Why Electronic Ear Muffs Are Essential?

Loud noise has a detrimental effect on an individual’s auditory health, though this fact is often overlooked by many. Heavy noise backgrounds can affect an individual’s hearing capacity and also lead to other physical weaknesses such as nausea and acute headache. Therefore, when you are present in a high noise area, such as a amidst noisy factory work, roadworks and demolition it is essential to use appropriate hearing protection devices as a safety aid. It has been researched and proved that any continuous noise that exceed the mark of 70 Db can result in permanent hearing loss.


Keeping all these aspects in mind hearing loss prevention has gained prominence worldwide both in the industrial and personal sphere. There have been several instanced where high noise from go-downs and construction sites have resulted in permanent hearing and brain hemorrhage amongst the workers. Situations like this needs to be handled with extreme care and adequate treatment as it might be beyond cure.


Therefore, the appropriated way to curb down these adverse effects of high noise is to resort to innovative ear hearing protection devices. This includes usage of advanced electronic earmuffs and earplugs that helps a worker to carry on work in a loud noise area without his auditory health being affected by it.  These devices have advanced features that enhances the speech quality by reducing the excessive and unnecessary noise.


Top notch service providers today have introduced high-end electronic ear muffs, ear plugs and headphones. These smart and unique range of noise protection devices provides a clear two-way communication and other essential benefits. Some of these features include:


 
  • A two-way Radio Interface

  • Enables communication in environments up to 105 dB (A)

  • Binaural Capability which makes it possible to hear the speech direction and other sounds

  • Wireless Bluetooth connection to cellular phones

  • Security against all types of noise, namely, Continuous, Impact, Intermittent,

  • Facilitates in a face to face communication, up to 97 dB(A)

  • You can safely hear your surroundings whilst also hearing speech

  • 12+ hours continuous talk time

  • Helps to communicate short range distances Ear Muff to Ear Muff, up to 50 meters

  • There are simple buttons for tactile adjustment without having to look or remove earmuffs

  • 12mth Warranty

  • MP3 Interface

  • Industrial ruggedized

  • Long-lasting adaptable headband

  • Extra soft ear cushions that provide comfort for a long time

 

Of the many professional hazards that are prevalent, occupational hearing loss is known to be an acute one owing to its side effects. The best way that enterprises can combat this is by investing in innovative hearing protection devices that offers a comprehensive high noise communication solution.


 

Also read more on -  ear plug, hearing protection 

 

Ensure End-to-End Information Security with Advanced Threat Management

Threat management is “an approach to network security that integrates a number of different approaches, designed to thwart threats before they actually enter the system.” 

 

Compared to before, today effective threat management is highly essential because enterprises face threats from external agents, internal employees, business partners, activist groups to name a few, who resort to methods like hacking, malware incorporation, physical attacks, social tactics, privilege misuse and so on, to get hold of highly confidential and sensitive business data. The data, which includes personal staff details, client lists, salaries, bank account details, marketing details and sales information, can jeopardize any enterprise’s hard-earned reputation and goodwill if it falls into wrong hands.

 

The 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report provides a clear picture of the current state of affairs. As per the report, the number of compromised records in 2011 was 174 million. The following are some of the data breach statistics taken from the DBIR report.

        98% of the data breach incidents stemmed from external agents

        58% of all data theft tied to activist groups

        81% of the data breach incidents involved hacking while 69% utilized malware incorporation

        79% of victims were targets of opportunity

        85% of breaches took weeks or more to discover

        92% of incidents were discovered by a third party

        97% of breaches were avoidable through simple or intermediate controls

        96% of victims subject to PCI DSS had not achieved compliance

        96% of attacks were not highly difficult

 

From the above statistics, you can easily make out that the cyber criminals are evolving rapidly with increased sophistication of attack, as 96% of attacks were not highly difficult.

 

Hence, enterprises must put in place effective threat management solution to defend themselves against today's ever-present and pervasive cyber-threats. Contrary to popular belief, firewalls that prevent unauthorized intrusions into private networks, and virus scanners and protection suites that monitor, filter, quarantine, and prevent virus attacks are not enough on their own to protect information. Instead, enterprises require a set of proper procedures and systems to counter threat to information effectively. 

 

Enterprises can easily achieve this with advanced threat management solutions that come integrated with Security as well as Governance, Risk and Compliance solutions.

 

Thus, investing in a complete end-to-end information security solution that provides better visibility into threats and risks from multiple sources is necessary for enterprises looking to protect its sensitive data.

 

Also read more on - IT Compliance, HIPAA and HITECH

 

Address Threat Management - No Ifs and Buts

Statistics prove beyond doubt that cyber criminals are after the sensitive and confidential information of the enterprises. Hence, in normal circumstances, the greatest concern of any enterprise today should be information security. However, the shocking fact is that majority of enterprises do not monitor security and the reason for such an attitude is the high Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), poor risk management, lack of automation and adequate integrated solutions. Though for enterprises these may be genuine reasons for not monitoring security, but these are not acceptable when taking into account the big picture. Therefore, there can be no ifs and buts when it comes to ensuring threat management.

Information is the lifeblood of any enterprise, its greatest asset, as it is this information that drives businesses. The success of any business enterprise largely depends on the confidentiality, reliability, availability, and security of information. Every enterprise generates and mines huge chunks of data every minute. This data carries potential risks and therefore it should be handled very carefully. According to McAfee’s Unsecured Economies Report, businesses lose more than $1 trillion in intellectual property, due to data theft and cybercrime annually on a global basis. This is one of the reasons why the federal government formulated several regulations such as HIPAA, HITECH, PCI DSS, ISO, COBIT, FISMA, SOX, BASEL II and so on and adopted a carrot and stick approach to ensure that the enterprises comply with these regulations. Therefore, when enterprises fail to monitor security, they are actually taking enormous long-term risks at the expense of any short-term cost advantages.

Depending on point solutions such as firewalls, antivirus, spam filters and so on are not enough to counter new age security threats. Enterprises need a unified security monitoring solution that allows their users to access applications and information where and when it is required, without exposing the organization to security threats, data loss and compliance risks. With automated enterprise compliance management software, enterprises get end-to-end integration of security monitoring with IT governance risk and compliance (IT GRC).

Hence, instead of taking a laid-back attitude and then lamenting about the loss, enterprises need to proactively deploy effective information security and compliance management solutions and be relaxed.

Also read more on - vulnerability management, vendor management

Excellent Supply Base Management Solutions

In any in a dynamic market, effective supply chain management is of top priority. With its significance to business growth being emphasized time and again, it is the one that can give companies the much-needed edge over their competitors. Supply chain management includes the planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the goal of building a competitive infrastructure, synchronizing supply with demand.

 

Until recently, most companies were keen on improving their supply chain performance, but always encountered difficulties due to issues associated with the supply base. Playing a crucial role in the enterprise, supply base management is a systematic, holistic, strategic approach to planning, developing, and managing the supplier base. It not only helps enhances global supply chain liquidity and helps maintain a record but also allows the identification of new suppliers, evaluation of existing suppliers, improvement  supplier performance and supplier portfolio.

 

The importance of robust supply base management under demand uncertainty requires an understanding of the benefits associated with a contractor having an optimal number of suppliers. Effective supply base management measures and develops supplier performance in a proactive way by mixing and collaborating tools, thereby reducing the risk and while also ensuring that the suppliers are in the best in class.

 

There are a lot of criteria used by leading companies to screen suppliers for business. Companies reduce their supplier bases to reduce costs and forge closer relationships with the remaining preferred suppliers to share cost savings, who usually increase business volumes in exchange for lower unit pricing. This results in lower total costs and inventories, improved working capital and better products. The key benefit is a reduction in a contractor's total cost of supply base management. However, few supplier-optimizing models incorporate the perspectives of both demand uncertainty and supply base management costs.

 

The supply base management solution that you choose must be able to abreast of market changes and respond rapidly with new options and offer full access to inventory levels. It must also provide

 

·   Material Planning and Procurement

·   Domestic and Offshore Sourcing

·   Turnkey and Consigned Materials

·   Supplier Qualification and Certification

·   Vendor Managed Inventory

·   Ken Ban and other models

·   Full Materials Lifecycle Management

 

Most companies evaluate suppliers through certification, audits and other reviews prior to entering into partnerships or any business arrangements. Look for a scalable and flexible supply chain solutions can help decrease costs and can make certain that insufficient resources are used to their most advantageous limit.


Learn more about : Supply Chain Consulting & Fulfillment Solutions

 

FBAR Reporting And Its Impliacations

Simply put, the FBAR is a report that needs to be filed in addition your individual tax return. Every individual is required to file the FBAR if they have been a U.S resident or citizen and have experienced an aggregate balance exceeding $10,000 in all their financial and overseas bank accounts. The final date for filing FBAR is June 30th.


Crucial Aspects of FBAR


FBAR though seems to be a simple foreign bank account filing procedure, has its own critical aspects that need to be kept in mind. They are discussed below.


* FBAR is not the same as your individual tax return


FBAR is filed in addition to an individual’s income tax return and needs to be filed in TD F 90-22.1 even of an individual has filed Form 8938, 'Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets' with the tax return.


* The FBAR due date is on June 30th


June 30th is the final date of FBAR submission. As opposed to a tax return that needs to be completed on April 15th, the FBAR needs to be received by the Treasury by the 30th of June and there is no extension to it. Hence, if you have completed your FBAR by June 29th it is important for you to send it through an overnight mail for it to reach by June 30th. In case, you complete the same by June 30th, then it becomes late.


* FBAR reporting is a must, even if there is zero income


In case you are holding a foreign financial account, you will have a reporting obligation even if the account has no taxable income


* A single day’s high balance is taken into consideration


The FBAR needs to be filed by the U.S residents, citizens and green card holders even if the aggregate of their financial and bank accounts surpassed $10,000 at any time during a year. This indicates that of the aggregate income of the account holder surpassed $10,000 even on a single day in a given year, then the person needs to file FBAR and disclose individual accounts.


Finally, individual who fail to report FBAR are faced with penalties. For the ones who fail to file FBAR they can be subject to harsh penalties that might go up to an amount of USD 100,000, 50 percent of the account balance, or a criminal penalty that may go up to USD 250,000. This apart, there is also a chance of 5 years imprisonment. At the same time, the IRS can even track down 6 years and review an individual’s tax return to trade the balances indicating FBAR. In  order to avoid these penalties, it is best to seek guidance from an expert tax planning agency and file your FBAR accordingly.


Read More About: IRS Amnesty, Overseas voluntary disclosure, Entity Formation

Address Corporate Investigation Concerns with e-Discovery Solutions

Many legal firms, corporations and organizations often witness a variety of situations that needs effective fact-finding and investigations. For instance, an anonymous caller makes call a company and puts forward any false allegations. A government body acts as a entity seeking sales and business records. Hence, whatever triggers an investigation, it is crucial that the investigation is conducted in an efficient and competent manner.

Therefore, a thoughtful and well organized approach to corporate investigations are a necessity. Severe outcomes beyond “losing the legal case” might occur if the investigation is not managed properly, comprising accidental waiver of the spoliation sanctions, attorney client privilege, obstruction of justice convictions, adverse jury instructions and damage to the corporate brand and image.

In the recent past, there has been numerous situations where government and corporate investigators have encountered massive pressures when conducting a digital investigation. The challenge lies in the fact that as the amount of the investigations keeps on increasing, the amount of data that are stored electronically also requires constant analysis. The deadlines also become tight and increases the urgency to detect all the relevant evidence and precisely determine what was known to whom and when. Furthermore, controlling the expense has been one of the primary concerns of corporate investigation that has been limiting firms to employ more people to help with the work load.

Hence, in order to address the concerns of corporate investigations it is essential to join hands with a leading solution provider. Today eminent companies excelling in electronic discovery (eDiscovery) solutions have come up corporate investigation solutions that help investigators to sort the documents smartly and check who has viewed the data instantly. The investigators are able to alleviate the manual review of information and manage more investigations within a shorter time. Other benefits that the solution offers includes the following:

  • Helps in resolving corporate investigations accurately and quickly
  • Helps to easily gather the suspect data from important data sources
  • Quickly recognizes all the participants that are involved in a corporate investigation
  • Delivers all the evidence to the internal sponsors online fast
  • Helps in eradicating the manual review of several false positives

Leading solution providers of corporate investigations help legal firms and corporations to collate data easily from crucial data sources for instance file shares, email servers, cloud applications for important investigative purposes. Furthermore, the investigators make use of transparent search options, topic analytics, discussion threads, people analytics to find any relevant data quickly.

Also read more on - electronic data discovery, e-disclosure

Implications of an eDiscovery Legal Hold Module

In today’s highly advanced electronic world where gradually most organizations are going “paperless” legal holds continue to gain prominence. Simply put, a legal hold can be best defined as the suspension of an enterprise’s document retention and destruction policies for documents that might be important to a lawsuit that has been already filed or for any litigation purpose that is anticipated. The main objective of a legal hold is to make sure that important data is not compromised and that adequate advice is given to the employees for requirements for document preservation. Hence, there is a clear requirement for enterprises and individuals to set up and adhere to a systematized legal hold procedure so that legal pitfalls relating to evidence destruction can be avoided.

Though most individuals associated in the legal field are familiar with the concept of legal hold, there are many who are not aware as to when the obligation is triggered, what is needed to be preserved and who needs to be involved. It has been observed, that there were numerous cases that addressed legal holds that helped to delineate some of the best practices for issuing a legal hold.

Today the top ediscovery solution providers have introduced eDiscovery legal hold modules that enable law firms, corporations and government agencies to manage and automate their legal hold procedures. The module or solution helps to simplify legal hold management by ensuring a repeatable workflow that helps legal teams to cater to the duty to preserve from anticipation to litigation completion. The end users have a seamless application that not only monitors hold notices but also quickly recognizes and collects data on demand. Therefore, as a result advanced legal hold modules helps in reducing the risk of sanctions while offering high level responsibility of defensibility all through the e-discovery life cycle. The main features of the module are:

  • Hold Notices
  • Reminders
  • Escalations
  • Notice Library
  • Mail-Merge
  • Automated Tracking and Reporting
  • Custodian Portal
  • Custodian Survey
  • Survey Response Report
  • Active Directory Integration
  • Custodian Audit Report
  • Distributed, Access-based Architecture


This apart, innovative legal hold solutions results in seamless integration with downstream e-discovery procedures. This is done by delivering a product for the overall e discovery life cycle. Simultaneously, the users can issue legal holds, and then process, collate, review and analyze case data within the same application, making sure a justifiable e-discovery process.

Also read more on - electronic disclosure, litigation support software

Advanced Biometrics Services Provided By CRO’s

Medical Science and technology has been joining hands for a while now to come up with advanced devices and treatment methods. On the similar line, biometrics technology has been present for a long time since the time of a standard finger scanner. This technology has been extremely useful in the healthcare and security and surveillance industry. However, there has been a much of the progress biometrics system in the last decade.

 

The eye sensor controlled wheel chair is perhaps one of the innovative developments that has taken place in this field some time back. To explain in simple terms, this chair is programmed to move automatically in a specific direction with the help of an eyeball movement detection sensor. Though there are numerous medical discoveries that are being made in this vertical, today eminent medical institutions and organizations a are expanding and experimenting with their Biometrics service portfolio.


Biometric Services Provided By Indian CRO's

In the recent past, well known Indian Clinical Research Organization has come up with their specialized Biometrics department and a team of expert professionals that help in clinical trial and other relevant medical studies. All these are conducted within the CRO's bio clinical laboratory and the services offered are used by other medical research, diagnostics, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical companies.


Eminent CRO's sometimes acts dedicated partner for the success of their client's clinical development program. For this their  specialized Biometrics team works towards speeding up the regulatory submission process and minimize timelines by innovative thinking. The Biometrics service portfolio includes the following:-


Database Programming


  •       CRF Design (paper & electronic)

  •       CRF Annotation

  •       Database Programming

  •       Validation Checks

  •       Metadata Repository Management


Data Management


  •       Data Acquisition

  •       Data Reconciliation

  •       Discrepancy Management

  •       Medical Coding (MeDRA & WHODD)

  •       Database Lock

  •       Data Extraction for Reporting


Pharmacokinetic & Pharmacodynamic Studies


  •       Sampling Point Estimation

  •       Technical Document Review

  •       PK/PD Query Resolution

  •       PK/PD Subject Matter Expert

  •       Pharmacokinetic support across study engagement


PK/PD Reporting


  •       SDMS Data Extraction

  •       PK Data Analysis

  •       PK Summary Reporting


Biostatistics


  •       Randomization

  •       Sample size estimation

  •       Trial Design Inputs

  •       Statistical Analysis Plan

  •       Statistical Analysis

  •       Biostatistics Subject Matter Expert


Statistical Reporting


  •       TLF Programming

  •       CDISC Data Mapping (SDTM & Adam)

  •       Clinical Data Repository

  •       Pooled Data Analysis & Reporting

  •       Safety (ADR) Reporting

  •       Patient Profiles & Data Cleaning Reporting


Today Biometrics technology is taking a great leap and making path breaking discoveries and has the capacity to be helpful to people with total paralysis. Furthermore, it is also useful for testing sponsors and medical students. The testing sponsors can secure the benefits of the credentialled program by retaining the integrity of the testing procedure.

Read Also On: bio clinical laboratories, Bioavailability, Clinical Pharmacokinetic

Make Informed Business Decisions with Social Media Analytics Tools

When the business environment became competitive, enterprises realized the importance of ensuring customer satisfaction to retain customers. However, to accommodate customers better, it is necessary to identify trends and their sentiments. Earlier marketers depended on surveys and feedback forms to know customer views and opinions. However, interpreting and analyzing survey results took a lot of time. The advent of social media and social networking sites brought in a wave of opportunities for enterprises to understand customer intent in near real time. Engagement tracking and advanced analytics helped enterprises in making critical business decisions. Thus, social media is highly beneficial for marketers. However, social media has its own share of challenges. Though social media consists of user-generated content, it is messy, data intensive and unstructured. And it is social media analytics that help in unlocking the wealth of information from the vast amount of unstructured data.

 

Today people do everything online i.e., from booking tickets, paying bills, to purchasing goods. However, most people are unaware of the fact that while browsing or doing a particular activity on the Internet, they actually drop pieces of intelligence about their likes and dislikes. As and when they click an item be it looking for a particular product in an online store, sharing links and contents on social networks, participating in any form of discussions or putting comments,  data regarding their online activities is collected by the social analytics tools deployed by most websites. Marketers then interpret and analyze these pieces of intelligence to understand the actual customer intent.

 

In 2011, 1 billion pieces of content were shared on Facebook per day, while the number of Tweets per day topped 95 million. In such a scenario, enterprises cannot ignore the strength of social media and social networking sites in customer acquisition, engagement, and monetization campaigns. However, to make informed business decisions, enterprises need the help of effective social media analytics tools. These tools do brand monitoring and audits to provide insightful information about customer intention.

 

To sum up, all businesses need to focus on social media these days and social media analytics are important tools for any social media campaign or social media users, to measure and increase their effectiveness online.

 

Get Actionable Insights with Social Media Analytics Tools

The popularity of social media has forced companies to be in top gear. Every day hundreds and thousands of customers socialize on social channels and as a part of it exchange opinions, thoughts, and perceptions about different brands, products, and services. This wealth of information, which would have taken months to collect if done through surveys, provides valuable insights for improving business strategy. This necessitated the need of listening to online conversations and using the social data or social intelligence to improve customer satisfaction.

 

As per Forrester, social intelligence is "the management and analysis of customer data from social sources, used to activate and recalibrate marketing or business programs." The process involves monitoring of social media, listening to customer conversations, collecting content, analyzing its importance, and using it to take informed business decisions. Simply put, social intelligence is monitoring the social media to gain insight about customer interests and demands and use that information to optimize marketing strategy. This has led to the growth of a new concept known as social business intelligence or Social BI.

 

Though most marketers today understand the importance of monitoring social media, social media being too fast and too big makes its monitoring a difficult process. Today there are quite a number of social channels where millions of new messages are created every day. That is where social media analytics tools come helpful. It tracks customer actions across the social Web and provides marketers with actionable insights. Actionable insight or rather actionable intelligence is any information that is immediately available to help enterprises understand, improve, and ultimately become more proficient to deal with the situation at hand.

 

Social intelligence is a staple in business life and hence enterprises must invest in right social media analytics tool to get the actionable insights from the chunks of social data that gets piled up. The following are some of the important features that these tools must possess.

 

      Analyze data in real-time from across social, mobile and web platforms

      Modernize the ability to capture broad data, uncover meaningful insights, and close the loop with automated action – all in near real-time

       Track user behaviors in real-time and get immediate feedback on what is working vs. what is not

 

Therefore, tools that go beyond simple metrics and yesterday’s measurements and provide insights as to the events, content and user segments that drive the most revenue are the one to look for.

 

Read more about: Social Gaming Market