In our current litigation-happy society, the Chief Risk Officer, or CRO, has become a vitally important executive for corporations, especially those reliant on technology. The controversies over hacking of the 2016 Presidential elections, compromises of email account information belonging to a number of banks, as well as corporations such as Yahoo!, Target, and others all demonstrate the liability risk to any company of cyber crime, ID theft, and a host of other technology-related issues. As such, the CRO has to oversee policies to mitigate those risks, such as data security, ID security, and email security, and also devise proper safeguards against corporate espionage, especially when it comes to intellectual property protection.
And, of course...there are the old standby risks, such as SEC, FTC, and other regulatory body compliance, public relations risks for potential slander or libel accusations, insurance, workplace environment, and other types of conventional liability.
While the CRO is often asked to go above and beyond to prevent risks to the corporation, they cannot be held responsible for rank stupidity. So the next time an executive uses “password” for his or her password, don’t blame the CTO.
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Finance: How does a board of directors f...27 Views
Finance a la Shmoop! How does a board of directors function?
All right, well structurally, the Board of Directors has really one function, after
it is elected by a vote, of the common shareholders, of the company. The board of
recruits, then hires the CEO and that's not necessarily easy. Because, most
of the good CEOs, you actually want, are already ensconced in high-paying jobs, [man being offered money]
from which they have to be bought away. Picking the right CEO, is the big
roulette wheel bet, the board makes. Is the CEO good, or bad, or ugly and yeah the
CEO can be all three. After being hired the CEO then hires everyone else, more or
less. In a public company, the board divides into committees, to advise and
oversee many of the little processes. There's audit committee people and
nomination and government committee people and Compensation Committee people.
In large companies there are also, often subcommittees, that focus on narrow
things, like technology, or politics and lobbying and, or the environment. You know, if [oil drill with man and duck]
you work for a big polluter. Well another big element of board value-add, revolves
around, strategy. Are we the high cost, high value company, or are we the low cost,
Walmart desk provider? That is, are we Pirates of the Caribbean, or are we La La
Land? What other strategic issues are we fighting? How do we get into China and [world map]
Russia and get out of Somalia? So yeah, that's strategy. How does the
board cover its primary obligations, in providing a fiduciary duty, to the
shareholders, who elected them? Is the board governing fairly and equitably?
Yeah, how do they do that? Well they just basically pay attention, right? Are
company policies racist, or gender biased, or ageist?
Which is illegal everywhere, except Silicon Valley in Hollywood. Are all the [director and actress]
right controls inspected, like audit, hiring, firing, policies and our
companies casual Fridays, have they gotten to just to casual? Is that a board item?
Yah, alright, next meeting. So yeah, that's the gist, hire the CEO, form
committees and of course they're also in charge of bagel Thursdays. [man in panda suit, bagels falling from sky]
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