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The role of the chief in any organisation, division or business unit is to set a firm direction for the organisation or team to follow.  That includes a clear purpose along with specific goals.  Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they don’t.

The last time the chief set direction, what did you have to say?  Did you have enough knowledge to talk sensibly about the challenges you all faced?  Were you able to bring your expertise to the table and really get people thinking?  Were you able to prov

Everyone has received very obvious “phishing” e-mails: Messages in your in-box that have outrageous subject lines like “Your Account Will Be Suspended,” or, “You Won!”

While some phishing attacks are obvious, others look harmless, such as those in a person’s workplace in-box, seemingly from their company’s higher-ups.

Researchers point out that an e-mail may appear to come from the company’s HR department, for example. E-mails with an “urgent email password change request” had a 28% click rate, Wo

A couple decades ago, back in 1992, W. Warner Burke and George Litwan collated a number of organizational change models into one holistic view of how organizational structure and design affects change.  With this research, Burke and Litwan developed the Causal Model of Organizational Performance and Change, otherwise known as the Burke-Litwin Model.

Their seminal framework achieves 2 things: First, it identifies 12 factors of change.  Note that this model is more comprehensive than the popularly

Disasters happen every day. Crashing hard drives, failing storage devices and even burglaries could have a significant negative impact on your business, especially if that data is lost forever. You can avoid these problems by backing up your data.

Backing up means keeping copies of your important business data in several places and on multiple devices. For example, if you saved data on your home PC and it crashes, you’ll still be able to access the information because you made backups.

A great way

Senior Market Risk Professionals Set to Discuss FRTB Finalisation Paper

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) recently released the long awaited revised new market risk framework, the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book ('FRTB'). The final text has prompted much discussion on Basel capital adequacy requirements with fundamental changes to and concerns over the internal models-approach, standardised approach, VaR to ES, trading book and banking book boundaries, and market illiquidi

A big mistake in risk management, especially when it comes to companies with newer programs, is underestimating the importance of standardized risk prioritization. Diving into identification and assessments without a sufficient framework inhibits prioritization. This can result in ineffective risk mitigation activities and duplicate work across departments, or even serious risks flying under the radar. The possibility of “missing” a serious risk is a disturbing one, but it’s impossible to be com

Here’s one for the know-it-alls: Kids are 35 percent more likely to become victims of identity theft than are adults. Betcha didn’t know that! This startling news comes from a 2015 Javelin Strategy & Release study.

Needless to say, the bulk of parents aren’t on top of this problem, unaware that thieves go after children’s SSNs like two-year-olds grabbing at candy. Thieves know that kids (and their parents) don’t monitor their credit reports. Thieves know that they can get away with their crime al

Some people believe that monitoring your kids’ online activities crosses the line of privacy or trust. But monitoring and controlling online activities is, essentially, no different than controlling access to the cookie jar or TV or even locking a liquor cabinet.

Which brings me to a way that parents can always know exactly what their kids are doing in cyberspace. And control when, too. This is possible due to a type of software known as “parental control” that monitors the goings-on of any conne

Benchmarking is a very powerful tool many organizations use to not only measure and gauge their performance against competition, but also to push themselves to be best-in-class.  Benchmarking is a source of competitive advantage and continuous improvement (Kaizen).

Wikipedia defines benchmarking as:

Benchmarking is the process of comparing one’s business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and

13.1 million people were stricken by identity theft last year in America, reports a study by Javelin Strategy & Research which reveals:

• Many people who don’t trust their banks are unwittingly doing things that make crime easier for crooks. This includes not using the bank’s protection services such as e-mail alerts.
• Oddly, there are more victims than ever, but the total amount stolen is less. But that hardly matters when you consider that in the past six years, $112 billion have been stolen.
• 18 per

Cyber criminals have been attempting to extort money from individuals and companies for many years, and the latest attempt to take advantage of others is by using Ransomware as a Service, or RaaS.

A ransomware virus infects a computer when a user clicks a link and unknowingly download a malicious file. The ransomware virus then encrypts the computer’s files and promises to render them useless unless the victim pays a ransom. The cost varies greatly and groups sending these out can bring in hundre

Ahead of the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book Summit taking place April 19-20, the Center for Financial Professionals have reviewed the Finalisation paper for the revised capital standard for market risk. Presenters and panelists will be presenting their findings of the paper and amending sessions in line with the changes.

With the Basel III capital framework for trading activities weaknesses being highlighted, resulting in undercapitalized trading book exposures ahead of the 2007-8 financi

Once a thief knows your Social Security number…you’re at very high risk for having your identity stolen.

A report on bankrate.com says that the IRS is warning of a cyber attack on its electronic filing PIN application. Thieves infiltrated it with malware in an attempt to claim other people’s refunds as their own. Over 450,000 SSNs were involved, and over 100,000 of them enabled the hackers to access an E-file PIN.

Endless scams are directed towards SSNs, like the classic phishing attack. A phishin

Reduce your cost of claims by as much as an additional 30%.

Serving 13 countries, Gleason Technology works with Risk Managers to better monitor critical operations that could potentially lead to a hazard within the facility. Their patented location-driven technology time and date stamps any operation while verifying all objectives were within compliance and have met the standards set by the company. 

The results are incredible!

Identity thieves are after children’s Social Security numbers. With this number, a thief can do so many things like open a credit card account and rent an apartment. Kids’ SSNs have great appeal to crooks because:

• A child’s record is usually very clean.
• This means fertile opportunities for new credit lines.
• Kids usually don’t check their credit reports and thus the fraud can go undetected for years.

Parents should consider putting a freeze on their kids’ credit. Simply getting the credit monitored w

You may be putting your company at risk simply by hiring a new employee. Why? Because that person could have a hidden, malicious agenda.

This is known as an inside threat, and it means that someone within your organization is planning or conducting activities meant to harm the company.

There is a pattern that most insider threats use: The first step is to gain access to the company’s system. Once they have access to the network, they will investigate it and seek out any vulnerable areas. The malic

Regular risk assessments are one of the most important pillars of any risk management department. Although performing risk assessments is now considered best practice, it’s easy to overestimate their comprehensiveness. As a result, some risk managers are doomed from the start to mediocre results.

For a quick check on the adequacy of your risk assessments, determine how many of the following 5 best practices your program has ingrained in its ERM process.

See the graphic below to learn our 5 tips fo

Do you shop at Amazon.com? Are you aware they have a back door through which hackers can slip in?

Let’s look at Eric’s experience with hackers and Amazon, as he recounts at medium.com/@espringe.

He received an e-mail from Amazon and contacted them to see what it was about. Amazon informed him that he had had a text-chat and sent him the transcript—which he had never been part of.

Eric explains that the hacker gave Eric’s whois.com data to Amazon. However, the whois.com data was partially false beca

Have you ever thought about the role strategic advisors such as accountants, lawyers, risk managers, auditors, HR managers, IT managers and many other back of house advisors play in the success of organisations? I mean really thought about it? You probably have.

If you are a strategic leader receiving the advice you have probably thought about the need for key expertise and advice that you can rely on. Key elements required to develop trust in the relationship.

If you are a strategic advisor you h

Your account passwords should be as unique as your fingerprint—to make them less hackable by crooks using password-guessing software that can run through millions of possible combinations in just minutes. And if you have an easy password, there may be a hit within 10 seconds.

Think this software can figure out your password of “password1” or “monkey”? These are among the most used passwords. Needless to say, so is “1password” and just “password.” And “login.” What are people thinking?

Every year,