Advisers, independent broker-dealers, and others that need to keep up with compliance and regulatory changes daily — or that need to research cross-industry or multinational issues — can enlist a new online tool from Wolters Kluwer Financial Services.
The company has launched a Compliance Resource Network that consolidates financial laws, regulations and commentary from across the globe. Its in-house team of attorneys, compliance analysts, technology specialists, and market experts keep the network up-to-date and searchable.
The online repository (which is also available in CD-ROM and print) includes rulebooks, laws and regulations across multiple sections of the financial services industry: securities, fund management, banking, commodities and derivatives. It is also international in scope, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia and daily compliance news for Asia and the European Union.
There is a daily Tracker service that sends subscribers customized alerts on the latest securities news, proposed rules, and regulatory updates released by the Securities and Exchange Commission, stock exchanges, and self-regulatory organizations.
Subscriptions for single users begin at about $1,000 per year. For firms that have more than 10 users, Wolters Kluwer offers firm-wide pricing based on the size of the organization and the amount of content needed.
The Network's search technology allows users to filter by individual requirements, and to run multiple searches at once, including those for different jurisdictions.
For more information visit the
Wolters Kluwer Financial Services' Compliance Resource Network page.
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A warning before you Twitter
Social media traffic on corporate computer networks surging
Rather than the typical hum-drum survey based on interviews with humans, the fourth Application Usage and Risk Report, a semi-annual analysis of application usage on enterprise networks put out by Palo Alto Networks relies on the data spat out by their cold, hard, security appliances — okay in reality they are probably running rather warm.
A few tidbits include that Twitter session use grew by more than 250% from the last study published in April, Facebook use increased 192% while Facebook Chat was the fourth most commonly detected chat application, ahead of Yahoo! Instant Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger.
Palo Alto Networks is a provider of advanced firewalls and firewall software headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. The study results came from the company's Application Visibility and Risk assessment process, basically meaning that data collected from more than 200 of its next-generation firewall installations in companies large and small around the world (37% of which were financial services companies) was collected between March and September of 2009 and analyzed.
The sorts of applications of specific interest in the study are Enterprise 2.0 applications which are loosely defined as Web 2.0 or Internet-based applications and technologies that are used for business purposes. Examples include messaging of all types, social networking, cloud-based productivity, collaboration, and conferencing.
Based on this definition, 38% or 255 of the 651 applications found during their analysis can be considered Enterprise 2.0.
Many of these applications showed significant increases in usage including SharePoint, Facebook, Twitter, and blog posting — all showing double- and triple-digit increases in how frequently they were found as well as their overall resource consumption based on both the number of sessions and bytes of traffic used.
Moreover, the report points out that the traditional distinctions between business and personal use of these sorts of applications is breaking down. According to the study, “more often than not, the same applications used for social interaction are being used for work-related purposes. Irrespective of personal or work related usage, the dominant underlying technology is the [Web] browser.”
Finally and of most concern to IT professionals, among the 202 Enterprise 2.0 applications found 70% can transfer files, 28% are known to propagate malware, and 64% have known vulnerabilities.
To register for a free download of the report visit the Palo Alto Networks
Application and Threat Research Center.
For more general information visit
Palo Alto Networks.
