Uncategorized

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, I hope you and your families have an excellent holiday.

Ravi Sharma, an ITACS alumnus, shared this cyber security article with me and its most timely.  A little long, but I think it does a great job of laying out the variety of attack types in a understandable framework.  Have a look.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141007190806-36149934–cyber-terrain-a-model-for-increased-understanding-of-cyber-activity

Jan and I are happy to announce that Tom Smith of Dow Chemical will be joining us on Tuesday evening October 4th to talk about the hard work of aligning IT to the business.  Tom is the IT Director for several of Dow Chemicals’ businesses.  Please join the regularly scheduled Webex for my section of IT Governance on the Training Center at webex.temple.edu.

Here’s Tom bio:

Thomas G Smith (Tom) joined The Dow Chemical Company in 1993 as an Information Analyst in their Coating Materials business.  Fascinated with the business’s technologies and markets, he became a sales trainee and enjoyed positions of increasing responsibility becoming a National Accounts Manager in the Sales team in Coatings.  During the 2000-2009 period, Tom used his combined experiences in the commercial team and in information technology to lead strategic programs for the business before moving into the corporate Selling Excellence team.  Tom is now the Business IT Director for several Dow businesses, including Building & Construction, as well as for Coatings, Monomers, and Plastics Additives.  Tom graduated from Amherst College with honors in Economics and English; and prior to joining Dow he worked as an information analyst at an international economic forecasting and consulting firm.  Outside of Dow, Tom has had a 25-year career as a semi-professional race car driver, and placed 15^th in the nation in 2015.  He also is a musician and writer.

Please plan on attending this presentation,

Jan & Rich

 

You’ve probably read accounts of the fraud at Wells Fargo in connection with cross-selling.  Over 5,000 employees were involved over a span of 5 years!  Here’s a good account of the situation by Andrew Ross Sorkin as reported in the New York Times: http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=InCMR7g4BCJTYuyKqXu41lOnxEkBWiqW&user_id=6284346ca2298b52bdd18ccab28c3e1d&email_type=eta&task_id=1473770462575991&regi_id=0.

For you to ponder:

• How could the gap between Mr. Stumpf’s words and the actions of his employees have developed and persisted?
• What controls might have prevented the activity or at least detected it in the very early stages?
• What does the massive scale and duration of the fraud suggest about risk management at Wells Fargo?
• How did the illicit activity escape the notice of both the internal and external auditors?
• Finally, how did it go undetected by bank regulators?

Accountability also seems to be absent from the Wells Fargo culture judging by the fact that the executive in charge of the the area of the bank in question decided to “retire” and will leave with a bonus of $124.6 million.

Please remember to look for a 15 minute quiz on Blackboard this coming weekend (9/17)