Technology

The number of data breach incidents has continuously ramped up at an alarming pace. As the digital world progresses, cybercriminals have found various ways to infiltrate confidential and sensitive business data, posing profound risks of business disruption, financial losses, and reputational damages. To mitigate these, businesses and their cybersecurity experts must ensure that their sensitive data are safeguarded. They must come up with data security measures and policies as well as cybersecurity assessment tools and strategies to avoid potential data breaches.

With today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, cyber threats and data breaches are becoming more sophisticated in terrorizing businesses and organizations of any size. Furthermore, the constantly changing data protection and privacy requirements and policies add up to the complexities and challenges for companies. Without an effective response plan, these threats and issues may pose risks that could significantly disrupt important operations.

Tax automation is not necessarily a new topic for global manufacturers. Over the years, many businesses within this sector have adopted scalable and affordable technology solutions enabling significantly improved accuracy in determination, filing and remittance.

In the U.S. and Canada, courts have designed the doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting (ODP) to prevent inventors from gaining an unjust extension of their patent rights by obtaining patent on the obvious variants of an invention.

Since its enactment last 2014, the Supreme Court's Alice decision has continuously raised the bar for patent eligibility. Software innovation went up and it has significantly altered the patentability of software, business methods, and e-commerce technologies. In addition, software patent litigations have also changed dramatically.

In January 2019, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a revised guidance to be used when evaluating subject matter eligibility and updated same in October 2019. The revised and updated guidelines primarily focus on patent eligibility procedures involving patent claims and applications. By providing new guidance in identifying whether a patent claim or patent application claim is directed to a judicial exception, it aims to bring better clarity and predictability to Step 2A of the Alice/Mayo test.

To keep businesses running efficiently even amid the COVID-19 crisis, different organizations shifted their operations to the "new normal" remote workforce environment. However, aside from the challenges of this sudden shift, the risks of cybersecurity attacks have also rapidly increased. Cyber threats have become more rampant, taking advantage of the situation and specifically targeting remote workers.

As COVID-19’s economic impact continues to generate shock waves among financial institutions, incorporating solutions that would ease banking activities is vital. Consequently, intelligent process automation (IPA), which enables businesses to create digital platforms and faster end-to-end processes, is currently gaining popularity. This momentum is brought by IPA’s benefits that expand from saving time and reducing costs to avoiding physical interaction between clients and employees.

The security risk analysis and management obligations required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Rule are intended to play a crucial role in mitigating risks and vulnerabilities to the security and confidentiality of patient protected health information (PHI). Organizations that fail to implement these measures may be more susceptible to potential PHI breaches and could be confronted with costly regulatory fines.

Cyber insurance has been valuable in covering non-physical losses in commercial contracts. Significantly, as cases of cyber threats continue to proliferate, many contracts now contain a sub-clause on cyber coverage which protects businesses from damages brought by data breaches and computer attacks. Cyber insurance also provides coverage for regulatory investigations as well as for third-party claims.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations were forced to make the shift to virtual operations. With very short notice, companies had to adopt digital processes to meet new consumer needs and accommodate a digital workforce. This sudden change has left many businesses in a digital transformation limbo with some critical business processes converted into digital workflows while other processes remain paper-based.

In this LIVE Webcast, a panel of thought leaders and professionals brought together by The Knowledge Group will provide and present an in-depth analysis of the fundamentals as well as recent developments in How to Mitigate and Manage Third-Party Risks: Leveraging Tools and Best Practices. Speakers will also present all important issues surrounding this significant topic. Join us for this Knowledge Group Webinar!

As digital advancements continue to transform today’s landscape into a complex cloud-based space, companies become more vulnerable to potential data breaches and losses which, if not properly addressed, could profoundly affect business processes.

2021 brings new and stricter cybersecurity requirements to all organizations within the supply chain to the US Department of Defense (DoD). Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), a program to curb the theft of sensitive defense information by foreign adversaries, begins its rollout this year, as do stricter measures to enforce compliance with existing cybersecurity requirements.  Compliance, and ultimately certification by an independent third-party auditor or CMMC Third-Party Assessment Organization (C3PAO) will become a pass-fail requirement for companies to do business with the DoD.

Establishing effective third-party vendors has been at the forefront of business development strategies today. With the current remote workforce setup, the importance of having efficient vendors to streamline complex business processes has been underscored, and more companies started depending on several third-party software to help with their operations. This growing reliance on vendors and other service providers, however, has opened newer risks of breaches and has intensified the call for organizations to employ a third-party management framework that is not only effective, but is also holistic.