data resilience
we know it today, and so CFOs need
to work in conjunction with the CEO
and CIO to understand how these
will transform the business. A lack
of comprehension of the changing
market and technologies could
leave their firms with a diminished
competitive advantage, as a result of
a lack of investment in transformative
technologies.
Transform with technology
the business. However, research
suggests there is little evidence in the
chief financial officer agenda about
anything to do with analysing the
impact of digitisation, and how new
technology innovations will change
their roles. What’s clear is that they
will evolve.
This evolution will happen because
technologies are emerging that could
totally change the whole financial
infrastructure of world commerce as
One of these possible transformative
technologies is Blockchain. This
technology is beginning to cause
a ground swell. You can’t ignore
it, because Blockchain is the core
technology that underpins the virtual
currency Bitcoin. Unfortunately,
Bitcoin has been associated with
corruption and ransomware in the
past. However, these challenges
shouldn’t stop CEOs, CFOs and CIOs
from embracing the transformational
aspect of this technology. It not
only has applications in finance, but
also in the management of medical
heath records, contacts, and the
sale and purchase of digital assets
– just to name a few. The range of
applications for it is widening.
Blockchain is all about peerto-peer transactions without the
middle man, and so has widespread
implications for organisations
that provide an interface between
two transacting parties. This will
lead to wide reaching changes
to IT infrastructure because the
technology has the ability create
vast amounts of data that is
encrypted. This data passes around
the nodes of the Blockchain at
high speed, and these nodes aren’t
necessary within your data centre,
so technologies that can accelerate
high speed encrypted data are key to
participating in the Blockchain.
Defend against ransomware
Forbes’ Top Ten Concerns for 2016
are Costs, IoT, Agility, Time to
Market and the perennial problem of
increasing data volumes and where
to store it. This issue brings the
cloud into play with a whole set of
new risks, such as ransomware. For
example, a report by The Register
on 23rd March 2016, ‘Your Money
Or Your Life! Another Hospital Goes
Down To Ransomware’, reveals that
the records of the Methodist Hospital
in Kentucky, USA, were scrambled
by ransomware to try to extort money
from the organisation. Thankfully it
called in the FBI and refused to pay.
The Hollywood Presbyterian
Medical Center also found itself
infected by ransomware recen