Risk Channel delivers the latest, most relevant and useful business intelligence to key decision makers and influencers, each weekday morning.

Reuters reports on a ​growing industry of ex-military and national security advisors who are helping Wall Street firms identify imminent military action. Around 6 p.m. ET on the day before U.S.-Israeli air strikes killed Iran's Supreme Leader on Saturday February 28, for example, geopolitical risk consultancy WestExec Advisors advised clients that there was a 65% probability of military action that weekend, said its managing partner Nitin Chadda. "What you're really seeing from the financial industry is ​how national security and economic security have been merging over the last few years, and that is accelerating," observed Amy Mitchell, founding partner at geopolitical consultancy Kilo Alpha Strategies.

 

Reuters

The Data Security Gap Behind Red Hat’s $100M Lesson

Red Hat’s costly cybersecurity incident reveals a risk many organizations still underestimate: your data is only as secure as its most vulnerable state.

While most companies encrypt data at rest and in transit, it can still be exposed when it’s being processed or analyzed. That moment—when data is in use—is where traditional security measures often fall short.

This article explores the hidden vulnerability many CISOs and CIOs overlook and why relying on partial encryption isn’t enough. Learn how sensitive data can become exposed during normal operations and what leaders should consider to ensure protection across the full data lifecycle.

Read the article

 

McKinsey is rushing to fix flaws in an in-house AI system after hackers - who acted without malicious intent - gained access to millions of its internal messages and were able to identify sensitive files. Researchers at red-team security startup CodeWall say their AI agent hacked McKinsey's internal AI platform and gained full read and write access to the chatbot in just two hours. "We used a specific AI research agent to autonomously select the target, it did this without zero human input," CodeWall CEO Paul Price told The Register. "Hackers will be using the same technology."

 

Financial Times

The Register

Loblaw is investigating a data breach after detecting suspicious activity on a contained, non-critical part of its IT network. The Canadian retailer said a third party accessed limited customer information, including names, phone numbers and email addresses, but passwords, health data and credit card details were not compromised. Loblaw has notified affected customers, logged users out of its digital services as a precaution, and said the incident did not impact its PC Financial unit or its expected financial performance.

 

Reuters

Toronto Star

The U.S. trade deficit shrank sharply to $54.5bn in January, down 25.3% from December, as exports surged to a record $302.1bn while imports declined. The Commerce Department said the increase in exports was driven largely by strong shipments of industrial supplies, capital goods such as computers and aircraft, and other goods, though pharmaceutical exports fell. Imports dropped slightly to $356.6bn, with declines in consumer goods, vehicles and industrial supplies partly offset by record imports of capital goods linked to artificial intelligence (AI) and data-center construction. The narrowing trade gap could help boost U.S. economic growth in the first quarter. Trade flows have been volatile amid tariff policies introduced by President Donald Trump, including new global tariffs following a Supreme Court ruling against earlier duties.

 

The Detroit News

Bloomberg

New York Times

Wall Street Journal

U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer has announced new trade investigations into 16 economies, including the EU, Taiwan, Switzerland, India, Japan and Korea. The probes relate to “structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors.” The investigations under Section 301(b) of the Trade Act of 1974 will determine whether their acts, policies and practices are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce. "We need to protect American jobs, and we need to make sure we have fair trade with our trading partners," Greer said. The investigation could result in new tariffs as soon as this summer.

 

Yahoo News

Fibre2Fashion

Financial Times

One year into President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, evidence suggests that closed borders are not improving employment opportunities for U.S.-born workers. Researchers from the American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution estimate that net migration may have been negative in 2025 for the first time in at least 50 years, a situation coinciding with rising joblessness among native-born individuals. “Look at what we're seeing: The U.S.-born unemployment rate has been going up. The U.S.-born labor force participation rate has dropped,” said Mark Regets, a senior fellow at non-partisan research organization the National Foundation for American Policy. “So if we've had a big withdrawal of immigrants from the labor force, we don't see any sign of the U.S.-born workers getting more employment because of that.”

 

Los Angeles Times

Morgan Stanley is hiring contract staff in Hong Kong for IPO due diligence amid a surge in stock listings. The move, which Reuters says is a ‌first for a Wall Street bank in the region, aims to ​control costs while meeting stronger demand in the Asian financial hub's ultra-competitive investment banking industry. "Their [contractors'] total package is significantly lower than a banker hired on permanent headcount. Morgan Stanley could spend ​less and take up more deals," a source said.

 

Reuters

Lululemon has been fined A$700,000 ($500,255) by Australian regulators for sending hundreds of thousands of unauthorized marketing emails to customers without offering a proper option to unsubscribe. Authorities said the company mischaracterized the emails as transactional messages, such as delivery receipts, when they also contained promotional content. The Canadian-based retailer, which operates about 30 stores in Australia, was found to have knowingly breached spam rules by disguising marketing communications and failing to provide a clear opt-out mechanism.

 

ABC News

News.com.au

An association representing German publishers, advertisers and media agencies has rejected Apple’s proposed changes to its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) tool. The association said the revisions made by Apple fail to resolve antitrust concerns. In a joint statement, the group has asked Germany’s antitrust authority to impose a fine on Apple, saying the U.S. company continues to act as a "data gatekeeper."

 

Reuters

Swiss lender UBS has called on a U.S. judge to protect it from new Holocaust-related lawsuits linked to the former Credit Suisse's activities during World War Two. During a court hearing, UBS's lawyer, David Burns, argued that a $1.2bn settlement from 1999 should cover all claims related to the Holocaust. The Simon Wiesenthal Center's lawyer, Faith Gay, opposes this position, claiming UBS is attempting to silence legitimate challenges to the settlement. The judge, Edward Korman, has yet to decide on the matter. An investigation into potential Nazi-linked accounts continues. UBS bought Credit Suisse in a Swiss government-arranged rescue in 2023,

 

U.S. News

U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian has told Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation to negotiate with a group of ​U.S. states that have accused the live entertainment conglomerate of anticompetitive conduct, a ‌day after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) settled its claims. Reuters says states on the political left and right, including New York, California, Texas and Tennessee, are scrambling to ⁠prepare to take over the case following the mid-trial settlement by the DOJ. Live Nation executive Dan Wall had previously told the court that he does not think it would be possible to strike a deal with ​the states ​within a week. "The ⁠probability of us resolving this is about zero," Wall said. "Not with that attitude," replied the judge.

 

Reuters

ChatGPT ​and two other artificial ‌intelligence chatbots have been approved for official ​use in ​the U.S. Senate. New guidelines said Senate aides could use AI tools for official work, including research, drafting and editing documents, and preparing briefings and talking points for lawmakers. They can use Google's Gemini chat, OpenAI's ​ChatGPT or Microsoft ​Copilot, all of which are ‌already ⁠integrated into Senate platforms. The New York Times says it is unclear how widespread usage of the chatbots might become in the Senate, or how widespread it already is, and "that leaves open the question of how staffers who deal with sensitive or classified information might be asked to approach use of the products."

 

New York Times

Meta has said it will charge advertisers a ‌location fee ranging from 2% to 5% to cover digital service taxes imposed by some countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Austria and Turkey. The ⁠fee, for image or video ads delivered on Meta ​platforms including WhatsApp click-to-message campaigns and marketing messages together ​with ads, will apply from July 1 and will also cover other government-imposed levies.

 

Reuters