CORPORATE COMPLIANCE

Corporate compliance is not just good business practice; it’s the law. While most business people are familiar, at least in name, with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, new rules and regulations have evolved out of previous legal concepts known as “duty of oversight” and “standards of due care.” These standards called for increasingly responsible corporate governance and establish legal liabilities for corporations and corporate officers failing to exercise caution, good judgment and sound business practices. A series of spectacular corporate fraud cases, of which Enron was only one and not nearly the biggest, emboldened regulators and law enforcement officers to go after corporations that failed in their duty to protect investors and shareholders. Attorney Generals and other prosecutors looking to create a name for themselves know that corporations and corporate officers are attractive, high-profile targets.

G2 can help corporations comply with the various new regulations in many ways. Thorough background checks on current and new officers is a good place to start; yet many human resource departments fail even in this most obvious form of due diligence. Controlling access and authority to a company’s information with a good information security architecture is a more sophisticated but highly practical approach, as is discreet surveillance of the workplace. Corporate counter-espionage measures such as enforced shredding, strict monitoring of outsources, especially those with physical or cyber access to data systems, and training of all workers can be critical. For instance, secretaries need to be trained not to become victims of “social engineering” – being fooled into giving out passwords, and executives need to be held responsible for mismanagement of funds or paperwork.

However, until corporations stop seeing security as a cost and start seeing it as a revenue, things will not change. Good corporate compliance measures should also have the net effect of improving efficiencies, which goes straight to the bottom line in improved margins. G2 can provide world-class consulting and services in all these areas. Remember, corporate compliance is not just good business. It’s the law.

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