Top IT stories this week: CSC splits, plane hack denied, and why the CDO is an endangered species

Computing's top seven stories from the past seven days. Read all about it!

Your chance to catch up with the most-read stories in Computing over the last seven days.

7. 'Finding data scientists with financial services experience is very unlikely' - Credit Suisse CIO

We are frequently told that the dearth of data scientists is in part a result of their being able to command much higher salaries working as "quants" for the banks. Not so, said Nigel Faulkner (now ex) CIO of Credit Suisse, who features in two of our top stories this week.

"When you look at the skills data scientists have - some parts [of the role] are computer scientists, some part statistician and mathematician, some part economist and some part of domain experience as well - so the idea that you can encapsulate that all in one person seems pretty unlikely when you look at the breadth of the field of our investment bank, let alone the broader remit of Credit Suisse," he said.

Yesterday we learned that Faulkner had resigned from the job at Credit Suisse. We would like to reassure CIOs everywhere that there is absolutely no connection between being interviewed by Computing and leaving your job...

6. Why the role of the chief digital officer shouldn't exist in 10 years' time

Everyone's going digital nowadays, and any company that wants to be taken at all seriously simply must hire themselves a chief digital officer or CDO. However, insiders, and even some CDOs themselves, believe that this is merely an interim post to get businesses over some of the hurdles of digitising services, and that in a few years' time the role will be as unfashionable as the Imagineer (remember them?).

5. Software bug brought down Airbus A400M military transport plane

On 9 May an Airbus A400M military transport plane crashed in Spain. The cause of the accident may have been a bug in the control software, which overrode the pilots' commands and shut down three of the plane's four engines.

"The pilots testing the A400M, could not do anything, according to Airbus investigators. While they were trying to return the 45-meter-long plane back to the airport in Seville, Spain they could no longer control it properly. The machine touched a power line, crashed into a field and burned out almost completely," said a report in Der Spiegel.

4. The cloud is coming: an interview with Credit Suisse co-CIO Nigel Faulkner

Because of tight regulations and the need for the strongest security banks have been slow to adopt cloud computing. However this is likely to change. Banks are now starting to eye the cloud to cope with peaks in demand and for processing non-confidential data. In our second top story featuring Nigel Faulkner this week he says:

"We're clearly not using cloud in almost any cases but I see it inevitable that we will, and there is enough desire and momentum within our industry and others, where we will be able to prove to all interested parties that it's just as secure to use external cloud as other forms of resources. Cloud is coming, cloud is already around and we're starting to use it for anonymous compute, but I do see that we will use it for other things as well... but I wouldn't put a timeline on it."

3. Plane hacker Chris Roberts denies taking control of Boeing 737

And here's another story about aircraft security. Under questioning by the FBI plane hacker Chris Roberts said that his earlier claims to have hacked into the controls of a Boeing 737 via its in-flight entertainment system had been taken out of context, and that an initial tweet in which he had made these claims had been a sarcastic joke. Well, you would, wouldn't you?

2. Where next for Hadoop? An interview with co-creator Doug Cutting

Hadoop was named after co-creator Doug Cutting's son's toy elephant. Now a key component underpinning the big data revolution Cutting sees his invention going from strength to strength with new use cases emerging all the time. However, he concedes that many organisations find it hard to get started with Hadoop, part of the problem being the rapidity of its expansion.

"We're still in the early stages," he says. "We're growing about as fast as we can responsibly. You need to have a certain number of people with some mastery of it to expand sensibly, and if you are doubling every year then half the people are still in their first year of experience."

1. Services giant CSC to be broken up?

Our top story this week concerned a rumour that services giant CSC was to be broken up following a $4.3bn write-off owing tho the failure of the NHS NPfIT programme, in which it was a key player.

Competitors such as Capgemini, CGI and TCS were said to be circling, waiting for some juicy morsels to snap up....

And lo, it came to pass. Yesterday came the news that CSC is indeed going to be split into two, with the the US public-sector business being floated off as an independent company.

Truly, a week is a long time in IT.