TAMPA, Fla. – March 5, 2024 – Schellman, a leading provider of attestation and compliance services and a top 50 CPA firm, is pleased to announce that the firm has received accreditation for France’s Health Data Host (HDS) certification services, the first US-based firm to receive such accreditation by COFRAC.

More and more, organizations are turning a keener eye toward ESG initiatives. Though the Social Governance pillars are no less important, it’s the Environmental cornerstone of ESG that is commanding more scrutiny—more specifically, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

As more aspects of society move online, digital assets—or any uniquely identifiable, discoverable thing that is stored online and used to realize value—have become increasingly prevalent, taking the form of data, cryptocurrencies, documents, credentials, and photos, among others.

Successfully managing your HIPAA risk means accounting for those introduced by your vendors that are supplementing existing business processes in different ways. Vendors can make you vulnerable in a variety of ways, which means a variety of solutions becomes necessary.

As you may remember, when Tom Sawyer was asked to paint a fence, he ended up outsourcing the job and even got his chosen “vendors” to pay him for the privilege. What was an assigned chore ended up being done by others and turning a profit for Tom.

While they have become increasingly prevalent in modern life, offering opportunities for efficiency, automation, and improved decision-making in various domains, the proliferation of IoT devices also raises important considerations related to security, privacy, data management, and interoperability.

With the escalation of climate and various environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-related risks, organizations are now actively setting bold sustainability objectives, and in recognition of the related concerns in their supply chains over which they lack control, companies are also asking for cooperation from their vendors in addressing their emissions to further minimize their environmental impact.