said in a statement. "Access to data, to services, interoperability ... these are efficient tools that we should be able to use, with a tailor-made approach, in order to tackle market foreclosure and ensure freedom of choice for consumers," he added. The EU, arguably at the forefront of regulation in this space, has intensified talks regarding Big Tech and the competitive landscape over the last 12 months. In addition to pursuing anti-trust investigations on some of the largest firms, the Commission is also working on data protection rules.

As the president clashes with the courts, some companies and investors say tougher limits on temporary work visas will help push jobs overseas. From a report: When President Trump suspended a raft of visa programs in June, including temporary permits for highly technical foreign workers known as H-1B visas, he portrayed the order as a victory for the American work force. Further overhauls were in the works, he said weeks later, "so that no American worker is replaced ever again." The order is now in front of the courts, after a judge on Thursday blocked the order and ruled that Mr. Trump had overstepped his authority. The move will allow some companies, like Microsoft and Exxon Mobil, to bring temporary workers into the United States again. The issue will now go to an appeals court, which may rule in favor of Mr. Trump's sweeping order. But the fate of the program still remains in doubt. The Department of Homeland Security has submitted a new regulation for federal review that would toughen H-1B eligibility and impose new obligations on the companies trying to bring in foreign workers. The uncertainty has thrown the plans of major companies in doubt and has already disrupted the lives of thousands of foreign workers, particularly those from India, who claim more than two-thirds of the H-1B visas issued each year.

The confusion might all be in vain, however. Experts say restrictions will do little to accomplish their stated goal of encouraging companies to hire Americans instead of workers from abroad. In fact, limits on H-1B visas may have the unintended effect of spurring American companies to shift even more work abroad. Already, Indian outsourcing companies are working to cast the new restrictions as an opportunity to do just that. "In America, there is a genius mix of homegrown and transplanted talent. The high level of global competition gives America its tech edge," said Sandeep Kishore, the chief executive officer of Zensar Technologies, an Indian firm that employs more than 9,500 people globally. More than 400 are on work visas in Zensar's offices in the United States, he said, but more work could drift to India if companies cannot hire who they want. The United States "risks giving up its edge," Mr. Kishore said. "If we can't bring this talent into the U.S., we'll place them in our offices overseas."

Big tech firms could be banned from preferencing their own services in search rankings or exclusively pre-installing their own applications on devices, under new regulations planned by the European Union. From a report: As part of the EU's Digital Services Act, platforms with power to control could also have to share customer data with business rivals, according to internal draft documents obtained by Bloomberg. Due to be unveiled in December by the European Commission, the bloc's executive body, the legislation will seek to modernize rules governing the internet to give platforms greater responsibility for what users post on their sites as well as propose regulation aimed at curbing the power of large platforms. The initiative comes as big giants such as Apple and Google offer services across a widening array of sectors and as competitors increasingly rely on their platforms to offer their own services. Apple has faced heat over policies with its app store, which companies like Spotify complain give an unfair advantage to the iPhone maker's rival music service.

China already has hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras in place, reports the Atlantic's deputy editor, and "because a new regulation requires telecom firms to scan the face of anyone who signs up for cellphone services, phones' data can now be attached to a specific person's face."

But the article also warns that when it comes to AI-powered surveillance, China "could also export it beyond the country's borders, entrenching the power of a whole generation of autocrats" and "shift the balance of power between the individual and the state worldwide..." The country is now the world's leading seller of AI-powered surveillance equipment.... China uses "predatory lending to sell telecommunications equipment at a significant discount to developing countries, which then puts China in a position to control those networks and their data," Michael Kratsios, America's CTO, told me. When countries need to refinance the terms of their loans, China can make network access part of the deal, in the same way that its military secures base rights at foreign ports it finances. "If you give [China] unfettered access to data networks around the world, that could be a serious problem," Kratsios said...

Having set up beachheads* in Asia, Europe, and Africa, China's AI companies are now pushing into Latin America, a region the Chinese government describes as a "core economic interest." China financed Ecuador's $240 million purchase of a surveillance-camera system. Bolivia, too, has bought surveillance equipment with help from a loan from Beijing. Venezuela recently debuted a new national ID-card system that logs citizens' political affiliations in a database built by ZTE.
* The article provides these additional examples:

• In Malaysia, the government is working with Yitu, a Chinese AI start-up, to bring facial-recognition technology to Kuala Lumpur's police...
• Chinese companies also bid to outfit every one of Singapore's 110,000 lampposts with facial-recognition cameras.
• In South Asia, the Chinese government has supplied surveillance equipment to Sri Lanka.
• On the old Silk Road, the Chinese company Dahua is lining the streets of Mongolia's capital with AI-assisted surveillance cameras.
• In Serbia, Huawei is helping set up a "safe-city system," complete with facial-recognition cameras and joint patrols conducted by Serbian and Chinese police aimed at helping Chinese tourists to feel safe.
• Kenya, Uganda, and Mauritius are outfitting major cities with Chinese-made surveillance networks...

According to The Wall Street Journal, JPMorgan Chase has taken on Coinbase and Gemini Trust as banking customers (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) -- "the first time the bank has accepted clients from the cryptocurrency industry." From the report: The move is the latest in a string of positive developments for bitcoin and another sign that Wall Street is becoming more comfortable with the business of cryptocurrencies. Coinbase, founded in 2012, is the largest U.S.-based bitcoin exchange, with more than 30 million accounts. Gemini, founded in 2014 by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, is a smaller exchange, but it has been in the vanguard of the industry's movement to attract mainstream clients and embrace regulation. The accounts were approved in April, and transactions are just starting to be processed, the people said.

The bank is primarily providing cash-management services to the firms and handling dollar-based transactions for the exchanges' U.S.-based customers, according to the people. It will process wire transfers, and deposits and withdrawals through the Automated Clearing House network, an electronic funds-transfer system. Although Coinbase and Gemini are built around trading cryptocurrencies, many of their customers link traditional bank accounts to their accounts on the exchanges. Handling transfers in and out of those bank accounts requires a payments processor. JPMorgan's services don't extend to any bitcoin or cryptocurrency-based transactions. The firms handle those themselves.

U.S. and Chinese firms hoping to deploy artificial intelligence and other technology in Europe will have to submit to a slew of new rules and tests, under a set of plans unveiled by the European Union to boost the bloc's digital economy. From a report: The legislative plans, outlined on Wednesday by the European Commission, the bloc's executive body, are designed to help Europe compete with the U.S. and China's technological power while still championing EU rights. The move is the latest attempt by the bloc to leverage the power of its vast, developed market to set global standards that companies around the world are forced to follow. Big U.S. companies, like Facebook and Alphabet's Google, won't get any reprieve from the Commission, which in its Digital Services Act plans to overhaul rules around legal liability for tech firms, and is also exploring legislation for 'gate-keeping' platforms that control their ecosystems. "It's not us that need to adapt to today's platforms. It's the platforms that need to adapt to Europe," European Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton said at a press conference in Brussels. If they can't find a way adapt to the bloc's standards, "then we will have to regulate and we are ready to do this in the Digital Services Act at the end of this year."

Matt Warman, the minister for digital and broadband in the UK, writes: From washing machines and children's toys to personal assistants, we are increasingly seeing more of our daily lives connected to the internet. In fact, research suggests by 2025 there will be 75 billion internet connected devices in homes around the world. However, the current security standards of many of these devices are low and the security and privacy risks are too great. Last week, for example, the usernames and for more 500,000 devices including Internet of Things (IoT) products were made available online.

Our aim is to make the UK the world's leading digital economy. But if we are to achieve this ambition we need to make sure people trust technology. I believe we can do this through pro-innovation regulation. So today I've announced we are developing new legislation to hold firms manufacturing and stocking internet-connected devices to account to stop hackers threatening people's privacy and safety. These new laws will mean consumers are protected from devices which do not adhere to the three rigorous security requirements we've developed alongside a code of conduct. These measures will mean all the passwords pre-programmed in internet-connected devices must be unique and not resettable to any universal factory setting.

BuzzFeed says they've identified two firms which "misappropriated names and personal information as part of a bid to submit more than 1.5 million statements" pretending to oppose net neutrality regulations: The anti-net neutrality comments harvested on behalf of Broadband for America, the industry group that represented telecommunications giants including AT&T, Cox, and Comcast, were uploaded to the FCC website by Media Bridge founder Shane Cory, a former executive director of both the Libertarian Party and the conservative sting group Project Veritas. Cory has claimed credit for "20 or 30" major public advocacy campaigns in recent years, including, he says, record-setting submissions to the IRS, Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and "probably a handful of others." On Media Bridge's website, the company has described itself as having expertise in "overwhelming government agencies" with avalanches of public submissions, and has publicly dubbed its approach to marshaling comments the "Big Hammer." In the FCC campaign, Cory was working for Ralph Reed -- a high-powered political strategist and titan of the Christian right who himself was working for Broadband for America. Cory, in turn, enlisted LCX Digital to find the commenters...

BuzzFeed News ran large samples of the email addresses in those files through Have I Been Pwned, a website that identifies whether an address has been exposed in any of hundreds of major data breaches. The results were stark: In one particular group of 1.9 million comments, according to BuzzFeed News' analysis, 94% of the email addresses belonged to people who had fallen victim to a hack known as the Modern Business Solutions data breach, in which millions of people's personal information, including full names, birthdates, home addresses, and email addresses, had been stolen... All these comments were uploaded by Cory, using his Media Bridge email address. (Some of the comments were full duplicates; after removing them, there were just over 1.5 million comment-and-email combinations.)

In its letter to BuzzFeed News, Media Bridge contested the idea that email addresses showing up in breached databases were a sign of improprieties. In fact, it said, a "high match rate" is a sign of validity, since most Americans appear in breached databases....
Two of the commenters were named Luke Skywalker and Boba Fett -- and yet mysteriously "the names and street addresses were exactly as they appeared in that breach... A separate spot check by BuzzFeed News of 100 randomly selected Media Bridge comments revealed a similar pattern -- even down to a street address that used underscores instead of spaces."

In addition, Buzzfeed found that "almost all" of the remaining 6% appears to just be "recycled" identities drawn from comments left in 2016 when the FCC was considering a new rule that would allow cable consumers to use their own set-top boxes -- a regulation that the cable industry opposed. "One year later, 99.9% of those exact same names and addresses appeared on the FCC's website, weighing in on an entirely different policy debate -- net neutrality. They were uploaded by Media Bridge."

Cyberattacks are now considered by most execs to be the top business concern, far outranking economic uncertainty, brand damage, and regulation, according to a survey by insurance consultancy Marsh and tech giant Microsoft. From a report: The global survey of over 1,500 business leaders illustrates the rapid change in business leaders' perceived risks to their organizations and shows that having a cyber insurance policy is now more common than two years ago. In 2017, Marsh and Microsoft found that 62% of respondents saw cyberattacks as a top-five risk, whereas this year 79% do. The share of respondents who see cyber attacks as the number one risk has also risen from 6% to 22% over two years. This year, the second most widely considered top-five risk is economic uncertainty, followed by brand damage, regulation, and loss of key personnel. [...] According to Marsh and Microsoft's survey, 47% of organizations have cyber insurance [PDF], up from 34% in 2017. Additionally, 57% of large firms with annual revenues of over $1bn report having cyber insurance compared with 36% of organizations with revenues below $100m. Nearly all respondents, totaling 89%, are confident their cyber insurance policy would cover the cost of a cyber event.

Japan's government said on Monday that high-tech industries will be added to a list of businesses for which foreign ownership of Japanese firms is restricted. From a report: The new rule, effective Aug. 1, comes amid heightening pressure from the United States in dealing with cyber-security risks and technological transfers involving China. The Japanese government made no mention of specific countries or companies that will be impacted by applying existing foreign ownership restrictions to the IT and telecoms industries.

The announcement came on the same day visiting U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are holding talks in Tokyo on trade and other issues. The United States has warned countries against using Chinese technology, saying Huawei Technologies could be used by Beijing to spy on the West. China and Huawei have strongly rejected the allegations.