The total global value of corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A) reached $5.9 trillion in 2021. For 2022, the figure is expected to reach $4.7 trillion. This would make 2022 the second-best year on record for the M&A market after 2021. Clearly, robust M&A opportunities exist for companies looking to stimulate growth, increase market share, and influence supply chains. Despite those potential benefits, however, M&A deals are also fraught with serious risks.

Modern-day enterprise risk management (ERM) is a disciplined, organization-wide approach to identifying and addressing a wide range of enterprise risks, such as operational risk, financial risk, compliance risk, and strategic risk. Organizations with robust ERM programs can better manage and mitigate risk and minimize the potential for losses or damage. ERM incorporates different strategies, tactics, and plans for each type of risk because those risks affect the organization in different ways.

Cybersecurity starts with the ability to recognize your cyber risk. We will explore several topics related to taking a practical approach to managing risk and achieving cyber resilience. This is a blog series with collective thoughts from Bindu Sundaresan, Director AT&T Cybersecurity, and Nick Simmons, AVP, Cybersecurity. Cybercrime has become increasingly frequent, complex, and costly, posing a risk to all businesses regardless of size. How do you plan to respond when falling victim to a breach?

2023 might be a really important year for real-time payments (RTP) development in North America. FedNow, a real-time payments service, is on track to go operational in 2023 in the USA, while the Real-Time Rail (RTR) payment system will be fully launched in Canada, also in 2023. Currently, in their test phases, these payment systems will go mainstream next year, making faster payments more accessible to smaller financial institutions and businesses.

Risk awareness, mitigation, and management are integral to solid cybersecurity and business performance in the modern business climate. Organizations need an active approach that supports risk-informed decision-making at every level to succeed at risk management. This is where integrated risk management comes into action.

Internal controls are the processes, procedures, tasks, and activities meant to protect an organization from fraud, financial information misreporting, cybercrime, and accidental losses. A strong internal control system is also vital to maintain compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. Internal controls do, however, have one nagging weakness: management override of those controls.

Vendor security questionnaires are frustrating, both to the organizations sending them and the vendors receiving them. While these frustrations remain unaddressed, they will only continue to impede the efficiency of vendor risk management programs. Fortunately, suffering through security assessments isn’t an unavoidable by-product of a Vendor Risk Management program. With the correct strategies, you can streamline the entire assessment questionnaire lifecycle. Read on to learn how.