Accounting Systems Report: Business Intelligence & Ransomware Analysis

This comprehensive report is divided into two parts, addressing the application of Business Intelligence (BI) in accounting and the risks posed by ransomware attacks. Part A explores BI, its technologies, and its impact across all accounting areas, emphasizing its role in informed decision-making. It highlights BI's influence on cost reduction, identifying new opportunities, and optimizing processes. The report also examines the potential impact of BI on the role of management accountants, emphasizing the need for understanding BI tools and analytics. Part B focuses on a ransomware attack scenario, specifically in a hospital setting. It provides an overview of the attack, identifies key risk areas, and assesses the impact on the hospital. The report recommends specific controls, including increased funding for end-user training, enhanced email and endpoint security, browser-level protection, and disaster recovery services, to mitigate these risks and protect the organization.

Running head: ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS
Accounting Systems
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Part A...............................................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Explain Business Intelligence..........................................................................................................2
Explain the impact of Business Intelligence on all areas of accounting..........................................4
Potential impact of Business Intelligence that it had on role of a management accountant............4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
Part B...............................................................................................................................................7
Introduction......................................................................................................................................7
Overview of the Ransomware attack...............................................................................................7
Key risk areas where the hospital may be exposed to a Ransomware attack..................................8
Impact of each of these risks on the hospital...................................................................................8
Specific controls recommended that need to be implemented at the hospital to protect the
organization from the key risk areas relating to a Ransomware Attack..........................................8
Recommending the most appropriate controls for the hospital that can address the identified risk
.........................................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
Reference List................................................................................................................................11

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Part A
Introduction
This section deals with understanding the concept of Business Intelligence. As a
management accountant, it is needed to recommend about implementation of business
intelligence software for the given business organization (Wu, Chen & Olson, 2014). The boss
and the Finance Director had asked the Management accountant to conduct some research on the
potential impact of Business Intelligence on the accounting function within the business
enterprise. By using appropriate academic literature, the present study illustrate upon the impact
of Business Intelligence that it had on all areas of accounting. The study even highlights the
potential impact of Business Intelligence that it had on role of a management accountant.
Explain Business Intelligence
The term “Business Intelligence” deals with technologies as well as practices and
application that are used for collecting, integrating and presenting the business information in
required format (Vossen, 2014). Addition to that, the main purpose of Business Intelligence is to
involve in better decision-making process and it is mostly driven with data Decision support
systems. However, Business Intelligence is one of the technology driven process that help in
analyzing and presenting the actionable information in front of the managers, corporate end users
and executives for making informed business decisions. Business Intelligence encompasses
usage of wide range of tools as well as applications and technologies that help business
enterprise for collecting data from external sources and preparing it for analyzing and developing
and running queries against that data.

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Explain the impact of Business Intelligence on all areas of accounting
Business Intelligence can be used within all areas of accounting as its usage guide
corporate executives and accounting managers to undertake more informed business decisions
(Sharda, Delen & Turban, 2016). It is needed for this organization to make use of Business
Intelligence as it cut costs as well as recognize new trade opportunities and spot any incompetent
trade process ripe for re-engineering. However, Business Intelligence as a regulation is
considered as technology-driven procedure that comprises of numerous behavior used in all areas
of accounting and these include data mining, online systematic processing as well as querying
and exposure at the same time.
Accounts receivable departments can make use of these key performance indicators for
tracking forecasted cash flows. It is important to understand the fact that accounting services can
make use of Business Intelligence for quantifying their own performance.
Potential impact of Business Intelligence that it had on role of a management accountant
Their Boss or Finance Directors ask the Management accountants about Business
Intelligence and its need to use in their business organization (Sauter, 2014). To answer this,
some accountants get scared as they are of the opinion that Business Intelligence is replacing
some of the services that they used to deliver for so many years. It is for this reason why firstly
management accountants should have proper understanding about Business Intelligence and it is
used to get results of Business Analytics so that it become more valuable to their business
enterprise as compared to previous years. After these accountants have proper understanding
about Business Intelligence, it will be then easy to extract and measure key performance

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indicators within the business (Richards et al., 2017). Nowadays, business organizations are
starting to look at the information and content that should not be treated on separate manner but
instead needed to be managed in an incorporated venture approach. Addition to that, Enterprise
information management helps in bringing together both Business Intelligence as well as
Enterprise Content management. It is necessary for the business organization to move towards
prepared trade intelligence that is presently served as well as unconcealed by vendors. Therefore,
Business Intelligence vendor’s aims at targeting only top of the pyramid areas. A paradigm shift
present aims at making Business Intelligence to the bottom of the pyramid with a focus to get
access to self-service business intelligence
One of the most vital roles that Management accountant plays at the time of
implementing Business Intelligence strategy is that of providing critical analytics that assist
decision-makers within the business enterprise. Addition to that, an effective Business
Intelligence can change the whole game plan in business enterprise by providing real insights of
information into the health of each area.
Several steps need to be taken into consideration at the time of implementing Business
Intelligence software:
Deciding on the outcome needed at the time of implementing such strategy (Popovič et
al., 2014)
Examining the structure of the company and keeping a note of requirement at each level.
Getting management buy in and it is essential that there is support from the Top-level
management because the success of the strategy hugely depends upon trusting the results
generated from analytics at the time of undertaking decision-making process

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It is necessary to select the suitable analytical Business Intelligence tools and then use it
strategically as and when required (Laursen & Thorlund, 2016)
Assessing whether a portfolio of Business Intelligence tools is needed of if a single
package would be sufficient. It is necessary to determine the nature of the business as
well as size and the analytical requirements.
Analytics used should be presented in front of the managers as well as stakeholders of a
company with proper fact-based data from where proper decisions can be taken (Chang,
2014)
Conclusion
At the end of the study, it is concluded that the business organization should engage in
implementing Business Intelligence software. After implementing Business Intelligence
software, the business organization can easily involve in speeding up and improving in decision-
making process, optimization of interior trade process, increased prepared competence, driving
new revenues, gaining competitive advantages against competitive rivalry firms. The business
organization can even find it easy to identify certain market trends as well as spot business
problems that further needs to be resolved. Using Business Intelligence tools help business
organization as it is completely data-driven Decision Support Systems. This tool can be used at
the time of briefing books, preparing reports, query tools as well as executive information
systems. By using this tool, the business enterprise can start examining the information all by
them rather than waiting for an IT expert to run any complex reports. However, the generated
data helps in accessing users to undertake trade decisions for the company.

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Part B
Introduction
This section explains about recent Ransomware Outbreak that took place in May 2017.
As an accountant in a local hospital, the CEO had asked to provide advice to management on
matters relating to Ransomware attack (Simmonds, 2017). The CFO has provided accountant
with an article that speaks about Ransomware attack that is even readily available in Interact
resources. The business report clearly presents an overview of Ransomware attack. The segment
even explains about the key risk areas where the hospital may be exposed to a Ransomware
attack. Each of the risk areas are mentioned in the business reports with its specific controls. At
the end of the business report, recommendations are provided that should be implemented by the
hospital to protect the organization from the key risk areas relating to a Ransomware attack
(Pope, 2016).
Overview of the Ransomware attack
The article that was provided by CFO was published on 13th May 2017 and the title of the
article is “Biggest Ransomware outbreak in history that hits nearly 100 countries with data held
for ransom” (Laszka, Farhang & Grossklags, 2017). Most of the countries were affected by this
enormous cyber extortion attack where locked computers and used files of users for ransom at
various hospitals, companies and even government agencies. This Ransomware attack was
caused by a self-replicating piece of software that took advantages of vulnerabilities as shown in
older version of Microsoft Windows. This attack spread from one computer to other computer as

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it enables to find the exposed targets. Furthermore, this ransom demands starts with an amount of
&US 300 and it even increases after 2 hours as noted by security researcher (Kruse et al., 2017).
Key risk areas where the hospital may be exposed to a Ransomware attack
Most of these troublesome attacks were accounted in countries like Britain where
hospitals and clinics were forced to turn away their patients after they lost contact to computers
(Jarrett, 2017). The other countries that were targeted by this attack were Spain, Portugal and
Russia. Recent Ransomware attack at hospitals left some of the experts worried because patent
care could suffer hugely. An individual losing its email can be treated annoying factor but
patients records are needed in order to treat patients (Brewer, 2016).
Impact of each of these risks on the hospital
The above risk identified are really dangerous and hospitals need to find ways where they
can minimize the risk from this attack as far as possible (Gupta & Tripathi, 2017). Private
security firms had eventually recognized Ransomware as a new alternative and it repeatedly
spread across large networks by exploiting a known bug in Microsoft Windows operating
system. The local hospitals are targeted for numerous reasons as the end users relies heavily
upon electronic health records as well as it is important to have a system that can be always
accessible. In cases, if Ransomware attack is detected, then this local hospital need to opt for
paying the ransom as well as recovering their files as far as possible. This will motivates cyber
criminals to make more attempts at other local hospitals (Chinthapalli, 2017).

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Specific controls recommended that need to be implemented at the hospital to protect the
organization from the key risk areas relating to a Ransomware Attack
Increased funding for end-user training- It is important to consider the fact that more
than 40% of spam email consists of malicious content like link to websites or any type of
attachments that contain viruses as well as Ransomware. It is suggested to hospital
employees that should use modern email protection as well as engage in filtering
solutions.
Enhanced email protections as well as endpoint security- In the year 2017, it is noted
that IT departments will look for ways to roll out for getting access to more advanced
functionalities like advanced URL detonation, URL redirection, attachment scanning for
malicious content.
More protection at the browser level- It is recommended to the local hospital to make
use of new browser based security tools for protecting the endpoints at the browser level.
It is advised to purchase the tools that will expand the protections in local hospitals for
the end-users who continuously use the web for work-related activities.
Disaster recovery as a service- The year 2017 will definitely take into account an
increase in investments towards use of tools as well as solutions that can protect against
and prevent a local hospital with a Ransomware attack. Some of the IT Departments are
planning to adjust their disaster recovery plans that ensure that their systems can recover
quickly as well as fully in case of any major Ransomware infection.

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Recommending the most appropriate controls for the hospital that can address the
identified risk
Ransomware is not only a major threat to local hospital but also it is pushing the security
budget largely. The main concern of the hackers being inside the hospital networks is to put IT
executives on the edge at the time of publicizing data breaches. It is advised to roll out network
monitoring as well as security tools that aligns with advanced traffic pattern analysis and the
intrusion detection. Some of the tools had been introduced that gain interest along with managing
certain security services that takes into account security specialists who monitors the function
network 24/7.
Conclusion
At the end of the study, it is concluded that local hospitals will carry on to be prime target
for these Ransomware attack in the year 2017. However, IT can stop an attack by continuous
training of end users on email best practices as well as checking network traffic in the most
appropriate way. The year 2016 was marked with an increase in cyber attacks in and against
healthcare business organization. The Ransomware attack can lead to life-threatening results in
local hospitals when they fully affect the various systems and the caregivers relies upon certain
actions during the treatment of patients.

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Reference List
Brewer, R. (2016). Ransomware attacks: detection, prevention and cure. Network
Security, 2016(9), 5-9.
Chang, V. (2014). The business intelligence as a service in the cloud. Future Generation
Computer Systems, 37, 512-534.
Chinthapalli, K. (2017). The hackers holding hospitals to ransom. BMJ, 357, j2214.
Gupta, G., & Tripathi, K. (2017). STUDY ON RANSOMWARE ATTACK AND ITS
PREVENTION. International Education and Research Journal, 3(5).
Jarrett, M. P. (2017). Cybersecurity—A Serious Patient Care Concern. Jama, 318(14), 1319-
1320.
Kruse, C. S., Frederick, B., Jacobson, T., & Monticone, D. K. (2017). Cybersecurity in
healthcare: A systematic review of modern threats and trends. Technology and Health
Care, 25(1), 1-10.
Laszka, A., Farhang, S., & Grossklags, J. (2017, October). On the Economics of Ransomware.
In International Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security (pp. 397-417).
Springer, Cham.
Laursen, G. H., & Thorlund, J. (2016). Business analytics for managers: Taking business
intelligence beyond reporting. John Wiley & Sons.

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Pope, J. (2016). Ransomware: Minimizing the Risks. Innovations in clinical
neuroscience, 13(11-12), 37.
Popovič, A., Hackney, R., Coelho, P. S., & Jaklič, J. (2014). How information-sharing values
influence the use of information systems: An investigation in the business intelligence
systems context. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 23(4), 270-283.
Richards, G., Yeoh, W., Chong, A. Y. L., & Popovič, A. (2017). Business intelligence
effectiveness and corporate performance management: An empirical analysis. Journal of
Computer Information Systems, 1-9.
Sauter, V. L. (2014). Decision support systems for business intelligence. John Wiley & Sons.
Sharda, R., Delen, D., & Turban, E. (2016). Business Intelligence, Analytics, and Data Science:
A Managerial Perspective. Pearson.
Simmonds, M. (2017). How businesses can navigate the growing tide of ransomware
attacks. Computer Fraud & Security, 2017(3), 9-12.
Vossen, G. (2014). Big data as the new enabler in business and other intelligence. Vietnam
Journal of Computer Science, 1(1), 3-14.
Wu, D. D., Chen, S. H., & Olson, D. L. (2014). Business intelligence in risk management: Some
recent progresses. Information Sciences, 256, 1-7.