The Compliance Life details the journey to and in the role of a Chief Compliance Officer. How does one come to sit in the CCO chair? What are some of the skills a CCO needs to success navigate the compliance waters in any company? What are some of the top challenges CCOs have faced and how did they meet them? These questions and many others will be explored in this new podcast series. Over four episodes each month on The Compliance Life, I visit with one current or former CCO to explore their journey to the CCO chair. This month, my guest is Asha Palmer, CECO at Convercent. Asha knew since age 8 she wanted to be a lawyer from watching Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show. She also wanted to attend a Historic Black College and University and chose Spelman in Atlanta. She attended NYU and joined a major Atlanta firm as a litigator before joining the Department of Justice in the Northern District of Georgia.
Resources
Asha Palmer LinkedIn Profile
Convercent by One Trust
Day: July 6, 2021
Categories
Recent BIS Settlements
The Kitchen looks at recent Bureau of Industry and Security settlements with US companies for exporting without license.
The compliance sphere is exciting as it is challenging to look into how the risk landscape is quickly changing. In this episode, Compliance Evangelist Tom Fox engages in a power-packed conversation with Jonathan Marks, a long-time professional in internal audit and thought leader in the compliance space.
Tune in and extract valuable insights as they go deep on the evolution of the internal audit profession since implementing the SOX Act of 2002, the arc of professionalism in compliance, the importance of an overall integrated structure of Enterprise Risk Management, and many more.
Major takeaways discussed in the episode:
✔️ Why the COSO 2013 Internal Controls Framework serves as a seminal moment for compliance professionals and helps keep up with the exponential speed of developments in the space.
✔️ The move to an overall integrated structure of Enterprise Risk Management is critical in proactively identifying, assessing, monitoring, and responding to risks and opportunities.
✔️ The 2020 Update to the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs brought business intelligence to compliance and serves as a significant step towards enterprise resiliency. Organizations today have to be flexible and nimble and adapt to changes of new risks to survive and evolve.
✔️ The importance of prioritizing root cause analysis in investigation and approach. Jonathan has advocated for this in so long and the rigor around the process. “When I look at the root cause, it’s really finding that one domino that fell and tipped off everything else. Often, some recommendations are made specifically related to internal controls that are treating the symptoms and not the underlying issues. And then we have this funky word called recidivism. And so that same problem keeps happening or coming back.”
✔️ The three vital skills that have come into play that a compliance professional needs today are being “digitally athletic” to understand data analytics, be a great communicator and possess critical thinking to keep up with the evolving compliance functions.
✔️ The most successful auditors are the ones that can communicate, build trust and relationships with people.
✔️ Companies and compliance need to be thinking about into 2025 are becoming more risk resilient, with what Jonathan calls the Bermuda Triangle — where internal audit, compliance, and legal all work harmoniously.
✔️ From a board member’s perspective going into the future, one has to start asking tough questions surrounding the company’s audit process and creating an internal audit plan.
Jonathan T. Marks is the firm leader of the global fraud and forensic investigations and compliance practice at leading advisory, tax, and assurance firm Baker Tilly. He has more than 30 years of experience working closely with his clients, their board, senior management, and law firms on global and cross-border fraud and misconduct investigations, including bribery, corruption, and compliance matters.
Jonathan specializes in internal and regulatory investigations, governance matters; risk assessment, design, and implementation of compliance programs; global fraud risk management programs; and compliance coordination and monitoring services for the private, public, not-for-profit sectors. He assists his clients to mitigate potential issues by conducting root-cause analysis, developing remedial procedures, and designing or enhancing governance and compliance systems along with internal controls, policies and procedures, and customized training.
LinkedIn: Jonathan T. Marks
Website: www.bakertilly.com/contact/directory/jonathan-t-marks/
Blog: boardandfraud.com
David Carns is the Chief Revenue Officer at Casepoint LLC, an eDiscovery platform for the artificial intelligence space. He is an attorney and technologist who has always been fascinated by the intersection between law and technology. Tom Fox welcomes him to this week’s show as they talk about his current role at Casepoint, the evolution of eDiscovery, and what it means for compliance and compliance professionals.
How Casepoint Has Evolved
Casepoint was initially focused on law firms but, as David explains to Tom, their expertise and knowledge on legal techniques are now spread out to all sectors and segments in the legal industry. The platform of Casepoint has also evolved from consultancy to predominantly software. Its legal discovery platform has moved beyond eDiscovery towards more of a development environment that supports legal workflows. “What Casepoint has become, is for many people a repository of either discovery ready data or data around internal investigations …it has expanded quite a bit beyond just eDiscovery and its document management for a variety of use cases that we find today,” David tells Tom.
Subject Access Requests
The main challenge with respect to data discovery in Europe is subject access requests. “Companies or individuals don’t necessarily want to avail themselves or their data to US jurisdiction,” David remarks. There is a strong interest in having data centers based in Europe, he adds, along with a desire from European-based companies to use those data centers. There is, however, a concern from people within the EU about the privacy implications surrounding such a move.
The Shift to Cloud-Based Technology
The pandemic transitioned the global working environment to a remote one. With this, came the boost in the adoption of cloud-based technology. David explains to Tom that cloud-based tech has its advantages over on-premise tech in three major ways: convenience, efficiency, and its ability to quickly implement machine learning. It’s much easier for Casepoint to adopt cloud-based applications, and cloud-based tech passively applies machine learning from documents and provides feedback to the appropriate users. For all these reasons, it’s no wonder cloud-based tech was adopted and embraced so quickly during the work-from-home period, and it’s also why it won’t be going away even after we return to the regular work environment, David points out. He predicts that the technology will most likely be used in a hybrid way in the future.
Looking To The Future
Tom asks David what compliance professionals, lawyers, and firms need to be thinking about when it comes to eDiscovery, and data management in the future. David advises that companies and corporations should pay very close attention and keep a handle on all the locations of their data. “If there are only references to URLs or data identifiers, are we making sure that that data is being collected and preserved in a way that can be used for future investigations, litigated matters, jurisdictional issues, those sorts of things?” he argues.
Resources
Davis Carns | LinkedIn | Twitter
With business entering the digital world, we need to start looking into alternate populations to begin hiring from. Sure there are people of different skin colors or sexes, but what about individuals with physical disabilites or people from the autistic population.
Sometimes to tackle certain situations, a different point of view can be highly beneficial.
Not only can business reach out and bring in employees from different walks of life, but companies can also look into how to treat their employees equitably. For some employees a flexible schedule would be helpful, or perhaps a cafeteria type benefits plan may work better for your employee base.
Julie Thompson joins us today on the Jamming with Jason podcast to discuss positive ways that industry can change in many ways for the better!
Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/jammingwithjason/
