Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Behind the 8-Ball (Again)!

There was an interesting article in one of the trade magazines I was researching that brought up a good point.* A reader had posed a question about the best way to archive reports and still retain the ability to print these reports years from now.  Good question!

This same issue becomes very important with the archaic financial systems that we have today.  Until the use of “Buckets” and the automatic deletion of detail information are changed, reports need to be generated while the data is still present and somehow preserved electronically.  It’s impractical to keep these reports on paper for any extended period of time, as it usually requires special archival paper and ink, plus a great deal of storage space. 

You need to be thinking of the best way to store reports electronically in a format that would still be supported for at least 10 years from now or longer.  The author of the column discussed that Text File Format (“txt”) has been around for over 20 years, but its available fonts and formatting are extremely limited.  Rich Text (“rtf”) was discussed and discarded because of larger file sizes and frequent changes to format structure that require conversion in order to be printed.

One format that surfaced for consideration was Adobe’s Portable Document Format (“pdf”).  It has become the de facto standard for Government forms, and because Government is not noted for changing standards very often, the article surmised that “pdf” files would be around (and usable) for several more decades.

So, my question to you is: “Is your antiquated financial system able to produce/convert reports to Adobe’s Portable Document Format?” If not, you’re really behind the 8-ball!  Get with it!

* Acknowledgement to: 

Breen, Christopher. “Mac 911,” MACWORLD, January 2008, p.102-104.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Identity Theft: Ripe for the Picking!

The scariest scenario that we are presented with today is the amount of private information that we are required to maintain on our employees.  When you gather all of the information that government bureaucracies (especially the Feds) require, and then add insurance companies and the court systems to the mix, there isn’t much left that is truly private about the employee or his/hers spouse and children.

All this data is maintained in the Payroll/Human Resources database.  This can be risky!  How secure is this information?  How well do you trust your Payroll and H/R staff?  I’m sure that you verified the security of the software application and have split the areas of responsibility between different individuals, so that one person doesn’t do everything.  Right?  You’ve also verified that the Payroll and Human Resource departments are locked every time the staff is not there.  Right?  Can an outsider get to this information?  Here are a couple of additional items you might have over-looked:

• Do you allow them to maintain any of this information on a Laptop? 
• Do they have a CD burner on their workstation? 
• What about USB Memory Sticks and are the USB ports active? 
• Can they Email a file to an outside source? 
• Do you allow them to “work from home?”
• What access does the janitorial staff have to these areas?

All of the above are potential security risks.  Remember, most company theft comes from within!  Identity theft is a very real problem today, and millions of dollars are being spent trying to prevent it.  But, sometimes we tend overlook the obvious.