Industry news

BP has moved accounting and finance services to Accenture in order to standardise processes and employ data analytics.

Accenture will provide reports, revenue accounting services and order to cash services.

Brian Puffer, group controller at BP, said: “BP sees this partnership with Accenture as an important milestone in driving standardisation in our finance and accounting processes by consolidating our F&A service providers”.

Capita members of the Unite union are preparing to strike after the company announced plans to offshore work to India.

Capita has claimed that moving skilled jobs to India is necessary in order to keep the company competitive and enhance services provided.

The company issued a statement saying: “This consultation process is not yet complete and we are disappointed that 84 employees who are members of Unite – 2% of the entire IT Services workforce - have voted in favour of industrial action”.

Turkish Airlines are expecting to create cost savings valued at more than £10.2 million over five years, through a new global networking deal.

The deal will see Juniper Networks provide networking services to 200 Turkish Airlines business locations around the world.

Adnan Metin, head of IT at Turkish Airlines, commented on new services, saying that: “integrated Juniper-based network infrastructure has enabled us to simplify our operations radically and reduce costs while improving security, performance and scalability.”

Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire councils are expecting to create £5million in ICT annual savings.

The shared services implemented in 2010, covering back office, HR, ICT, frontline and professional services.

Local Government Association (LGA) who identified the savings, said: “IT is a critical enabler of wider business transformation and any failure will slow down other initiatives and ultimately impact on the success of third-party contracts.”

Axway who specialise in business technology solutions, have announced the creation of its Managed Service Provider (MSP) partner program.

The new program is designed to enhance and extend current collaboration, encryption, and file transfer solutions offered by Axway.

Mike Dayton, senior vice president, said: “Together with our partners, our solutions will enable improved business productivity and efficiency for security conscious enterprises, delivering the visibility and controls needed to mitigate corporate risk and reduce overhead.”

Communities in rural Scotland are set to receive £5 million from a government programme, designed to bring the next generation of communications to areas lacking IT infrastructure.

The funding will come from a joint initiative between the Scottish Government, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise, COSLA and Local Government.

Alex Neil, Holyrood's Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment, commented: “This investment of £5 million, over the next three years, will see targeted support being provided to community projects to enable them to deliver broadband solutions for their areas."

Slough Borough Council has outsourced its datacentre to hosting company Savvis.

The move comes as part of the council’s attempts to deliver cost savings through selling the previous datacentre site.

Council IT staff are able to link remotely to the new site, while Savvis will host the datacentre, the council will retain physical access to the site and will be able to implement maintenance.

A shared services venture delivered across local government and the NHS in Herefordshire, has delivered savings of £619,000.

The shared services, delivered through a joint ventures company called Hoople, were established in 2011. The services include back office integration and IT support.

Involved in the shared services were Herefordshire Council, Wye Valley NHS Trust and Herefordshire Primary Care Trust.

The service cost £1.5 million to implement, but is expected to deliver savings of £12 million over the next 10 years, and £33 million when taking into account overall shared service reforms.

Every organisation faces one challenge to their IT security position–the user. It doesn’t matter how much security training and advice a person is given-if they want, and can, do something then they will. Unfortunately, a user with admin rights–wittingly or unwittingly–is akin to a loose cannon. You just don’t know when or where they’re going to strike, and the results can be devastating. And once a problem occurs it all too often turns into a downward spiral that can bring down your reputation and your business.

This article outlines 10 logical reasons why every organisation should develop a policy of least privilege.

Reason 1: Minimise Risk

In a business environment you really need security decisions to be made by IT, governed by business requirements, when it comes to the desktop. Many users don’t understand the implications of configuration changes, such as files within the Windows folder and protected parts of the registry. If these are altered – either accidentally or maliciously, it can make the system unstable and increases the risk of data leakage.

Simply, if IT doesn’t know what applications and changes users have made or installed, then they can’t be sure that sensitive data isn’t being redirected into the hands of an unknown third party.

Reason 2: Improve End-User Experience

Security is often seen as preventing users from doing something, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Instead, by adopting a well planned and implemented least privilege policy, you can actually improve the user experience.

Following the example of devices like the iPad and Android Smartphones, which operate in a curated environment, organisations can catalogue a portfolio of programs and applications that are needed, and can be supported. Doing so will help track changes to the system and keep the core system configuration secure.

When users make system-level changes, they can weaken the endpoint or introduce application clashes which can have serious consequences. It also makes it harder to support the enterprise as, if a problem does crop up, IT often get a nasty surprise.

Reason 3 : Move to a Managed Environment

By locking down machines, so that users can only change their desktop configuration and not the core system, you can save time and money – by reducing support costs, lost productivity from network downtime, and the expense of data breach management.

However, to make sure that this facilitates and not hinders the enterprise, thought needs to be given to how the environment will be managed moving forwards. Software distribution, and patch management, at the simplest level could be through Group Policy Software Installation or perhaps System Centre Configuration Manager.

Reason 4: Reduce Support Costs

It’s a fact that secure and managed systems are cheaper to support. This turns security from an initial expense into an enabler.

The public sector is suffering from a lack of effective monitoring and accountability. The government are at risk of exacerbating the problem with the failure to adopt open reporting on public sector IT projects.

Whitehall had originally planned to release a series of ‘gateway’ reports, detailing the progress of major public sector IT projects. This would co-inside with the creation of a supplier blacklist which would be implemented to encourage companies to meet high standards.

The gate way reviews act as independent reports on large scale projects, that require approval from the Treasury. Francis Maude, the compliance Cabinet Office minister, had originally planned to publish the reports, which are currently kept secret, in order to promote responsibility and control.

The recent revelation of the governments backtracking on regular IT project reports represents a dangerous precedent and risks the return of unregulated spending on ineffective projects such as ID cards and the UK border force.

Maude went back on his promise, reportedly after senior civil servants complained, fearing that such accountability could damage their reputation if they became linked with failed IT projects.

The government have made significant savings from increasing IT efficiency and carrying out cost cutting. In backtracking on public accountability, reportedly in favour of protecting civil servants linked to failed projects, the government are risking the health of public sector IT operations.

Both suppliers and users must be made to be held accountable for the success of projects. It could be argued that the damage done to civil service members from public exposure to failed projects is justified. In failing to abide by this key practice of contract management, Whitehall are harming the prospects of government IT projects