The Cybersecurity Threat: Compliance and the Role of Whistleblowers

In today’s technologically dependent world, concerns about cybersecurity, data breaches, and compromised personal information infiltrate the news almost daily. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently emerged as a regulator that is keenly focused on cybersecurity, specifically with respect to encouraging disclosures in this arena by regulated entities. Although the SEC has issued non-binding “guidance” to help companies navigate their reporting obligations in this sector, the agency lacks binding cybersecurity disclosure regulations as they pertain generally to public companies. Given that the SEC has already relied on such guidance in threatening enforcement actions, reporting companies are increasingly pressured for compliance in this arena. This Article addresses the importance of establishing effective internal reporting channels and other internal compliance mechanisms in meeting the SEC’s expectations and highlights the role of “cybersecurity whistleblowers,” specifically those reporting internally, in building the type of improved corporate culture necessary to discover and remediate cybersecurity risks. Cybersecurity whistleblowers, like all whistleblowers, commonly experience retaliation for their efforts. Despite the SEC’s commitment to providing whistleblowers retaliation protections through statutes like the Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank Acts, the absence of binding cybersecurity regulations translates into a direct problem for cybersecurity whistleblowers, because their reports are likely to fall outside the scope of “protected activity” enumerated under these statutes. This Article discusses this gap in protections in light of the SEC’s heightened cybersecurity focus, the feasibility of SEC adoption of binding cybersecurity disclosure regulations, and the broad contributions of whistleblowers to compliance systems generally

L∞-norm and energy quantization for the planar Lane–Emden problem with large exponent

For any smooth bounded domain (Formula presented.), we consider positive solutions to (Formula presented.)which satisfy the uniform energy bound (Formula presented.)for (Formula presented.). We prove convergence to (Formula presented.) as (Formula presented.) of the (Formula presented.)-norm of any solution. We further deduce quantization of the energy to multiples of (Formula presented.), thus completing the analysis performed in De Marchis et al. (J Fixed Point Theory Appl 19:889–916, 2017)

The Regulation of Lawyers in Compliance

The field of compliance has exploded in interest, attention, and growth over recent years. It has emerged as a popular career path for those trained in the law, giving rise to an influx of job opportunities for new law school graduates and seasoned attorneys alike. Additionally, compliance has tightened the essential interplay between business and law. Numerous compliance officers hold J.D. degrees and many also serve simultaneously as both an organization’s chief compliance officer and general counsel, thereby muddying the lines between which service constitutes the “practice of law,” requiring adherence to professional rules of responsibility, or non-legal work, where such rules would typically not be applicable. This Article will analyze these important distinctions, as well as the lack of regulatory guidance for lawyers in the compliance function, by viewing the discussion largely through the lens of an often-unnoticed ethical rule—the American Bar Association’s Model Rule 5.7—which requires lawyers to comply with the full range of professional conduct rules even when they are providing a non-legal “law-related service.” This Article will argue that the compliance function is a near-precise fit for this rule and will propose reform to the current regulatory model to ensure that the interests of lawyers, as well as the recipients of their services, are protected to the most fruitful extent possible in today’s compliance-driven era. While placing this examination in the context of current scholarly debate that challenges traditional “zealous advocate” models of attorney representation, this Article will claim that, without adequate and clear regulatory reform to establish guidelines for behavior, lawyers in compliance functions risk heightened personal liability due to potential ethical violations from their respective jurisdictions of admission

Conflicted Counselors: Retaliation Protections for Attorney-Whistleblowers in an Inconsistent Regulatory Regime

Attorneys, especially in-house counsel, are subject to retaliation by employers in much the same way as traditional whistleblowers, often experiencing retaliation and loss of livelihood for reporting instances of wrongdoing involving their clients. Although attorney-whistleblowing undoubtedly invokes ethical concerns, attorneys who appear and practice before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are required by federal law to act as internal whistleblowers under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and report evidence of material violations of the law within the organizations that they represent. An attorney\u27s failure to comply with these obligations will result in SEC-imposed civil penalties and disciplinary action

The Cybersecurity Threat: Compliance and the Role of Whistleblowers

In today’s technologically dependent world, concerns about cybersecurity, data breaches, and compromised personal information infiltrate the news almost daily. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently emerged as a regulator that is keenly focused on cybersecurity, specifically with respect to encouraging disclosures in this arena by regulated entities. Although the SEC has issued non-binding “guidance” to help companies navigate their reporting obligations in this sector, the agency lacks binding cybersecurity disclosure regulations as they pertain generally to public companies. Given that the SEC has already relied on such guidance in threatening enforcement actions, reporting companies are increasingly pressured for compliance in this arena. This Article addresses the importance of establishing effective internal reporting channels and other internal compliance mechanisms in meeting the SEC’s expectations and highlights the role of “cybersecurity whistleblowers,” specifically those reporting internally, in building the type of improved corporate culture necessary to discover and remediate cybersecurity risks. Cybersecurity whistleblowers, like all whistleblowers, commonly experience retaliation for their efforts. Despite the SEC’s commitment to providing whistleblowers retaliation protections through statutes like the Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank Acts, the absence of binding cybersecurity regulations translates into a direct problem for cybersecurity whistleblowers, because their reports are likely to fall outside the scope of “protected activity” enumerated under these statutes. This Article discusses this gap in protections in light of the SEC’s heightened cybersecurity focus, the feasibility of SEC adoption of binding cybersecurity disclosure regulations, and the broad contributions of whistleblowers to compliance systems generally

Compliance Officers: Personal Liability, Protections, and Posture

This Symposium Article will explore the evolving nature of the regulatory and enforcement landscape as it pertains to compliance officers, specifically regarding their susceptibility to personal liability. It will examine the posture of compliance officers in three contexts: i) as a possible target for enforcement activity by regulators; ii) as a quasi-professional subject to a current regime of “non-regulation”; and iii) as an employee in need of ample whistleblower protections, each of which create implications for a compliance officer’s risk of personal liability and protections as a constituent of the organization monitored. After considering the current guidance surrounding enforcement activity against chief compliance officers by regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), this Article will examine the lack of professional regulation of compliance officers and the various ways in which this poses liability risks, especially in instances where a compliance officer’s work overlaps with that of other regulated professions. Finally, this Article will analyze whistleblowing law developments interpreting the Dodd-Frank Act, particularly through the lens of how such developments affect compliance officers as potential employee-whistleblowers navigating issues of workplace culture and pressures from management

Fault diagnosis by multisensor data: A data-driven approach based on spectral clustering and pairwise constraints

This paper deals with clustering based on feature selection of multisensor data in high-dimensional space. Spectral clustering algorithms are efficient tools in signal processing for grouping datasets sampled by multisensor systems for fault diagnosis. The effectiveness of spectral clustering stems from constructing an embedding space based on an affinity matrix. This matrix shows the pairwise similarity of the data points. Clustering is then obtained by determining the spectral decomposition of the Laplacian graph. In the manufacturing field, clustering is an essential strategy for fault diagnosis. In this study, an enhanced spectral clustering approach is presented, which is augmented with pairwise constraints, and that results in efficient identification of fault scenarios. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is described using a real case study about a diesel injection control system for fault detection

Evaluation of deep learning with long short-term memory networks for time series forecasting in supply chain management

Performance analysis and forecasting the evolution of complex systems are two challenging tasks in manufacturing. Time series data from complex systems capture the dynamic behaviors of the underlying processes. However, non-linear and non-stationary dynamics pose a major challenge for accurate forecasting. To overcome statistical complexities through analyzing time series, we approach the problem with deep learning methods. In this paper, we mainly focus on the long short-term memory (LSTM) networks for demand forecasts in supply chain management, where the future demand for a certain product is the basis for the respective replenishment systems. This study contributes to the literature by conducting experiments on real data to investigate the potential of using LSTM networks for final customer demand forecasting, and hence for increasing the overall value generated by a supply chain. Both forward LSTM and bidirectional LSTM (forward-backward) for short-and long-term demand prediction in supply chain management are considered in this study