It’s rare for one of the world’s largest corporations to oppose a court order, ostensibly made in the name of national security, and be applauded for it.

Yet Apple declining to help the FBI access San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook’s iPhone has been backed by prominent figures including Google CEO Sundar Pichai and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as thousands of privacy-conscious consumers.

That’s not to say there isn’t backing for the FBI, with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and controversial figure Donald Trump among those suggesting Apple should not obstruct the FBI’s investigation.

Cyber security balance to be reached

Balancing individual privacy with national security is proving to be a compelling subject, and it’s possible that there’s no right answer. Indeed, Apple’s stance – that helping the FBI access the iPhone would set a dangerous precedent for its users’ privacy – has been divisive.

But Apple knows only too well the damage that can be done by losing the public’s trust around privacy. Past hacking scandals and data breaches have significantly impacted their sales and share prices, taking months to recover from. Indeed, some commentators have accused Apple of turning this debate into a marketing campaign.

Regardless of your take on the ethics of this debate, Apple’s stance suggests that, where PR and marketing is concerned, individuals’ privacy seems to trump all else.

About VinciWorks

We help businesses train employees in cyber security topics with online courses including Data Protection, Information Security and Records Management. Contact us now to discuss how our online training can improve your company’s data privacy efforts.

Image Credit: Mike Deerkoski

The 2016 Oscars have already garnered thousands of column inches, for largely the wrong reasons. Instead of spurring debate about the best films, performances, scripts and artisans, the nominations caused an outcry about the lack of diversity among the nominees.

Sadly, this is not the first time that the Oscars have caught flack for a lack of diversity; a similar scenario occurred in 2015 when the widely-tipped Selma was overlooked by the Academy. However, many commentators have suggested that this year’s Oscars nominations are more troubling because of the abundance of worthy nominees, including Creed, Straight Outta Compton, Beasts of No Nation and Chi-raq.

So what is happening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences? Why are so few black actors, writers, directors and artisans earning nominations for their widely-respected work? Why are the majority of nominations – and awards – going to a largely white field?

One theory is that the Academy, and the people who choose the nominees, are largely white, and this lack of institutional diversity leads to largely white candidates.

As the uproar over the Academy whitewash threatens to overwhelm the Oscars, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Academy President, launched an initiative to address the lack of diversity. Boone Isaacs stated that the five-year plan, A2020, is designed to ‘increase film industry diversity in front of and behind the camera’. The plan includes a commitment to double the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020. The Guardian reports that “the changes also include 10-year limits on the voting abilities of new members of the Academy, which will be removed if the member is not ‘active in motion pictures’ in the intervening time.”

Both of these ideas suggest that the Academy views their lack of internal diversity as part of the problem. The established members do not represent the diversity of society, nor do they reflect the diversity of society when choosing nominees.

The lack of diversity within the Academy is a story often repeated in the business community, with many corporate leadership teams derided as being ‘male, pale and stale’. Organisations are learning that the push for diversity is about more than just trying to do the right thing, it’s about recognising the value of having a diverse team, and of helping the most talented professionals achieve their full potential, regardless of their race, gender or nationality.

About the author…

We offer a range of eLearning on compliance topics, including Equality and Diversity, and Introduction to Equality and Diversity. Our comprehensive training courses are available electronically, on-demand, so your teams can access the training they need, precisely when they need it. Our eLearning can either be chosen as an off-the-shelf package, or we can customise the courses to suit the needs of your business.

One of the most powerful automation features in the VinciWorks Learning Management System just got better. Now, when enrolling group members in multiple emails, only one consolidated email gets sent – reducing inbox clutter.

What are groups?

Groups take most of the administrative burden out of determining who needs to be enrolled in which course at what interval. With groups users are automatically enrolled in the appropriate courses at the right time, based on predefined criteria.

Some useful groups that other firms are using:

  • Automatically enrol new hires in a series of inductee courses
  • Automatically enrol users in AML refresher courses every two years
  • Automatically enrol different departments in courses relevant to their departments

If you license LMS pro or Enterprise and are interested in setting up or reviewing your current groups, contact us to set up a free training session.

In the past few weeks the world of tennis has been blighted by allegations of match-fixing. While the claims made against the sport have not been proven, it’s an interesting case which may provide lessons for businesses that want to reduce their risk of corruption.

Reports suggest that players have worked with gambling syndicates to throw matches. The claims have been made following an investigation by the BBC and BuzzFeed News, in which they used an algorithm to review the betting activity on professional tennis matches over a period of 7 years. Their studies highlighted a number of matches that attracted suspicious betting activity. Namely, huge value bets for the underdog.

They identified 15 players who ‘regularly lost matches in which heavily lopsided betting appeared to substantially shift the odds – a red flag for possible match-fixing.’ As BuzzFeed reports, ‘gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy have made hundreds of thousands of pounds placing highly suspicious bets on scores of matches’.

This is not the first time that tennis has been embroiled in allegations of corruption. There have long been rumours of professionals colluding to agree the outcome of matches, or even sharing the winnings after planning a mutually-beneficial outcome (some players are suspected of throwing – or ‘tanking’ – matches that they don’t care to win so they can save their energy, yet still pocket a share of the winnings).

Richard Ings, former executive vice president for rules and competition of the Association of Tennis Professionals spoke to BuzzFeed about how the nature of tennis makes it uniquely suitable for match fixing, “if you were to invent a sport that was tailor-made for match-fixing, the sport that you would invent would be called tennis. “It doesn’t take much effort on a player to throw a match without the opponent or the officials or the fans or even the media being aware.”

Given the level of suspicion around tennis, the nature of the allegations, and the apparent simplicity with which matches can be fixed, one might assume that investigators and tennis officials would be aware of the risks and quick to clamp down on the alleged fixers. But so far, the tennis authorities have been slow to react and have failed to punish most of the alleged fixers.

Commentators are speculating that one reason for the lack of decisive action is the fact that the organisation tasked with stopping corruption in tennis is too close to the sport. The Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU) was founded in 2008 by the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the ATP, the WTA and the Grand Slam Board. If corruption is occurring inside tennis, can an insider organisation hope to solve the problems? Or does the TIU have too many incentives to ignore warnings in an effort to preserve the good name of the sport of gentlemen?

Whether or not the allegations surrounding tennis are true, the affair is a reminder that, for any organisation fighting corruption, internal investigators may not be the most effective route to the truth. When an organisation has too much to lose – and plenty to hide – outside investigators may be the only effective way to reveal the truth. Impartial third-parties may be necessary to break through a wall of silence, or to expose failings that insiders may see as ‘just the way things are’. Perhaps the TIU needs to involve independent investigators in their procedures, and accept that the investigation may reveal uncomfortable truths.

Perhaps the problems blighting tennis are similar to the difficulties that face some businesses: corrupt practices become so commonplace that they become normalised. In such cases it can be challenging to uncover the full extent of the fraud taking place, particularly if employees don’t view their actions as problematic – or if the fraud is so widespread that a majority of employees have a vested interest in maintaining the cover-up. When corruption is part of an ingrained culture, training programs and other awareness-raising initiatives may be required to change perceptions and encourage people to develop a zero-tolerance attitude to fraudulent practices.

Fraud often occurs in situations when people have both a motive and an opportunity. So while it’s important to limit opportunities and minimise motives, it’s also important to shape an organisational culture that does not accept corruption in any form.

VinciWorks offer eLearning on a range of business and management topics, which can be chosen as an off-the-shelf package, or customised to meet the needs of your business. Our corruption eLearning packages include:

  • Anti-Bribery and Corruption (Introduction)
  • Anti-Bribery and Corruption (Working Globally)

There seems to be a common misconception in the legal profession that the SRA’s changes to CPD hail the end of formal compliance training. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Compliance training on topics such as money laundering, bribery, diversity, data protection etc. remains mandatory irrespective of any CPD changes.

The SRA has reiterated on numerous occasions that changes to CPD will have no impact on other mandatory training required by legislative or regulatory bodies; nor will it affect industry best practice. For example, in the SRA’s money laundering guidance:

We have recently changed our approach to continuing competence, deciding to remove the requirement for a certain number of hours of CPD and allowing firms to arrange appropriate training at their own discretion. Anti-money laundering training and the policies that underpin it, remain a legal requirement as noted above, and firms should consider this as part of their continuing competence planning

Continue reading

VinciWorks attended a recent event hosted by Thomson Reuters titled Modern Slavery, Bribery and Corruption. The international panel included Nick Grono, CEO of the Freedom Fund, Dan Viederman, CEO of Verité, Duncan Jepson, CEO of Liberty Asia, Martina Vandenberg, Founder and President of the Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center and Mike Harris from World-Check.

The panel – which coincided with the publishing of two new reports: Modern Slavery and Corruption and An Exploratory Study on the Role of Corruption in International Labour Migration – focused on the relationship between modern slavery and corruption. The discussion provided an overview of the current legislation around the world, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which has been used effectively in the United States to prosecute human traffickers.

The key takeaway from the discussion was that slavery can only take place when corruption is present. At some stage in the process, someone must turn a blind eye, pay a bribe or falsify records to facilitate human trafficking or forced labour. Organisations should never be able to say “we were not aware” because the warning signs and the records of corruption are almost always there to be found. Continue reading

Technology is integral to the way we live and work, but it’s never felt more important for businesses to keep up with technological advances than it feels today.

From enabling staff to work flexibly wherever it’s convenient for them, to cutting down on physical meetings with the help of video conferencing, to using services like Basecamp and Slack to do away with email, businesses aren’t just using technology to improve their products: they’re improving the workplace itself.

But what does this have to do with eLearning?

You might use eLearning for continuing employee development, or to simply fulfil mandatory training requirements, but if the experience doesn’t deliver on what learners expect from modern technology, it will only lead to frustration – and frustrated employees are demotivated employees.

So, where do you begin to make sure this isn’t the case with yours?

Looking at the technology habits of the generation that’s about to enter the workforce reveals some interesting insights into what the workers of the future will expect from their eLearning.

Changing habits

The BBC recently reported that young people between the ages of 5 and 16 now spend more time online than they do watching television, a change which can be attributed to the fact that 67% of young people today own tablets or mobile devices.

The prevalence of these devices has caused use of CDs, broadcast television and printed publications to decrease – all to be replaced by their digital mobile alternatives.

For employers, this means a new generation of employees is about to enter the workforce that’s used to having instant access to music, news, television – in short, whatever media they want – instantly, whenever it suits them.

Futureproofing eLearning

If you want to make sure your online training will be engaging to employees of the future, perhaps it’s time to follow TV’s lead and make it available on demand through mobiles, tablets, and PCs.

To do this, there are three main options: mobile compatible eLearning, mLearning and responsive eLearning, each with its own pros and cons:

Mobile compatible eLearning: sometimes described as mobile friendly, mobile compatible eLearning courses are usually designed with personal computers in mind, but built to scale down to fit mobile screens. Mobile compatible eLearning can be rapid to create as existing courses can be exported in a new format, but can result in text being too small to read, buttons being difficult to press, and a need to scroll from side to side to see the course.

mLearning: designed specifically for mobile devices, mLearning courses can work particularly well when you know in advance what kind of mobile learners will be using, for example in schools. Because they are designed for mobile, they are fairly quick to create, but may be equally quick to become outdated as the technology changes frequently. Due to bandwidth and memory issues, mLearning courses can often lack in depth, interactivity and multimedia.

Responsive eLearning: responsive eLearning courses are designed to work on mobiles, tablets and personal computers and dynamically adapt their design according to the device they’re being accessed on. Responsive design is the standard for modern web and app development, and enables a familiar learner experience no matter what device is being used. This type of course requires the most initial investment of the three approaches, but the result is a course that can be created and updated once, and accessed on all kinds of device.

VinciWorks

We believe responsive design is the best way to futureproof your eLearning and ensure it remains engaging, which is why we’ve invested in producing over 40 off-the-shelf responsive eLearning courses covering compliance and health and safety topics.

If you’re not sure about responsive eLearning, try out free instant online demos of our courses today. No need to fill in any forms, just browse through our courses and if you like what you see, get in touch for access to the full versions.

Competition law exists to prevent monopolies, remove trade barriers, and ensure the marketplace is fair and competitive.

Activities prevented by competition law include:

  • Restrictive agreements between businesses such as pricing agreements, market sharing and dividing up customers
  • Agreements which do not benefit consumers
  • Abuse of dominant market position

Breaching this legislation can lead to fines of up to 10% of worldwide revenue, imprisonment of individuals for up to 5 years, and debarring of company directors for up to 15 years.

Many common business activities carry a risk of competition law being breached inadvertently, such as planning marketing, pricing or distribution strategies, joint ventures, or participation in trade associations.

Our Competition Law eLearning course is designed to provide employees with an overall understanding of competition law and the knowledge to know when situations should be referred to the legal team.

The course is built with the Adapt Framework to be fully responsive and display elegantly on mobiles, tablets and personal computers, so employees can access it whenever the need arises, offering an effective mitigation of the risk of breaching competition law.

Hot on the heels of the General Data Protection Regulation’s approval last week, an agreement has been reached between the EU and the US for transatlantic data flow.

The EU-US Privacy Shield will replace Safe Harbour, the law which allowed the transfer of data from the EU to the US until it was ruled invalid last October for failing to protect EU citizens’ privacy rights.

A decision on the new framework will be welcomed by US titans including Google, Apple and Microsoft, who bank on data from the EU – but what’s going to change, and what impact will it have on your business?

The major changes made by the EU-US Privacy Shield include:

  • US companies will be obligated to comply with specific rules related to protecting EU citizens’ personal data
  • Safeguards and clear limitations designed to prevent mass general surveillance of EU citizens by the US government
  • A specially created US ombudsperson to handle EU citizens with concerns over their data privacy

The proposed changes would ease the pressure on EU businesses which rely on cloud-based services in the US such as HR, CRM and marketing platforms, which are difficult to balance with data protection compliance.

In its current form, Privacy Shield may ultimately amount to business as usual for many companies. It is, after all, designed to enable rather than prevent the transfer of data.

However, these developments do highlight the requirement for businesses to be aware and in control of where their data is stored and the compliance of third parties – a matter of increasing importance given the General Data Protection Regulation’s requirement for transparency.

Notably, the proposed EU-US Privacy Shield has hardly been universally welcomed, and assurances from the US government around mass surveillance have been questioned, with the 2013 NSA scandal that prompted changing legislation still fresh in many peoples’ minds.

It remains to be seen how this growing scepticism and increased concern over personal privacy can be balanced with the economic benefits of the data economy, and it’s likely that data protection legislation will continue to evolve in trying to find that balance.

Whatever changes are made to data protection legislation, VinciWorks clients can rest assured that our compliance eLearning will be kept up to date in line with any legal requirements that may arise.

Contact us today to learn about how we can help you deliver data protection training that’s always up to date with current legislation.