Posts Tagged: "goldman sachs"

Goldman Sachs increasing interest in blockchain, develops distributed ledger tech

The concept of the central clearing house in financial systems could be completely obviated with the use of blockchain. Blockchain is a distributed database system that decentralizes the financial ledger; instead of the ledger being held and checked by the clearing house, each member of the blockchain network receives an updated ledger every time a transaction is made on the system. It’s a peer-to-peer system which reduces financial transaction risk through massive redundancy. With every member of the blockchain system holding a copy of the ledger for every transaction that has been completed, going back to the beginning of the blockchain, it becomes easier to identify malicious activity on the financial network or prevent transactions if users don’t have enough cryptocurrency. New transactions are recorded on blocks, which are added to the blockchain. Blockchain systems like bitcoin often reward those in the blockchain system who offer their computing resources to record new blocks; this incentivized process is known as mining.

Steve Brachmann

October 4, 2016

NY v. Aleynikov: NY Penal Code, Federal Criminal Law Unprepared to Deal with Source Code Theft

Employers often assume that they have the same weapons in their arsenal to prevent theft of virtual trade secrets as they have against other types of loss. As the prosecution of Sergey Aleynikov in Federal and New York courts showed, however, that simply isn’t true. Even though juries in both courts found him guilty of downloading confidential computer code from his employer, judges ultimately found that the laws under which he was prosecuted did not cover the acts he committed. A careful employer should therefore make sure it puts precautions in place that prevent theft of computer code, rather than relying on the threat of criminal prosecution.

Aleynikov was a computer programmer employed by Goldman Sachs to write high-frequency trading code. In 2009, he accepted a job offer to join a potential competitor, where he would create a new high-frequency trading platform from the ground up. Before he left Goldman, however, he sent portions of Goldman’s high frequency trading code to a German server for his own future use. After Goldman found out, it went to the FBI; Aleynikov was then arrested on a flight home from a visit to Chicago. With that arrest began his circuitous journey through the U.S. legal system, governed by two different sovereigns and under two different legal regimes.

Joshua R. Rich

October 19, 2015

Banks struggle to keep up as cybersecurity risks increase

Regulations will likely start rolling out in the coming year starting at the state level. In May of last year, for example, the New York State Department of Financial Services released a report which said that the agency would add cybersecurity measures to the list of items that it investigates when evaluating a bank’s overall safety and soundness. New York, and New York City in particular, is home to a huge banking industry that represents some of our nation’s largest financial institutions, including American Express, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. According to remarks made by NYS DFS Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky in late February, state regulations could involve the use of multi-layer authentication systems for firms regulated by the DFS.

Steve Brachmann

March 18, 2015

Patents in the Real World

But looking back, what strikes me is the surprisingly-variable role that patents played in the growth and success of the half-dozen trailblazing startup companies that I helped lead. For these startups, which collectively created more than 2,500 jobs, I raised approximately $1 billion from strategic and venture investors (who ended up with $3 billion in returns). And in the majority of cases, owning patents proved to be crucial to the funding and commercial success of my startup. But this wasn’t always the case. In several startups, patents were almost completely irrelevant to either the financing or the ultimate fate of the company. Understanding why this was so may offer some insights into both the value and the limitations of patenting.

Henry R. Nothhaft

October 10, 2010