Global Finance, Inc. (GFI) is a financial company
finance
Description
GLOBAL FINANCE, INC. (GFI)
Global Finance, Inc. (GFI) is a financial company that manages thousands of accounts across Canada, the United
States, and Mexico. A public company traded on the NYSE, GFI specializes in financial management, loan
application approval, wholesale loan processing, and investment of money management for its customers.
BACKGROUND AND YOUR ROLE
You are the Chief Security Officer, hired by COO Mike Willy, to protect the physical and operational
security of GFI’s corporate information systems. Shortly after starting in your new position, you recognize
numerous challenges that you will be facing in this pursuit.
Your primary challenge, as is usually the case, is less technical and more of a political nature. CEO John
Thompson has been swept up in the “everything can be solved by outsourcing” movement. He believes
that the IT problem is a known quantity and feels the IT function can be almost entirely outsourced at
fractions of the cost associated with creating and maintaining an established internal IT department. In fact,
the CEO’s strategy has been to prevent IT from becoming a core competency since so many services can
be obtained from 3rd parties. Based on this vision, the CEO has already begun downsizing the IT
department and recently presented a proposal to his senior management team outlining his plan to greatly
reduce the internal IT staff in favor of outsourcing. He plans on presenting this approach to the Board of
Directors as soon as he has made a few more refinements in his presentation.
