Tuesday, Apr 8, 2008
Mortgage and credit cards are an integral part of our life, as both of these are important sources from which we can derive financial help as and when we need. The best mortgage rates are those which offer very low rates of interest and are comparatively less pinching than the other fixed rate loans.
When you would go out shopping for the best mortgage rate you will find it quite frustrating at times if you are not at all aware of the term. Interest rates are believed to be one of the most important things which you would be considering when you shop for the best mortgage rates in town. The first and foremost thing that you need to do is gather information from the most valuable resource. You must in fact, gather information from those who have gained quite an experience in this field. They are the ones who will be able to guide you better on this. Surf the net for the best sites from there and then zero in on a few of the lenders in your choice list. There are a lot of questions which you need to keep in mind while shopping for the best mortgage rates. You must also be aware that there are a lot of fees which are involved with that of the mortgage rates. These fees in the due course of time can prove to be quite expensive and in the long run your lower rate of interest does not remain to be the best deal. First of all, ask lenders what is the rate for the product in which you share an interest and following that ask them what will be the APR of the same?
Credit card offers are such nowadays that anybody would make a plunge and grab the offers. It is very difficult for some to understand that there are some aspects related to the interest rate of a credit card which is very tough to conceive. A careful note should be taken into deep consideration. A single credit card might have many Annual Percentage Rates attached to it. Best credit card offers are generally known to offer best deals in terms of grace period and the number of days within which you will make your bill payment without paying any sort of extra charges. Hard pinching are ones which charge a very high rate of interest when you make cash advances as well as balance transfers on an immediate basis. Then again, if you wish to make use of your credit card solely for these purposes then you must also seek to find the lowest APRs which are in relation with these kinds of balances. You must also be aware of the method that the credit card company uses in the calculation of interest charges. So before you set to get the credit card with best offers, just see to it that you have gathered enough information on the interest rate and the value returns of the credit card in question.
Posted in Finance
Saturday, Apr 5, 2008
A new site has been created which lists the top 10 income opportunities available from the internet today. The opportunities listed on this site if implemented properly can result in the opportunity to make money online.
All the examples listed on the site are work at home friendly and are split into various popular categories, such as affiliate marketing and betting systems.
Every opportunity has a ranked listing on the site, as mentioned the site focuses on the top 10 examples and the listings are regularly updated as required, the internet is an ever growing place and the rankings continue to get updated as new products are released and as popular products continue to gain popularity.
One thing about this site, is that it is totally impartial, a lot of sites on the market are out there to ‘make a quick buck’ however you can see from this site that it is not a marketing gimmick, it is an excellent resource for people looking to make money online or perhaps start a home business.
On the front page of the site there is also some scam information, if you simply enter your personal details then you will gain access to scams which seem to plauge the internet, this resource by itself makes the site more useful then the vast majority.
The site also focuses on the very best opportunities in the most profitable categories and you could soon be changing from your job in an office, to working from a study in your office, take the first step and realise your dream and work from home.
Posted in Finance
Saturday, Mar 22, 2008
Keeping records of past audits can help streamline things in terms of finding the right people and documenting how to get access to evidence, but it’s only the first step. If you want to ratchet your responsiveness to the next level and further streamline, consider adding a defined process to the mix in addition to just recording who a particular piece of evidence came from.
Have you seen that movie “Groundhog Day?” You probably have, but on the off chance that you missed it, it’s the movie where Bill Murray’s character (who’s kind of a jerk) wakes up every morning to find that it’s the same day — Groundhog Day — over and over again. He’s forced to relive the same day repeatedly, and as he does so, he slowly learns enough about life to transform into a pretty likable guy.
It’s a great movie, but I’m not actually calling your attention to it to recommend watching it (which I do). Instead, I’m bringing it up because it makes a great metaphor for IT audit. Hear me out before you scoff.
You see, in the movie, Bill Murray’s character wakes up every day and “remembers” what’s about to happen because he’s lived that day time and time again. However, nobody else he encounters does — to everyone else around him, the events that happen during the day are totally new and unexpected. This is almost exactly what’s happening in most firms during an IT audit.
Here’s what I mean: When it comes to gathering the evidence required for an audit — no matter how many times we’ve worked together in the past to gather almost the exact same evidence — it’s still a challenge to find and get access to the required material. As part of the work that I do, I conduct a number of audits of various firms — large firms, small firms and every shape and size in between. I do PCI (payment card industry) audits, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) audits, general controls audit — you name it, I audit it. One thing I’ve noticed is that all organizations — no matter what size or in what vertical market — have very similar challenges locating the information that auditors need.
Same Ol’, Same Ol’
It’s easiest to see what I mean by looking at an example like PCI. As part of the PCI compliance validation process, some firms (like large retailers) are required to have a QSA (qualified security assessor) come in and validate their level of compliance to the PCI Data Security Standard. As part of the process of validating compliance, the QSA requests evidence in the form of firewall rules, log files, system configuration documentation and so on. The published audit procedures for PCI are pretty specific, so the QSA will ask for (more or less) the same documentation and evidence each and every time they come in (usually annually). If a firm was assessed in the past, some QSA — maybe even the same one — has already spent time working with that firm to gather the required documentation.
But most of the time, the work required to gather evidence is the same. Firewall logs? Ask around to find the right person to send the request to, request the documents, explain to them what we’re doing and why, work with them to establish an appropriate and representative sample to include, and so on. System logs? Find out who owns that, initiate the request, find out when their schedule allows them to retrieve the information for you, work with them regarding what type of log you’re looking for, etc.
It’s never easy, and depending on the size of the firm, each evidence request can represent days if not weeks of effort — weeks of effort, by the way, that come right out of the pocket of the firm being assessed in terms of impact to their resources as well as the overall cost of the assessment.
Moving Too Slow? Help Drive
The frustrating part of this is that, in theory, the cost of doing an audit should go down over time as firms become more and more familiar with the process. But, as we know, theory is often different from practice. In practice, while firms may streamline their internal processes to help lower overall compliance costs, the cost of the assessment tends to stay about the same year over year. If the goal of the organization is to save money (and what firm doesn’t have this goal?), they can help themselves quite a bit by looking at the costs of the audit/assessment with the same cost-cutting eye they look at everything else.
One way that firms can do this is by helping to drive the audit. Keep in mind that you are the one ultimately paying the bill for the work the auditor does — as such, you are well within your rights to keep records of who the auditor talks to and what processes were used to actually get their hands on the right artifacts and documents. Ideally, keeping a record of these things can and will help the process go smoother the next time around.
Most auditors will have a project liaison (”guide”) or other internal personnel that he or she is working with to help schedule meetings, help find evidence and help navigate the internal organization. When it comes to allocating a point person to keep a running record of an audit for streamlining purposes, this internal guide is a good choice. Correspondingly, there is also a benefit to be had from using the same guide for the same type of audit year over year, since they will have a familiarity with the process from prior experience as well as their own written records.
If you prefer not to keep your own record of the events of an audit, keep in mind also that a good auditor or assessor will keep detailed records in their work papers. They’ll keep records of who they talked to, when, what was discussed and how a particular piece of evidence was acquired. However, unless you specifically ask for these records, most auditors won’t usually volunteer to provide it back to the organization. If you ask, however, many auditors will provide these records to you for you to use for planning purposes next time around.
It’s More than Just Record Keeping
Keeping records of past audits can help streamline things in terms of finding the right people and documenting how to get access to evidence, but it’s only the first step. Even if you do have a record of who is the “right person,” keep in mind that organizations change and people change jobs. The person who supplied you with the evidence last year might not be the person who supplies it to you this year. Additionally, the systems that you collected evidence from last year might have been replaced with new systems, responsibility for them might have shifted and so on. The absolute worst time to find out about these things is once the audit already started — at that point, the auditor needs to go through the same process they would if they didn’t have any data in the first place.
If you want to ratchet your responsiveness to the next level and further streamline, consider adding a defined process to the mix in addition to just recording who a particular piece of evidence came from. For example, if you establish an audit response plan that incorporates instructions on how to get access to the various pieces of technical evidence that you will need to supply (for example, a procedure for how to get access to firewall logs), you can insure against changes in personnel or organization stopping you cold during an actual audit.
Ideally, the ultimate goal of any organization is to get through a required audit as painlessly as possible. However, unless you take an active role in using your experience during the audit to help learn from and prepare for next time, each audit will be about as painful as the ones before it. By using a combination of record keeping and process definition, you can help streamline the process and take measure to lower the overall cost of compliance.
Posted in Finance
Saturday, Mar 22, 2008
While Wells Fargo’s vSafe online safe-deposit box service may fare well with existing Wells Fargo customers, it will compete with some well-established — and cheaper — online storage services, such as Mozy, which costs $4.95 a month for unlimited storage, and Microsoft’s SkyDrive, which offers 5 gigabytes of storage for free.
If you’re security minded, you might keep your important paper documents in a safe-deposit box at your local bank. If those documents are digital, you can keep them in a virtual safe-deposit box so that they’re not only secure, but also available from anywhere.
Wells Fargo Bank will soon offer its retail banking customers a personal online safe-deposit box that it calls “a natural extension” of the company’s 156-year security legacy.
The Wells Fargo vSafe service is the first online storage solution offered by a financial services company, according to Katherine McGee, senior vice president of Wells Fargo’s Internet Services Group.
Like other online storage solutions, vSafe offers accessibility from any computer with an Internet connection. Documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, and even media files can be stored. McGee told us that the bank did extensive research with its consumer and small-business customers and honed the product to match their needs. The offering is integrated with the Wells Fargo Online Banking service so that customers can have account statements automatically added each month
“It’s secure online storage with an easy-to-use interface built for customers based on their needs,” she said. The company offers a set of boilerplate folders to help customers get started quickly; there’s also an option to create unique folders and subfolders. McGee said that online forms simplify the procedure of consolidating data from a plethora of sticky notes into one safe place (such as a PDF document). Users can add folders and upload files from any computer.
Security a Priority
With sensitive documents being uploaded and stored, security is naturally a priority to customers. According to McGee, vSafe “offers secure storage, and it’s available through the Wells Fargo online banking session, so we leverage all the security we use for online banking,” as well as additional measures that encrypt information as it crosses the Internet and while it’s stored. An RSA SecurID token that adds a layer of authentication is an available option for a one-time fee of $25.
Help will be available via a toll-free customer service number as well as through online help systems. Customer service representatives will not be able to see any stored customer information even as they assist customers, McGee said.
The Price of Convenience
McGee says there will be different plans available, depending on the amount of storage required. For $4.95 per month, you can buy 1 gigabyte of storage — the equivalent of about 10,000 documents, she said. For 3 gigabytes customers will pay $9.95 a month, and $14.95 will buy you 6 gigabytes.
The vSafe service will be rolled out this summer and should be available to all customers by the end of this year.
While the offering may fare well with existing Wells Fargo customers, it will compete with some well-established — and cheaper — services such as Mozy, which offers 2 gigabytes for free and charges $4.95 a month for unlimited storage, as well as Microsoft ’s SkyDrive, which offers 5 gigabytes for free.
Posted in Finance