The seemingly never-ending breaches of data over the years has prompted most states to enact data privacy breach notification laws. But some states are ahead of others in this initiative. The below map from Imation shows which states are laying down the law when it comes to data breach notification laws and which states completely… Continue reading Compliance Heat Map

What is a healthy culture and how do you change an unhealthy culture? I have always thought that baseball was a simple game: You throw the ball; you hit the ball; you catch the ball. I had also thought that you could measure whether a baseball team had a healthy culture with a fairly easy-to-understand… Continue reading How Do You Change An Unhealthy Compliance Culture?

Over lunch, a CFO recently shared the difficulties C-level management face since the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) with Kathleen M. Marcus, Shareholder at Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth and Chair of its Compliance and Corporate Governance Practice Group. He spoke of joining a company whose books and compliance policies are “a mess” and his struggle… Continue reading How a compliance audit can ensure your public or private company’s policies measure up

The requirement for appropriate enterprise risk management (ERM) techniques continues to grow. The recently passed Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act calls for a risk committee to be established by all public, nonbank financial companies, as well as larger public bank holding companies. To read the article, please click here: http://www.sbnonline.com/2012/08/how-to-implement-an-effective-enterprise-risk-management-program/?full=1

We continue to work closely with our federal, state, local and tribal partners as Isaac impacts portions of the Gulf Coast. As we mentioned in our blog post earlier today that included safety tips, flooding and power outages remain significant threats from tropical storm Isaac, even though it was recently downgraded to a tropical storm.… Continue reading Isaac update 5: August 29 recap

As businesses rely more heavily on their data center services, the cost of downtime increases. And for these (and other) businesses, hurricane season is a strong reminder of the need to plan ahead for potential disasters. One disaster recovery option for companies is a remote facility that can take over operations in the event that… Continue reading Disaster Recovery Sites: Are They Worth the Expense?

When a parent drops off a child at a school or child-care facility, there’s a reasonable expectation that he or she will be safe and cared for, especially in times of emergency. But a new report by the international child-advocacy group Save the Children raises concerns that many U.S. institutions entrusted to protect children are… Continue reading States Fail to Meet Disaster-Preparedness Standards

NEW ORLEANS – Hurricane Isaac continued to pound Louisiana with heavy rains and damaging winds Wednesday as forecasters said the biggest threat is storm surge flooding from central Louisiana to the Panhandle of Florida. To read the article, please click here: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/story/2012-08-29/hurricane-isaac-wednesday/57401670/1

The rise of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs is the single most radical shift in the economics of client computing for business since PCs ‘invaded’ the workplace, according to Gartner. Every business needs a clearly articulated position on BYOD, even if it chooses not to allow for it. To read the article, please click… Continue reading Bring Your Own Device: ‘the most radical shift in enterprise client computing since the introduction of the PC’

Perhaps you’ve heard that the next new thing in IT is “big data” and concluded that the hype-cycle machine is turning out another attention-getter. I’m not big on predicting paradigm shifts, so I won’t in this case. But I will say that if you’re an IT professional, you ignore big data at your peril. I… Continue reading Big Data Deserves IT’s Attention