Tagged: Dow Chemical

Risk of the early click

There has been a recent spate of premature earnings releases, thanks to what I’m going to call the “early click”. It is evident that even the world’s biggest and well-managed companies have not accounted for a risk with reasonably high likelihood in the technology space and significant impact in the financial space. Chances are, as the earnings release process moved from a purely manual set of tasks to an automated workflow, nuances relating to control were missed. The inadvertent mistakes result in some real and measurable impact, as in the case of Google, which lost more than $22 billion from its market capitalization due to the sudden drop in share price. So, what can or should companies do about this?

  • Authorization – guessing that most organizations have this in-place by virtue of allowing only designated individuals or third parties filing such releases or having the ability to “click” the necessary buttons
  • Authentication – this is the part that is probably missing and needs to be bolstered. To “click” is simple, fast, instantaneous. But, to validate it, is not. Build in a password interrupt, segregate it between 2 human beings, or time-delay its real-world impact

In hindsight, it’s amazing to observe that single individuals have the power to push out material information, with seemingly no other checks and balances. In addition to the above steps, organizations should continually “Assess” their current processes and consider “Advance Staging” to simulate the release process in a sandboxed environment. No doubt, there are a lot of things that need happen before updates hit the wire – continue those practices in a virtual space and have everything ready before that final click to the real world.