Company Archives - CFO Center USA

The Spies Inside Your Company

Posted on July 24, 2017March 29, 2018 by Matthew Booth

Hear the words ‘corporate espionage’ and you might think it’s only something that corporate giants need to worry about.

But that’s not the case. Corporate espionage is something that can affect companies of any size. And despite what you might believe, the threat is highly likely to come from within your organization.

The corporate spy could be a dissatisfied or disgruntled employee, a manager, or a supplier, according to Rick Orloff, CSO at Code 42, a leading provider of cloud-based endpoint data security and recovery.

Case in point: an employee of Siemens, a leading European manufacturer, was arrested in the Netherlands last month on suspicion of leaking patents and other company secrets to a Chinese competitor, according to Reuters news agency.

“Individuals can easily syphon off sensitive corporate information and pass it to unauthorized third-parties,” writes Orloff in Info Security magazine. “Systems can also be infiltrated by those that wish to do your business harm or gain a competitive advantage from your data.”

And it’s a huge mistake to assume you only need to protect your company from cyber-attacks, according to Bruce Wimmer, G4S’s Senior Director and Leader of Counter Business Espionage.

He warns that business spying that doesn’t involve cyber intrusion is on the rise and is one of the greatest security risks to businesses, dwarfing the threat from cyber-attacks.

G4S’s corporate risk service division estimates the cost is as high as $1.1 trillion annually. By comparison, the impact of business-critical data being stolen remotely is estimated to be $400bn a year, G4S estimates.

“Many businesses consider the threat of a cyber-attack to be their biggest security concern and at their peril they ignore the threat of data loss where corporate spies uncover serious shortcomings in physical security arrangements,” says Wimmer.

“Disgruntled employees, competitors, foreign governments, and suppliers can act as an insider threat, over short and long periods of time, with little chance of detection if the business is only focusing on external cyber threats.”

The corporate spy will home in on weaknesses, knowledge gaps and human frailty and there’s little point in monitoring systems if your company doesn’t also monitor the people who can access them.

“While a cyber-attack can bring down a company’s systems or access confidential information, there are many more ways that competitors or other corporate spies can attack a business,” warns Wimmer.

Worse, these methods can make an in-depth cyber-attack possible.

How to Protect Your Company’s Sensitive Information

Wimmer recommends doing the following:

Conduct a security audit of your premises. Identify and test the rights of access and rights of way for all your employees as well as service providers (cleaners, engineers, IT professionals, etc.).
Assess the processes you have for new employees, external suppliers and visitors. Share the information with relevant employees.
Instigate a Clean Desk Policy and make sure it’s always enforced.
Establish a process for the secure and timely disposal of sensitive printed material.
Introduce a policy to protect sensitive information that covers how it is shared (or not) in conversations, meetings, telephone calls and paper documents.
Ensure business executives who travel to meetings or conferences stay vigilant.

“Business executives are extremely vulnerable to spying when travelling,” says Wimmer.

“Travel security programs address terror threats, criminal threats, potential political instability, even health and natural disasters, but they rarely cover business espionage threats – even though the business espionage threats almost always pose a more serious adverse business impact.”

Managing All The Threats and Risks To Your Business

Of course, corporate espionage is just one of the security risks your company might face. Besides security risks, there are risks involving finance, legal and regulatory compliance, operations, reputation, service delivery, commerce, internal and outsourced projects, safety, stakeholder management, strategy, and technology.

It’s no wonder that business owners and CEOs get overwhelmed when it comes to managing risk. Fortunately, we can help. The CFO Center will provide you with a highly experienced senior part-time CFO with ‘big business experience’ who will work with you to understand the risk profile of your business and of the shareholders.

By managing the company’s risk profile and the risk profiles of the shareholders the whole business can be brought into alignment and can operate as a unit rather than as a set of individual parts.

This is actually one of the most critical roles in any business and your part-time CFO will support and guide you through the process.

We have an intimate understanding of every conceivable risk growing businesses face.

This means that we can help you build a much stronger business by knowing how to navigate through the growth stages of the business cycle confident that you are equipped to meet the challenges as they present themselves.

Lower Your Risk Today

Let one of the CFO Center’s part-time CFOs help you with business risk analysis. You can download a free report on Business Risk Assessment here or you can book a free one-to-one call with one of our part-time CFOs—just call us now on (800) 919-4022 or go to: https://www.thecfocenter.com/financebreakthroughsession/

How Your Office Shredder Is Putting Your Company At Risk

Posted on June 13, 2017March 29, 2018 by nancycaltabiano

It might look innocent enough, but your office shredding machine actually poses as much a threat to your business as the most virulent computer virus.

What?! How?

How could something that was bought to protect your business be as harmful as a computer Trojan?

It’s simple really: it’s not fit for purpose. Yes, it cuts your unwanted documents into thin strips. But—and this is the important bit—it leaves your company exposed to all kinds of trouble because those strips can be reassembled.

All it takes is a little bit of patience to reassemble those bits and read your documents.

Now, you might think this all sounds far-fetched, a little too James Bond/Jason Bourne for your circumstances but unfortunately, it’s not.

In fact, there’s even software that runs on Windows whose very purpose is to reassemble shredded documents.

Called ‘Unshredder’, it automates the reassembly of torn or shredded documents, thus saving ‘even novice computer users’ the tedious task of doing the job by hand.

What if those documents reveal your company’s strategic plans for the next five years? Or the details of your next big ‘secret’ project? Or the names and personal details of your customers or clients?

Even office memos can reveal valuable information in the wrong hands.

And let’s face it, people who take the trouble to reassemble shredded paper to find sensitive company information aren’t doing it for benign or charitable reasons.

No, they’re most likely doing it for nefarious purposes: to expose your company’s plans via social media or traditional media; to sell the information they find to your competitors; to blackmail your company, or to commit large-scale identity theft using your customers’ details.

The impact of your company’s secrets being revealed could be devastating. But the impact of your customers’ or clients’ details being revealed could be just as bad.

In the UK, for instance, companies that collect customers’ or clients’ personal details are legally obliged to protect those details under a law called the Data Protection Act 1998.

The same law also states that companies are legally obliged to carefully destroy customer records when they no longer need to retain them.

Not doing so results in severe penalties.

Like the £100,000 fine handed out to a local council which was found guilty of dumping the personal records of 100 people in a building it had once used as offices. The personal records were found stuffed inside 45 bags of rubbish left by the departing council employees.

So, allowing your customers’ details to fall into the wrong hands could result in your company ending up on the wrong side of the law.

And it doesn’t matter how healthy your revenue is, few companies can take a £100,000 hit to their monthly cashflow without hurting.

There’s more. If word gets out that your company doesn’t protect your customers’ details, think of the public relations implications. Who will want to risk buying from your company again?

How can you avoid this kind of disaster?

Simple, you outsource your document disposal to companies that offer paper shredding services. These companies use industrial-scale paper shredders with blades capable of transforming your documents into tiny, uneven bits of paper that can’t be reassembled.

Just as importantly, these companies will provide you with proof of destruction so that you have an audit trail, should you ever be in a position where you need it.
And as with all kinds of outsourcing, there are many other benefits too.

One, you save on overheads. You no longer need to pay for the repair, maintenance and replacement of an office shredder that, like a photocopier, has an unfortunate habit of breaking down when you most need it.

Two, your employees no longer need to waste time slowly feeding one document at a time into the office shredding machine. Instead, they can do the job for which they were employed.

Three, you save space. No need to allocate valuable office space for the mountain of documents that need to be fed one page at a time into your office shredder.

Four, you save money. And five, you help save the environment, because most reputable professional paper shredding services recycle what’s left of the documents they process.

So, as you see, although outsourcing has attracted its fair share of negative press in the past, it is often a force for good in a company.

It not only allows you and your employees to focus on your core competencies but saves you money and time.

Paper-shredding is just one example of what you can outsource in your business. You can in fact outsource all your technology services and business processes such as HR and finance, which allows you to operate a leaner, more efficient business and use the savings to drive growth.

Enlisting the services of an experienced part-time CFO, for example, can add value, increase efficiency and maximize opportunities in your business.
You get access to a CFO with the experience and knowledge to help you plan, manage and control business growth and who can organize both your in-house and external accounts functions.

Many business owners don’t realize the breadth of the role of a part-time CFO. For instance, a part-time CFO will not only become an unofficial ‘sounding board’ for the often-isolated CEO or owner of the business but can also help devise an efficient outsourcing strategy for the company.

If one of our part-time CFOs helps you to create an outsourcing strategy, for example, the process will include:

• Evaluating your company’s current and future requirements.
• Discussing a company-wide strategy/protocol for taking on outsourced providers
• Investigating specific outsourced providers (starting with our national network of trusted providers) with proven track records
• Evaluating providers’ core competencies to ensure they find the right match
• Discussing cost implications in detail and uncover any hidden costs before contracting the supplier
• Interviewing providers and ensure they will be a good cultural fit
• Ensuring that the provider will be able to deliver the service on time and to the right standard
• Challenging providers about their data security and integrity
• Asking providers to share their contingency plans in the event of serious problems
• Evaluating providers’ training programs and ability to support your business in the event of staff sickness or absence
• Discussing providers’ compliance policies to ensure that they will take on the responsibility (where appropriate) to adhere to laws and regulatory requirements.

And that’s just outsourcing. For a fraction of the cost of hiring a junior member of staff, our part-time CFOs will work with you to resolve all of the 12 major challenges your company is likely to face:

1. Exit Planning
2. Risk Assessment
3. Implementation Timetable
4. Strategic Funding
5. Internal Systems
6. Reporting
7. Profit Improvement
8. Cash Flow Management
9. Compliance Reporting
10. Tax Planning and Legal Issues
11. Outsourcing
12. Banking Relationship

And because it’s a part-time role, there’s no impact on your payroll or headcount.

What’s not to like?

Conclusion

So, if you want to keep your company safe, outsource your paper-shredding. And if you want to free up your time, save money and accelerate your business growth, hire a part-time CFO.

To find out more about how a part-time CFO will help your business, book a free one-to-one call with one of our part-time CFOs now by clicking here or call us on 800-919-4022.

How to Seduce Your Bank Manager

Posted on June 7, 2016March 29, 2018 by Matthew Booth

Given that the bankers are often ranked in the top 10 of the world’s most hated professions, the prospect of seducing your bank manager is probably not high on your bucket list.

It’s fair to say that you’ve probably never thought about doing it. But if you want your company to grow then it’s something you not only need to think about but act on.

Unfortunately, seduction, in this case, will rely almost entirely on the allure of your company’s numbers rather than your ability to deliver snappy one-liners, a bunch of hothouse flowers or the promise of a candle-lit dinner. That’s because the average bank manager is a risk-averse creature who will demand far more from you than the average romantic date!

And it will be down to you to do the running—because if you need to fund your working capital or if you’re looking to fund investment in the business and to grab an opportunity, you’re likely to need external funding.

In other words, you need your bank manager far more than he or she needs you. That’s because access to finance will be a key determinant in your company’s growth and if you’re like the vast majority of SMBs, you’ll approach traditional banks for funding (in the form of an overdraft or loan) before looking at other funding options. So you’ve got to be at your persuasive, most charming best.

And it will take preparation—masses of it. Think weeks, even months of preparation.

That new finance might be for working capital/cash flow or capital expenditure such as investing in new machinery or property or improving existing buildings. Or you might need it to enter new markets, develop new products/service or even to refinance the business.

Whatever your reasons for seeking external finance, if you’re going to approach a bank, you need to know the best ways to win over your bank manager. You also need to know what approach is going to trigger an immediate slap-down (an outright ‘No’) or the offer of a substantially smaller amount than you’ve requested. To download our full report on how to get the best out of the relationship with your bank manager click here

Why do bank managers rebuff applications?

Banks won’t always provide you with the reasons they’ve turned down your loan or overdraft application. But here are some of the reasons they’ve offered companies in the past few years:

The company is experiencing declining sales/profitability
The company is over-leveraged
The bank has changed its lending policy. A new feature of the new ‘normal’ financial environment means there’s been a reduction in the availability of longer-term debt (for loans with terms stretching over five years), according to the CBI.
The company has insufficient security
The company has no experience in the new product/service or market
The bank considers the company’s business sector or trading environment too risky
The bank is not prepared to lend the full amount
The company has a weak balance sheet.

How to boost your chances of a ‘Yes’ response

So how do you get your risk-averse bank manager to happily rubber-stamp your loan or overdraft application?

Be prepared

Your bank manager is likely to demand you provide fully audited accounts, financial cash-flow projections, security information and guarantees and full business plan details. You might also be asked to provide evidence from order books.

Companies who’ve gone through the application process in the post-recession years have noticed that it’s become a lot more stringent. They found there was a higher level of due diligence, sales and market reporting, security and guarantees and that the process took longer than was expected. This was particularly the case when they approached banks with which they’d had no previous dealings.

Improve your credit rating

As well as having all the required paperwork in place, managing and making efforts to improve your company’s credit rating will help your chances of getting a ‘Yes’ response from your bank manager.

That means making payments on time, maintaining regular contact with creditors and banks and ensuring you offer maximum financial transparency.

Enhance your internal resources

Hire an experienced Chief Financial Officer who has experience with accessing various forms of bank debt finance and can put together, for now, the business plans and financial projections the bank will want to see. Here’s the thing: you can now hire a part-time highly experienced Chief Financial Officer for less than you’d pay a full-time junior staff member. You can find out more here

Conclusion

Seducing your bank manager is going to take time and lots of effort but if you’re successful, it will provide your company with the financial fuel it needs to grow and reach its full potential.