Automation in the finance industry is cutting time spent on routine tasks, and becoming increasingly important to operations—but the security questions around the deployment of the technology are always a concern.

Osaic, a wealth management fund previously known as Advisor Group, started its automation process around 15 months ago, according to the company’s VP of digital automation, Matt Ham.

Osaic’s customer base had been unsatisfied with the financial services company’s level of technology, Ham told reporters at Automation Anywhere’s Imagine conference in September, which motivated the firm to incorporate AI in its processes.

Numbers game. The company quickly found that using software robotics added value to operations and streamlined processes. By early this year, some 42 status bots delivered 17 to 20 labor hours of value a week. The increase in efficiency began paying for itself—and at a financial services firm, profit’s the goal.

“We’re looking at our solutions from an end-to-end business perspective, not just looking at it from an IT perspective and trying to fit the business into the IT,” Ham said.

Read more here.—EH

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The beleaguered MGM Resorts lost $100 million due to the cyberattack that ground much of the hotel and casino chain to a halt last month—but it told regulators on Oct. 5 that it expects to bounce back.

In an 8-K statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission, MGM said that despite September bookings falling to 88% occupancy (compared to 93% at the same time last year), those numbers should rebound in the fourth quarter.

It highlighted that it expects hotel bookings to rise in November due to an upcoming Formula 1 Grand Prix event in Las Vegas.

“Operations at the Company’s domestic properties have returned to normal and virtually all of the Company’s guest-facing systems have been restored,” according to the company’s 8-K filing. “The Company continues to focus on restoring the remaining impacted guest-facing systems and the Company anticipates that these systems will be restored in the coming days.”

MGM Resorts’ computer systems came back online roughly 9 days after an early September ransomware attack broadly disrupted the casino and hotel chain’s operations.

The company refused to pay the ransom hackers demanded to get its systems back up, the Wall Street Journal reported, in contrast with Caesars Entertainment, which recently paid about $15 million to end a similar attack.

Read more here.—KG

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected].

Europe’s biggest telecommunications firms are demanding big tech companies whip out their wallets.

The Financial Times reported that executives at 20 telecoms, including BT, Deutsche Telekom, and Telefónica, have signed an open letter to the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, and members of the European parliament demanding they take action to ensure tech firms pay a “fair” amount to use their networks.

“Future investments are under serious pressure and regulatory action is needed to secure them,” the companies wrote in the letter, according to the Times. “A fair and proportionate contribution from the largest traffic generators towards the costs of network infrastructure should form the basis of a new approach.”

While the telecom companies left EU officials to figure out the details, they urged that any proposal should ensure the “very largest traffic generators” pay fees with a focus on “accountability and transparency on contributions…so that operators invest directly into Europe’s digital infrastructure.” The letter claims tech firms profit while paying “almost nothing for data transport.”

Tech companies have insisted their users already have to pay for their own connections, and that network fees are little more than attempted shakedowns. Daniel Friedlaender, the head of tech lobbying group CCIA Europe, told the Times the telecom operators are “trying to fool Europe into providing them with extra cash” and demanding they be “fully subsidized by the same firms who have helped them grow and thrive.”

Keep reading here.—TM

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected]. Want to go encrypted? Ask Tom for his Signal.

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 17%. That’s the average pay increase Veterans Affairs IT workers received under a new policy designed to close the pay gap with the private sector. (CIO Dive)

Quote: “This is not just legislation; it’s a seismic shift in how we relate to our gadgets and who gets to fix them.”—The Repair Association, a group representing independent repair shops, on California’s new right-to-repair law (The Register)

Read: A novel technique enables DDOS attacks at unprecedented magnitudes. (Ars Technica)

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