11 May 2010

Information Threat: Battle for Superiority...

What continues to be the greatest economic threat to your organization? Is it "Internal" or "External" to your institution? Could it be both? Insiders rarely work alone and therefore the nexus with some outside influence, whether it be a person, life factors or some other entity are typically in play.

Is an engineer in R & D copying precious intellectual property information from within the enterprise company that could be worth hundreds of thousands or even millions to the highest competitive global bidder? Could your small business have an accounting supervisor that has been diverting funds to a private bank account for the past two years? Would it be possible that a supplier or 3rd party partner is capable of inflating the number of billable hours on a project?

Whether it's IP Theft, Fraud or other white collar corporate malfeasance these Operational Risks are real and growing at a double-digit percentage rate annually. The greatest economic threat to your organization could be complacency or an apathetic staff who works without adequate resources and little communication with the Executive "Powerbase".

The compliance and oversight mechanism's are in full swing from the federal governments around the world as highly regulated critical infrastructure organizations are implicated in a myriad of corruption, scandal, ethics and criminal matters. Litigation is an Operational Risk that many organizations have realized the necessity for more robust internal teams to address the continuous requests for information from the government.

There is one common denominator across all of the insider threats, external forces and other vectors that seem to be attacking our institutions night and day. That common denominator is "Information". And underlying this is the data and meta data that all to often ends up being the key or clue to finding the "Smoking Gun" and the source or person(s) associated with the scheme or attack on the organization.

Managing information in a mobile and interconnected planet is a major issue in any global company. Providing the tools and the right information faster and more accurately than the competition can be the difference in your own survival on the corporate battlefield. So how does the CxO suite even begin to address the risks, opportunities and resilience in our demanding information-centric environment?

They believe in having a strong culture of ethics, training and continuous monitoring of employees, systems and their supply chain. They understand the importance of providing the vital resources to the people on the front line of risk management and to make sure that their early warning systems and methods are not compromised. This breed of CxO's are the new breed of organizational management that are leveraging information to their most significant advantage:

Goldman Sachs isn’t the only firm that made a trading gain every day last quarter.

JPMorgan Chase reported positive trading revenue every day in its first quarter, according to a regulatory filing posted Monday. The firm said that its average daily revenue was $118 million.

The achievement is remarkable for both Goldman and JPMorgan — and yet may serve as another target for legislators eager to restrain the trading activities of banks.

What could account for the phenomenal trading results at both firms? Both would claim strong risk management — especially since both emerged from the financial crisis stronger than their rivals. But the surging markets, especially those in fixed income, surely played a role as well.

Whether you are trading in a marketplace, analyzing assets on a map or manufacturing widgets and selling them to qualified buyers, operational risk management begins and ends with information. Managing that information effectively and more accurately than your competition is the name of the game. What have you done today to insure your survivability in the face of the next crisis?

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. lawyers met this week with representatives of the Securities and Exchange Commission in a first step toward a potential settlement of the agency's fraud lawsuit against the securities firm.

The two sides remain far apart. The preliminary settlement talks, held Tuesday, between Goldman co-general counsel Gregory Palm and other lawyers representing the New York company and SEC officials didn't include any specific settlement terms, such as the amount of a fine or agreements Goldman could make with the agency, people familiar with the situation said.