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Legal Outsourcing: Is the Bloom Already off the Rose? – Law Blog – WSJ

December 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Things are tough all over in the legal world these days, with even those pesky offshore outsourcing outfits likely to see a profitability squeeze, according to this 2012 outlook issued Friday from Fronterion, a group that tracks such matters for law firms.

One problem the report identified: wages are rising in developing countries such as India (per this projection from Aon Hewitt) but remain relatively soft here in the U.S. and the U.K. That could hamper profitability for the legal process outsource (LPO) industry as a whole—something unlikely to bring tears to the eyes of job-hunting young  lawyers stateside.

So what’s the problem? The price gap has narrowed between offshore legal processing groups—which charge between $25-$35 an hour for basic legal services such as document review—and domestic services offered by contract review attorneys in places such as the Midwest, which might charge $25 to $30 per hour. (Here Fronterion cites our own Vanessa O’Connell’s piece this June on lawyer temps).

The glut of new law school graduates in 2012 will likely put offshore legal services outfits at a further disadvantage, the report found.  “Most legal professionals, all things being equal, prefer to keep legal work domestically,” it said.  In response, some offshore vendors are opening up in places such as Chicago and Washington D.C., said Fronterion managing Principal Michael Bell.

via Legal Outsourcing: Is the Bloom Already off the Rose? – Law Blog – WSJ.

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WikiLeaks Cables Detail Apple’s Battle With Piracy in China | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

August 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In China, as iPhones and iPads grow in popularity, Apple has had to battle against the piracy of its products. Though it’s been a problem for some time, Apple was slow to take action against offenders, recently leaked documents from WikiLeaks have revealed.

A September 2008 cable from the Beijing embassy says Apple formed a team in March 2008 to curb piracy in China. But CNN says three years later, the piracy of consumer electronics isn’t a pressing concern to the Chinese government.

There’s been some evidence of this reported lately, and it extends to more than just Apple gadgets. In July, an American blogger living in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming uncovered five electronics retailers posing as official Apple Stores. The publicity and a request from Apple’s Shanghai office prompted Kunming city officials to investigate, and it said the stores were forced to remove all Apple trademarks and all allegedly complied. However, pictures posted online show that the stores had not changed much; many just opted for different name.

The WikiLeaks cables detail Apple’s early plans for taking on counterfeiters, which included first taking on street vendors and retailers, then going after factories, from which parts for Apple products are often swiped  to build fake gadgets. In the last prong of the battle plan, Apple would reportedly target online retailers.

The cable reflects Apple’s typical clandestine modus operandi. “Low-profile raids are a good option for Apple, a company that wants to stay away from too much publicity surrounding this issue,” the cable said.

Not surprisingly, Apple reps did not respond to questions on the matter.

via WikiLeaks Cables Detail Apple’s Battle With Piracy in China | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

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Four companies rethink databases for the cloud – Page 1 – Information Architecture

June 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Several companies are developing new database technologies to solve what they see as the shortcomings of traditional, relational database management systems in a cloud environment. Four of them described the approaches they’re taking during a panel at the GigaOm Structure conference on Thursday.

The basic problem they’re trying to solve is the difficulty of scaling today’s RDBMS systems across potentially massive clusters of commodity x86 servers, and doing so in a way that’s “elastic,” so that an organization can scale its infrastructure up and down as demand requires.

“The essential problem, as I see it, is that existing relational database management systems just flat-out don’t scale,” said Jim Starkey, a former senior architect at MySQL and one of the original developers of relational databases.

Starkey is founder and CTO of NimbusDB, which is trying to address those problems with a “radical restart” of relational database technology. Its software has “nothing in common with pre-existing systems,” according to Starkey, except that developers can still use the standard SQL query language.

NimbusDB aims to provide database software that can scale simply by “plugging in” new hardware, and that allows a large number of databases to be managed “automatically” in a distributed environment, he said. Developers should be able to start small, developing an application on a local machine, and then transfer their database to a public cloud without having to take it offline, he said.

via Four companies rethink databases for the cloud – Page 1 – Information Architecture.

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Judge Nixes California Consumer-Friendly Law For Toyota Cases – Law Blog – WSJ

June 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

You win some, you lose some.

That’s been the outcome so far of a hearing earlier this week for Toyota in the legal saga of the Japanese automaker’s accelerating vehicles.

Hundreds of people have sued Toyota in hopes of holding the company responsible for vehicles they say accelerated out of control, in some cases causing fatal accidents and also sharply reducing the resale value of Toyota vehicles.

The company blames the problem on issues that it says were fixed by worldwide recalls.The plaintiffs say a mystery defect caused the problem. A government study has blamed the problem on driver error.

U.S. District Court Judge James Selna has denied Toyota’s motion to consider the government study the subject of “judicial notice.” He said the study is subject to reasonable dispute, a boost for the plaintiffs in that regard. This story has more on the legal issues behind the ruling.

But, and perhaps more importantly, the judge also ruled that Toyota owners can’t pursue their claims under California law, consumer-friendly statutes that give plaintiffs a better shot than most states at recovering damages, according to this Bloomberg story.

The story says about 70 percent of the economic-loss cases were filed outside the state. Using California’s law would permit claims to go forward that would be barred by laws in other states, Selna said. Bloomberg quotes Michael I. Krauss, a George Mason University law school professor: “The damage they’re claiming is not that they’re driving a dangerous car, but that people will think they’re driving a dangerous car,” he said. “The overwhelming majority of states don’t allow recovery if the only damage is economic damage.”

via Judge Nixes California Consumer-Friendly Law For Toyota Cases – Law Blog – WSJ.

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Google Fixes Android Public Wi-Fi Security Flaw

May 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Flaw allowed hackers to imitiate public Wi-Fi hot spots that the phone has accessed before to capture an authentication token and access user data, and Google responds with Android version 2.3.4 to address the problem.

A few days ago researchers at Ulm University in Germany found that it was “quite easy” for hackers to intercept data from Google’s photo-sharing, calendar and contacts applications, as well as potentially other Google services including Gmail, and already Google says it has “fixed” the problem.

The flaw affected Android version’s 2.3.3 and older, which comprise 99% of all Android phones currently in use.

via Google Fixes Android Public Wi-Fi Security Flaw.

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Define, educate, prevent: Avoiding data loss is easier than you may think – Computerworld

May 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Most organizations believe they aren’t in danger of losing data, but as recent news demonstrates, the threat is real and no organization is immune.

In a recent CDW report on threat prevention, data loss emerged as the No. 1 cybersecurity challenge faced by medium and large businesses. Fully 37% of IT security decision makers surveyed for the report cited data loss as “the next big security threat” their organizations face, naming it a bigger threat than viruses, worms, malicious attacks and botnets.

SECURITY THREAT: Too many data loss prevention tools become shelfware, says analyst

Just envisioning the potential consequences of data loss is enough to keep executives up at night. Data loss of any kind can damage an organization in countless ways. From a simple hard-cost standpoint (forensics, notification, credit protection, etc.), data loss is expensive, costing an estimated average of $200 per record breached, or an average of $6.8 million per total breach, according to a recent Ponemon Institute survey.

The true cost, however, is much harder to measure when considering factors such as lost competitive advantage, loss of revenue, litigation and company reputation.

The first step to prevent data loss is to accept that data loss is a real problem. Truly solving the problem can be boiled down to three simple concepts: define/baseline, educate and enforce.

via Define, educate, prevent: Avoiding data loss is easier than you may think – Computerworld.

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MetaVis Offers Free Office 365 Migrator for SharePoint

May 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Migration Between SharePoint, Office 365

The new free version of MetaVis Migrator for Office 365 is currently available until the end of the month, or when the one-GB limit is reached, but that shouldn’t be a problem as it is easy to sort out additional license options — which you have to purchase.

No matter, as the one-GB limit should give you some idea of how and how well it works, after which you can decide then as to whether it will work for you.

There also appears to be few limitations as to what it will work with it, too, as it provides content migration to SharePoint (Office 365) abilities for SharePoint 2010, 2007, 2003 and BPOS (S & D).

 

While migration is a small word, it has big implications, all of which the free migrator can handle, including the migration of metadata such as created and modified properties to help manage and govern your SharePoint environment.

With it, enterprises can take the kitchen sink across to Office 365, including sites, libraries and other content, as well as offering a central location to maintain SharePoint taxonomies and systemwide awareness of taxonomy structures.

Migrating to Office 365

In fact, MetaVis itself has been playing this down a little bit by promoting the SharePoint abilities alone, because the new Office 365 migrator also works with everything else in the new suite. This includes:

File Systems

Outlook

Exchange Public Folders

Cloud to Cloud

via MetaVis Offers Free Office 365 Migrator for SharePoint.

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TalkingPoint: Addressing FCPA issues in emerging market deals

April 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

W: Can you explain why Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (FCPA) issues might be a cause for concern when acquiring emerging market companies? Is corruption and bribery still a pervasive problem in the BRIC countries?

Walker: Different corporate and compliance cultures, decentralised and inconsistent contracting procedures, and antiquated or opaque accounting practices are just some of the reasons that US companies wishing to acquire an emerging market company should be concerned about FCPA issues. BRIC countries are of particular interest because of the notable growth in their economies, although much of this growth has been in the industries where fraud and bribery can be found. Indeed, Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index suggests that corruption and bribery still are perceived to be pervasive problems, revealing that out of 178 countries surveyed, with 178 being the country ranked most corrupt, Brazil ranked 69th, Russia 154th, India 87th, and China 78th.

DiBianco: Based on various factors, emerging markets continue to have an elevated perceived risk of corruption. Accordingly, enhanced diligence on corruption risks is frequently appropriate when considering a transaction in such markets. Regulators in the US and Europe have increased levels of sophistication regarding the nature of perceived risks in different geographies. For example, recent settlements identify risks in Brazil that are focused on customs clearance and duties. In India and China, past investigations have focused on payments to secure licences and permits or to ensure contract renewals with government entities. In Russia, investigations and settlements have examined payments to intermediary entities as a conduit to government officials or principals in state owned enterprises.

Pomerantz: In many emerging markets, including the BRIC countries, there is a confluence of circumstances which makes corruption risk greater. Industries, such as healthcare, oil & gas, and textiles, among others, which are privately owned in the United States and in Western Europe, are owned or controlled by the state. In addition, many of the emerging market countries have a history of controlling governments, with little transparency, which fostered a culture of corruption. Finally, the fault in this does not all lay on the side of the emerging market. There is a great deal of money to be made in emerging market economies and, as a result, companies seeking to do business with the government have a strong motivation to pay bribes. With regard to BRIC countries, bribery is clearly a problem. One need only look at enforcement actions over the past year to ascertain that corruption is alive and well in each of the BRIC countries.

FW: To your knowledge, has there been a rise in aborted or renegotiated deals due to FCPA problems?

Pomerantz: FCPA risk is increasingly a focus of the pre-deal due diligence process, as it should be. There is no doubt that deals have been both terminated or, more often, renegotiated as a result of an FCPA issue discovered during this process. Our specific experience is more in line with renegotiated deals and deferrals of transactions than outright termination.

Walker: Approximately 63 percent of the companies surveyed in the recent Deloitte LLP ‘Look Before You Leap’ survey identified corruption issues as the cause for renegotiating or aborting merger deals in the past three years. These survey results are consistent with the daunting financial penalties incurred recently by companies whose subsidiaries engaged in corrupt practices, including the $5m in civil and criminal fines Tyson Foods agreed to pay this February because of payments by a Mexican subsidiary to government officials, and the combined $137m in fines and disgorgement Alcatel-Lucent S.A. agreed to pay in December 2010 relating to gifts and payments paid by subsidiaries to foreign officials in several countries. Lack of knowledge that the acquired company’s subsidiaries paid bribes to conduct business will not shield the acquirer from successor liability, and therefore renegotiating or aborting a deal upon the discovery of FCPA problems often is warranted.

via TalkingPoint: Addressing FCPA issues in emerging market deals.

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Samsung investigating report of keylogger on its laptops – Computerworld

March 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Samsung Electronics is investigating allegations that some models of its R Series laptops contain keylogging software that could be used to record anything typed on the laptop computers.

Mohamed Hassan said he became aware of the issue last month, when he purchased a Samsung R525 at a Best Buy in Toronto. The laptop had keylogging software on it, which he deleted immediately. Two weeks later, Hassan decided he wanted a more powerful machine, so he returned the R525 and bought a new model — the R540, at a local FutureShop. To his surprise, the keylogger was there too, Hassan said in an interview Wednesday.

“These were new systems. They weren’t used for anything,” he said. “I could give them the benefit of the doubt on the first one. But then when I got a second model, a different model from a different store, that tells me that Samsung is aware of the problem.”

Hassan, an IT consultant based in Toronto, said that Samsung tech support told him: “We just put it there to find out how the computer is being used.”

Samsung spokesman Jason Redmond said that his company is looking into Hassan’s allegations. “We take these claims very, very seriously,” he said. He had not previously heard of the problem, or heard of de Willebois Consulting, the company that makes the StarLogger software that Hassan said he found on the laptop. “We have no understanding of a relationship with this company and we have no prior knowledge of this software being on our laptops,” he said.

via Samsung investigating report of keylogger on its laptops – Computerworld.

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Google: China hacked Gmail

March 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Once again, Google says China has tampered with Gmail in an attempt to squash Chinese political dissidents.

Google says the Chinese government hacked its Gmail service in an attempt to quell a social uprising in the country, reports the Guardian. The tampering has caused an array of problems for Chinese Gmail users.

For the past month, Chinese customers and advertisers have informed Google of problems related to sending messages. Marking messages, unread messages, and other functions have also reportedly caused issues.

The problem, says Google, isn’t with Gmail — it’s with the government of China, which designed an attack on the email system to look like the problem was with Gmail itself.

“Relating to Google there is no issue on our side,” a Google spokesman told the Guardian. “We have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail.”

via Google: China hacked Gmail.

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