55 articles · Economics & Procurement · page 3 of 3
Articles
Week of 20 December 2021
Oracle bought Cerner, and Cerner customers inherited a cloud strategy
Oracle’s December 2021 deal to buy Cerner gave hospitals running Cerner’s records a new owner with its own database, cloud and priorities. What mattered next was roadmap, hosting and contract terms, and when to act on each.
Week of 29 November 2021
Inflation’s first casualty in bank IT was the change budget
Bank and credit union technology budgets took an inflation squeeze after the Fed dropped “transitory” in late November 2021. Running costs rose on their own through contracts, wages and usage pricing, and modernization money paid the difference.
Week of 15 November 2021
A cyber grant with a rising match is a sustainment test
The infrastructure law’s $1 billion cybersecurity grant came with a local share that rose every year. That forced states and localities to decide early what they would keep paying for once the federal money stopped.
Week of 4 October 2021
Why a security attestation to government now carries fraud risk
In October 2021 the Justice Department said it would use a fraud law against contractors and grantees whose security promises outran their practice. Overnight, a signature on a security form became a personal and financial risk for whoever signed it.
Week of 20 September 2021
What sanctioning SUEX changed for banks that serve crypto firms
Treasury’s September 2021 sanctions on the crypto exchange SUEX went after the place where ransom money gets cashed out. Because SUEX hid inside other exchanges, banks serving crypto businesses had to decide how deep to look, and what that would cost.
Week of 19 July 2021
How a bed-count fine repriced hospital price secrecy
In July 2021, CMS proposed tying hospital price transparency fines to bed count, so the biggest systems could no longer cheaply pay to keep their rates hidden. Compliance became a permanent data product, read most closely by payers, employers and competitors rather than patients.
Week of 7 June 2021
Why Basel’s 1,250% risk weight pointed banks toward custody
In June 2021, global bank regulators proposed rules that made owning bitcoin outright ruinously expensive in capital. Read closely, they split the bank crypto question into three different businesses, holding, safeguarding and moving value, and priced out only one of them.
Week of 8 March 2021
One-time money, recurring bills: the Rescue Plan’s technology hangover
The American Rescue Plan handed state and local governments $350 billion of flexible, temporary money. Where it paid for technology subscriptions, the risk hid in three places: the shape of the funds, the shape of the costs, and contracts signed in a hurry.
Week of 30 November 2020
Congress regulated connected devices by deciding what agencies may buy
The IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act set no rules for device makers. Instead it set rules for one very large customer, the federal government, pushed security duties onto its contractors, and exposed an old problem: you cannot secure devices you do not know you own.
Week of 16 November 2020
Permission to donate cybersecurity arrived without the money to run it
In November 2020, regulators finally let hospitals give cybersecurity to the small physician practices around them, free of charge. A legal barrier fell overnight. Whether anyone was actually safer depended on budgets, staffing and who would run the tools year after year.
Week of 19 October 2020
Antitrust moves in years; vendor dependency is set at signing
The Justice Department’s case against Google opened a long fight over platform power. It offered regulated buyers no relief on their own dependence on vendors, which is settled in contracts, system design and tested exit plans, far faster than any court moves.
Week of 24 August 2020
Low for long: the rate forecast hidden in bank technology budgets
The Fed signaled in August 2020 that rates would stay near zero for years. Many bank technology plans assumed the same without saying so: in deposit forecasts, in how digital channels were judged and in contract terms that later came due.
Week of 15 June 2020
What due diligence cannot outsource, as Wirecard’s partners found
Wirecard had audited accounts, licenses and blue-chip clients, yet €1.9 billion of its cash probably never existed. Its partners learned that three checks cannot be handed to anyone else: where the money comes from, whether customer funds are visible, and how to leave.
Week of 1 June 2020
UCSF’s ransom decision was shaped long before the attack
Ransomware hit servers at UCSF’s School of Medicine in June 2020, and the university chose to pay. The decision looked like a crisis call but was largely settled in advance, by backups, where data lived, insurance terms and which advisers were already on retainer.
Week of 6 January 2020
Travelex’s outage was every white-label bank’s outage
Ransomware knocked Travelex offline, and the banks selling its travel money under their own names were left with no service and little to tell customers. If a partner carries your brand, it needs your controls: communication, contract terms and a plan for shared dependencies.