List Of Threats Research Articles

Spatial overlap in powerline collisions and vehicle strikes obscures the primary cause of avian mortality

Anthropogenic threats to Hawaii’s birds have resulted in numerous extinctions with many additional species now listed as threatened or endangered. Implementing conservation recovery plans for these birds requires identifying a comprehensive list of threats. Research from outside of Hawaii has shown that avian powerline collisions are one of the greatest anthropogenic causes of mortality. To date, with the exception of endangered seabirds, powerline collisions have not been considered a major threat to most native and endangered birds in Hawaii. This may be because Hawaiian species face a multitude of already identified threats with the clearest causes of mortality (e.g., vehicle collisions) often obscuring evidence of powerline collisions. We report a strong spatial correlation between roads and powerlines which increases the likelihood that birds colliding with powerlines are grounded on roads, where secondary vehicle collisions can confound the primary grounding cause. We recorded flight heights of all birds at powerlines and roads, as well as the frequency of flights directly at powerline and vehicle height. We observed 162 powerline collisions across ten native and endemic birds. We also collected a further 251 grounded native and endangered birds. For each of the grounded birds we evaluated the injuries the bird sustained and the grounding location itself using multiple factors to attribute the primary cause of grounding. Using this system, we classified these birds as follows - powerline collision (69.3%), vehicle strike (9.2%), and uncertain cause of grounding (21.5%). Overall, we confirm that 13 native and endangered species collided with powerlines, including all native and endemic waterbirds, and vehicle collisions were confirmed for three species. Our study clearly demonstrates that birds hitting powerlines can be grounded in roads and then secondarily run over by vehicles, which can obscure the primary cause of grounding. The obfuscation of powerline collision by secondary vehicle strike has previously prevented researchers and managers from identifying powerline collisions as a threat to native and endemic waterbirds. By using the data reported here, the local power company has implemented 170 km of bird-friendly powerline modifications including the removal of static lines, attachment of bird diverters and reconfigurations. These bird-friendly powerline modifications are the first of their kind in the state of Hawaii.

The development of a method for assessing the security of complex technical systems using artificial immune systems

Ensuring the security of complex technical systems of various functional purposes requires a constant search for new scientific and practical approaches in order to ensure its proper level against a growing list of new risks and threats. Nowadays, no state in the world is able to work on the creation and implementation of artificial intelligence in isolation from others. Artificial intelligence technologies are actively used to solve both general and highly specialized tasks in various spheres of society. The problem of synthesis of management of complex technological processes is an urgent task in management theory. A promising direction in the design of such complex ones is the use of bio-inspired algorithms that are effectively used while solving optimization tasks. Thus, the object of research is complex technical systems. The subject of research is the state security of complex technical systems. The research developed a method for assessing the security of complex technical systems using artificial immune systems. The novelty of the proposed method consists in: ‒ taking into account while calculating the correction factor for the degree of uncertainty about the state of a complex technical system; ‒ reducing computing costs while assessing the state of a complex technical system; ‒ improved implementation of procedures for solving the task of influencing relationships in a complex technical system; ‒ creating a multi-level and interconnected description of hierarchical complex technical systems; ‒ the possibility of performing calculations with source data that are different in nature and units of measurement. It is advisable to implement the mentioned technique in specialized software, which is used to analyze the state of complex technical systems and make decisions.

Emerging infectious diseases never end: The fight continues.

Emerging infectious diseases have accompanied the development of human society while causing great harm to humans, and SARS-CoV-2 was only one in the long list of microbial threats. Many viruses have existed in their natural reservoirs for a very long time, and the spillover of viruses from natural hosts to humans via interspecies transmission serves as the main source of emerging infectious diseases. Widely existing viruses capable of utilizing human receptors to infect human cells in animals signal the possible outbreak of another viral infection in the near future. Extensive and close collaborative surveillance across nations, more effective wildlife trade legislation, and robust investment into applied and basic research will help to combat the possible pandemics of new emerging infectious diseases in the future.

European Security Strategies and the War in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine made European societies wonder how ready they were for it, and exposed new dangers that European leaders had believed gone. First and foremost, once again, a vision of territorial aggression has returned to the list of threats to European security. Does the EU have adequate security strategies to guideline its response to such dangers? Do the strategies structure the development of instruments so that its institutions and Member States can successfully deal with the threat that the war in Ukraine poses to EU societies? The EU has two security strategies, from 2003 and 2016, and it stands to reason to verify their adequateness vis-á-vis the war in Ukraine. This article studies the provisions of these strategies, presents the progress of the war in Ukraine, and verifies the reactions of EU institutions and Member States in face of these events. While it reflects on the provisions of the security strategies in light of the ways the EU and its Member States have reacted to war, it concludes with a proposal of elements that need adjusting within the EU catalogue of possibilities.

USING CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE AS A STRATEGIC RESOURCE FOR IMPROVING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF THE STATE

This article explores the theoretical and practical aspects of protecting critical infrastructure as a strategic resource for improving the competitiveness of the state. In the article, the concept of critical infrastructure is defined and justified as a strategic resource for improving the competitiveness of the state. Also, a number of threats are identified that can affect the functioning of objects of critical infrastructure and cause instability at different levels, including national security, which significantly affects the competitiveness of the state. One of the directions for ensuring effective protection of critical infrastructure is to develop a policy of “efficiency” – to optimize the distribution and application of state security resources for localizing potential sources of threat and enhancing the competitiveness of the state. The approach to formulating content of the concept of “threat” in the context of competitiveness of the state is analyzed and improved. The focus is on identifying critical objects on national, regional and local levels of infrastructure as a strategic resource for improving the competitiveness of the state. The methodology for attributing objects of national infrastructure to the field of critical infrastructure in accordance with their importance functions and services that they perform is described. A list of vitally important functions and services provided by representatives that require protection is presented, as well as representatives that are objects of critical infrastructure in the context of national security and competitiveness of the state. The content of relevant normative-legal acts that provided grounds for specifying a list of threats to critical infrastructure and confirming its inclusion in strategic resources for ensuring national security and enhancing competitiveness of the state is analyzed. Based on a critical analysis, it is generalized that there are three main categories of threats to critical infrastructure: natural origin, technological nature and malicious actions. It is proposed to supplement this list with combined threats that can cause “synergy effect” destabilization of critical infrastructure, reducing competitiveness of the state.

PEST-АНАЛІЗ В СИСТЕМІ МАРКЕТИНГОВОГО АНАЛІЗУ АГРАРНИХ ПІДПРИЄМСТВ

The transition of the agrarian sphere of the economy to market relations requires the formation of a new adequate market of the economic mechanism of management. Its most important element is marketing, in which the main role of the production and marketing activities of agro-industrial complex enterprises, regardless of the forms of ownership, is determined by the consumer. Practice shows that the complexity of the problems of exiting the crisis is determined not only by the lack of management experience in new conditions, but also by the weak validity of the conceptual support of transformations in the agrarian sphere. There are still no worked-out approaches to the creation and development of federal and regional agricultural marketing systems, methodical developments for the rational planning of marketing activities in the agro-industrial complex enterprises themselves, methods for evaluating the economic effectiveness of marketing strategies being implemented, etc. The most productive way of obtaining information in the developing market environment is marketing research, which is a multidimensional process of analyzing the internal and external environment of business entities, aimed at the development of adequate management decisions and ensures the minimization of various threats and risks. In the conditions of socio-economic reform of the agro-industrial sphere, information turns into a leading production factor, and the activity of its collection, transmission, storage, processing and analysis becomes one of the most important management technologies. The fate of a new product, and sometimes the fate of the enterprise itself, depends on the completeness, objectivity, reliability, systematicity, timeliness and periodicity of information. PEST analysis is a simple and convenient method for analyzing the macro environment (external environment) of the enterprise. The PEST analysis technique is often used to assess key market trends in an industry, and the results of a PEST analysis can be used to identify a list of threats and opportunities when compiling a company's SWOT analysis. The PEST analysis is a long-term strategic planning tool and is prepared 3-5 years in advance, with annual data updates

Threat modeling in smart firefighting systems: Aligning MITRE ATT&CK matrix and NIST security controls

Industrial automation technologies are envisioned as multi-device systems that are constantly interacting with one another and with enterprise systems. In these industrial systems, the industrial internet of things (IIoT) significantly improves system efficiency, scalability, ease of control, and monitoring. These benefits have been achieved at the cost of greater security risks, thus making the system vulnerable to cyberattacks. Historically, industrial networks and systems lacked security features like authentication and encryption due to intended isolation over the Internet. Lately, remote access to these IIoT systems has made an attempt of holistic security alarmingly critical. In this research paper, a threat modeling framework for smart cyber–physical system (CPS) is proposed to get insight of the potential security risks. To carry out this research, the smart firefighting use case based on the MITRE ATT&CK matrix was investigated. The matrix analysis provided structure for attacks detection and mitigation, while system requirement collection (SRC) was applied to gather generic assets’ information related to hardware, software and network. With the help of SRC and MITRE ATT&CK, a threat list for the smart firefighting system was generated. Conclusively, the generated threat list was mapped on the national institute of standards and technology (NIST) security and privacy controls. The results show that these mapped controls can be well-utilized for protection and mitigation of threats in smart firefighting system. In future, critical cyber–physical systems can be modeled upon use case specific threats and can be secured by utilizing the presented framework.

A BN driven FMEA approach to assess maritime cybersecurity risks

Cybersecurity risks present a growing concern in the maritime industry, especially due to the fast development of digitalised technologies, also vis-à-vis autonomous shipping. Research on maritime cybersecurity is receiving increased attention. This paper aims to assess the cybersecurity risks in the maritime sector and improve safety at sea and in coastal areas. First, we identify all the concerned cyber threats in the sector based on literature review and expert opinion. A novel risk assessment framework of maritime cyber threats, which combines Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) with a Rule-based Bayesian Network (RBN), is proposed and used to evaluate the risk levels of the identified threats and to better understand the threats that contribute the most to the overall maritime cybersecurity risk. The results can inform stakeholders about the most vulnerable parts in their cyber operations and stimulate the development of risk-based control measures. More specifically, the next step in managing cyber threats is to tackle the threats that are associated with unacceptable risk levels and identify cost-effective measures to manage them. To that extent, our findings provide a list of top threats – that is the areas where efforts should be focused on. As a result, this work can help the whole community to grow its resilience to cyber-attacks and improve the security of shipping operations.

СТРАТЕГІЧНЕ УПРАВЛІННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНОЮ БЕЗПЕКОЮ ПІДПРИЄМСТВА: СУЧАСНІ ПІДХОДИ ТА ВИКЛИКИ

The article deals with the peculiarities of ensuring strategic management of information security of modern enterprises. Nowadays, information security systems are designed to ensure the full function-ing of an enterprise's information infrastructure using various types of information services, automation of financial and production activities, as well as its business processes.The basic provisions of information security are formalized and enshrined in the Information Security Strategy of Ukraine. Other regulatory documents and standards of enterprises must comply with the laws and regulatory framework of Ukraine, international law, industry standards and EU and NATO directives.The article considers the need to form an information security management system, which is caused by the existence of internal and external threats, their destructive consequences for the activities and image of an enterprise. The tasks of information security are analyzed: data confidentiality, integ-rity, availability, ensuring the reliability of information, ensuring the legal significance of information, ensuring the untraceability of user actions. Information security management involves identifying po-tential risks to an enterprise, assessing the potential impact, developing and implementing strategies to eliminate problems designed to minimize risks with the available resources.The main stages of developing an information security policy are identified: complete registration of all information resources that require protection; formation of a list of possible threats to each re-source from the list; assessment of the probability of occurrence of each threat; application of actions for the effective protection of each resource. The basic principles of an information security management system for an enterprise are outlined: ease of use, full control, open architecture, access limits, least privileges, sufficient stability, and minimization of duplication. It is also about storing and processing significant amounts of information of varying degrees of confidentiality, so the issue of protecting im-portant enterprise information data from various internal and external threats is relevant

Ferret Models for Henipavirus Infection.

Henipaviruses are emerging zoonotic viruses that can cause outbreaks of severe respiratory and neurological disease in humans and animals such as horses. The mechanism by which these viruses can cause disease remain largely unknown and to date there are no therapeutics or vaccines approved for use in humans. Nipah virus is listed on the World Health Organization R & D Blueprint list of epidemic threats. In order to advance the availability of effective therapeutics and vaccines and medicines that can be used to save lives and avert large scale crises, animal models are required which recapitulate the disease progression in humans. Ferrets are highly susceptible to infection with henipaviruses and develop both severe respiratory and neurological disease. Therefore, the ferret model is highly suitable for studies into both the pathogenesis of henipaviruses, as well as pre-clinical evaluation of intervention strategies.

ТРАНСФОРМАЦІЯ ЗАГРОЗ ЕКОНОМІЧНІЙ БЕЗПЕЦІ ТА БЕЗПЕЦІ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНОГО СЕРЕДОВИЩА УКРАЇНИ В УМОВАХ ПОВНОМАСШТАБНОЇ ВІЙНИ

The article defines an objective list of risks and threats for the economic security and security of the information space of the state in the conditions of a full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation. The main components of threats for the economic security of Ukraine and security-oriented information environment are summarized, including: macroeconomic, production, financial, foreign economic, investment and innovation, social and food security. The systematization and analysis of current challenges and threats made it possible to identify the most significant of them – financial security, which dually reflects the growth of the state budget deficit and the increase in the state debt and expenses for its maintenance, which are the direct economic consequences of a prolonged high-intensity war, as well as factors that cause a fundamental negative influence on the economic security of Ukraine in medium and long-term dimensions. It has been proven that considering a wide range of threats for the economic security is an important step in the formation of effective strategies for the stability and state’ protection. The key directions of action to reduce threats for the food safety have been identified in the article. The manufacturing sector of Ukraine was significantly affected by the high-intensity hostilities with the aggressor country, which caused the destruction or suspension of key, largely export-oriented enterprises, mainly in the metallurgical, chemical and machine-building sectors. The impact of immediate destruction was worsened by the disruption of the logistics of both the domestic market and export routes, a significant increase in the cost of a number of important processes, the loss of part of the labor potential due to forced migrations, as well as the involvement of part of the workers in the Defense Forces, in addition, starting from the fall of 2022, – a complication with energy supply. The effectiveness of adapting the state’s investment strategy to the difficult conditions of war has been proven in the article. The priority of considering the process of risk transformation in wartime is justified, which helps to develop strategies to preserve the economic security of the country. The above makes it necessary to model and forecast the dynamics of Ukraine’s economy in the medium term in order to develop government solutions to ensure the economic security of the state, aimed at the recovery and modernization of Ukraine’s economy in the conditions of war and post-war recovery

ФОРМУВАННЯ СТРАТЕГІЇ ЛОГІСТИЧНОГО УПРАВЛІННЯ ПІДПРИЄМСТВОМ В УМОВАХ ВОЄННОГО ЧАСУ

This article is devoted to the peculiarities of the formation of the enterprise's logistics strategy in wartime conditions. The authors indicate that logistics, due to the situation that has developed in Ukraine at the moment, again often acquires the characteristics of "military", and some military personnel have to acquire new knowledge at a fairly fast pace, which is extremely necessary during the deployment of troops, transportation of ammunition, medicines, wounded etc. The study monitored the existing logistics strategies, identified their features, advantages and disadvantages in wartime conditions. It was also stated that when forming a logistics strategy, it is necessary to first of all take into account the change and transformation of many transport routes, the change, and in some cases, the destruction of partnership relations and supplier enterprises, changes in the needs and preferences of consumers, especially those who are in the occupied territory or in the zone of active hostilities, etc. The authors proposed a list of factors and possible threats and consequences that must be taken into account when forming a logistics strategy in wartime conditions. Unfortunately, the inflexibility of the domestic logistics system as a whole still remains a problem. In the conditions of wartime, it is very desirable to quickly make strategic decisions and their implementation, especially in relation to occupied territories and outside active hostilities. It often takes weeks to search for essential goods, and even more time for documentation, as a result– in some places it is no longer needed. Wartime also requires considerable effort from civilian logisticians to quickly replace suppliers, to find a vehicle to deliver products, to ensure production with the necessary raw materials and materials. The authors identify the factor that, in wartime conditions, logistics becomes extremely necessary for the effective operation of not only a separate enterprise or military unit, but also for the viability of the country as a whole. The formation of a logistics strategy for enterprise management in wartime conditions should take into account the elements of uncertainty, risks and threats and, accordingly, directions and ways of reducing them.

Современный статус степного орла в Казахстане

Современный статус степного орла в Казахстане

ІНТЕЛЕКТУАЛІЗАЦІЯ ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ ЕКОНОМІЧНОЇ БЕЗПЕКИ ПІДПРИЄМСТВА

The current conditions of the accelerated implementation of digital technologies, along with the negative impact of COVID-19 and military actions, actualize the need to pay due attention to the intellectualization of ensuring the economic security of the enterprise. It was revealed that the issue of intellectualization of economic security of the enterprise is not considered as such today, which is mostly caused by the existence of outdated ideas about the immutability of the nature of security activities, i.e. the actual need to respond and counter the constantly existing list of threats based on a technological map of actions developed in advance by each individual security service employee. The current conditions, complicated by the rapid and unpredictable impact of the latest threats, require paying attention to intellectualization. The research is aimed at substantiating the methodological foundations and directions of intellectualization of ensuring the economic security of the enterprise. In order to form the methodological foundations of the intellectualization of ensuring the economic security of the enterprise, the following methods were applied: induction and deduction, comparison and systematization – in the study of the essential characteristics of the term "intellectualization of human capital"; synthesis and analysis – to outline the content of the main areas of intellectualization of ensuring the economic security of the enterprise; morphological analysis – to clarify the parameters of the application of the synectic approach in the intellectualization of ensuring the economic security of the enterprise; graphic – for visual representation of theoretical and methodical material; abstract-logical – for theoretical generalizations and research conclusions. Several key directions (personnel policy; training; motivation; formalization, exchange and transfer of knowledge; creativity in actions thanks to the application of a synectic approach) are substantiated, which should contribute to the intellectualization of ensuring the economic security of the enterprise in order to further create the necessary safe basis for the transformation of the entire enterprise. The stages of application of the synectic approach have been determined, which should contribute to the combination of clearly defined actions of security subjects with the ability to study new problems and form atypical options for achieving the set tasks.

Criminology analysis and improvement of the system of prevention of drug trafficking in the black sea region of mainland Ukraine

The article examines the criminological features of illegal drug sales and, on this basis, provides suggestions for improving the system of combating drug crime in the Black Sea region of mainland Ukraine.
 The author revealed that the rapid pace of drug addiction, the expansion of the range of drug supply, the increase in the volume of their supply, the involvement of a large number of the population in the criminal sale, the involvement of Ukraine in the world drug business industry are only a small list of threats that determine the increased degree of danger of activities related to illegal sale of drugs. It is proven that due to the specific economic, social, demographic situation; advantageous geographical location; due to the presence of an extensive network of sea, rail and road transport, the Black Sea region turned out to be one of the most attractive areas for the illegal enrichment of criminals through the sale of drugs. It is substantiated that this puts the problem of analyzing drug crime in the Black Sea region of mainland Ukraine into an extremely urgent scientific problem and determines the need to find new forms and means of improving the regional system of drug crime prevention.
 The author established high indicators of the intensity of drug sales in the Black Sea region. So, if in Ukraine the intensity of the illegal sale of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances or their analogues is an average of 14 crimes per 100,000 population, then in the Black Sea region of Ukraine these indicators exceed the Ukrainian average.
 It is argued that criminals use the most diverse ways to move drugs from the illicit producer to the end user.
 It is justified that the prevention of drug sales is a set of interrelated measures that should cover a number of spheres of social relations. The activities of state and law enforcement agencies, whose tasks include countering drug crime, should influence the sphere of supply and demand of drugs.
 The paper states that law enforcement agencies in the Black Sea region of Ukraine should respond with adequate measures to prevent crimes: improve information and analytical support for crime prevention work; training of highly qualified personnel who would use modern knowledge, the latest forms and means to prevent crime; regulatory and legal support for the practice of combating drug addiction needs improvement, especially its organized forms; an important role is played by the establishment of cooperation (at the national, regional and local levels) between the practical units of the National Police, the Prosecutor's Office, the Court, the State Border Service, etc. in matters of exchanging information about criminals, conducting joint operations to stop crimes, preventing smuggling and their movement through the territory of the country to points of sale; an important direction is counteraction to "contactless" forms of domestic anesthesia - through the Internet, various messengers, etc.; not the last role is assigned to the prevention of drug crime: promotion of a healthy lifestyle among the population; prevention of recidivism and other measures.

Comparison of commercial web application vulnerability scanners and open source scanners

The paper compares eight vulnerability scanners based on two intentionally vulnerable applications. The comparison is performed using five criteria: accuracy, recall, Juden index calculation, web benchmark from WASSEC and OWASP. OWASP WebGoat and Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA) are selected as the tested applications. Among the tested scanners there are three commercial scanners: Acunetix, HP WebInspect, AppScan, and five open source scanners such as: Arachni, IronWASP, Skipfish, OWASP ZAP, Vega. According to the results, it was concluded that commercial scanners are more effective in a number of criteria (including the list of threats). Some open source scanners (such as ZAP and Skipfish) can be characterized as originally targeted at certain types of threats. It is emphasized that there is no single security scanner that provides consistently high detection rates for all types of vulnerabilities. Based on the results of the review, it is claimed that the existing differences in the frequency of false-positive vulnerabilities (for both groups of scanners) are due to the fact that most commercial solutions have automated scanners, which are more effective than manual settings by the tester. It is obvious that the results of manual settings have a direct relationship with the actual level of the tester's competence, and largely determine the final results.

Bird conservation status and cultural values in Indigenous Mexican communities: towards a bioculturally informed conservation policy

BackgroundWe summarize comparative ethnoornithological data for ten Mexican Indigenous communities, an initial step towards a comprehensive archive of the avian diversity conserved within Mexico’s Indigenous territories. We do so by counting highlighted species listed for bird conservation status on widely recognized “red lists” and their cultural value to build biocultural policies in Mexico for their conservation.MethodsIndigenous bird names for each study site were determined to allow calculation of the “Scientific Species Recognition Ratio” (SSRR) for high cultural value birds obtained across communities. This demonstrated patterns of cultural prominence. A matrix of 1275 bird versus seven biocultural values was analysed using a correspondence analysis (InfoStat/L-v2020) to illustrate patterns of concordance between bird conservation status and cultural values.ResultsThis paper contributes to quantitative and qualitative data on the role of ethnoornithology and ethnobiology in biocultural conservation. The areas studied provide refugia for almost 70% of the Mexican avifauna within a fraction of 1% of the national territory, that is 769 bird species recorded for all communities. The global correspondence of regions of biological and linguistic megadiversity is well established, while linguistic diversity is widely accepted as a good proxy for general cultural diversity. Our correspondence analysis explained 81.55% of the variation, indicating a strong relation between cultural importance and bird conservation status. We propose three main categories to establish a bioculturally informed public policy in Mexico for the conservation of what we described as high, medium, and bioculturally prominent bird species all include cultural value in any material or symbolic aspect. High are those species appearing on any threatened list, but also considered in any endemic status, while medium include threatened listed species. The last category included species not necessarily listed on any threat list, but with a wide range of social and cultural uses. We suggest that the concept might be extended to other species of biocultural importance.ConclusionsWe argue that bird conservation policies should be biocultural, that is they should recognize birds of cultural value on a par with bird species “of special interest” because they are most critical for biodiversity conservation. The desire of local people to protect their traditional community lands and livelihoods can be an effective biodiversity conservation strategy, which should be recognized in national biocultural policies.

Antimicrobial Resistance Genes Analysis of Publicly Available Staphylococcus aureus Genomes

Staphylococcus aureus is a pathogen that can cause severe illness and express resistance to multiple antimicrobial agents. It is part of the ESKAPE organisms and it has been included by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of USA in the list of serious threats to humans. Many antimicrobial mechanisms have been identified, and, in particular, antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) can be determined by whole genome sequencing. Mobile genetic elements (MGEs) can determine the spread of these ARGs between strains and species and can be identified with bioinformatic analyses. The scope of this work was to analyse publicly available genomes of S. aureus to characterise the occurrence of ARGs present in chromosomes and plasmids in relation to their geographical distribution, isolation sources, clonal complexes, and changes over time. The results showed that from a total of 29,679 S. aureus genomes, 24,765 chromosomes containing 73 different ARGs, and 21,006 plasmidic contigs containing 47 different ARGs were identified. The most abundant ARG in chromosomes was mecA (84%), while blaZ was the most abundant in plasmidic contigs (30%), although it was also abundant in chromosomes (42%). A total of 13 clonal complexes were assigned and differences in ARGs and CC distribution were highlighted among continents. Temporal changes during the past 20 years (from 2001 to 2020) showed that, in plasmids, MRSA and macrolide resistance occurrence decreased, while the occurrence of ARGs associated with aminoglycosides resistance increased. Despite the lack of metadata information in around half of the genomes analysed, the results obtained enable an in-depth analysis of the distribution of ARGs and MGEs throughout different categories to be undertaken through the design and implementation of a relatively simple pipeline, which can be also applied in future works with other pathogens, for surveillance and screening purposes.

Mechanism of action of cefiderocol.

Gram-negative bacilli are intrinsically resistant to many antibiotics due to the low permeability of their outer membrane. The most effective strategy to solve this problem has been the design of antibiotics that cross the membrane using specific transport systems. This is the case of cefiderocol, which, unlike cefepime or ceftazidime, has a chlorocatechol group at the end of the C-3 side chain. This group is recognized by transporters located in the outer membrane that allow cefiderocol to accumulate in the periplasmic space. Furthermore, cefiderocol is not a substrate for efflux pumps and the configuration of the side chains at C-7 and in particular at C-3 confer it a high stability against hydrolysis by most beta-lactamases of clinical interest including class A (KPC, BLEEs), C (ampC) or D (OXA-48) serine beta-lactamases and metallo-betalactamases (NDM, VIM. IMP). In order to better understand the mechanism of action of cefiderocol, the importance of iron in bacterial metabolism and the competition for iron between bacteria and host are reviewed.The indiscriminate and massive antibiotic use in the clinical practice and in agriculture or cattle during the past few decades has produced a serious world health problem that entails high morbidity and mortality: the antibiotic multi-drug resistance. In 2017 and 2019, the World Health Organization published a list of urgent threats and priorities in the context of drug resistance, which only included Gram-negative bacteria and specially focused on carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, as well as carbapenem and third generation cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. This scenario emphasizes the need of developing and testing new antibiotics from different families, such as new beta-lactams, highlighting cefiderocol and its original mechanism of action; new beta-lactamase inhibitors, with vaborbactam or relebactam among others; new quinolones such as delafloxacin, and also omadacycline or eravacycline, as members of the tetracycline family. The present work reviews the importance and impact of Gram-negative bacterial infections and their resistance mechanisms, and analyzes the current therapeutic paradigm as well as the role of new antibiotics with a promising future in the era of multi and pan-drug resistance.

Resistance to beta-lactams in Gram-negative bacilli: relevance and potential therapeutic alternatives.

The indiscriminate and massive antibiotic use in the clinical practice and in agriculture or cattle during the past few decades has produced a serious world health problem that entails high morbidity and mortality: the antibiotic multi-drug resistance. In 2017 and 2019, the World Health Organization published a list of urgent threats and priorities in the context of drug resistance, which only included Gram-negative bacteria and specially focused on carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, as well as carbapenem and third generation cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. This scenario emphasizes the need of developing and testing new antibiotics from different families, such as new beta-lactams, highlighting cefiderocol and its original mechanism of action; new beta-lactamase inhibitors, with vaborbactam or relebactam among others; new quinolones such as delafloxacin, and also omadacycline or eravacycline, as members of the tetracycline family. The present work reviews the importance and impact of Gram-negative bacterial infections and their resistance mechanisms, and analyzes the current therapeutic paradigm as well as the role of new antibiotics with a promising future in the era of multi and pan-drug resistance.