Industry News

Last time, I wrote about evidential reasoning as a necessary technique for an analysis system. To recap, using a single approach to identify fraud, such as comparing employee or vendor names to those on a watch list, leads to a noisy and sub-optimal system. Instead, heterogeneous data and analysis techniques are required, giving rise to [...]

A very large enterprise software company posted a video on finding fraud, waste, and abuse using a new query tool.  The tool mainly compares names and addresses across multiple “watch” lists, which is a common approach used by several software companies and for numerous in-house projects.  At first blush, this is a reasonable approach, and [...]

. Yet, in a recent Deloitte survey of 1,200 industry-diverse business executives during a Dbriefs webcast program on “The Changing Global Anti-Corruption Legal Landscape,” only 24 percent said they have actually changed their anti-corruption programs to comply with major new regulations under the UK Bribery Act.

At times, it is appropriate to step back and reflect on why ERM fails. Below we explore 10 common risk management mistakes and how they can be avoided. (These insights are based on our experiences in working with many companies over the years as well our efforts to understand significant failures observed over time.

Anti-corruption, anti-bribery and anti-money laundering programs, policies, and procedures – and even export control systems – are seemingly in a constant state of evolution. Many companies are struggling with the challenge of implementing effective controls and monitoring risks across a spectrum that could include the three above compliance areas as well as others.

In Part 1 of this series, I provided an overview of the Fraud Triangle and how incorporating it into compliance risk assessments can improve a compliance program’s assessment and prioritization of compliance risks.

Real time is hard but it’s not that hard. Big data is removing some of the excuses from a computational perspective. The technology exists, we just need to stitch it together and we’re off to the races. He went on to say that this type of intelligent system can be applied to fraud detection, exception reporting and offer optimization.

A PKF/University of Portsmouth Centre for Counter Fraud Studies report suggests mining companies' haste for social acceptance in developing nations could cost them dearly.

Another whitepaper in the Always Audit-Ready series from ControlPanelGRC, this document focuses on issues surrounding SAP Transport (change) management, describes the SAP Transport “wish list” and shows how automated compliance reporting helps fulfill that list.

In the lesson-rich history of compliance failures, one of the most important cases of all time is the prosecution in 2001 of a 50/50 joint venture (JV) between two pharmaceutical companies for violations of federal fraud and abuse laws (the “TAP case”). Evidently neither of the two companies paid much attention to the compliance and ethics program of the JV.

In a January 29, 2012 editorial in the New York Times (NYT), entitled “Made in the World”, columnist Thomas Friedman wrote about the end of ‘outsourcing’; his thesis being the “world is now so integrated that there is no “out” and no “in” anymore.

It is often said that being on an audit committee is a part-time job with full-time responsibilities. It’s no wonder when you consider the broad and critical role that the audit committee plays.

CORPORATE reports are being held back by confusion over their different audiences, their complexity, and lack of timeliness, a report has found. According to an Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) survey of annual report users, end-of-year financial reports must include more about potential risks that could affect performance.

Many corporate investigators have never received formal training on how to determine if a witness is telling the truth or lying. As a result, they often struggle when faced with “he said/she said” allegations.

The explosion of powerful mobile devices over the past few years has put them front and center in a number of enterprises as employees begin to demand they be incorporated into the corporate workflow. Beyond smartphones, tablets have begun to filter into the executive suites and business processes at companies. The result?

MORE emphasis should be placed measuring the value of non-financial assets, a report has found. The survey from the American Institute of CPAs and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants found that more than 50% of chief executives think their companies are not very good at measuring the value of non-financial assets.

Friday, Jan. 27, 2012, was the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 1 disaster. As reported by Brian Vastag in an article in the Washington Post entitled “45 years after America’s first space tragedy, lessons linger,” it was a “launchpad fire which killed three NASA astronauts during testing of the then-new Apollo capsule.

This whitepaper explains how the requirements around Segregation of Duties (SoD) have changed and increased since Sarbanes-Oxley was enacted in 2002, and examines in detail five signs that a new SoD compliance strategy needs to be implemented. Among the signs are the organization is still using manual controls, a new audit firm is hired, and a near-miss occurs.

FINANCE chiefs are unprepared for a raft of fundamental changes to financial reporting standards in the UK and across the world, according to a survey from Ernst & Young. The survey found a lack of preparedness and also concern about convergence with US generally accepted accounting practice (GAAP), lease reporting and revenue recognition.

FINANCE chiefs are unprepared for a raft of fundamental changes to financial reporting standards in the UK and across the world, according to a survey from Ernst & Young. The survey found a lack of preparedness and also concern about convergence with US generally accepted accounting practice (GAAP), lease reporting and revenue recognition.

For corporate executives, corruption risks are real and developing an effective anti-corruption compliance program will yield positive benefits for any company. The leading practices below can provide a good starting point and useful benchmark as companies begin to think about and build anti-corruption compliance programs. 1.

The whitepaper covers the now infamous, $7-billion case of trading fraud committed at Société Générale, a French multinational investment bank, in January 2008. Fruad is a financial institution’s worst nightmare due to the potential for large-scale financial and reputational loss, especially in an industry so reliant on trust and reliability.

ARLINGTON, Va. — As we begin 2012, new research from the Ethics Resource Center (ERC) reveals that over the past two years, 45 percent of U.S. employees observed a violation of the law or ethics standards at their places of employment.

Code of conduct re-certification, conflicts of interest identification and organizational policy attestation – these are just some of the annual disclosures that can be time consuming, complicated and cumbersome for ethics and compliance professionals.

“The public Web is full of anonymous users and fake identities. Most common on social networks are identities that are presumably true (look legitimate) but have not been verified.” – Information Week Everyone is talking about the use of social media applications in business, in fact it’s “all the rage!

Regulatory scrutiny of the insurance industry has never been more acute. Government regulators from a host of disparate disciplines are intensely focused on making sure we have the controls in place to avoid another financial meltdown.

In an article in the December 2011 issue of Compliance Week magazine entitled “Board Checklist: What Every Director Should Know,” author Jaclyn Jaeger reported on a panel discussion at the Association of Corporate Counsel’s 2011 Annual Meeting, held in October.

NEW YORK – Audit committees know they face another complex year in 2012 – headlined by an uncertain economy, regulatory reforms, new accounting standards, technology transformation, and other developments posing a host of oversight challenges, according to KPMG’s Audit Committee Institute (ACI).

In recent years, challenges concerning automation, technology risk and operational improvements were often put on the backburner as organizations responded to an all-hands-on-deck need to address Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance requirements. Today, chief audit executives (CAEs), management committees and audit committees are taking action to allocate resources more evenly between compliance audits and operational audits.

Financial services firms may have to appoint chief data protection officers under new rules being drawn up the European Commission.

financial_director CORPORATE reporting has increasingly been in the spotlight over the past few years, but post the credit crunch this scrutiny has intensified. Since this time, there have been a number of corporate incidents whereby strong, global businesses have been held up to scrutiny for mismanagement, poor governance and lapses in board-level decision-making. As a result, stakeholders, government, regulators and policy-makers have looked for ways to ensure companies are held to account for their...

financial_director Once you get beyond the media feeding frenzy surrounding the operations of News International and the dramatic events of the select committee hearing that is already being dubbed "pie gate", it is clear that the spotlight of commentators and investigators alike is coming to rest upon corporate governance and the culture in place within Rupert Murdoch's businesses, both in the UK and overseas. The implementation and maintenance of good corporate procedures and a...

financial_director A CORPORATE fraudster may not always be a disgruntled middleman, but is more often found to be one of the people running the very company that is defrauded. According to research from KPMG, company bosses are committing an increasing proportion of corporate frauds: the volume of cases involving senior management is now a third of all cases. Globally, it was also found that board members had perpetrated fraud in 18% of...