Compliance

The Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of the Whistleblower has recently released its annual report for fiscal year 2014. Highlights of the report include: The SEC issued more whistleblower awards in fiscal 2014 than all previous years combined, including a record $30 million award to a foreign whistleblower. The first anti-retaliation case was brought against a hedge fund that retaliated...

Richard Bistrong interviews Alan Kennedy, Partner with Gibson Kennedy & Company, a Toronto-based consulting firm, speaker and co-author of The Alpha Strategies, which explores the eight strategies common to all organizations and provides a different approach to test and communicate strategy for nonprofits and for-profit companies alike.

When you go to hire sales staff, keep in mind that no test can give you a clear picture of their abilities or hint at the successes they can achieve for your company. For salespeople, the best predictor of future results actually does lie in past performance. Linda Henman outlines today exactly why you shouldn't give prospective sales hires assessment...

We hold our most valuable possessions under lock and key, safe from criminals who would take them from us. Then why are we - individuals and corporations both - so lax with our data, which if stolen could do us such great harm? Many companies store data with cloud service providers without a great grasp on the risks to compliance...

The winds of change have reached Brazil, and it's fast becoming clear that the Brazilian government is putting the kibosh on corruption there. Violations of the Clean Companies Act have yet to bring about enforcement actions, but meanwhile, authorities are prosecuting individuals. Here, Matteson Ellis covers three high-profile cases and considers what they may portend.

The San Francisco Giants grasped their third World Series win in five years last week. In the course of the championship, the team demonstrated what many compliance practitioners know to be true: that compliance and strategy make good bedfellows. When a company or sports team, as the case may be, is armed with both, they're primed for success at the...

The number of clinical trials taking place in Russia is rising, and fast. More than 20 countries initiated studies there in Q2 alone, and the U.S. leads the pack, right after Russia. And while there are certainly regulations governing the process, and a host of authorities involved throughout the process, there are yet risks for any foreign parties conducting trials...

Compliance alone isn't enough, says Michael Volkov. Compliance alone is the bare minimum; fostering an ethical culture takes your compliance program to the next level, requiring little besides commitment. And there's the payoff, of course... employees want to work for companies that operate with integrity, and clients want to do business with ethical organizations.

It's not enough to pay your employees what you owe them. You've got to do it on time, or you may be in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Consequences include owing liquidated damages to employees, interest on any overdue amounts and even penalties violations. And be warned, employers: the federal government isn't the only entity with jurisdiction in...

Some have taken issue with the Conflict Minerals Rules, asserting that they violate the First Amendment. According to a recent court decision, this is only partially true. The decision by the D.C. Circuit Court may yet be revised, however. It's been challenged already by the SEC. While we wait for the final word from the court, let's remain focused on...

Work has become increasingly mobile, a boon to productivity and profitability, as employees can log hours from practically anywhere and at practically anytime. At the same time, however, many organizations may be compromising data security at the expense of increasing mobility. What we need are solutions that allow remote access, but only through the appropriate channels.

Data encryption seems to be top of mind for many corporations, and with good reason: high-profile data breaches prove to do significant damage in the way of reputational harm. Perhaps the answer isn't in better encryption, though, but instead better internal controls to keep users from being compromised and to strengthen reporting mechanisms.