County native who worked for Perzel charged in probe

A Lancaster County native who once worked as a top aide to Rep. John Perzel is among 10 people charged in the wide-ranging probe of corruption at the state Legislature.
John R. Zimmerman, a 1965 Garden Spot High School graduate is accused of obstructing agents from the Attorney General's office as they sought evidence from a Capitol storage room in February 2008.
Attorney General Tom Corbett, speaking at a news conference Thursday, expressed frustration that Perzel aides allegedly tried to cover up an illegal scheme in which more than $10 million in taxpayer money was spent to help win political campaigns.
"You're interfering with justice; you're interfering with people finding out what truly happened," Corbett said.
Zimmerman, 61, formerly of New Holland, could not immediately be reached for comment. The Hummelstown resident did not return an e-mail message or telephone messages at his home or office Friday.
Zimmerman now works as the open records officer for the House Republican Caucus. Corbett said the obstruction charges against him stem from subpoenas issues by a grand jury investigating the alleged misuse of public resources and employees for campaign purposes.
The subpoenas, served on the House Republican Caucus on Feb. 26, 2008, sought "any and all evidence of campaign work" and listed a number of employees who may have performed the campaign work.
Two days later, a legislative employee told investigators that boxes containing campaign materials were being removed from a basement assigned to Perzel in the Capitol complex.
The next day, the grand jury issued a subpoena ordering the immediate production of any and all documents or materials removed from the storage room on Feb. 26 or during the prior 60 days. It also ordered the disclosure of any and all materials removed from the room.
On the evening of Feb. 29, an agent and a prosecutor from the attorney general's Public Corruption Unit went to the Capitol complex to inspect numerous boxes that reportedly had been removed from the storage room.
They were escorted by Capitol security officers, attorneys for the Republican Caucus and Perzel staffers Zimmerman and Paul Towhey.
When questions that evening, Zimmerman and Towhey denied any knowledge of boxes containing campaign material being removed from the storage room, Corbett said.
A subsequent investigation found that the boxes containing evidence of campaign work performed by public employees had in fact been removed from the storage room on or before Feb. 26, Corbett said Thursday.
Testimony of caucus messengers corroborated by Capitol security video footage confirmed that two cartloads of boxes were transferred from the storage room to Perzel's office suite in the main Capitol building, he said.
Corbett said the grand jury found that prior to Feb. 29 Perzel's secretary had twice gone to the storage room and examined the materials and told Towhey, who was then Perzel's chief of staff, of the existence of campaign materials.
Towhey, Corbett said, ordered her to have the materials transferred to Perzel's office suite and then to move the campaign materials and evidence of campaign work out of Perzel's suite to the House Republican Campaign Committee offices, located across the street from the Capitol complex.
The grand jury examined Towhey's phone records for the week of Feb. 25 during the times pertinent to the alleged hiding of the campaign materials. Corbett said they indicated that he was in frequent telephone contact with Perzel and Zimmerman during that time.
According to newspaper records, Zimmerman is a retired captain with the U.S. Marine Band who helped plan presidential inaugurals for Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and supervised inauguration ceremonies for former Gov. Tom Ridge.
Zimmerman is charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution and obstructing administration of law or other governmental function.

Question

My company collects credit applications from customers. The form requires them to give us lots of financial information. Once we're finished with the application, we're careful to throw them away. Is that sufficient?

NO. Have a policy in place to ensure that sensitive paperwork is unreadable before you throw it away. Burn it, shred it, or pulverize it to make sure identity thieves can't steal it from your trash.

What Are Records?

What are records?

Records are the evidence of what the organization does. They capture its business activities and transactions, such as contract negotiations, business correspondence, personnel files, and financial statements, just to name a few.

Records come in many formats:
- physical paper in our files
- electronic messages
- content on the website, as well as documents residing on PDA's, flash drives, desktops, servers
- information captured on various databases

When there's a lawsuit, all of these, including copies that individuals have retained or deleted, may be identified as a discoverable.

Protecting Personal Information: Five Steps for Business

1. Take Stock: Know what personal information you have in your files and on your computer. Understand how personal information moves into, through, or out of your business and who has access - or could have access to it.

2. Scale Down: Keep only what you need for business. That old business practice of holding on to every scrap of paper is "so 20th century." These days, if you don't have a legitimate business reason to have sensitive information in your files or on your computer, don't keep it.

3. Lock It: Protect the information you keep. Be cognizant of physical security, electronic security, employee training, and the practices of your contractors and affiliates.

4. Pitch It: Properly dispose of what you no longer need. Make sure papers containing personal information are shredded, burned, or pulverized so they can't be reconstructed by an identity thief.

5. Plan Ahead: Draft a plan to respond to security incidents. Designate a senior member of your team to create an action plan before a breach happens.

What Are The Components of a Corporate RIM (Records Information Management) Program

A comprehensive corporate program for systematic management of recorded information includes the following components:

• Written policy directives that define corporate records, emphasize their value as corporate assets, affirm corporate ownership of recorded information associated with a company's business operations, and articulate the purpose and scope RIM initiatives
• Standard operating procedures for storage, retrieval, dissemination, protection, preservation, and destruction of recorded information associated with all business operations
• Systematically developed retention guidelines that specify how long records are to be kept and fully address a company's legal, fiscal, regulatory, and administrative requirements, as determined through consultation and collaboration with corporate legal, tax and finance departments as well as knowledgeable personnel in other business units
• Procedures for the timely, secure destruction of corporate records when their prescribed retention periods elapse, including provisions for suspending the destruction of records if warranted by litigation
• Design and implementation of manual and computerized methods for convenient retrieval and dissemination of recorded information when needed
• Cost-effective arrangements for storing inactive records that need to be retained for legal, fiscal, regulatory, or administrative reasons
• Policies and procedures for identifying and protecting records deemed essential for continuity of mission-critical business operations
• Training plans and programs for company employees regarding the above
  

How Does Record Information Management Save Money?

1. By ensuring compliance with recordkeeping requirements contained in legal statues and government regulations, thereby avoiding costly fines or other penalties, including criminal penalties to which executives may be subject.

2. By minimizing storage requirements (office space, equipment, and supplies) for recorded information.

3. By reducing the time and effort required to reconstruct mission-critical information in the event of a disaster, theft, or loss.

4. By reducing the labor requirements for organization, retrieval, and dissemination of recorded information.

5. By reducing the risks and burdens of pre-trial discovery in civil litigation and government investigations.

Tips to reduce the risk of identity theft (Part 1)

1. Shred financial documents.
2. Never clink on links in unsolicited emails.
3. Do not use obvious passwords.
4. Do not give out personal information.
5. Protect your social insurance number.
6. Keep your personal information in a secure place.
7. Be alert to bills that do not arrive when they should.
8. Be proactive about unexpected credit cards or account statements.
9. Be alert for credit being denied unexpectedly.
10. Respond immediately to calls or letters about purchases you never made.

Ten Ways You Can Make Your Data Backups More Secure

Data backups are an essential element of good storage security, but they are often the source of security woes. In fact, a significant percentage of security breaches can be attributed to the mismanagement and mishandling of data backups. Simply skimming through the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse's Chronology of Data Breaches shows that adequate data backup controls are lacking.

1. Ensure your security policies include backup related systems within their scope.

2. Include your data backup systems in your disaster recovery and incident response plans.

3. Assign backup software access rights only to those who have a business need to be involved in the backup process.

4. Store your backups offsite or at least in another building.

5. However you choose to store your backups (tape, NAS, or external drives) be sure to control access to the room/car/house in which the backups are stored.

6. Use a fireproof and media-rated safe. Many people store their backups in a "fireproof" safe, but typically one that's only rated for paper storage.

7. Find out the security measures that your offsite storage, data centre and courier services are taking to ensure that your backups remain in safe hands.

8. Password-protect your backups at a minimum.

9. Encrypt your backups in your hardware and software support it.

10. You've heard it a thousand times but it deserves repeating: your backup is only as good as what's on the backup media.

How Thieves Get Your Identity

1. Stealing: Taking your purse, wallet, mail, pre-approved credit card, new checks, personnel files from work, or tax information.

2. Changing your address: Completing a change of address form to get your mail and personal statements.

3. Phishing: Pretending to be a financial institution and sending scam alerts to get your personal information.

4. Dumpster diving: Going through your trash.

5. Skimming: Storing your credit card number in a special storage device when processing your card.

Eight Top Rules For Good Record Management

1. Perform daily business transactions more efficiently.
2. Waste less employee time with faster retrieval.
3. Protect against accidental or premature record destruction.
4. Prevent costly paper accumulation with systematic record disposal.
5. Secure vital records and information in case of business disruption or disaster.
6. Reclaim office space.
7. Access documents that demonstrate regulatory and legislative compliance.
8. Build confidence and pride from knowing you have done an important job well.

Business After Five & Member Expo - Tuesday, September 1st

BUSINESS AFTER FIVE & MEMBER EXPO!
Hosted by: Club Roma

125 Vansickle Rd, St. Catharines

ADMISSION IS FREE!
Come see what Chamber Members have to offer!
For a list of exhibitors, please click here.

The 2009 BA5 Series is Sponsored by:

What Can You Find On eBay?

Kessler International, a computer forensics firm, said it recently purchased 100 hard drives from online auction site eBay. Here's what they found on 40 of them:

Personal /confidential data 36%
E-mails 21%
Photos 13%
Corporate documents 11%
Web browsing histories 11%
DNS server data 4%
Miscellaneous data 4%

How To Protect Your Business From Identity Theft

1. Conduct an audit of your organization's client and administrative records and get a solid summary of the personal data that your organization gathers and files. Stipulate the usage of such information by your organization.

2. Implement programs to ensure documents retained in storage are secure. This may require off-site storage.

3. Ensure that your records are stored in a secure site that is also safe-guarded from potential harm by fires, floods, and other disasters.

4. Cut office space costs by using a off-site records storage service that is secure, and makes it convenient to source documents when required.

5. Provide your staff with training regarding information practices and security.

6. Implement a records retention program to ensure that personal data that is no longer required gets destroyed in a secure method.

Are you prepared for a disaster?

The recent hurricanes and the current economic climate are timely reminders that businesses need to be prepared for the worst and have comprehensive back-up plans in place - before they actually need them.
Without a plan, you could end up losing weeks of valuable income. Although the Niagara area rarely sees hurricanes, disasters do come in other forms such as fires, floods, ice/snow storms, server failure, etc. How long would it take your business to have all the information it needs at hand to continue the day to day economics that keep you in business? Would your information be readily available?
Would your staff, your customers, and your suppliers be able to contact you and resume business within a short time period?

Some aspects of a disaster preparedness plan include:

Take stock of your assets.
Consider what would happen if your financial data, contracts and documents, both hard copy and digital, were destroyed.

Play "what if".
Consider the full range of manmade and natural disasters that could happen in your area and how it would affect personnel, records, and operations.

Put your recovery plan in place.
Schedule regular practice sessions. Test, test, retest.

Prepare and maintain an inventory listing of your computer systems, telephone systems and employee home phone numbers.
It is imperative that all firms regularly back-up computer data and store it offsite. Check your back-up files regularly to be sure you have adequate information to resume operations.