A new study by Sage, the leader in accounting, financial, HR and payroll technology for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), has found that over four-fifths (83%) of finance leaders believe the industry needs a new breed of CFO.
“The Redefined CFO” study investigates how finance leaders today take a more holistic approach with a reliance on data to engage with the wider strategic priorities of organizations. Stepping out from the shadow of the CEO, the CFO has become a hub of business information – diversifying their expertise, recruiting the right talent, and ensuring they implement emerging technologies and purpose-driven programs to remove friction and deliver insights. The Chief Facilitative, Fairness and Future Officers represent this new breed of CFO.
Cryptocurrency and the metaverse embraced by SMBs
The research found that finance officers within SMBs are increasingly embracing cryptocurrencies and the metaverse as digital payments technology forces an evolution.
While only 17% of global finance teams reported currently accepting cryptocurrency transactions, one-third (33%) plan to accept decentralized currencies within the next 12 months. Just over half (52%) believe these currencies will prove ‘extremely’ viable as a long-term payment solution. The biggest hurdles surrounding adoption of cryptocurrencies were internal ESG policies (22%) and finding the right talent to manage it (22%).
The research revealed that over two-fifths (44%) of finance leaders have used cryptocurrency as payment for personal transactions, whilst nearly half (48%) have personally invested in cryptocurrency. Another half (49%) plan to invest in it.
When it came to the metaverse, SMBs may be further ahead in embracing the new technology than many anticipate. Over one-third (36%) of finance teams say their company has already entered the metaverse, while half (52%) say they plan to increase their presence over the coming year. Over half (54%) of respondents are planning learning programs in the metaverse, and almost half (42%) are purchasing virtual real estate (via NFTs).
Global Breakdown
SMBs are accessing new capabilities all the time, supported by AI, machine learning and blockchain, to better manage their finances, and run their businesses more effectively.
Finance leaders in the US were the most bullish: almost half (46%) of US SMBs have already entered the metaverse, compared with only 30% of UK and 32% of Canadian businesses.
US finance teams were amongst the most likely to already be accepting cryptocurrency transactions, with a fifth (21%) already accepting these payments. The US trails only Australia – where 29% of businesses already accept decentralized payments. These figures were substantially higher than those seen in the UK (13%) and Canada (12%) which are lagging behind.
In terms of the long-term viability of cryptocurrency as a SMB payment source, 60% of US finance teams believe it to be extremely viable. This compares with 44% of UK and half (49%) of Canadian finance executives.
Purpose and people ahead of profit
Finance teams are now prioritizing technology skills over financial experience in recruitment, and it’s impacting the hunt for new skills. One-third (32%) of finance teams say they are now looking for candidates with either coding, developer, or AI algorithmic building experience. In fact, candidates with a strong AI experience were even more appealing than strong finance candidates willing to train and develop AI skills (38% compared to 34%, respectively). However, both are more attractive candidates than professionals without any technical skillset at all.
Organizations are also prioritizing people and empathy in business decisions. Just over three-quarters of financial decision makers are encouraged by their organization to prioritize people (77%), account for empathy and understanding when making business decisions (75%) and put purpose over profits (74%).
To download the full Canadian report, click here.
Blue Hexagon Debuts World’s First Unified Harden & Defend Platform For Multi-Cloud Security
Posted in Commentary with tags Blue Hexagon on April 13, 2022 by itnerdBlue Hexagon, a leading agentless cloud-native AI platform, today announced the world’s first unified harden and defend multi-cloud security platform that combines two cloud security pillars – harden and defend – into a single platform designed to reduce DevSecOps friction, catch threats and misconfigurations early via deep learning, and improve compliance.
Blue Hexagon’s Cloud Security Platform allows customers to both harden their cloud – including cloud visibility, cloud compliance, and misconfiguration detection – and detect active threats – for workload, storage and network threats – without relying on outdated signatures, IOCs and threat intelligence feeds. Blue Hexagon connects directly to a customer’s cloud infrastructure in an agentless manner in minutes using Cloud Service Provider (CSP) native APIs to collect raw data from cloud resources in every region, account, configuration, control-plane activity, network activity, serverless packages and containers pushed to repositories. This raw data is analyzed by the Blue Hexagon platform using proprietary deep learning models to detect malware, command and control, beaconing, and behavior analytics to uncover unusual patterns in the cloud control plane and data plane.
Hardening Outcomes: Blue Hexagon provides visibility into asset inventory and cloud activity, detects several hundred misconfigurations in more than 100 different services across AWS, Azure, GCP and OCI and aids in compliance with multiple standards like CIS, HIPAA and PCI. Blue Hexagon provides coverage for 12 out of the 20 CIS-recommended controls.
Threat Defense Outcomes: Blue Hexagon provides sub-second identification of both known and unknown threats with near 100 percent accuracy, and natively works with cloud infrastructure for visibility and enforcement. By applying deep learning to network traffic, storage activity and workloads, Blue Hexagon is able to identify both known and unknown threats with greater than 99 percent accuracy in network traffic, container/K8S workloads and cloud storage, usually in less than a second.
Blue Hexagon provides actionable security visibility with network, workload and storage as well as user and entity insights. The solution also helps achieve continuous compliance including misconfigurations and cloud intrusion detection. Blue Hexagon is trusted by leading healthcare, e-commerce, insurance and financial services companies and has received positive feedback from many customers including Prime Communications and Pacific Dental Services.
Blue Hexagon has been recognized in Forbes AI 50 for Next Gen NDR innovation, included in the 2020 Gartner Market Guide for Network Detection and Response, named to CNBC’s Upstart 100 list of “World’s Most Promising Startups,” was tested by Miercom as the most effective of four leading security products against the most lethal zero-day malware, ransomware, worms, botnets and evasive malicious threats and was named to the 2021 CB Insights AI-100 list of “Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence Startups,” CRN’s “10 Hottest AI Security Companies You Need to Know,” Analytics Insights “Top 100 Artificial Intelligence Startups to Lookout for in 2021.” The company recently won several 2022 industry awards for cloud security including the Silver Globee Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards for Hot Security Technology of the Year for Artificial Intelligence in Security.
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