Month: March 2019

How can companies use the increasing demands for legislative and regulatory compliance to provide benefit? Whilst good governance, effective risk management and compliance management are undoubtedly a challenge for many businesses and can be viewed as onerous they can also be viewed in a more attractive light as a catalyst for change. If embraced correctly they can help organizations achieve greatly improved business performance in turn creating increased shareholder value.

Today there are many legislative, regulatory and best-practice standards affecting organizations and the number and complexity of these requirements is forecast to increase. From our perspective it is essential that organizations invest in GRC compliance management systems to provide a framework and tool for managing all the requirements of the regulations. Organizations need a system which will ensure that they both comply with the latest standards and can easily incorporate new demands at any time. Leading business analysts recommend a single integrated GRC system approach, to aid simple management and reduce costs.

The leading GRC management solutions should be able to addresses the business-critical issues, forming the foundation for a single corporate wide unified GRC platform. As with all software different applications will have their strengths. Some will be very industry specific others will be more flexible and provide the functionality to cover multiple compliance areas, including Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO 9000:2000, ISO 14000 and ISO 18000, Life Sciences, IS0 27001 and multiple industry specific compliance requirements.

The key benefits a Governance Risk and Compliance Management system should deliver are:
Consistency delivered across the enterprise, by using Document Management for the enterprise wide output of information including everyday email systems ensuring enterprise wide adoption and adherence.

Sustainability, by offering organizations the framework to manage changes and new requirements as they occur, be they organizational changes, such as acquisitions or entry into new markets; or GRC management changes, such as new or amended legislation and standards.
Efficiency by supporting efficient allocation of resources, as highest cost and risk areas are identified.

Accountability ensuring that corrective and preventative actions are managed and recorded throughout defined processes.

When selecting a GRC software solution look for the following features:

Policies, procedure and controls management

This functionality is important for the development, maintenance and communication of the policies and procedures to comply with regulations and standards.

Risk & control assessment

This functionality is required for the gathering of information for evaluation of adherence to standards.

Risk analytics

These provide the data for executive and management personnel to measure the overall state of risk and compliance

Investigations management

To centrally manage the recording of incidents and facilitate the development and implementation of corrective and preventative actions.

Have you ever stopped for a moment and considered just how many rules and regulations there are in the U.S. Even to drive a car on a public street you are expected to know reams of rules and regulations. Do you know all of them? Of course not and the best that you can do is to hope that you don’t get caught violating some obscure rule or regulation while you are out driving your car. For if you do you will be fined and that is no fun.

A Regulation For Everything and Everyone

For businesses it is even worse. They face far more rules and regulations and there is no way on earth that a medium to large business owner can expect that his managers can know each and every regulation, particularly when they keep on changing. Also, a business that is new to a state in the U.S. or to the U.S. itself, really has their work cut out for them trying to stay in compliance with the spider web of state and federal regulations that govern their business.

Too many to Count

This is why many businesses choose to use a regulatory compliance service to advise them on how to stay in compliance of the regulations that pertain to the business that they are operating. Regulatory compliance services employ people who are experts in various areas of government regulation, ranging from oil and gas exploration, toxic waste disposal, commercial fishing, building government subsidized low income housing and many more types of businesses.

Are there too many rules and regulations for businesses in the U.S. now? That depends on who you ask. If you ask a business owner that has to abide by all of them, he will most likely say yes. However; if you ask the owner of a regulatory compliance service he will most likely say no and that in face we need more. The fact is that a civil society needs rules and regulations or there would be chaos.

Indeed, I’ve written quite a few online articles about regulatory compliance. It is a topic that is on the mind of every business person and every corporate executive. There is a whole industry built up around just the training and compliance of the never ending incessant regulations imposed upon commerce by government. Still, much of the regulations are written in legalese, and therefore they are dry, boring, and they will literally put you to sleep, along with much of the training which is available on DVDs or CDs as part of a program that professionals can purchase to maintain their standing and licensing in the industry.

Every industry has regulations, some much more than others. Some sectors of our economy are drowning in regulation, and forcing companies to offshore their business, and its killing American jobs. The reason I mention this is that as an online article author preparing quality content I’ve realized there is a right way and wrong way to approach all this. I know, because I’ve learned from experience, and have created articles that have not pulled very well or received much traffic, but I’ve also written articles on this topic which have been replayed, re-tweeted, and ended up all over the Internet.

Now then, to keep from sounding dry and boring, or putting the reader to sleep as if they are sitting in a lecture hall listening to someone talk in monotone, you as the article writer need to loosen them up. You’ll need to explain the problem, perhaps tell a quick joke, or put everything into perspective perhaps using a case study. The best articles I’ve written on this topic, and those that I’ve enjoyed which I’ve read using real-life examples of how a business person got themselves into trouble inadvertently due to some rule they didn’t know about, or some crazy situation that happened.

You should never advise a business owner to break the rules or to dismiss the regulations as irrelevant, even if they are overly burdensome, somewhat ridiculous, and extremely costly. Those costs must be incurred, and of course passed on to the customer. It might also be wise to explain how important it is to keep the costs of regulatory compliance down because if a business raises their prices too much, no one is going to buy anything from them, and that’s how industries are dying on the vine due to overregulation.

Something that sometimes the bureaucrats don’t understand, but something you should explain to your business readers. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

The use of automation in the audit function-whether it is for the administration of the audit organization or tools employed to critically analyze an organization’s transactional data -has become a requirement, not an option. Auditors should no longer rely on manual techniques, even if they are tried and true. Auditors must embrace the technology, as intelligent users of the new tools.

The role of Auditors has become extremely critical and vital for the long term sustainability and success of the organization. With increasing demand from Board members for profitability & transparency, constantly changing regulatory compliance environment, increased complexity and geographical diversity of organizations, auditors face innumerable challenges.

In the wake of financial crisis cost of adherence to regulatory compliance is on increasing spree.It is very difficult to manage compliance policies in such a distributed and heterogeneous environment without IT intervention. Regulatory Compliance management is closely coupled with the audit functions of an organization and hence an automation tool should cater to both auditory as well as regulatory compliance requirement.

Automation software cannot do everything nor will auditors one day be replaced by computers. What it means to auditors that the risk of errors can be minimized along with improving efficiency and decreased cost of non-compliance.

Trigger for audit automation

Technology as an audit and compliance tool is not a new concept but it gained considerable importance in last few years. The drivers of audit automation are as follows:

Characteristics of a good audit automation tool

Access Control:

1. The tool should have role based access control to restrict system access to authorized users. It will also ensure segregation of duties.

Regulatory Compliance Audit:

1. As part of overall risk assessment, internal auditors should assess regulatory compliance risk and incorporate compliance auditing into their audit plans. The tool should support assessment of cross industry regulations to ensure regulatory compliance.

Compliance Reassurance

1. The framework should give partners and regulatory bodies reassurance that tool will ensure no override until all the necessary work has been completed and audit points cleared.
2. It should provide auditors and regulatory bodies selective, controlled, secure access to compliance-relevant documentation and approved assessment results.

Analytics

1. The tool should have capability to support hindsight (what happened yesterday),insight (what is happening today) andforesight (what will happen tomorrow) through comprehensive data analysis and pattern finding capabilities.

Increasing pressure on auditors to improve efficiency, profitability and compliance.

Budgetary pressure on internal audit departments especially after post-SOX. The passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has resulted in increase in demand for qualified audit personnel, leading to personnel shortages and audit cost increases. This creates an opportunity for automating audit processes to further increase their efficiency.

Risk based audit plan with objectives aligned to safeguard business value necessitates linking of business process with risks and auditory checks. This requires bringing multiple stakeholders on the same platform which can be done through automation.

Decentralization of offices is creating need of centralized repository to unify and analyze cross-departmental audit data, quickly and efficiently.

Customizable:
It should provide a standard framework to ensure consistency across organization but at the same time it should be flexible enough to accommodate organization specific workflows.

It should make it easier for audit teams to collate all the necessary information. It should allow the auditors to evaluate business risks, assess the mitigating controls and then link themall to the business processes or departments as applicable.

The Use of Event Log Management Software

Event Log Management involves logging and monitoring the events on various systems in an IT infrastructure. The monitoring and logging of these events is done with the help of occasion log management software. These days System Administrators are demanded to take precise measures to ensure high levels of security over critical enterprise assets. With occasion log software administrators can gain better insight into internal and external security threats and also meet regulatory compliance requirements.

What exactly does event register monitoring software do?

Occasion Log monitoring software tracks down changes in an organizations IT infrastructure. This is done through logs, which get created from various devices such as a switch, router or server. To be prepared for compliance audit an organization must provide logs that are accurate and confirmable. These logs should include events such as failed log attempts, miss typed password attempts, tracking of objects, privilege access and device failure. Without these logs, your organization will most likely not pass a full scale compliance audit. Also without logging and monitoring for such events you will be unable to verify security on the devices in your organization.

Today, system administrators and Chief Information Officers are under high pressure to record and create documentable IT information. Occasion log managers are a crucial tool in providing this type of data. There are many devices that create different types of log files (syslog, windows incident logs, IIS, web server logs). To manage these events there are several different tools available, some are designed for a specific log and others can view many log types.

Managing the event register in the Health Sector

Event register Management particularly plays a crucial role for those public companies in the health sector. This is due to the various strict rules set forth by Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). These agencies require public companies and even those which are handling personal health information, to monitor or retain incident logs.

Features of Event Log Management Software

The earlier versions of incident log monitoring software where limited in its features. They basically had one function and that was to record events from devices to a log file. The new versions however, have came a long way and contain handful of features. These features include; real time alerting, log rotation, change tracking, scheduling, filtering, and reporting. One of the features that can be most helpful is the real time alerting feature. This can provide an administrator with an instant notification via email or text message if there has been a security breach. Most incident log monitoring software will let you watch for any event such as an account being deleted or many failed password attempts in a row. This feature is crucial since the majority of company violations come from inside the network.

For the purpose of IT auditors that most significant feature in happening log management is the ability to produce authentic logs. Most compliance auditors require happening log data to be generated straight from the application. This is to ensure that the logs have not been tampered with or manipulated in any way.