Massive Ransomware Wave Hits Banks, Hospitals

A massive ransomware attack has spread across at least 74 countries, hitting the IT systems of banks, telephone companies and hospitals and holding affected computers hostage for $300 in Bitcoin.According to Wired, the ransomware strain WannaCry (also known as WanaCrypt0r and WCry) has gained par...

By Matthew Heller • May 12, 2017

Grasping the Concepts and Benefits of Cloud ERP

A growing business must be cognizant of its financial functionality. Multiple software systems, lengthy accounting processes, suffering sales and customer experiences, and a myriad of complexities within their current systems will do nothing but slow its growth and hurt the bottom line. Forward-t...

By Kerry Maruna • May 10, 2017

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The CFO Strategy for Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence’s impact on the office of the CFO continues to evolve, and finance chiefs must be aware of the opportunities it will create for growth. 

By CFO.com staff

Watchdog Probing Customs’ Demand to Twitter

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog is investigating whether Customs and Border Protection improperly demanded that Twitter identify critics of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.The demand for the identify of the owners of the Twitter account @ALT_uscis was ...

By Matthew Heller • April 24, 2017

Cyber Attacks Can Cause Major Stock Drops

Cyber security attacks have a debilitating effect on companies’ stock prices, causing an average decline of 1.8% percent on a permanent basis in cases of severe breaches, according to a new report.In an analysis of 65 companies affected by hacks since 2013, security consultant CGI and Oxford Econ...

By Matthew Heller • April 12, 2017

SAP Patches Critical Flaw in Business Software

European software giant SAP said Tuesday it had patched multiple vulnerabilities in its cloud-based enterprise platform HANA that could have allowed hackers to fully compromise databases and business applications without a valid username or password.HANA runs SAP’s latest database, cloud and othe...

By Matthew Heller • March 14, 2017

Betting on Blockchain

As a graduate student in international economics at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1980s, Chris Ballinger sometimes found himself engaged in speculation about what would happen when money became electronic, and whether anybody other than a central bank could issue it. Twenty...

By Randy Myers • March 2, 2017

PC Shipments Expected to Decline

Annual shipments of personal computing devices are expected to decline slightly over the next five years as manufacturers continue to combat the recent surge of smartphones into the marketplace, according to the consulting firm International Data Corporation.The global PC industry, which includes...

By Sean Allocca • Feb. 27, 2017

CFOs Rethink Cybersecurity Strategies as Hackers Organize

IT-specific concerns such as malware, firewalls, and virus scans are still part of the overall cyber security strategy. However, mitigating cyber risks requires CFOs to shore up their technical and physical defenses. Here are five articles covering trends in managing security across the organizat...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 18, 2017

Don’t Just Mitigate Ransomware

Almost every day, it seems, there’s news of another ransomware attack on a prominent organization. In fact, according to one study, almost 40% of all businesses experienced an attack from the summer of 2015 to the summer of 2016. To protect our companies against ransomware and its potentially dis...

By Roy Golding • Feb. 7, 2017

Apple Reportedly Readying Supersized iPhone

Apple’s supply chain is expecting the company will launch a new iPhone next year with a supersized 5.8-inch AMOLED display manufactured by Samsung, according to a published report.Citing Taiwan-based component manufacturers, DigiTimes said Apple will launch 4.7-, 5.5- and 5.8-inch new iPhone mode...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 2, 2017

Detecting Cyber Attacks Faster

Two-thousand sixteen continues to deliver a growing number of cyber attacks, while financial institutions continue to be threatened and vulnerable. Sophisticated cyber attackers are clearly able to circumvent traditional cyber defenses and gain access to internal networks—and the longer they stay...

By Moshe Ben Simon • Nov. 28, 2016

10 Questions for Technology Optimists

I am, for the most part, an optimist about the contribution technology can make to business and to people’s quality of life. It’s often a mixed blessing, of course, and there’s always the potential for unintended consequences or misuse, but if we’re going to run a modern economy, or arguably, a d...

By John Parkinson • Nov. 9, 2016

Predictive Analytics: An Essential Tool for Today’s CFO

Today’s CFO is responsible not only for shareholder performance but also acts as a strategic business adviser to the CEO, helping drive the executive agenda. While financial rigor is necessary, it is not sufficient to deliver the performance results required to meet shareholder expectations or si...

By Kris Hutton • Oct. 26, 2016

AICPA Warns of Executive Impersonation Scam

Organizations should take steps to prevent a form of cyberattack in which criminals impersonating a top executive deceive an employee into transferring large sums of money, according to the American Institute of CPAs.The FBI has identified so-called Executive Impersonation as a variant of “Busine...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 23, 2016

Yahoo Says Hacker Stole Data of 500M Users

Yahoo has disclosed a “state-sponsored” hacker broke into its system in late 2014, compromising the account information of at least 500 million users in the largest data breach ever of a single company’s network.The account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, ...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 23, 2016

IT Spending to Grow 3.3% in Next 5 Years

Worldwide spending on IT products and services will increase at a compound annual rate of 3.3% over the next five years, driven in large part by commercial demand, according to International Data Corp.The research firm said in its latest semiannual IT Spending Guide that the information technolog...

By Matthew Heller • Aug. 29, 2016

Bitfinex Hack Fuels Bitcoin Security Concerns

The cybertheft of about 120,000 bitcoins from Hong Kong-based digital currency exchange Bitfinex has renewed concerns over the security of the cryptocurrency.Bitfinex earlier this week suspended trading on its platform after discovering the security breach. The bitcoins that were stolen by the ha...

By Matthew Heller • Aug. 4, 2016

Britons’ Tweets Foreshadowed Brexit Vote

Remember when pollsters were calling Brexit a dead heat? Maybe they should have taken notice of Twitter activity coming out of Britain in the days before Thursday’s shocking vote.Nearly two-thirds (64.75%) of tweets from Britain posted between June 7 and June 15 and between June 20 and June 21 in...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • June 24, 2016

IoT Will Recharge Machine Manufacturers

You’re probably hearing about the Internet of Things (IoT) from some of your technology suppliers. While much of it is very cool, and we’ll see much more that’s even cooler, why should you consider using IoT cloud services? What does all of this technology to connect machines, collect data from t...

By Timothy Chou • June 21, 2016

The Case for Cloud Storage Vendors

Just a few years ago, most people would have answered the question of whether data is more secure in a company’s data center or in a vendor’s cloud storage system with a resounding answer in favor of organization’s data center.Ashley Vukovits Companies hired very smart security people and gave th...

By Ashley Vukovits • June 15, 2016

Cloud Providers Have a Lot at Stake

Keeping data in your own data center feels like the right choice. After all, it’s your business on the line.Chip Wentz Yet the largest application cloud providers have even more at stake in terms of their businesses and reputations. They are responsible for protecting the information of thousands...

By Chip Wentz • June 15, 2016

The Relative Risk of the Cloud vs. Data Centers? It Depends

You are out of capacity. You’ve got data that you don’t have a home for. So you have to decide whether to build out additional capacity within your existing data center (if you have one), in a colocation data center, or in the cloud.Let’s consider each in turn.Option 1: Build new capacity in your...

By Rajendran Avadaiappan • June 15, 2016

Wendy’s Says Hack Hit More Payment Terminals

Wendy’s has disclosed that a cyberattack on its restaurants was more extensive than it initially reported, saying the attackers used malware to breach a second payment terminal system.The burger chain has been investigating reports of fraudulent charges on some credit and debit cards that had bee...

By Matthew Heller • June 10, 2016

Suit Against Oracle Spotlights Cloud Accounting

Accusing her Oracle supervisors of trying “to fit square data into round holes” to boost financial results, a former senior finance manager at the firm with responsibility for cloud revenues has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the technology giant.In her lawsuit, which demands a jury trial,...

By David Katz • June 2, 2016

Smartphone Sales to Rise Only 3.1% in 2016

“Phone fatigue” may be increasing, as market research firm IDC on Tuesday reduced its forecast for 2016 global smartphone shipments growth and predicted iPhone sales will decline more sharply than originally expected.In its latest quarterly survey of the smartphone market, IDC said that after ris...

By Matthew Heller • June 1, 2016