2014

Russia's State Duma and Federation Council have adopted amendments to Russia 's personal data protection act, which require that personal data of all Russians is stored inside the country. This data localization obligation will have a major impact on global social networking companies but also other companies that transmit electronic communications over the Internet. The Bill is waiting for the signature of Vladimir Putin and may become effective on September 1, 2016. It means that any foreign company using the personal data of Russian nationals outside Russia must locate its servers in Russian Federation territory. Otherwise, access to this type of information resource will be blocked.

Switzerland's biggest bank UBS said it had expanded the number of employees that are subject to internal background checks to around 15% of its workforce in a move than came in the wake of numerous scandals. Under the new policy, roughly 9,000 bank employees will be subject to internal vetting, said a UBS spokesman. UBS is also beefing up policing of its employees as it grapples with a probe into potential rigging of the global foreign exchange market. The spokesman said UBS had already been vetting some current employees and that the expansion was part of the bank's operational risk strategy.

Sixty two percent of employers report having been affected by a bad hire in the past year. The impacts are in time, money and morale. According to CIFAS, the average total cost of internal fraud was ?483,000 in 2013, the average cost of a redundancy settlement ?12,000 and the cost of a UK Border Agency fine for an illegal worker ?20,000. As a result, a bad hire can cripple an SME or an already-frail business. Comprehensive and systematic background checks of prospective employees are vital as a cornerstone in the prevention of fraud and as protection from costly mistakes.