Understanding GLBA Compliance

When an individual or an enterprise employs the services, or uses the products of any financial institution, they are protected by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act or GLBA. This act is applicable to all financial institutions and has been enforced to protect customers' confidential information. The FTC or Federal Trade Commission presides over all institutions that provide loans, advice related to finance and investments or insurance. All loan brokers, debt collectors, entities who prepare tax returns, banks, real estate settlement service providers, non-bank mortgage lenders and real estate appraisers come under the purview of this act.

As per the GLBA compliance financial institutions have to implement security standards to protect the customer's information from unforeseen threats. The act mainly provides cover for collecting, disclosing and protecting customer's personal information. Thus it is extremely necessary for all financial institutions to implement a compliance management procedure that takes care of the security policies.

Importance of GLBA

It is not a simple job to handle a financial institution. Simply providing attractive offers is not enough to acquire and retain customers. It is also extremely important to safeguard customer information and ensure their security. Financial issues are highly sensitive and critical. Therefore organizations in this sector have stringent security measures to adopt. Effective compliance management software can be helpful in ensuring GLBA compliance to a large extent. Here are the features common to most GLBA compliance solutions in the market:

GLBA Compliance Management Software Features

1. Cloud based program using on-premise deployment procedures to help reduce large investments. With easily available cloud based services the returns are very high.

2. They reduce the time typically wasted on individual compliance processes, and therefore reduce management costs.

3. A centralized repository procedures handle the data efficiently by storing documents, evidences and processes in one place. Accessibility to this data is possible from any location and at any time.

4. With the help of centralized dashboards, institutions can have clear visibility of the compliance status that is being enforced across multiple units located globally.

5. They provide a web based secure interface for easy accessibility, management of workflow, inventory control and document management.

6. They conduct intranet scanning of information and integrate all information related to compliance from several sources and match them against compliance signatures.

7. They handle all activities that are relevant to compliance and compliance compliance regulation optimization by sending reminders.

8. They monitor and track movements to detect any loopholes and immediately set remediation processes in action.

9.They provide an exhaustive audit trail.

GLBA compliance has been beneficial to both customers and financial institutions. While the mandatory regulations of GLBA ensure a high degree of IT security, making financial institutions safer for customers, by ensuring compliance with GLBA financial institutions can win people's trust and attract more prospects.

Make Money and Love It

Someone once told me that play is work that we enjoy. I began to wonder why people do not play at work. There is a stigma that surrounds the word work. It is a necessary evil; it forces you to work for your weekend - the time you enjoy; it is just to be endured. But I do not believe it. Work can be fun, sure there will still be tough days, but there is nothing wrong with looking forward to going to work on Monday. Many things factor into whether you will enjoy your work: the people, the environment, and the work itself. These factors can keep you from enjoying work, but when used to your benefit, they can also help you find and retain enjoyment at your work.

What you excel in doing will affect if you enjoy the work you do. This is because individuals find satisfaction in accomplishes. I am a great goal-setter, planner and executor. I worked for a company where I severely got to use any of those skills. Instead, my time was focused on encouraging people to do things that did not want to do, which required skills in reading people, customizing messages to each individual person, and being a cheerleader; none of which are my strengths. Knowing this, each day I would try to improve how I talked to people and to influence them to smile at customers, and each day when my goals were not reached I went home feeling like a failure. Being in an environment where you can use your strengths allows you to go home with a sense of accomplishment. Spending your day toiling in areas where you struggle, leaves you feeling empty.

Many books have been written that will help you discover your strengths and weaknesses. Some go so deep as to help you find your undering motivators. These are fantastic resources which I recommend. For now, however, I want to focus on a quick analysis.

Think of your best day at work where you felt a sense of accomplishment. What happened? What activities were you doing? Did you land a tough deal? Did you overt a crisis? Did you create a successful plan? What attributes did that day's activities have? By boiling it down you will find the basics of what you enjoy doing.

What do people say you are good at? Does your boss ever refer co-workers to you for advice because you do something well? Do people seek you out as the expert in certain activities? What do you get recognized for? These are all great indicators of your strengths.

What do you find yourself doing when you do not have to? Are there activities at work or home you find yourself participating in even though you do not have (are not required) to? I am constantly creating plans and setting milestones for projects I do outside of life. My friend will sit down and pound out a book in a day. My husband will design and build things, not because it needs to be done, but because he enjoys the process. Figure out what you enjoy that can be translated to work.

Just knowing what you are good at is not enough, it is important to understand what you do not do well. What do you dread doing at work? Do you avoid paperwork like it is the plague? Do you make as few client calls as possible? What activities do you do that never seem to measure up to the status quo? My first internship I asked to cold call potential investors to see if they would be interested in speaking with a broker. After four hours of cold calling I went home crying. Each time I made a call that day, I would feel apprehension: afraid they would ask a question I would not have the answer to; afraid they would be rude to me; afraid I would get yelled at. Talking to strangers and trying to sell a product was not my strength.

After you know what you do not do well, there are two things to do: either manage those weaknesses or avoid situations that require them. To manage a weakness you need to leakage other skills to help you do that activity to the (level of the) status quo. Do not expect to ever make your weaknesses a strength. That same time you could use practicing and improving your current strengths and yield a much higher return on investment. Look at the activities you do not do well and see if there are ways for you to do that activity a little differently and still achieve it. Some things you can avoid absolutely. Is there someone at work whose strengths compliment your weaknesses? Maybe you can share the work. Do you have the authority to hire someone to take on the work you do not do well so you can focus on your strengths? In my business I am good at the organizational management piece where my partner is better at the sales piece (remember my cold-calling experience). I focus on directing the vision of our organization while he brings in the business. Would this work for you?

By understanding your strengths versus your weaknesses, you can begin shaping your job to fit you (or finding a different career). You will find you have much more satisfaction after spending your day being successful versus struggling through a workday by trying to rely on weaknesses. And go ahead, play at work.

Choosing a Web Designer

Many small business owners struggle with deciding on how to make the right choice for designing their website. They search the web for help with their website and find that the choice is harder than they thought. Currently there are (literally) millions of websites who claim to be professional web designers. However, one must be careful in choosing the right person or people in which to trust their company image. In this article, I will attempt to categorize web designers into manageable groups, and teach the reader the difference between the types.

Web designers fall into four general categories: freelance amateur, freelance professional, Web Design Company, Web Development Firm.

Freelance Amateur

The majority of web designers you will come across, especially searching the Internet, are freelancers. That is, individuals who do web design but are not employed by a web design company. Some are self-employed professionals but most of these freelancers are amateur-hobbyist types. They find a copy of FrontPage™ came with their MS Office™ Suite. They discovered how fun it could be to make web pages so they started telling their friends that they could "design" web pages.

The "pros" of using an amateur is that they are very cheap. The "cons" are too numerous to mention, but I'll point out a few. They have no training; they have little knowledge of what makes a good website work; they do not understand HTML code or CSS but only FrontPage point and click; they do not understand general design and layout concepts and they have little real experience. The biggest reason they should be avoided for the serious businessperson, is that their work looks amateurish, which makes your company look amateurish. Who wants that?

Freelance Professional

A professional is often defined by simply being paid. People think that if you are paid for something, then you are professional. Maybe that's true in the Olympics, but for the business services world, you are not a professional until you are established and respected as one by your clients and peers. Freelancer professional web designers are a giant leap from the amateur in that they have established a portfolio of respectable work. They have some sort of qualified training and experience and they have credentials that can be verified by contacting references. They have a good reputation with their clients and other professionals. In general, a good freelance professional web designer can be good person to have doing your site. But they are hard to distinguish from the amateur when you are just searching the web.

The upside is, if you find a good one they are significantly cheaper than a web design company. But that is usually the only upside. If the budget limits you, then a freelancer will do for a small project. But anything seriously important should be left to a professional company.

Some downsides to using a freelance pro are that they are usually part-time, meaning they are limited in how much time they can devote to your project. They are also limited in what they can do for you. Most freelancers are specialists in one area and generalists in everything else. Some have no skills in anything except their one specialty and often you will have to find others to fill roles. In addition, freelancers are not always cheap although many of them are aspiring to create their own company; some are highly sought after and charge $100 per hour or more for their work. My advice here is, if you have that much to spend, go with a company that has a team of professionals to get the job done in a timelier manner.

Web Design Company

This is the next step beyond a freelance professional. The web design company offers the "whole show". They provide real project management and have pulled together a team of web experts to get a wider range of jobs done. A company can provide a much higher level of expertise in web design, programming, content development and more.

Such a company is usually very small, yet large enough to handle larger scale projects. Compared to the most highly qualified freelancer, a company has a diversity of talent and collaboration working for them. The end-result is usually a much higher quality product.

The only real drawbacks are on the one hand, the web design company is more expensive than a freelancer because there are many more people on the job. However, you get what you pay for rings true. On the other hand, for very large projects or long term development, web design companies may be too small and usually do not have the human recourses to accommodate that $500,000 contract. In the end, for serious business people looking for quality and professionalism and who can't afford the big firm, this is the way to go.

Web Development Firm

As the title implies, a web development firm is like any traditional company. They have a staff of office workers, they have owners and officers, and they have a team of talented professionals who are paid a good salary for their work. They often have a sales force that do inside and outside sales. The quality of their work goes without saying, as you could not be so well-established by doing shoddy work. These firms offer teams of very talented professionals who work on your project and get the job done in a timely and extremely efficient manner. Additionally, they usually cover all aspects of website development including marketing and advertising. They may have teams of specialists that they can deploy to your location and work in-house under a temporary contract. The possibilities are endless.

If price is not an issue and the highest quality work is necessary, then this is who you want to do the job. For smaller budget businesses, a quote from an established web development firm might knock you off your chair, but know that companies who have project requirements that reach hundreds of thousands of dollars know the score. Thus, the only real drawback for a web development firm is that they are usually very expensive. Then again, cost is relative and bigger companies like to work with bigger companies.

In summary, the choice is yours. I would recommend for the serious businessperson, that you budget a decent amount of dollars to properly design and execute a professional website. I would avoid the amateur and outsource to an individual or company with good experience and reasonable rates to create my web presence. If money were no object, then I would only deal with established firms and pay the big bucks to get the job done right and done well.