McDonald’s System Goes Down

Posted by & filed under Data security, Financial Accounting, Student life.

Description: Friday was a tough day for McDonald’s restaurants in several countries as system issues brought business to a standstill. Very early Friday morning Brian Rice, McDonald’s Chief Information Officer, reported the chain “experienced a global technology system outage, which was quickly identified and corrected.” Temporary shutdowns appeared to be required in countries such as… Read more »

Are Campus Vending Machines Watching You?

Posted by & filed under Data security, Student life.

Description: The University of Waterloo has asked for all 29 vending machines from Swiss company Invenda be removed from campus following word that the machines have a type of facial analysis capability. The matter came to light when one of the vending machines displayed an error message relating to “facial recognition,” prompting student responses on… Read more »

Students Failing on Online Security

Posted by & filed under Data security, Internal control, Student life.

Description: If online security were a university course, many Canadian post-secondary students would have a failing grade, at least according to survey results from RBC’s Students and Fraud Poll. Eighty percent of the students admit to vulnerabilities, including 28% who had shared their passwords on debit and credit cards. With fraudsters becoming more resourceful, it’s… Read more »

Square Problem

Posted by & filed under Data security, Financial Accounting.

Description: Payment processing company Square was facing problems on Thursday and Friday as customers were unable to access their accounts. Square has been a popular innovation for small vendors who use it to process payments from customers. The system outages also impacted Cash App, an application that is not available in Canada. Date:  September 8,… Read more »

Indigo Hit

Posted by & filed under Accounting Careers, Data security.

Description: Indigo Books and Music has a new website up and running following a recent cyberattack. But in this temporary site, Indigo says you can only “window-shop online.” You may browse, but if you find an item that interests you, you will need to go to an Indigo or Chapters store to purchase it. Indigo… Read more »

User Security Concerns at Facebook

Posted by & filed under Data security, Internal control.

Description: On Friday Facebook’s parent company Meta announced that approximately 1 million of its users may have had their usernames and passwords stolen by hackers. Apps downloaded from Apple and Google appear to be the source of the problem, by permitting access to user information while disguising themselves as popular apps like fitness trackers and… Read more »

The Sunwing Fiasco

Posted by & filed under Accounting Careers, Data security.

Description: After several days of delayed flights and upset passengers, Sunwing announced Thursday that it hoped to return to “close to normal operations” sometime on the weekend. A data breach at Airline Choice, the third-party supplier of Sunwing’s passenger system, caused cancellations and extensive delays as staff had to use manual processes to handle clients…. Read more »

Blackberry’s Rich Patents

Posted by & filed under Data security, Financial Reporting and Analysis.

Description: Blackberry has announced the sales of the bulk of its remaining patents related to its communications technology. Catapault IP Innovations has purchased this intellectual property for $600 million in a combination of cash and promissory notes. As Blackberry has moved itself from a mobile device company to a cybersecurity business, fans of the legendary… Read more »

Reitmans Out of Protection

Posted by & filed under Advanced Accounting, Corporate Strategy.

Description: Fashion chain Reitmans is exiting creditor protection after 20 months. The company, with HQ in Montreal, has paid its creditors roughly $95 million, about 1/2 of the amount owing based on public disclosures provided by the monitor Ernst & Young Inc. in September 2020. Between its Reitmans brand and its related stores, RW&CO and… Read more »

The Upstart Engines

Posted by & filed under Accounting Careers, Data security.

Description: There’s probably not much chance that any of the search engines like Neeva, DuckDuckGo, or You.com will supplant Google as the world’s number one search engine anytime soon. Google owns over 90% of the market, with Microsoft’s Bing the next largest at roughly 2.5%. Yet, by offering more privacy, fewer ads, and better results,… Read more »