The research speaks for itself – animals have a profound impact on Canadians’ wellbeing. From this study that shows watching images and videos of animals for just 30 minutes positively affects blood pressure, heart rate, and anxiety, or this study that shows those who engaged in a 10-minute interaction with a live animal reported higher levels of contentment, it’s clear we look to critters for comfort and joy.
TELUS has launched the Critter Comforts video playlist on YouTube and Optik TV, providing Canadians with a healthy dose of relaxation and delight watching their favourite TELUS critters. Watching the playlist won’t just help viewers feel good, it will also do good for animals and the charities that support them: for every view of the Critter Comforts playlist on YouTube, TELUS will give $1, up to $100,000, through the TELUS Friendly Future Foundation, to charities that support service animals, wildlife rehabilitation and animal therapy across the country.
Similar to the fireplace channel or calming musical playlists, the TELUS Critter Comforts playlist is designed to boost Canadians’ well-being with a warm combination of calm and joy in a convenient, digital way, featuring TELUS’ iconic critters who Canadians have come to know and love.
To further examine the human-animal bond, and just how much critters mean to us – whether in our homes, on our screens, or in our natural environments – TELUS conducted an online survey (between January 20-27, 2023) surveying a nationally representative random sample of 2,114 Canadians adults.
Below are the top survey findings.
Canadians feel that simply watching animal content online has a positive affect on their mood:
- 63% of Canadians said that videos like TELUS’s Critter Comforts Playlist content improved their mood and made them feel happy (58%), relaxed (48%), and joyful (41%).
- Those who consume animal content online are more likely to feel happiness (80%).
- Top Animal Video Content for Canadians are baby animal videos or photos (52%), pet rescues (51%), or touching and wholesome animal stories (50%).
- And some believe their pets enjoy entertainment too! 56% of Canadians leave the TV or other entertainment on for their pet when they go out so they don’t feel alone.
In general, Canadians feel pets are good for their wellbeing:
- 6-in-10 Canadian households (59%) currently have a pet.
- Two-thirds of Canadians have a dog, and half of Canadians are cat owners. Other pets include fish, birds, reptiles, farm animals, and squirrels.
- Even non-pet owners agree that having a pet, or interacting with any animal has a positive impact on health and overall wellbeing (83%) with seven-in-ten Canadians noting they spend time in nature to support their mental health (69%).
- 70% of Canadian pet owners were motivated to get a pet to help with their anxiety and/or depression, to battle their loneliness, or to reduce their stress levels.
- 94% of Canadian pet owners agree that pet ownership has positively impacted their life, and nearly all pet owners agree that animals have a positive impact on all people’s health and wellbeing.
- 78% of parents said they were motivated to bring a pet home to their children to help with their children’s loneliness, to help with their anxiety, or to help boost their children’s self-esteem and confidence.
How regional locations stack-up on all-things-critters:
- 63% of Canadians said that videos like TELUS’s critter content improved their mood and made them feel happy (58%), relaxed (48%), and joyful (41%).
- Quebecers reported to feel happy the least (48%), while Atlantic Canadians felt happy the most (68%).
- Those living in the Atlantic provinces (63%) and the Prairies (63%) currently have a pet – higher than the national average (59%).
- 62% of Atlantic Canadians leave the TV or other entertainment on for their pet when they go out.
- Atlantic Canadians like to watch TV with their pets (77%).
- Atlantic Canadians are most likely to look to their pets for comfort on emotionally challenging days (77% compared to national average of 66%), with Quebecers least likely to seek solace from their pets (60%).
- 70% of Canadian pet owners were motivated to get a pet to help with their anxiety and/or depression, to battle their loneliness, or to reduce their stress levels.
- Higher in Atlantic – To help with my anxiety and/or depression (27%).
- Higher in Quebec – Battling loneliness (23%).
- Higher in Ontario – To reduce stress levels (35%).
- British Columbians were more likely to both celebrate their pets ‘gotcha day’ and to take their pet on a play-date to meet other pets, versus any other province (63% and 51% respectively, compared to national averages of 55% and 40% respectively).
76% of Ransomware Attacks Use Old Vulnerabilities
Posted in Commentary with tags Ivanti on February 21, 2023 by itnerdA new study by Ivanti and others found ransomware operators used a total of 344 unique vulns in attacks in 2022, an increase of 56 over the prior year. A full 76% of all vulnerabilities were from 2019 or older. The oldest vulnerabilities found were RCE bugs in *Oracle products from 2012.
Top Findings for 2022
David Maynor, Senior Director of Threat Intelligence at Cybrary:
“As a person who has done both offense and defense security work I am not surprised by these statistics. There is a public perception these groups are Wizard level hackers but in reality they rely on organizational sprawl for attacks.
“Scanners have never detected all exploitable threats. It’s just not possible. One of the reasons is that vendors like Oracle have had a hostile relationship with external security companies since the beginning of this century. In fact, *Oracle’s CSO Mary Ann Davidson wrote a scathing blogpost in 2015 about how people who find vulnerabilities in Oracle’s products should not tell the company about it. The post has been removed but was covered by Wired here: https://www.wired.com/2015/08/oracle-deletes-csos-screed-hackers-report-bugs/
“CVSS scores do mask vulnerability severity or at least how companies use it for risk detection and mitigation. I have seen companies set SLAs on producing threat intel reports based solely on the CVSS score. Because the reports are generally generated by regurgitating versions of other people’s reports and not hands on testing, the Threat Intel manager won’t push back. This report from Ivanti highlights the typical misuse of Threat Intel since actual ransomware attacks are coming from old or lower risk attacks being chained together. CVSS is not designed to evaluate an exploits value to a actors kill chain. While the CVSS has been updated over the years it remains an example of early 2000s thinking being used to make threat intelligence and risk decisions in 2023.”
“This is why training a team to be able to do hands on research and testing in an org’s environment is extremely important. No scanner detects all the flaws, no vendor gets every patch right, so a layered defense being driven by a well-trained security team is the best way to de-risk your operations.”
Given that ransomware attacks have huge costs, I’d be looking at Mr. Maynor’s advice as well as reading this report and forming a game plan to make sure that old vulnerabilities don’t come back to haunt you.
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