Some of the year’s big news items involved tech companies and technology’s impact on businesses. These were the 10 most popular Finance Tech News stories in 2012: 

1. Stealing a credit card without ever touching it

Just because a credit card’s in your wallet, safe in your pocket or purse, doesn’t mean it can’t be very easily stolen without ever leaving the safe confines of your pants or your pocketbook.

2. Facebook and the Cloud are dead, who killed them?

It’s not every day that an analyst from a well-respected and highly influential firm declares the death of not one but two well-respected and highly influential technologies. But that happened this year in Paris, and the rumors of downfall for the two tech darlings are beginning to be felt in the online world. The two doomed innovations: The social networking behemoth, Facebook, and the tech construct known as The Cloud.

3. Digital trail exposes Penn State co-conspirators

It took Judge Louis Freeh, the former F.B.I. director, and his team of investigators many months and millions of dollars to get to the bottom of what happened at Penn State in the past couple of decades. But one thing is clear: Finance and electronic data played an enormous role in what became the greatest sports scandal in the history of college athletics.

4. Analysts get a peek at new iPhone

Before Apple officially launched the highly anticipated next version of its industry-changing iPhone, financial analysts got a few details on what to expect.

5. Should the CFO be the boss of the CIO?

It’s no secret that at most organizations, pretty much everybody reports to finance. Even if the corporate structure draws different reporting lines between  positions, all lines lead to the bottom line — which controls the organization’s future. And the bottom line is managed by finance professionals. But the increasing importance of technology to most companies means the boss of the CIO  has even more authority and responsibility for the way a company operates.

6. Kill your brand in hours: Lessons from Komen fiasco

February’s kerfuffle over the funding by the Susan G. Komen foundation of Planned Parenthood offered organizations of all stripes and industries a pointed lesson in not just the power of the Internet to destroy a carefully-crafted brand image. It also showed the speed and ferocity of the web-generated backlash when the momentum of public opinion shifts toward or away from the targets of a public image campaign.

7. Bad password policy leads to 10-year network breach

Companies don’t always detect data breaches right away, which can allow hackers to continue stealing sensitive information. Here’s an example of a single breach that lasted almost ten years.

8. Consumers flock to the Web’s hot new site: Pinterest

If you’re in business and targeting consumers, 2012 saw a new social networking site that got about as hot as anything gets online these days. The new object of consumer affection, admiration and flat out obsession: Pinterest, a social scrapbooking site.

9. Tablets will become primary computer by 2016

Analysts at Forrester predict that the tablet revolution that began a couple of years ago with the debut of the iPad will culminate in the device becoming the primary computing device for most users by 2016.

10. Your data’s at risk with these lousy passwords

Securing your finance data depends in large part on how careful your staff is with the crucial servers and networks it uses to keep your organization running. And nothing threatens the security of your data like a lousy, weak or easily compromised password, of which there are plenty. The worst of them? There are a number of sources, but check out these two that are pretty authoritative.

Tags: Apple, data theft, Facebook, technology, top 10