Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) roles are becoming fewer and fewer, especially in the tech sector where they have been at the forefront of layoffs. It’s a disappointing turn for a movement that rose to prominence in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and the subsequent demonstrations for racial justice; the number of DE&I positions rose 55% between June and August of that year, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. However, at the end of 2022, listings for DE&I jobs were down 19% according to hiring resource company Textio.

As of 2023, Amazon, Twitter, and Applebee’s have reduced their DE&I staff at a higher rate than their non-DE&I staff. For example, among Elon Musk’s recent—let’s call them capricious—staffing decisions, Twitter’s DE&I team shrank from 30 employees to a total of two this January, a former employee told AdAge.

“There’s usually some lever that influences them to spend the money and make the leap. It may be investor pressure or employee pressure,” Keely Denenberg, senior client partner at Orange Grove Consulting, a leadership development firm that offers DEI consulting and training services, told CFO Brew. “It could be any number of those things, but there’s usually either something they’re working toward or running away from.”

Denenberg suggests companies eager to gain the most from their DE&I investments consider first goals for those programs. It’s not uncommon for companies to have vague timelines for such initiatives, Denenberg added.

Even with some of these cuts to DE&I roles, it's not all bad news for diversity in hiring: In 2022, for instance, there was a record number of female CFOs, according to the Crist Kolder 2022 Volatility report. Among women of color CFOs, 61% were in the role for the first time, according to a survey by executive search firm Cowen Partners.—LR

Ransom—where?

Ransomware attacks were on the rise for many years, until they began to decline in 2022. But threat actors are improving their tactics, meaning targeted companies and organizations will have to turn to stronger security operations.

Vulnerabilities that lead to ransomware attacks are often a symptom of bigger security hygiene issues, Mike Wiacek, CEO of Stairwell, told IT Brew. Over time, those flaws can build up and open the door to vulnerabilities that can be exploited by threat actors of all kinds—raising concerns that adversaries have more lines of attack.

“Ransomware may be the one that causes you the pain that’s most visible, but the underlying disease that was untreated is fundamentally the real concern that we overlook,” Wiacek said.

We shall fight on the beaches. Undetected malicious software can be used as a “beachhead” for ransom attacks, but the fact that the threats can go so long undetected indicates greater problems at the core of IT security that need to be dealt with. Wiacek told IT Brew that what’s required is better practices.

“When you start thinking about this as a hygiene problem, the best way to stop ransomware is to make sure that you don’t have compromised devices on your networks in the first place that can then be used as beachhead to get ransomware to show up,” Wiacek said. “The ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Part of the threat landscape, according to a new Rapid7 analysis, is widespread exploitation vulnerabilities. Caitlin Condon, the Rapid7 report’s lead author, told IT Brew that the reduction may well be the result of a more sophisticated class of cybercriminal.

“We’ve seen that the cybercrime economy is mature, it’s specialized, it is geared towards speed,” Condon said.

Read the full story on IT Brew.—EH

Coworking is a weekly segment where we talk to CFOs and others in the finance space about their experiences, their companies, and the larger economy. Let us know if you are—or you know—a CFO we should interview.

Jilinda Crowley is the CFO of magniX, a private equity-backed company designing and developing electric motors for electric aircraft based in Everett, Washington. Crowley spent 14 years at Rolls Royce in a variety of finance roles.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How has the role of CFO changed over the course of your career?

It is much broader now and it is less CPA-focused. I’d say when I first started that felt like a real impediment, particularly for British companies because their expectation was if you work in finance, you have a CPA and I didn’t. Increasingly, the CFO role is so much more strategic, and so much more hands-on, and so much broader than it used to be.

In the old days, the CFO’s job was to report the numbers, file taxes, and that was kind of it. These days, in my view, it’s a much more strategic role. It’s about guiding the strategy, the direction of the business and can be much broader than it previously used to.

So I’m responsible for business development at magniX, which is a totally new territory for me, not a space that I’ve worked in before. At first, it felt a little bit uncomfortable. But again, it’s one of those areas where an MBA is better training for that type of work.

What’s your advice for a young finance professional looking for their first CFO job? How do they prepare for their first day as a CFO? Keep reading.—DA

Stat: $3 billion. That’s how much Ford Motor Co. said it will lose on sales of electric vehicles to consumers this year. The company said it expected its EV unit to be profitable by 2026. (CNN Business)

Quote: “The future of TikTok in the US is definitely dimmer and more uncertain today.”—Lindsay Gorman, head of technology and geopolitics at the German Marshall Fund think tank and a former tech adviser to the Biden administration (the New York Times)

Read: A metric used to gauge accounting fraud is also a recession red flag and folks, it doesn’t look good. (the Wall Street Journal)

Stay the course: According to 600 CFOs, building organizational resilience is the top priority. Learn how to achieve it—and how to balance cutting costs while investing in growth—in Coupa’s latest survey, available here.* 

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