Articles | Compliance Week – Page 292
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Managing Data Security and Privacy Risks 2.0
Image: Modern technology allows powerful employee monitoring ability to sharpen business performance and even support compliance efforts. The bad news: Those technologies also spawn a new set of data security risks to keep compliance officers busy. “The key is trying to strike a balance between the employee’s personal privacy interests ...
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High Court Ruling Is Boon for Regulators, Snare for Business
Image: Compliance officers worried about regulatory change, prepare yourself: The Supreme Court’s ruling to give agencies more leeway in re-interpreting rules does you no favors. Today’s estranged Washington politics means regulators are bound to try re-interpretation for the sake of expedient rulemaking, and CCOs will need to be vigilant. “This ...
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Human Trafficking Compliance Arrives for Federal Contractors
Image: Starting this month, government contractors must ensure that their supply chain is free of human-trafficking activities. The thicket of new requirements isn’t too different conceptually from other compliance obligations, but the nuances of human-trafficking risk will pose some tricky policy challenges. Companies previously might not have thought much about ...
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Report Spotlights the Underbelly of ‘Audit Politics’
Image: A new report finds corporate political pressure on chief audit executives to alter audit plans or results is “extensive and pervasive,” and it underlines the need for audit professionals to master the art of office politics. “We were really surprised by the extent of pressure,” says Larry Rittenberg, co-author ...
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Putting All of That Talent to Work Smartly
Amid a tough climate of regulatory enforcement and an explosion of new rules after the financial crisis, many large companies—especially financial institutions—have beefed up their staffing on risk and compliance. But is more always better? While the investment sends a message, more boots on the ground may just step on ...
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Mitigating FCPA Risks in Pharma, Med Device Sectors
Image: SEC Enforcement Director Andrew Ceresney recently dropped new hints on FCPA risks for pharma and medical devices, plus suggestions on how to avoid those risks. “Our FCPA focus obviously covers many industries,” he said. “But the pharma industry is one on which we have been particularly focused in recent ...
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Preparing Your Board for Cyber-Security Oversight
Every board knows its company will fall victim to a cyber-attack and, worse, that the board will need to clean up the mess and superintend the fallout. This week, guest columnist John Stark, a long-time student of cyber-security risks, breaks down the fundamentals any board must establish for cyber-security, and ...
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Momentum Grows for Small Companies & Capital Markets
The SEC is exploring new ways to fulfill its mission to facilitate capital formation for small- and medium-sized companies. While uncertainty still surrounds capital formation efforts included in the JOBS Act, momentum is growing to revisit the SEC’s traditional definition of an accredited investor, and to create new “venture exchanges” ...
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Audit Voices Try to Calm Tensions on Evidence
Image: Leaders of the auditing world are calling for a truce in arguments between internal and external auditors over how much evidence external auditors should collect themselves while scrutinizing internal controls—and are calling on audit committees to intervene earlier to prevent such disputes. “Essential value will be lost if external ...
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Blurred Lines: How to Handle Informal SEC Communications
When the SEC sends a formal inquiry into your company’s operations, you know you have a problem to be handled in strict ways. So what about when the SEC delivers an “informal” request—and all those speeches and opinions, for that matter, that can sound an awful lot like formal guidance ...
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Petrobras Probe Portends Brazil Enforcement Crackdown
Image: Suddenly anti-corruption enforcement seems to be serious in Brazil—to the point that businesses working there might want to pay more heed to enforcement risks from Brazilian regulators themselves. The catalyst is the sweeping investigation into state-owned oil company Petrobras, riveting Brazil this month. “We can expect much more enforcement ...
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Case Study: UCLA, Apps, and HIPAA Compliance
Companies that handle health information are subject to data privacy rules under HIPAA—rules that have grown more complex with the proliferation of mobile health applications (mHealth apps). Those that want to develop mHealth apps in a compliant manner have two options: Build a HIPAA-compliant application of your own, or buy ...
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How to Impose a Travel Policy Without Strangling Anyone
Compliance officers can pick fights with employees over any number of workplace policies. But if you really want daggers drawn and subversive battles at every turn—impose a policy on business travel. Inside, we look at how to defuse that policy management time bomb, as well as the collateral legal damage ...
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Post-Investigation Follow-Up and Discipline at 3M
Image: What role should compliance officers have in investigations and discipline? How can they maintain independence during an investigation and subsequent sanctions decisions, while developing an effective strategy for what happens next? We talked to Jim Zappa, chief compliance officer at 3M Corp. about his approach. Zappa will be among ...
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e-Discovery Missteps From the Judge’s Point of View
Image: If you fear that your e-Discovery processes are not strong, take heart: Lots of federal judges agree with you. A recent survey of judges and a follow-up webcast spotlight the mistakes in e-Discovery as seen from the bench, and methods to avoid them. “The whole point is to come ...
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NY Regulators Pose New Challenges to Compliance Officers
Image: The state of New York is muscling its way into financial regulation, with regulator Benjamin Lawsky proposing moves in anti-money laundering compliance far more bold than anything the feds are doing. Inside is a look at what the Empire State wants to achieve, and the potentially severe liability CCOs ...
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Consolidation Rule’s Consequences More Than You Expect
Image: A new rule on consolidating entities into a parent company’s financial statements might reach well beyond the original problem it aimed to fix. Financial reporting executives should prepare to take inventory of the entities in your enterprise and see how they may need to roll onto the balance sheet. ...
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Lessons From HSBC’s Size, Compliance Struggles
For nearly three years, HSBC Holdings, a grande dame of international banking, has come under fire for a litany of regulatory problems and compliance failures: money laundering, sanctions, violations, and abetting tax evasion to name just a few. How does a good bank fall into such dire straits? The problem, ...
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Gap Analysis: C-Suite Struggling to Define Risks
Image: Despite consensus that risk is a big deal—something companies should manage aggressively—recent academic research suggests that boardroom leaders focus on vastly different risks than compliance, audit, and risk executives do. “I wonder if there is a lack of understanding of the views of risk across the management team,” says ...
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Internal Controls, Audit Committees Primed for SEC Scrutiny
Every February SEC officials convene at the Practising Law Institute’s “SEC Speaks” conference, where commissioners can break news and staff can detail priorities for the New Year. The focus this year, from rulemaking to enforcement, was on financial reporting internal controls, and ways to improve audit committees. And, of course, ...