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bne December 2020 Companies & Markets I 23
Estonia’s Bolt to invest €100mn in rental services in 2021
bne IntelliNews
Maverick Estonian transport company Bolt announced it will expand its light-duty electric vehicle rental service to 100 European cities and bring 130,000 electric scooters and bicycles to the streets in 2021. The total investment will be over €100mn.
The investment will be directed to expanding the rental business, product development and the production of Bolt's own scooters, the company said.
This year, Bolt launched scooter rental services in 15 countries and 45 cities. In addition to scooters, electric
bicycles were also brought to the streets in France, Spain, Portugal and the Czech Republic.
In May of this year, Bolt introduced an electric scooter model designed and manufactured by the company itself. The new model is 100% recyclable, meets ISO standards and has
a lifespan of up to five years.
Last year, Bolt published a long-term green strategy to reduce the company's ecological footprint. In addition, Bolt announced in September this year that it would make the scooter business climate-friendly by the end of 2020.
Russia sharpens knives against cybercrime
East West Digital News in Moscow
Acenter for combating cybercrimes, telephone spam and phishing will be created in Russia as part of
a government program for the digital economy, the TASS news agency reported earlier this week, citing Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev, reports East-West Digital News (EWDN).
In an attempt to exclude even the smallest external risks of disruption, the ministry has begun independent testing of all state information systems for security holes.
On its side, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media is creating an governmental working group to combat telephone fraud. This working group includes representatives of the largest mobile operators, credit institutions, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service, Roskomnadzor and the Bank of Russia.
In late October, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, announced plans to launch “a cyberpolygon designed for training information security specialists.”
Medvedev sees in this project “a serious model with full- fledged infrastructure.”
More AI, more cybercrime?
The former Prime Minister also noted that the extension of the use of artificial intelligence will lead to an increase in the number of challenges for state security.
“For all states this is a priority topic and, of course, we are talking about creating a reliable system to protect people, business, and the state from various information threats, including cyber fraud, the problems with which have become more and more serious during the pandemic,” TASS quoted Medvedev as saying.
According to a new global PwC study cited by Russian business news company RBC, 42% of Russian companies (vs. 51% world average) plan to increase the number of cybersecurity specialists in 2021. The majority of executives (52% in Russia, 55% globally) plan to increase spending on cybersecurity.
The growing demand for cybersecurity specialists in Russia is also confirmed by online job search platform HeadHunter. The number of vacancies for such jobs in Russia is growing at double-digit rates: from January to October 2020 there were almost 30,000 new vacancies up from some 17,000 for the whole 2018.
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