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RB announces $25 million for Reckitt Global Hygiene Institute
NEW DELHI: RB today announced the launch of a global initiative to generate high-quality scientific research-based evidence to inform public health recommendations and promote behaviours that improve global hygiene. The Reckitt Global Hygiene Institute (RGHI) is a public health research and innovation hub that will bridge epidemiology, public health and behavioural insights to generate practical, high-quality scientific research that leads to enduring behaviour change.
“The Covid2019 pandemic has pushed public health to the top of the global agenda. At RB, we see the need for a new paradigm that brings together the highest quality scientific based evidence and informed public health recommendations to generate large-scale behaviour change for a cleaner, healthier world,” said RB CEO Laxman Narasimhan. “Today we’re announcing our commitment to convene a group of multi-disciplinary experts who, like us, believe real change on a global scale is within reach if we translate science-based evidence and consumer behavioural insights into sustainable hygienic practices that can be adopted globally. This ambitious goal is the result of our belief that the highest quality hygiene is a right and not a privilege.”
RB’s commitment to global hygiene research and education includes:
A multi-year, $25 million investment in research aimed at filling the gaps in our understanding of the science-based evidence around hygiene and the behaviours and solutions necessary to sustain it.
The formation of an Expert Panel—comprised of cross-discipline luminaries—to guide these research efforts at leading academic institutions around the world.
The creation of a Global Hygiene Institute with physical infrastructure, a Governing Board supported by full-time staff, ongoing research, and education programming driven by expert researchers and educators.
Through the establishment of a fellowship program with leading universities, RGHI will generate practical, informed public health research and recommendations that champion global hygiene as the foundation of health. The RGHI Governing Board will determine specific areas for research and will work with the Expert Panel to award the fellowships to promising early career academics, who will become Reckitt Fellows. In addition to the fellowships, the Institute will award grants to institutions for open, collaborative, cross-functional research. The Expert Panel will further define the parameters of these awards.
RB is honored to announce the founding members of the governing board and expert panel including:
Professor Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Dame Sally Davies, master of Trinity College, Cambridge
Professor Feng Cheng, research center for public health, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Tsinghua
Dr Randeep Guleria, Director, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)
Professor Dr Albert Ko, department chair and professor of epidemiology, Yale School of Medicine
Professor Teo Yik Ying, Dean, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore
“The purpose of RB—to protect, heal, and nurture in the relentless pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world—resonates more than ever in the current environment. I am excited to work with the Expert Panel and combine the deep experience in their respective fields with RB’s expertise in hygiene and consumer behaviours,” said RB chief safety officer Simon Sinclair, who has been named executive director of RGHI. “We look forward to partnering across disciplines and geographies to generate the information necessary to support the right behaviour changes for a healthier world.”
Updates about RGHI are forthcoming as additional details about the initiative are confirmed. The formal launch of the Institute will be in the autumn of 2020.
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Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal to boost AI and cloud security
Wiz joins Google Cloud but keeps multi-cloud support across rival platforms
NEW YORK: Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, marking the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history and signalling a major push to strengthen security in the era of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud computing.
The New York-headquartered cybersecurity firm will join Google Cloud while continuing to operate under the Wiz brand. Crucially, the company will maintain support for multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, reflecting the reality that most large organisations run their systems across several cloud providers.
Google said the acquisition is designed to help organisations build and scale applications more securely as businesses and governments increasingly move critical systems and data to the cloud. At the same time, the rapid adoption of generative AI has introduced new cybersecurity risks, with attackers also using AI to launch faster and more sophisticated attacks.
Wiz has built a reputation for simplifying cloud security. Its platform maps entire cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities, potential attack paths and misconfigurations before they can be exploited. By connecting insights from code, cloud infrastructure and runtime environments, it allows security and engineering teams to detect and fix risks early in the development cycle.
Bringing Wiz into Google Cloud will create what the company describes as a unified security platform capable of detecting, preventing and responding to threats across cloud and AI environments. The combined offering will also integrate Google’s own security capabilities, including threat intelligence tools, security operations platforms and the cybersecurity expertise of Mandiant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the move reflects the growing importance of security as more organisations rely on AI and cloud technologies. “Keeping people safe online has always been part of Google’s mission,” he said, adding that the partnership will help organisations innovate with greater confidence.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said the goal is to make security an enabler rather than a roadblock for businesses building modern applications. He noted that the combined technologies will simplify the complex task of protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
For Wiz, the acquisition opens the door to global scale while keeping its core philosophy intact. Co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company remains committed to an open, multi-cloud approach and will continue supporting customers regardless of where their workloads run.
Over the past year, Wiz has expanded its platform to address emerging risks tied to AI applications, including tools that help organisations monitor AI usage, detect AI-specific vulnerabilities and secure AI workloads during runtime.
With Google’s infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities and security ecosystem now behind it, Wiz plans to accelerate development of its platform while continuing to serve enterprises, governments and start-ups operating across different cloud environments.
For Google Cloud, the acquisition adds a powerful piece to its security puzzle as competition intensifies among global cloud providers. For customers, it promises a future where building fast in the cloud does not have to come at the expense of staying secure.
