CFOs are feeling pretty generous in sharing their newfound tariff-fueled costs with others.

President Donald Trump wasted little time enacting, then delaying, then enacting tariffs in the first months of his second term. Nearly three-fifths of CFOs said they planned to absorb 10% or less of the tariffs within their own cost base, a new Gartner poll of 192 finance leaders found.

“CFOs are strategically responding to new tariffs, focusing on cost management and supply chain adjustments to mitigate the financial impacts,” Alexander Bant, chief of research in Gartner’s finance practice, said in a news release. “While a majority of CFOs are not expecting their organizations to absorb most tariff related costs, some do, likely indicating varying levels of price sensitivity among customers and suppliers for specific organizations.”

Among the 41% of CFOs who said they would absorb 11% or more of the tariffs’ impacts, “the average expectation is to absorb 49%” in their cost base, according to the release. Only one in 10 respondents are taking one for the team and plan to absorb 91% or more of the tariffs in their cost base.

So, where’s it all going? According to the survey, organizations will pass about 73% of tariff costs on to customers. Three in 10 said they’d pass nearly all (91% or more) of the cost to customers.

Click here for more on how CFOs plan on dealing with tariff costs.—AZ

The unpopular “150-hour rule” may soon be no more.

The AICPA and NASBA are offering a new pathway to CPA licensure that doesn’t require students to take another year of college.

Under proposed changes to the Uniform Accountancy Act—a national model for states to follow in crafting CPA license requirements—AICPA and NASBA would eliminate the requirement that accounting students receive at least 150 semester hours of college education, 30 more hours than needed for a bachelor’s degree.

Instead, students may earn their CPA license by completing an undergraduate degree in accounting and logging two years of work experience before taking the CPA exam. Other pathways include a post-graduate degree with one year of experience, or a bachelor’s degree plus another 30 credit hours and a year of experience. So while a form of the 150-hour rule may live on in some form, it’ll be relegated to a Pirate’s Code level of prominence.

For more on the new CPA requirements, click here.—CV

Companies are forking over larger portions of their IT security budgets to better combat homegrown threats.

According to a recent report from DTEX Systems, insider risk management on average made up 16.5% of a company’s overall IT security budget in 2024, up from 8.2% in 2023. The majority of companies surveyed (81%) said they either currently have or plan to have an insider risk program.

The report, which was independently conducted by the Ponemon Institute, surveyed 8,306 IT and security professionals from 349 organizations in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region. It defines insider risk as harm inflicted by an insider that’s both malicious, such as IP theft and fraud, and non-malicious, such as falling victim to advanced phishing attacks.

Of those with an insider risk program, more than six in 10 (65%) said the program was the only security strategy that allowed them to preempt a data breach. The average time to contain an insider incident fell to 81 days in 2024, down from 86 days in 2023.

To keep reading IT Brew’s story on the cost of insider risk, click here.—BM

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