Compliance Newsflashes: U.S. Regulators Warn of Bird Flu, and more

Regulators Warn U.S. Institutions to Prep for Bird Flu

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Office of Thrift Supervision together issued an advisory notice to financial institutions urging preparation for the possibility of an outbreak of avian flu.

The notice refers to the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, which stated that the "private sector should play an integral role in preparedness before a pandemic begins, and should be part of the national response." Financial institutions and their service providers supply essential financial services and should consider their preparedness and response strategy for a potential pandemic, said the joint statement. Institutions should take note of their measures in preparedness, communication, surveillance, detection, response and containment.

"Financial institutions with a global presence and those considered critical to the financial system may have greater preparation and response challenges than those of other financial institutions. However, a pandemic event is a potential threat to any financial institution regardless of size and location," said the notice.

Leeward Hedge Funds Chooses Fortiva for E-mail Compliance

Leeward Hedge Funds, a Canadian alternative asset manager with six hedge funds, has selected Fortiva for e-mail archiving to meet compliance requirements, provide data redundancy and inalterability and protection in the case of legal discovery. Security was a primary concern due to the nature of information shared internally and externally via e-mail, but cost as well as quick and simple deployments were also considerations.

Leeward turned to Fortiva's hosted e-mail archiving solution, which provided the firm with an out-of-the-box, integrated approach to e-mail archiving. Fortiva features search and retrieval capabilities coupled with encryption technology that Leeward expects will keep its data secure.

Being a small organization with a limited IT budget, Leeward had to be vigilant in finding a solution to fit its needs as well as its wallet, explained Robert Lendvai, managing director of Leeward, in a release. "We wanted to avoid making significant upfront capital investments in storage and servers," he said. "With Fortiva, we avoided those big purchases, we know upfront what we're paying, and as we grow, our costs will increase incrementally with our needs."

Actimize Teams With IBM to Deliver Online Fraud Prevention

Actimize Inc., a provider of fraud prevention and compliance solutions, will work with IBM to address banks' growing need to combat online fraud. The two companies plan to deliver Online Fraud Prevention solutions for banks, brokerages and other financial services institutions.

Actimize Online Fraud Prevention 2.0 combines smart, multi-factor authentication and highly accurate financial fraud detection technology to enable an increasingly accurate, operationally efficient fraud prevention capability for banks, brokerages, and other financial services institutions. The Actimize Online Fraud Prevention solution helps financial services institutions meet FFIEC guidelines by using a combination of multi-factor authentication, adaptive profiles and an analytical fraud risk engine to deliver comprehensive and accurate online fraud detection and prevention capabilities.

"Actimize has leveraged a strong foundation in fraud detection and surveillance to create a solution designed to monitor and manage the increasing volume coming through the online channel at banks and brokerages," said Bob Molloy, leader of IBM's banking fraud practice, in a release. "Financial services institutions need to protect themselves against more than yesterday's fraud schemes. Actimize provides a solution that can be extended to address new fraud schemes as they are identified."

In addition to multi-factor authentication and the analytical fraud detection engine, the Actimize Online Fraud solution features real-time self-learning, case management and alert management, and auditing and reporting capabilities. The solution also incorporates proven detection methodologies and models tailored to the online channel.