Regulatory Data Compliance - How Does This Affect Your Company?
By Dan Schutte

Over the past decade, significant legal requirements have evolved concerning an organization s digital data. Measures that initially applied only to major Fortune 500 corporations have now expanded to apply to any business with employees. The complexity of today s compliance framework has caused confusion about what is required. Many businesses are assuming a wait and see stance or rationalize that this probably does not apply to me . Indifference on taking action can become a damaging option.

Background for Compliance

Terrorist attacks, globalization, high-profile corporate scandals, and business-to-business online transactions have led to a dramatic rise in requirements to safeguard electronic customer data. Going beyond consumer protection, recent regulations (i.e. e-Discovery) are now requiring data retention and retrieval on messaging (email and instant messages). Frequently, blunt and unedited email and instant messages can become the smoking gun in litigation.

In order to become compliant, organizations must take several actions.

• First is to design and implement comprehensive written information security policies for all staff.
• Second is to deploy technical solutions that will maintain constant vigil on the data environment and notify of policy breaches.
• Third is to monitor and enforce. If systems are implemented but review is not active, all efforts are lost. This also becomes precedent when court cases review a company s diligence in managing their environment.

The implications of non-compliance can range from hefty fines to potential prosecution and imprisonment of senior executives. The consequences are the same to a company that refuses to deliver or simply has not retained the data to produce. Over the past year there are several major court cases where failure to produce requested documents have rendered favorable awards to the plaintiffs, and in some cases fines were added.
High profile cases, such as Enron and WorldCom are weighty reminders that compliance and regulation are serious business issues.

What to Do?

So, what do organizations need to know to navigate the regulation matrix? More importantly, how can content security solutions help meet the compliance challenge?

The role of Content Security in Compliance is complex and wide-ranging. Regulatory compliance covers:

1. Privacy
2. Records retention and archiving
3. Monitoring of content for compliance
4. Recovery or discovery of information in response to litigation or court orders

From the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), regulatory compliance requires vigilant content security policies for email and instant messaging, including archiving and encryption. SOX, for example, mandates that processes - including internal and external email - used to produce financial reports must be consistent, reliable, secure and accurate. Organizations, therefore, need to ensure that email systems are spam and virus- free, and that internal and externally shared data is secure. Protect, archive and retrieve. The SOX Act mandates that any email or IM included in the documented financial reporting process is retained for seven years. The challenge can be identifying the right messages to keep and finding them quickly and easily when required. Many businesses estimate that more than 50 percent of messages are not required for compliance purposes, but best practices are now saying to retain all messages.

SOX Does Not Apply to My Company

For those who may have decided that SOX or HIPPA does not apply to their business, e-Discovery (aka FRCP) will probably ensnare you. With a Supreme Court ruling in December, 2006, fundamentally any business that has employees is covered. The requirement is that all digital data (email, IM, documents) be retained for up to five years. Your specific industry compliance may add to this term, like NASD that requires seven years.

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Thirty days is the typical allowance to deliver all subpoenaed documents in a readable printed format.

Conclusion

Do you still feel that you may not be on the compliance list? Here is a list of current US regulations or agencies that can impact your business, depending on your industry and company structure.

• FOIA- Freedom of Information Act
• HIPP
• SEC
• NASD
• GLBA - Gramm-Leach-Bliley
• SOX
• FRCP/e-Discovery

Now you can see how broad this can become to decide if your business is required to meet compliance. Most companies fall under more than one regulation. The best course action is to decide that you are expected to comply. Most of the compliance measures have similar expectations - manage and retain you data environment.

We work with companies of all sizes to assure their data and messaging is in compliance. Our solutions are state of the art, quick to implement, cost effective and provide the comfort to know your data is secure. A phone discussion is a great way to assess your environment and what would be the best action plan. Visit our website Enclave Data to learn more.

You have the responsibility to maintain your company s digital environment, with the right tools you can now also have the control to assure compliance and protect your company s assets.

Dan Schutte is the President of http://enclavedata.com specializing in messaging security, content filtering, anti-spam software, email/IM archival and compliance. Visit our http://www.enclavedata.com to read actual Case Studies of how companies have successfully protected their data network and met compliance requirements. Free trials and downloads are available on all of our products to assess the vulnerability of your data environments.

Please feel free to republish this article provided a working hyperlink remains to our site.

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Some of the Benefits of Windows XP Registry Cleaners
By Ken J Morris

In this day and age, computers play a crucial role in our lives. People from all walks of life rely on computers to perform both personal and business related tasks. It can be very frustrating when something that is so important to us, refuses to start or deteriorates in its performance. Just like your car, your computer also requires regular maintenance to keep it working at its highest level. Listed below are some of the tasks that you can perform to keep your PC in good health and fix any Windows errors:

- Keep your PC clean and free of dust by lightly vacuuming it periodically.

- Run PC and hard disk diagnostic utilities such as Scandisk, Disk Defragmenter, and Disk Cleanup to keep your system files and physical hard disk in good health.

- Run regular antivirus scans to keep your PC free from errors.

- Use registry tools to keep the registry free from errors.

In this article, we will concentrate on the uses of registry tools and programs in keeping the system registry error-free.

Causes of Registry Errors
8 out of every 10 problems on your PC are due to errors in the registry. Registry problems are a result of the accumulation of large quantities of outdated, invalid, corrupt, and unnecessary entries in the registry. The registry is a central repository of all configuration information on your XP computer, and there is not a single task that you can perform without making an entry in the registry or referring to an entry already contained within it. Even malware such as viruses and spyware make an entry within the registry to perform their malicious activities.
The accumulation of unwanted data in the registry leads to its unwarranted growth and eventually corrupts and damages it. An unstable and erroneous registry affects system performance and reduces your computing capabilities considerably. This makes it very important for you to regularly clean the registry to keep it free from unwanted information.
Uses of Registry Cleaners
Manual registry maintenance with the help of Registry Editor (regedit) is possible but quite tedious and risky. Any false move can render your system more useless than it was before. Therefore, the best way to deal with registry problems is to use tools that are specially designed to help you deal with such problems. You can easily search for and download a registry cleaner tool from the Internet. Some of the top benefits of registry cleaners are listed below.
Most of the registry cleaners are GUI-based that makes them easy-to-use. Even novice users with no technical knowledge can use registry cleaners to fix Windows registry.

- Registry cleaners usually come equipped with automatic scan capabilities that enable you to fix registry errors in just a few mouse clicks.

- Advanced registry cleaners also comprise manual cleanup tool. This tool scans and analyses the registry for errors and displays the results in a new window. You can then browse through the results and choose the errors you want to remove.
Using registry cleaners you can fix Windows errors, such as fix rundll errors, DLL errors, runtime errors and ActiveX errors. In other words, by using a registry cleaner you not only get an healthy registry but also an error-free system.

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This way, you can restore your registry in case something goes wrong with the changes.

- Defragment tool included with many registry cleaners enable you to reindex the registry files to increase the data access time. They also help in removing registry holes-vacant spaces left behind by deleted entries-and help you in maintaining a compact registry.

- Advanced registry cleaners enable you to remove embedded keys, which are usually added by various freeware and shareware applications to maintain license information. These keys are also used by spyware to store malicious entries.

- Good registry cleaners also enable you to perform various other system maintenance tasks such as manage startup programs, Browser Help Objects (BHOs), program shortcuts, orphan system files, and Internet Explorer files (History and Cache).

Registry cleaners play a very important role in your regular system maintenance activities. They help you keep your registry error-free and compact. This, in turn, keeps your system in good health and at its optimal working performance.

Visit Repair-XP.com for more information on Windows XP Registry Repair and to download free tools

Ken Morris
Repair-Xp.com
http://www.repair-xp.com

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