Necessity is the Mother of Invention

You could file this under the headline “in other news, water was found to be wet.”

A report came out this week announcing the winner of the “most unpopular company of 2017,” an award that lends new meaning to the word “dubious.”

To exactly no one’s surprise the company was Equifax, the consumer credit reporting agency that collects and aggregates information to nearly 1 billion customers and nearly 100 million businesses around the world.

Unless you’ve been on another planet, you probably know that Equifax suffered a massive data breach last year that affected some 145 million customers. And no, that’s not a typo - 145 million. That’s a lot of sensitive information circulating somewhere. You would think that a company of this size and scope would have had something resembling an impenetrable firewall, but apparently not.

In addition, the government watchdog, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fielded some 30,000 complaints about Equifax. I’m just guessing here but that probably didn’t do much to help their reviews on Yelp.

Since 2013 over nine billion personal records have been lost, stolen or compromised. In 2016, data breaches rose 13 percent from the prior year and there was a 164-percent spike in stolen or compromised personal information.

So, it’s probably little wonder then that one of the most sought-after non-traditional niches in the accounting profession is cyber security.

Recently our company has fielded calls from a number of midsized to large regional firms requesting – actually closer to pleading - that we send them any opportunity related to cyber security – no matter how large or how small.

Normally a Top100 firm would not give any firm or company under $5-$10 million a second look, but we have clients with annual revenues of over $100 million in negotiations with cyber-security concerns that are under $1 million – a true barometer of how in demand that niche is.

So if necessity is indeed the mother of invention, this is a textbook example of that oft-repeated axiom. But for us, there’s a definite upside.

And traditionally our business has an annual cycle of nine months – from February to April our clients are so knee deep in 1040s that they view our phone calls during that period with the same disdain as telemarketers selling replacement windows. But with the number of non-traditional mergers rising, we’re able to facilitate M&A discussions even during the filing frenzy.

Years ago when company calling cards were popular I was once “shoulder surfed” at a hotel where some eagle-eyed pirate stole the number on the card and later that month I received a bill for $800 including calls to Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Ah if only cyber security was then what it is now, I wouldn’t have had to explain that collect call from Kabul to accounts payable.