Are Boards Getting Cyber Wrong?

board

A new report finds that most large corporations in the United States assign oversight of cybersecurity risk to the board’s audit committee, which isn’t the craziest governance decision a board can make but does raise questions about whether boards are addressing cybersecurity as wisely as possible. The report comes from MyLogIQ, a software firm that…

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Fines Cut for Ex-Wells Fargo Execs

wells fargo

U.S. banking regulators settled charges with two former top audit executives at Wells Fargo for their oversight failures during the bank’s fake accounts scandal of the 2010s, cutting the millions in fines the two men were facing by more than 90 percent. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced the deals late last…

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Governance Lessons From NRA

NRA

A New York state judge has ordered the National Rifle Association to implement a suite of corporate governance reforms meant to encourage transparency and enforce ethical conduct, after years of mismanagement by the NRA’s former leaders. It’s fascinating stuff for compliance officers, regardless of what you think about the NRA’s political positions.  The judge’s ruling,…

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How Boards Should Oversee Compliance

board

Compliance officers wonder constantly about how they should talk to the board of directors, and what issues they should bring to the board’s attention. Today let’s flip the script and ask — what should board directors be asking compliance officers? Which compliance issues should keep them awake at night?  This is on my mind thanks…

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TD Bank: Remediation and Accountability

TD

Today let’s return to the compliance debacle at TD Bank. By now you probably know the bank pleaded guilty to running a terrible anti-money laundering compliance program and must pay $3 billion in penalties for its misconduct. Let’s move on to the next question: how will regulators assure that TD Bank improves its compliance program? …

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Making a Compliance Charter Work

charter

Compliance officers are always looking for ways to help the board of directors oversee the ethics and compliance function, so today let’s explore one way to do that by adapting an idea from the internal audit function: a charter that spells out board oversight duties. Specifically, the audit committee of the board is charged with…

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Tips on Reporting to the Board

board

The other week I had the good fortune to moderate a webinar on how compliance officers can have a better relationship with the board of directors, which is a top priority for pretty much all of you. The conversation was great and the advice excellent, so I took plenty of notes and now pass them…

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A Convergence of Risk Disclosure

risk

Like many other people, last week I read the SEC’s new requirements for disclosure of climate change risks with a sense of trepidation. The more I studied them, however, the more I felt something else: a sense of déjà vu.  Like, has anybody else noticed how similar these disclosure requirements are to those that the…

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Is Cyber Driving the CCO-Board Relationship?

cybersecurity

We begin this week with yet another compliance benchmarking report, this time from Navex: a deep look at how compliance officers engage with senior management, and whether cybersecurity concerns, rather than anti-corruption, might be driving the board’s attention to compliance these days.  Navex published the report late last week. It polled more than 1,300 compliance…

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Twitter Allegations: Begin at the Top

twitter

Corporate compliance and audit professionals might want to clear your schedules. The former head of security for Twitter has published a stunning whistleblower complaint against the company, alleging all manner of security failures at the social media giant — and that management then lied to the board and regulators about the severity of the problems. …

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