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I. INTRODUCTION The globalization revolution is undeniably well underway. Some of the primary leaders of the revolution are the off-shoring outsourcers of the world in search of readily available talent at prices below what is available in the traditional geographical outsourcing centers. Certainly, U.S. companies seeking information technology resources--as well as those looking for human resources to support the ever-growing customer care requirements of their business--are at the forefront of the movement. Some of those companies are seeking their own solutions, but many have turned to business process outsourcing companies for assistance. Business process outsourcing is, generally speaking, the contracting of a specific business task to a third party service provider. Processes that are best suited to be outsourced are those that a company requires but does not depend upon to maintain its position in the marketplace. There are two primary categories of business process outsourcing. One category is commonly referred to as "back office outsourcing" which includes internal business functions such as billing or purchasing. The other category is commonly referred to as "front office outsourcing" which includes customer-related services such as marketing, customer contact management, and technical support. The globalization of business in general has resulted in the need for companies to be able to provide support to their customers in many different languages. At the same time, developments in technology have provided the ability for business process outsourcers to provide a cost effective global delivery platform. The convergence of the need for a portfolio of services to be sourced globally with the ability of business process outsourcers to do so on a cost effective basis has driven the outsourcers to geographic locations previously ignored by most business sectors. By many estimates, there are currently off-shore outsourcing vendors in more than 175 different

On Wednesday, February 11, 2009, the Data Protection Working Party, an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy, released its Working Document 1-2009 (.pdf) on pre-trial discovery for cross border civil litigation. The Working Document attempts to reconcile the tension between U.S. discovery rules and the European Union's Directive 95/46/EC (.pdf), which outlines the EU's privacy requirements. What follows is a summary of the Working Document and an analysis of how it begins to bridge the gap between U.S. discovery rules and the European privacy framework. The Working Document offers guidance to EU data controllers responding to U.S. discovery requests. As the Working Document explains, those controllers often find themselves in a bind. On the one hand, U.S. law allows for broad discovery, which may require a controller to provide, or "process," personal data of customers or employees. On the other hand, Article 7 of EU Directive 95/46 limits a member state's authority to process such data. Under Article 7, a member state may process personal data only if one of six identified grounds for processing applies. The Working Document considers the Article 7 grounds most likely to supply a legitimate basis for compliance with a discovery request - namely 1) consent, 2) necessary for compliance with a legal obligation, and 3) necessary for the purposes of a legitimate interest, where such interests are not "overridden by the interests for fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject." Recognizing that the "interests of justice would be served by not unnecessarily limiting the ability of an organisation to act to promote or defend a legal right," the Working Document suggests that the third basis - necessary for the purposes of a legitimate interest - will often provide a ground for processing data in response to a U.S. discovery request.

The dark figure of fraud drove the development of best practices at Memolink. I harnessed the fear of the unknown and used basic change management to gather support internally. I knew the approach would indefinitely change how we did business and alter our company's culture. Like many dot coms, my company has an entrepreneurial spirit, and like not-so-many dot coms, we have been in business for 15 years. The culture is well established and the work we do is exciting and fun. Would a company with an innovative and "don't-box-me-in" mentality openly receive a new set of standards and expectations? The implementation of the Best Practice approach required two important change management tactics: consistent messaging and constant and varied communication. It was not enough to tell associates that the proposed transition, which included separating processes that traditionally had been managed by a sales team, would benefit the company in the long term. The main component of the message had to be the "What's in it for me?" value proposition. At the time, the sales associates had nothing to gain, and, in fact, they would lose commission. For example, when my department rolled out the Best Practice approach to partner vetting, fewer partners would meet the standard and be accepted, which meant incremental commission loss for the sales team. Money matters create major stress and tension, so it was important that this conflict be addressed early in the implementation process. Management responded by restructuring commissions so that employee motivations were aligned with business goals. This move also made the adoption period for other processes and procedures shorter and less chaotic. In essence, align the money motivators and people will buy in more quickly. Associates were not reeling about their payment structure, but were they and other stakeholders, who were originally unaffected by the commission structure, truly behind the idea? In order to gain the

It's been four years since data broker ChoicePoint acknowledged the data security breach that put it in the middle of a media firestorm and pushed data protection to the top of the infosecurity community's priority list. Since then, the business world has made plenty of progress hardening its data defenses -- thanks in part to industry standards like PCI DSS and data breach disclosure laws (click to see state-by-state map) now in place. But the latest data breach to grab headlines illustrates how vulnerable organizations remain to devastating network intrusions. Heartland Payment Systems, the Princeton, N.J.-based provider of credit and debit processing, payment and check management services, admitted Tuesday it was the victim of a data breach some quickly began citing as the largest of its kind. The company discovered last week that malware compromised card data across its network, after Visa and MasterCard alerted Heartland to sinister activity surrounding processed card transactions. The Shadow of ChoicePoint The Heartland breach comes roughly four years after ChoicePoint announced -- as required by California's SB 1386 data breach disclosure law -- that conmen stole personal financial records of more than 163,000 consumers by setting up fake business requests. Since then, much bigger incidents have occurred, most notably the TJX data breach that exposed more than 45 million debit and credit card holders to identity fraud. Heartland President and CFO Robert H.B. Baldwin Jr. said Tuesday that 100 million card transactions occur each month on the compromised systems used to provide processing to merchants and businesses. As of Tuesday, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse estimated that a total of 251,164,141 sensitive records had been compromised since early 2005. Up to 15 separate cases have been reported since Jan. 1, 2009.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has developed these guidelines to explain how the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) applies to transfers of personal information to a third party, including a third party operating outside of Canada, for processing. As the legislation itself states, PIPEDA is intended to "support and promote electronic commerce by protecting personal information that is collected, used or disclosed in certain circumstances…" This acknowledges that proper protection of personal information both facilitates and promotes commerce by building consumer confidence. Today's globally interdependent economy relies on international flows of information. These cross-border transfers do raise some legitimate concerns about where personal information is going as well as what happens to it while in transit and after it arrives at some foreign destination. Consumer confidence will be enhanced, and trust will be fostered, if consumers know that transfers of their personal information are governed by clear and transparent rules. There are different approaches to protecting personal information that is being transferred for processing. European Union member states have passed laws prohibiting the transfer of personal information to another jurisdiction unless the European Commission has determined that the other jurisdiction offers "adequate" protection for personal information.

The Data Protection Directive is old-fashioned and out of date, a report published by the UK's privacy regulator the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said. Commissioner Richard Thomas said that the European Union must change its legislation. The ICO commissioned RAND Europe to investigate whether or not 1995's EU Data Protection Directive was a good basis for Europe-wide data protection law. The research concluded that the law was flawed and needed to be updated. It found that the law must be clearer about what it seeks to achieve, that it should be better at forcing organisations to protect personal data in their charge, that it should encourage a more strategic approach to enforcement and that it does not deal well enough with the export of personal data outside the EU. Thomas said that the Directive, on which the UK's Data Protection Act is based, is outmoded. "The Directive is showing its age. Modern approaches to regulation mean that laws must concentrate on the real risks that people face in the modern world, must avoid unnecessary burdens, and must work well in practice," he said. "Organisations must embed privacy by design and data protection must become a top level corporate governance issue." RAND said that the Directive would be improved by its fundamental approach to ensuring data privacy being changed. It said that the law should focus on the protection of individuals and the security of their data, and not on the processes that lead to that. "The stronger, results oriented approach described in this report aims to protect data subjects against personal harm resulting from the unlawful processing of any data, rather than making personal data the building block of data protection regulations," said the report. "It would move away from a regulatory framework that measures the adequacy of data processing by measuring compliance with certain formalities, towards a framework that instead requires certain fundamental principles to be respected

Enterprise role management is key in efficiently managing user access rights and enforcing access policies such as segregation of duties. Roles help companies group coarse- and fine-grained access rights (like access to and functionality within a financial accounts application) into groups, called enterprise roles. These enterprise roles map to job functions and are only allowed access rights that don't violate segregation of duties. For instance, a financial clerk role can't contain fine-grained access rights that allow someone in the role to access the accounts receivable and accounts payable parts of the financial application. The processes and tools necessary for effective role management consist of role mining and design (automatic discovery and management of roles based on existing access rights and entitlements data), role recertification (a process performed typically every six months when a business role custodian certifies what access rights should belong to a role), and access recertification (a process performed typically every 3-6 months to ensure all user access is understood and was granted in an audited way).

A data protection group has warned that opting out of Phorm will not prevent the technology from processing data that users enter through web site search portals. Companies such as Amazon, Wikipedia and LiveJournal have taken the decision to block the controversial advertising technology from scanning their sites because of the privacy implications. However, Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock has since admitted that, even if web sites opt out of the programme, ISPs supporting Phorm will still be able to profile users visiting those sites. "This is because Phorm can scan search requests entered in those sites, even if it cannot detect the web site pages users are viewing," Killock said. "For example, even if Google opts out of Webwise, when a user types in a Google query and they are using BT, it will still go through Phorm before it reaches BT." Killock added that Phorm does not gain permission from either senders or receivers of the information before it processes the data. Phorm uses browsing information to serve accurately targeted advertisements, and is soon to be rolled out under the Webwise brand by internet service providers BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk. However, as the time for deployment nears, the controversy surrounding the technology only seems to be increasing.

Nearly one week after news emerged of the big data breach at Princeton, N.J.-based merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc., it remains unclear how much damage actually happened and who did it. One report suggests Heartland's breach-related legal liabilities could approach $98 million, an estimate a Heartland spokesperson dismisses as speculative. The spokesperson tells Digital Transactions News on Monday that the so-called "sniffer" program secretly planted on one of Heartland's payment-processing platforms was not being used when investigators found it about two weeks ago. "It was inactive," the spokesperson says. "I want to be specific to say it was inactive," he adds, clarifying that the hackers hadn't deliberately disabled or deactivated it. Robert Carr, Heartland's chief executive, meanwhile, issued a statement calling for better industry cooperation and new operational procedures to prevent future data compromises, including industrywide, end-to-end encryption to fully protect cardholder data. Heartland uses encryption, but industry procedures leave data unencrypted during one brief point of the authorization process-a weakness that hackers have learned to exploit. Carr also said Heartland is working on its own system of end-to-end encryption.

"Disaster recovery and business continuity planning are processes that help organizations prepare for disruptive events-whether an event might be a hurricane or simply a power outage caused by a backhoe in the parking lot. Management's involvement in this process can range from overseeing the plan, to providing input and support, to putting the plan into action during an emergency. This primer (compiled from articles in CSO magazine) explains the basic concepts of business continuity planning and also directs you to more CSO magazine resources on the topic."

"This presentation contains statements of a forward-looking nature which represent our management's beliefs and assumptions concerning future events. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions and are based on information currently available to us. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements due to many factors, including without limitation, the impact that the significantly unfavorable economic conditions confronting the United States may have on our business, the results and effects the security breach of our processing system may have on us, including the costs and damages we may incur in connection with the claims arising from such breach that have been made and may in the future be made against us, the extent of cardholder information compromised and the possibility that such security breach could cause us to lose customers or make it difficult for us to obtain new customers, the possibility that we may not be successful in developing and implementing an end to end encryption solution, the possibility that if we are successful in developing and implementing an end to end encryption solution it may not prevent future security breaches of our payment processing system, and additional factors that are contained in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including but not limited to, the Company's annual report on Form 10- K for the year ended December 31, 2008. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this presentation. Topics / Agenda - The Future of Electronic Payments * What Is The Problem? The Cybercrimes Arms Race * Who Is Heartland Payment Systems? * What Happened and What Has/Will It Cost? * What Did We Do About It and What Are We Doing Now? * Massive Quantity/Quality of Breaches Call for Enhanced Solutions * Our New Solution Called E3 -

Two firms certified to asses a company's compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) have been placed under remediation by the PCI Security Standards Council. Two firms certified to asses a company's compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) have been placed under remediation by the PCI Security Standards Council. "We have a contractual relationship with the PCI Security Standards Council and they can pull our certification at any time," Bates said, adding that the firm is working wholeheartedly to remedy the situation. Chris Konrad, senior vice president of client services at Fortrex, did not return a phone call seeking comment. Fortrex's business is U.S-based. The company is in its sixth year assessing service providers and merchants. In addition to being certified to conduct payment application quality security assessments, the firm sells risk management consulting services. It is a reseller in security vendor Qualys Inc.'s PCI Partner Program, according to the company website. Qualys said its "program gives partners generous margins based on their level of certification." The PCI Council launched its quality assurance program for assessors in September to address growing concerns from merchants about the quality of their assessments and other issues. Merchants have complained that some QSAs don't appear to have the technical skills necessary to conduct a thorough assessment. Other merchants have raised issues with QSA's pitching security products during the assessment process. Merchants that receive negative feedback are placed on probation and a revocation process is in place if assessors do not address the issues identified by the council.

The largest threat to online advertising is growing as the economy declines. More individuals will turn criminal, purchasing products or generating income through fraudulent means. Billions of dollars are stolen from businesses each year, and in 2009 companies will fight fraud with fewer resources.According to CyberSource, an estimated $4 billion dollars was lost to fraud in 2008 up from $3.7 billion in 2007, and 87% of merchants must fight fraud with the same or less staff in 2009. The increase in eCommerce fraud from 2007 to 2008 (and one can expect, in 2009) follows the advertisers' shift to spend more of their budget online. Much like crime statistics, one has to wonder how much fraud is not being reported because, among many reasons, commission-driven employees are not motivated or your company lacks resources.In early 2008, I was approached by our CEO to start a new division that would address our partners' fraud concerns-both real and perceived. He said, "I'm not going to lie to you. It's a SOB job." I was sold, and the Best Practices Division began.My team establishes best practices (measurable, repeatable events, processes, and procedures) and applies them internally and externally (to our partners' online marketing practices). At its core, best practices (BPs) are a set of standards that provide transparency and clear expectations of behavior and results to everyone involved in the business process. This accountability will drive the long-term performance of the online advertising industry while maintaining profitability without additional federal regulation.The BP approach can be applied to every business model and used to fight fraud-wherever you find it. Industry norm places the onus on the advertiser to successfully qualify inbound leads as well as identify fraudulent traffic. In the past, advertisers had only two options: become an online fraud expert, or hire a vendor.Only a small percentage of companies will be successful with the

Last week, a commercial Twitter spamming tool (tweettornado.com) pitching itself as a "fully automated advertising software for Twitter" hit the market, potentially empowering phishers, spammers, malware authors and everyone in between with the ability to generate bogus Twitter accounts and spread their campaigns across the micro-blogging service. TweetTornado allows users to create unlimited Twitter accounts, add unlimited number of followers, which combined with its ability to automatically update all of bogus accounts through proxy servers with an identical message make it the perfect Twitter spam tool. TweetTornado's core functionality relies on a simple flaw in Twitter's new user registration process. Tackling it will not render the tool's functionality useless, but will at least ruin the efficiency model. Sadly, Twitter doesn't require you to have a valid email address when registering a new account, so even though a nonexistent@email.com is used, the user is still registered and is allowed to use Twitter. So starting from the basics of requiring a validation by clicking on a link which will only be possible if a valid email is provided could really make an impact in this case, since it its current form the Twitter registration process can be so massively abused that I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. Once a Twitter spammer has been detected, the associated, and now legitimate email could be banned from further registrations, potentially emptying the inventory of bogus emails, and most importantly making it more time consuming for spammers to abuse Twitter in general. If TweetTornado is indeed the advertising tool of choice for Twitter marketers, I "wonder" why is the originally blurred by the author Twitter account used in the proof (twitter.com/AarensAbritta) currently suspended, the way the rest of the automatically registered ones are? Pretty evident TOS violation, since two updates and 427 followers in two hours clearly indicat

Canadians who travelled to the United States in 2008 are being advised to check their credit-card statements and watch for signs of identity theft after a massive security breach at a U. S.-based company that processes millions of credit cards. Canada's Privacy Commissioner said yesterday she was shocked to learn that New Jersey-based Heartland Payment Systems, which processes credit-card transactions for more than 250,000 businesses in the United States, had found "malicious software" in its operating system. "I'm amazed to see something this significant can still happen with the importance that not only privacy commissioners, but experts everywhere, are placing on security," Jennifer Stoddard said. "I was concerned to see this going on and the size of it." Tech experts say the hack could be one of the largest ever credit-or debit-card data breaches, and that Canadians should watch closely for signs of identity theft.

Heartland Payment Systems, the sixth-largest payments processor in the U.S., announced Monday that its processing systems were breached in 2008, exposing an undetermined number of consumers to potential fraud. Meanwhile, Forcht Bank, one of the 10 largest banks in Kentucky, told its customers it would begin reissuing 8,500 debit cards after being informed by its own card processor of a possible breach. In the case of Heartland, while the company continues to assess the damages inflicted by the attack, Robert Baldwin, the company's president and CFO, says law enforcement has already noted that the attack against his company is part of a wider cyber fraud operation. "The indication that it is tied to wider cyber fraud operation comes directly from conversations with the Department of Justice and the U.S. Secret Service," Baldwin says. The company says it believes the breach has been contained. Heartland, headquartered in Princeton, NJ, handles approximately 100 million transactions per month, although the number of unique cardholders is much lower. "It is still a question as to the percentage of the data flow they were able to get," Baldwin says, adding he would not speculate on the number of cards potentially exposed. Specifics surrounding when the breach occurred are still being analyzed. But Baldwin says two forensic auditing teams have been working on the breach analysis and investigation since late 2008, after Heartland received the notification from Visa and MasterCard. The investigation began immediately after the credit card companies told Heartland they saw suspicious activity surrounding processed card transactions. Described by Baldwin as "quite a sophisticated attack," he says it has been challenging to discover exactly how it happened.

Enterprise employees frequently use social networking tools, most notably Web-based applications. It's no surprise more organizations are wondering what happens if social networking data becomes relevant to an e-discovery investigation. How does an enterprise go about discovering and assessing Web 2.0 data? How responsible is an organization, legally speaking, for the information that's out there in the Web 2.0 world? What risks arise from e-discovery as it relates to Web 2.0 data, and how can you mitigate them? In this tip, we will look at e-discovery as it relates to Web 2.0 and consider the strongest options for minimizing risks to the organization. E-discovery basics We begin with a quick look at what e-discovery is and how it can create risk. Essentially, e-discovery is the electronic extension of the legal process of discovery, which Wikipedia defines as "the pre-trial phase in a lawsuit in which each party through the law of civil procedure can request documents and other evidence from other parties or can compel the production of evidence by using a subpoena or through other discovery devices, such as requests for production and depositions." If you're an IT person, not a lawyer, it's important to note that the rules governing the discovery process now require plaintiffs to address all electronically stored information or ESI. In other words, if your organization faces litigation, it will have to deal with the issue of e-discovery, which will entail a whole lot more than turning over some old emails. Depending upon your role in the organization, the first you may hear of this is a "notice of litigation" with perhaps a "litigation hold directive" containing a "preservation directive." Here is a generic e-discovery request below. Apart from a few limiting factors, such as subject matter, named persons and a specified time period, the scope of such a notice is likely to be broad; blame standard procedure, not some high-powered attorney pushing his or her lu

This tip is part of SearchSecurity.com's Data Protection School lesson, E-discovery and security in the enterprise. Visit the E-discovery and security in the enterprise lesson page for additional learning resources. Most information security pros have a handle on the major data types found in their environments, but they also know that there is a whole lot more data lurking around the edges. These unknown data types can include documents used by individuals, or whole applications owned by departments that have quietly become essential to the business. Most of the time, focusing on the squeaky wheels is an acceptable strategy; if there's no "squeak" then there's no need to worry. But when it comes to litigation, and especially managing the electronic discovery process, what you don't know can hurt you. There are four major types of data in use today: paper documents; structured data sets, like databases; semi-structured applications, like email and image stores; and unstructured repositories, like file servers. Comprehending the vast volume of these varied records can be a challenge for everyone involved, which includes information technology, records management, legal staff, and even the data owners themselves. But since almost all business information is stored in digital formats today, electronic storage systems are the most popular target for the discovery motions filed as part of legal proceedings. It is most efficient for a litigator to head straight for your email, spreadsheets and applications, looking for what they term electronically stored information (ESI). Making matters worse for IT administrators, new rules for civil litigation enacted at the end of 2006 (called the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, or FRCP) have pushed up the timetable of electronic discovery. What was once a delayed and informal process has become much more structured, with lawyers meeting to discuss available ESI, typically just a few weeks after legal action commences. When l

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is ineffective and major payment processing infrastructure improvements are needed to secure credit and debit card transactions, lawmakers said Tuesday. The House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, Science, and Technology, part of the House Committee on Homeland Security, held a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to examine the effectiveness of PCI DSS. "The bottom line is that if we care about keeping money out of the hands of terrorists and organized criminals, we have to do more, and we have to do it now," said U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), who chairs the subcommittee. "The payment card industry and issuing banks need to commit to investing in infrastructure upgrades here in the United States." Clarke called on the industry to implement encryption on its credit and debit card processing networks and said the deployment of chip and PIN technology could significantly reduce the amount of stolen payment data. Chip and PIN technology is used in Asia and Europe. The technology replaces the magnetic strip on the back of a card and adds a four-digit personal identification number (PIN) to confirm a payment.

Heartland Payment Systems Inc. said it was experiencing losses this quarter as a direct result of a massive data breach it disclosed in January when investigators discovered a malicious program sniffing credit card data passing through its systems. The company said it took a $2.5 million loss for the quarter as a result of spending more than $12.6 million in legal bills, fines from MasterCard and Visa and administrative costs. The announcement was made during the company's financial earnings call, where Carr said the costs associated with the breach could continue to climb. "Our defense of the claims regarding the processing system intrusion remains ongoing," he said. "Much of the legal work remains to be done and it is difficult to anticipate when these matters will come to a conclusion." Carr also admitted for the first time that since the Princeton, N.J.-based processing giant announced a breach of its systems, some of the payment processor's clients have switched to competitors as a result of the breach. He said some competing processors resorted to scare tactics. "We have had many competitors that have been very supportive and professional, and we certainly don't want to tar all of our competitors with the same brush," Carr said. "We have had some competitors telling merchants falsely that they would be fined $10,000 a day if they stay with Heartland. We think we're through the worst of that." Car said less than $1 million of the breach costs were fines levied by MasterCard and Visa against the company's sponsored banks. The fines are being contested, he said. More than $500,000 relates to a fine assessed by MasterCard against the sponsored banks in which the card company said Heartland failed to take appropriate action upon learning that a breach was suspected. Carr said the fine is in direct violation of both the MasterCard rules and law.