TD Bank Group (TD) is the most valuable brand in Canada for the second consecutive year, according to the latest Canada 100 report by Brand Finance the world’s leading brand valuation consultancy.
With a brand value of CAD25.8 billion, TD edges out RBC, which holds the second position with a brand value of CAD22.4 billion. TD has shown robust performance in Brand Finance’s latest consumer research findings. Across Canada, Familiarity has increased from 71% to 84%, and 31% of individuals currently report using TD’s services.
WSP Global brand value soars 72%
WSP Global is the fastest-growing brand in Canada this year, with a notable 72% surge in brand value, now standing at CAD1.6 billion. This growth is primarily attributed to strategic acquisitions and market expansion efforts. The integration of Golder in 2021 and the subsequent rebranding in 2023 notably bolstered market share, driving significant growth. WSP continues its expansion journey with the acquisition of John Wood Group in 2022, aimed at enhancing its environmental leadership and, more recently, Communica Public Affairs, strengthening its indigenous and stakeholder engagement services in Canada.
TELUS dials up success, overtaking Bell to become Canada’s most valuable telecoms brand
TELUS has recorded a solid 13% brand value growth to CAD11.7 billion, positioning it as the leading telecoms brand in Canada this year, surpassing Bell (brand value down 2% to CAD10.8 billion). TELUS has reported robust financial performance, driven by expanding its subscriber base – which now surpasses 10 million mobile phone users – after celebrating the strongest fourth-quarter customer growth on record. This notable achievement underscores the efficacy of its advanced broadband networks and customer-centric ethos.
Moreover, TELUS’s Brand Strength Index score has increased by 4.2 points to 80.3 out of 100. This growth primarily stems from enhanced reputation scores and improved perceptions regarding its environmental initiatives. TELUS is actively pursuing its objective of transitioning to 100% renewable or low-emission electricity within the next two years and a commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030 or sooner.
A&W is Canada’s strongest brand
In addition to calculating brand value, Brand Finance also determines the relative strength of brands through a balanced scorecard of metrics evaluating marketing investment, stakeholder equity, and business performance. Compliant with ISO 20671, Brand Finance’s assessment of stakeholder equity incorporates original market research data from over 150,000 respondents in 41 countries and across 31 sectors.
This year, A&W has claimed the title of Canada’s strongest brand with a Brand Strength Index (BSI) score of 85.3 out of 100. With over 1,000 restaurants across Canada, A&W has consistently maintained a strong level of awareness and familiarity among Canadian consumers. Brand Finance’s latest research underscores this, revealing familiarity and consideration scores of 85% and 93%, respectively, across Canada.
Despite its continued success as the strongest Canadian brand for the second consecutive year, A&W has experienced a slight decline in overall strength this year, primarily attributed to lower ESG scores. However, in a significant stride towards sustainability, A&W Canada became the first QSR brand to launch a nationwide exchangeable cup program, ‘A&W One Cup,’ to combat single-use cup waste. This initiative could bolster positive perceptions across ESG dimensions in the upcoming year.
TD has the highest Sustainability Perceptions Value at CAD1.76 billion
As part of its analysis, Brand Finance assesses the role of specific brand attributes in driving overall brand value. One such attribute that is growing rapidly in significance is sustainability. A brand’s perceived sustainability on environmental, social, and governance is represented by Sustainability Perceptions Scores. The proportion of brand value attributable to sustainability perceptions, or ‘Sustainability Perceptions Value’, is then calculated for each brand.
In addition to being the most valuable Canadian brand, TD has the highest Sustainability Perceptions Value of Canadian brands, at CAD1.76 billion. TD’s position at the top of the Sustainability Perceptions Value table does not assess its overall sustainability performance but rather indicates how much brand value is tied to its sustainability perceptions.
TD’s dedication to sustainability has received recognition in Brand Finance’s research. Amongst brands with high familiarity, TD is the highest-perceived banking brand by Canadian respondents for the environmental dimension and second for social and governance. TD recently unveiled its ambitious three-year, USD 20 billion Community Impact Plan, aimed at empowering diverse and underserved communities across the United States.
Additionally, through the 2023 TD Ready Challenge, TD also awarded $10 million in grants toward innovative solutions that address barriers to affordable housing. Under TD’s Climate Action Plan, which serves as the Bank’s Transition Plan, TD continues to advance on the Bank’s sustainability goals and role as a corporate citizen.
IntelBroker Strikes Again By Pwning Home Depot
Posted in Commentary with tags Hacked on April 9, 2024 by itnerdHome Depot experienced a data breach by one of its SaaS vendors that inadvertently exposed employees’ data. The announcement came after increasingly notorious threat actor IntelBroker leaked the data of approximately 10,000 employees on BreachForum last Thursday. While the third-party vendor was testing their systems, the data exposed includes names, work email addresses and User IDs during.
“Today, I have uploaded the Homedepot.com database for you to download, thanks for reading and enjoy!” wrote IntelBroker on BreachForums.
Recently, IntelBroker has gained notoriety by breaching large organizations and government agencies such as DC Health Link, PandaBuy, Acuity, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the Weee! grocery service, as well as an alleged breach of General Electric Aviation.
Stephen Gates, Principal Security SME, Horizon3.ai offered this comment:
“It’s clear that traditional cybersecurity measures and approaches used in some third-party environments can fall short in identifying and mitigating exploitable risks effectively. Often, implementing and enforcing security best practices takes a back seat in smaller companies with smaller IT footprints. This is primarily due to not having dedicated security-focused personnel on staff, inadequate security budget, and leaders not fully understanding their risks.
“Often, the mantra is, “We’re just a small software supplier. Why would anyone attack us?” These sorts of supply chain events are only going to grow, and today, supplier security posture management is becoming key to ensuring someone else’s risk does not transfer upstream to you.”
Dave Ratner, CEO, HYAS followed with this:
“People need to realize that increasingly, the breach happens not because of lack of security in your organization but due to a breach in a SaaS application, third-party, or vendor in the supply chain. It highlights the critical need for cyber resiliency approaches that not only assume breaches occur but have the visibility, capability, and controls to detect them early in the kill chain and stop them before data is leaked or damage occurs.”
Craig Harber, Security Evangelist: Open Systems had this comment:
“The Home Depot data breach highlights the importance of companies implementing third-party risk management. To protect their customers, companies must implement consistent security standards across their entire business ecosystem to help mitigate cyber-attacks originating through partner and supplier systems.
“Most modern businesses depend on third-party partners. Unfortunately, these partnerships introduce inherent risks because the resulting interconnected IT/business systems do not deliver the critical trust relationship to prevent supply chain attacks, data breaches, and reputation damage.
“In this case, a SaaS vendor accidentally leaked the personally identifiable information (PII) of 10,000 employees. This information was exposed by a well-known threat actor, IntelBroker, on their data leak site. The attackers are likely to exploit this data for targeted phishing campaigns to gain credentials and infect Home Depot’s corporate network with ransomware.
“To prevent further occurrences, security teams must implement consistent security standards across the entire business ecosystem, including all its subsidiaries’ IT/business systems. Consistent security practices include requiring prompt and regular patching of system vulnerabilities and implementing multi-factor authentication to prevent exploitation.”
Supply chain attacks are real and likely happen more often than you think. Thus you have to force the companies that you work with to be on the same page as you when it comes to security. Otherwise, pwnage through no fault of your own is never far away.
UPDATE: Paul Valente, CEO and Co-founder, VISO TRUST:
“For many companies, third party risk is just a compliance checkbox. Home Depot got lucky this time, but the incident highlights how companies need to do more to elevate third party risk management. While some breaches are inevitable, using the latest AI-assisted TPRM approaches companies can avoid these types of breaches.”
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