Corporate Vision February 2017

NEWS , have been made. In almost every case, HMRC’s approach has been to acknowledge that there are concerns, but to confirm that the original proposals will be fol- lowed anyway. “What is particularly worrying is that HMRC have shied away from committing themselves on the major issues. The key ques- tions for small businesses are what the threshold for inclusion will be and whether there will be a year of grace, but HMRC have simply said they are still consid- ering these points. The key issue for tax professionals is to have a look at the long-awaited draft legislation, but the seven pages of legislation simply provide for regulations to be made at some point. It almost looks as though HMRC have handed in some half- done homework to avoid missing the deadline, hoping that they can fill in the blanks later. “MTD is an exciting prospect that could deliver enormous value for the UK, but only if it’s done cor- rectly. However, although the start date for MTD is now just over a year away, we still don’t have any clarity over these proposals. HMRC are rapidly running out of time if they’re going to do things well, rather than quickly. They should acknowledge that more time is needed, defer the start date by at least one year if not two, and use the additional time to develop their approach and test their systems before they are imposed on taxpayers.” Francis Whitbread, Tax Partner at UK200Group member firm Ed- mund Carr, said, “Given the fact that the implementation date for MTD for many UK businesses is 6 April 2018, it is disappointing to see HMRC have not been able to provide details of compliant soft- ware for MTD. Do they have any idea how long it takes to success- fully introduce a client to a new accounting system? What we need now is some substantive in- formation on software providers, the form the quarterly summary will take and other issues. “Another question: the purpose of MTD, we are told, is to remove the scope for taxpayer errors and the ThreatQ enables So- pra Steria to anticipate threats through a new SOC based on intelli- gence management ThreatQuotient™, a trusted threat intelligence platform innovator is pleased to announce its partnership with Sopra Steria, a European lead- er in digital transformation and well- known in the cybersecurity space. Sopra Steria’s rationale behind the partnership is to bring a global solu- tion with advanced services focused on intelligence and threat manage- ment to its customers so that they can move away from a reactive response to threat to a more move a more pre- dictive way of operating. Sopra Ste- ria has equipped its SOC (Security Operations Centre) with the ThreatQ platform which will become the corner- stone of it security operations. Organisations continue to be targets or victims of cyber threats. Attacks tripled in 2016 from one every two minutes to one every 40 seconds. Confronted with growing cybercrime and the reality of regulatory pressure, cybersecurity has become a requirement for organisa- tions. To stay competitive, companies must speed up their digital transforma- tion, while guaranteeing that their in- formation assets are protected, in par- ticular via an efficient security incidents detection system. This means the new generation of SOC must be: - adaptive, cognitive and predictive. Partnership for Threat Intelligence management Sopra Steria has chosen ThreatQuo- tient™, for its real-time intelligence organisation and management strat- egy, which will be one of the keys for running a successful SOC. The continuous growth and complexity of threats require fast action and, more importantly, a switch to a new era of anticipation by combining technolog- ical, economic and geopolitical infor- mation. This new approach will benefit external sources of threat intelligences and feeds and share anonymised in- formation with customers. Antonin Hily, MSSP Director at Sopra Steria comments on the announce- ment, “The ThreatQ platform is the driving force behind of our threat op- erations. Its Threat Library and work- bench are key capabilities our SOC analysts and other security tools used to identify what adversaries are in- volved on a given detected attack. Our day to day SOC activities are heavily focused on enriching the Intelligence attached to our customer’s adversar- ies to provide our customers with a full understanding of the risk mitigated by our service.” “A Threat Intelligence Platform helps C-Level executives to integrate Secu- rity Operations feedback into their risk analysis and strategic planning activi- ties.” comments Anthony Perridge, Re- gional Director for ThreatQuotient™. “Companies need more and more Intelligence driven services like the Threat Intelligence Platform. I strongly believe that classical Managed SOC offers will disappear in the near future and will be replaced by Intelligence Driven SOC offers focused on threat defence and fighting adversaries.” The new generation of SOC shall be adaptive, cognitive and predictive Sopra Steria is recognised as a trusted provider for its managed SOC servic- es, combining the best of technology and human intelligence to evolve its offer towards the orchestration of in- telligence services in a “security intelli- gence” global approach. Sopra Steria’s SOC is provided as a scalable offer depending on the client’s requirements. This offer provides a new state-of-the-art capability, including all the value added services from Sopra Steria, including cognitive intelligence and obviously Threat intelligence based on the ThreatQuotient platform. consequent underpayment of tax, remove the worry and uncertainty that comes with an HMRC en- quiry, and give businesses a bet- ter record of how they are faring. How will requiring businesses to submit data on a quarterly basis achieve those objectives? Pre- sumably, HMRC will be reviewing the data for anomalies and inves- tigating accordingly. The problem is, if adjustments for items such as stock and amounts owing to and by the business are only dealt with on a once a year basis, as HMRC anticipate, the quarterly data will be of limited use for ana- lytical review purposes. “Finally, where does the account- ancy profession fit into MTD? Although the largest number of responses to the consultation came from accountants, limited notice seems to have been taken of their views. Whatever HMRC may think, it is taxpayers’ agents who are currently the main rea- son why their clients pay the cor- rect amount of tax, by ensuring their tax returns are a correct and complete record of the business’s activities in the accounting period in question. “MTD will not work unless ac- countants and tax advisors con- tinue that role, something which the government replies do not really acknowledge. The possibil- ity of agents having direct access to their clients’ digital tax records has again been ignored. As ac- countants, our primary concern is our clients. We do not want MTD to place another administrative burden on them and have the skills to prevent that happening, but only if we are allowed to play a full part in the process.” The UK200Group views Making Tax Digital as the key issue for SMEs in the next few years, and views it as imposing a burden on smaller firms. As such, it has set up a Digitalisation Taskforce to ensure that it can assist business owners with the transition to dig- ital tax accounts and reporting, provide a dialogue between the SME community and HMRC and the Office for Tax Simplification, and campaign for clarity on Mak- ing Tax Digital. ThreatQuotient Announces New Partnership with Sopra Steria N