Back @ IT Show

Back @ IT: Governance, Ransomware, and the CFO with Nick Lumsden

Episode Summary

Many companies have technical sprawl: apps, automation, SaaS & on-premise systems, and much more. What can the CFO do to mitigate risk and create a plan for strategic investments? In this “Back @ IT” episode, Aaron Back chats with Nick Lumsden to explore these areas more.

Episode Notes

This “Back @ IT” episode is part of the “Future Office of the CFO” program and is brought to you by Sage Intacct, an official underwriter. Sage Intacct can increase ROI and transform your organization with the first and only preferred provider of the AICPA for accounting and financial management software for companies of any size.

According to CFO Financial News, the total ransomware costs for data recovery should exceed $20 billion in 2021.

Additionally, many small and medium-sized businesses are the most likely targets as they aren’t as secure as enterprise organizations. And, the average ransom requested for a business of this size is $5,900.

So, how can businesses of any size be more resilient and invest wisely to future-proof the business?

In this “Back @ IT” episode, I chat with Nick Lumsden, CTO of Tenacity Cloud. We’ll chat about the impact of governance across finance, tech, operations, and lines of business, the strategic role of the CFO, pitfalls companies face when trying to implement a governance model, and much more.

Highlights

• 02:43: Organizations have become increasingly complex. The company does not have to be large in size to have complex environments to manage.
• 06:58: The alignment between technology and CFOs is a really good thing for technologists. Also, technology is seen as less of a cost center burden and more as an advantage.
• 10:15: Obligations to shareholders, customers, and employees increase the need for rigorous system audits and compliance. The intellectual property of any company is critical to its operations.

• 15:12: Everyone thinks they are meeting all the regulatory requirements. A system, such as Tenacity, can surface the surprises that should be fixed. Nobody wants to check all the systems from a compliance perspective.
• 19:00: AI components can help us humans make sense of massive datasets. And, spot anomalies in spending to mitigate future risk.
• 23:30: The Tenacity AI models can be trained to work with specific industries, such as healthcare. This provides better governance to ensure the correct compliance from HIPAA to ISO 27001 to NIST 800-53, and more.
• 26:05: We should ask ourselves, “What could I be doing to free up time?” Automation is not meant to replace humans but augment them. However, this opens up new areas to consider and shifts in business processes.

Sage Intacct continues to lead the cloud financial management revolution. Part of the Sage Business Cloud, Sage Intacct is used by thousands of organizations from startups to public companies to improve company performance and make finance more productive. As a best-in-class system, our cloud accounting software products and financial management solutions deliver deep accounting capabilities across multiple industries designed with a single aim—to accelerate your success.

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