To Cargo Thieves, a Truck’s a “Bank on Wheels”

A whole host of factors, including the ease of breaking into and stealing a truck and trailer and of dispensing of stolen cargo, the omnipresence of gangs, and the relative indifference of law enforcement has turned trucking piracy into a big and burgeoning risk for a wide range of companies, ris...

By Caroline McDonald • Oct. 2, 2012

Ruling Favors Employer Tax Refunds on Layoffs

Editor’s Note: this article is one of three submissions CFO received from attorneys regarding an important court decision on FICA taxes for severance pay. While each reaches essentially the same conclusion, each also contains a unique discussion of the issues involved in the case. Read the other ...

By Thomas D. Sykes • Sept. 25, 2012

How Risk Management Kept the Olympics on Track

Despite speculation that they might not be, the preparations for the London Olympics were pulled off with barely a hitch. The Olympic Games were successful and safe because of the way they were managed from the very beginning, contends Chris Bell, chief marketing officer with Active Risk, a risk-...

By Caroline McDonald • Sept. 5, 2012

Reputational Risk Tops Board Worries

For the second straight year, corporate directors view reputational risk as their chief concern, aside from financial risk, according to a survey by EisnerAmper LLP. The study, “Concerns About Risks Confronting Boards,” found that 66% of 193 directors see reputational risk as their top concern, c...

By Caroline McDonald • Sept. 1, 2012

New SEC Rules Target Conflict Minerals, Supply Chains

In a controversial 3-2 vote on August 22, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued final rules designed to cut off funding to groups committing human rights violations in central Africa. The new rules were created pursuant to an obscure provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Cons...

By Adam M. Taylor and Obiamaka P. Madubuko • Aug. 28, 2012

C-Suite Slipping on Information Security, Study Finds

While computer hackers and data thieves are always improving, developing ever-more sophisticated ways to breach corporate security systems, businesses have been falling behind in the measures they’re taking to protect themselves, a PricewaterhouseCoopers report released Wednesday asserts. C-suite...

By Taylor Provost • Aug. 17, 2012

Reputational Risk Still a Top Concern for Boards

For a second straight year, boards of directors see reputational risk as their top concern. They’re also displaying a new optimism about a financial recovery, and are making plans to hire staff to support CFOs, according to a survey by EisnerAmper LLP.Looking at internal growth and expansion, “th...

By Caroline McDonald • Aug. 14, 2012

When Clouds Collide, You Get Lightning

As the cloud carnival slowly makes its way through town, organizations (fortunately) are becoming increasingly aware of many of the pitfalls associated with the adoption of nontrivial, enterprise cloud-computing solutions. Oft-cited risks include data privacy, uptime reliability, security, total ...

By Rob Livingstone • July 31, 2012

‘Total Cost of Risk’ Redefined

The risk-management profession needs to expand the definition of total cost of risk (TCOR) beyond the insurance-based context it has traditionally focused on, risk-management experts said during a Thursday webinar.From an insurance standpoint, TCOR is generally defined as premiums + retained loss...

By Caroline McDonald • July 27, 2012

Social Media Gives, but Also Takes Away

Business uses for YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are fast catching up to the leisure uses that have been their primary raison d’etre so far, and usage of LinkedIn, which was created as a business tool, keeps soaring.But among more than three-fourths (75.8%) of U.S. companies that have built corpo...

By Caroline McDonald • July 6, 2012

State-led Hacking Cost Company 1 Billion Euros, U.K. Spy Chief Says

A British company suffered lost revenues of €1.0 billion ($1.25 billion) because of a state-sponsored cyber attack against its computer systems, according to the head of the United Kingdom’s inland security agency. The hit was said to be suffered through intellectual-property loss and from “comme...

By Andrew Sawers • June 27, 2012

No Escaping Cyber Risk, Companies Warned

Neither a company’s size, its location, nor its industry is a deterrent to cyber crime, which costs organizations an average of $5.5 million per data breach and can have an impact on the privacy of customers, employees, and business partners, experts say.In the past, cyber-risk management was mos...

By Caroline McDonald • June 26, 2012

IT Risk: Your Audit Checklist

The broad and rapid adoption of cloud computing by all sorts of businesses and organizations is quickly reshaping the way many key internal functions are expected to operate in — and adapt to — the new paradigm. That includes procurement, IT, risk management, governance, compliance, and audit, to...

By Rob Livingstone • June 19, 2012

BYOD: Bring Your Own Danger?

Now that a bit of the luster has worn off that shiny buzzword — BYOD — and the policy of allowing employees to work with their personal cell phones and tablets has had some time to settle in, some CFOs are discovering that actually deploying a “Bring Your Own Device” strategy might not be the sma...

By Taylor Provost • June 14, 2012

The Increasing Inevitability of Cyber Insurance

Back in the days when I was president of Oracle On Demand, we made a proposal to deliver a discrete manufacturing application-as-a-service to a computer manufacturer. In the course of the discussions, the manufacturer’s CIO asked, “If this service goes down, we lose $1 million an hour. So, will y...

By Timothy Chou • June 11, 2012

Will Another Pro-business Online Bill Bite the Dust?

The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote soon on a business-friendly bill that would give companies access to information about threats to their networks’ security.The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) would allow the government to provide classified intelligence...

By Sarah Johnson • April 26, 2012

Apple and China: A Love Story, With Risk

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer basked yesterday in the glow of a record quarter that saw his company nearly double its net income over the past year, while its second-quarter revenue rose to a little more than $39 billion, up from $24.7 billion a year ago. With quarterly profits driven by sales of i...

By David Rosenbaum • April 25, 2012

Doing Business Overseas Gets Riskier

Dozens of countries are riskier places to do business, in terms of terrorism and political violence, than there were last year, according to the 2012 Aon Risk Solutions risk map, released today. The map shows 37 countries with greater business and financial risk, including France, Germany, Italy,...

By Sarah Johnson • April 24, 2012

The SEC Wants a Raise

The Securities and Exchange Commission has requested $1.6 billion for its 2013 fiscal year, an 18.5% increase over 2012. But some legislators think the agency doesn’t need it.SEC chairman Mary Schapiro told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services in March that the agency would...

By Sarah Johnson • April 15, 2012

Four Barriers to Cloud Due Diligence

As a CFO overseeing your organization’s transition to cloud, how can you ensure your journey delivers on its promises over both the medium and long term? Focusing on the short term is the comparatively easy part. Entry costs are – as cloud vendors are quick to tell you – low relative to on-premis...

By Rob Livingstone • April 11, 2012

Under Heat from Congress, SEC Still Seeks 18.5% Raise

During a subcommittee hearing today where Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Schapiro was seeking an 18.5% budget increase, the chair of a congressional oversight committee contended that she would be “reticent to throw money at the SEC” until the regulator can prove it’s made signific...

By Sarah Johnson • March 6, 2012

Worker-Departure Disaster Waiting to Happen

It wasn’t long after American Superconductor (AMSC) employee Dejan Karabasevic was demoted and resigned before he went rogue. In a state of revenge, he covertly sold AMSC’s encrypted software key code to its most valuable customer. AMSC eventually detected this exploitation and identified Karabas...

By John Reed Stark • March 5, 2012

HP CFO Acknowledges Supply Chain Woes

In its quarterly earnings report yesterday, Hewlett-Packard announced that sales of personal computers fell 15% year over year; consumer sales fell 25%, and corporate PC sales fell 7%, all contributing to a 44% decline in profits. Overall revenues fell 7% to $30 billion, which was below expectati...

By David Rosenbaum • Feb. 23, 2012

Lawmakers Act to Stem Suppliers’ Abuse of Workers

Companies that do business in California may have to step up scrutiny of their supply chains for potential workers’ rights abuses, thanks to a new state law. And if a similar bill in the U.S. House of Representatives is passed, companies in the rest of the country could have to do the same.The Ca...

By Marielle Segarra • Jan. 25, 2012

Anti-Piracy Act Vote Postponed

A vote on the Protect IP Act (PIPA) scheduled for January 24 was called off today by Senate majority leader Harry Reid in the wake of Wednesday’s protests that notably included a blackout of the popular Wikipedia website.The PIPA legislation, along with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), was stro...

By David Rosenbaum • Jan. 20, 2012