How to Protect Your Customer Data and Your Reputation
When it comes to safeguarding customer data, the stakes are higher than ever in today's wired world. A single security breach can create a legal and regulatory nightmare. How vulnerable is your organization to hackers and disgruntled employees? What can you do to protect your company?<br><br>Sponsored by Cisco, this 30-minute BizWise TV broadcast for small and mid-sized businesses outlines the legal, ethical, and business obligations you face. A panel of security experts will show you how to assess your vulnerabilities, implement an effective security plan, handle an employee suspected of committing a security breach, and execute "damage control" through effective PR if a breach does occur.<br><br><br><br>BizWise TV features TV Style Broadcasts on topics relevant to SMBs. Tune in for a new topic on the third Thursday of every month or watch the previous broadcasts on demand at your convenience.
Intrusion Prevention Case Study: Mainova AG - Energy
This case study examines Frankfurt, Germany energy supplier Mainova AG's reliance on McAfee for its network security.
Corporate Incident Response: Why You Can't Afford to Ignore It
This Foundstone Professional Services paper explains the need for an effective corporate incident response plan and highlights common problems associated with inadequate incident response. It also discusses the steps you need to take when creating a corporate incident response plan and serves as a general guide to the phases that should be included in a comprehensive plan.
Making Your Business Disaster Ready with Virtual Infrastructure
Download this white paper to learn how a virtual infrastructure built on VMware server software can help make your disaster recovery strategy more effective and affordable. The paper emphasizes the need for business continuity and disaster recovery (DR) planning in today's enterprises and explains how a virtual infrastructure enables you to:<ul><li>Extend disaster coverage to more applications</li><li>Reduce recovery time</li><li>Make DR processes more reliable</li></ul>
Master Time Management With a Final 7 Time Management Tips
Time management is a hot topic these days. With more pressure on most people to do more with less, people are constantly turning to gurus in this area to try and improve their time management skills. This paper seven more tips to help people in their quest to master their time usage.
Action Plan in Time Management
Action plans are lists of responsibilities that instruct a person "To carry out to achieve an objective." The list centers on the goals immediately needing achievement on demand. The list or action plan enables one to center his attention on the specific obligations required of him. The marketplace has several software programs that help those people that have busy schedules and time management is a struggle.
Business Continuity Preparedness Handbook
AT&T's Business Continuity Preparedness Handbook provides a broad range of information to support your business continuity planning efforts.<br><br>The 16-page handbook examines business continuity in the context of two potential catastrophic events a pandemic influenza and a hurricane strike and highlights why taking a proactive approach to business continuity planning is essential for all disaster scenarios.<br><br>Topics include:<ul><li>AT&T's own business continuity preparedness efforts</li><li>Planning assumptions for pandemic influenza and the 2006 hurricane forecast</li><li>Best practices recommendations</li><li>AT&T solutions that support business continuity strategies</li><li>AT&T customer support during business continuity "events"</li></ul>
The Inexpensive Instant Message: Creating an E-Mail Newsletter
How does one share accurate, timely information with employees, customers and the community - and do it faster, better and less expensively than using the normal media outlets? The person should turn to e-mail. Faced with a barrage of negative media coverage as a result of innovative steps that provided a few surprises during the 2000-01 upheaval in energy markets, Chelan County PUD (Wenatchee, Wash.) came to this realization: The media were not going to tell their side of the story for them; they had to do it ourselves.
Using Crises as Publicity Opportunities
There are two kinds of Crisis Management: Internal (for when something happens within a company or externally that affects the company directly) and External (for when something happens in the world that indirectly affects the company). The authors' recommend that every company have a written plan on how to handle a range of both internal and external crises. This paper deals with external crisis management, and how one can, with advanced planning, gain positive publicity for the company when an external event occurs.
Telling Everyone You're Ok - A Key Element in Crisis Communications
Have a person ever noticed that one of the first side effects of most disaster situations is that the phone lines in the area immediately go down? The author believes that the first thing people think about in disasters is how it affects the people they know, or maybe just know of. That's why the phone lines go down - calls to check.
Impact of Past Crises on Current Crisis Communication
Previous research based on Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) suggests that an organization's past crises history affects the reputational threat posed by a current crisis when that crisis results from intentional acts by the organization. The study reported on in this paper provides a wider test of crisis history to better assess its role in crisis communication. Results from the present investigation showed that a history of similar crises intensified the reputational threat of a current crisis even when the crisis arose from the victimization of the organization or from an accident, rather than from the organization's intentional acts.
Sample Source: Crisis Management Plans - Part II
This paper includes specific action steps to take in the event of a crisis. Schools should create detailed procedures for each type of crisis that may threaten the school environment. Each process will vary, according to the type and severity of the emergency. The paper also describes the process in which the school recovers and restores its community.
Sample Source: Crisis Management Plans - Part I
Every morning, millions of students pour into school buildings all across the country. Families depend on schools to ensure that the environment in which their children learn and play is as healthy and safe as possible. Emergencies can take many forms, including severe weather and natural disasters, medical incidents, terrorism, and other threats of violence. Although many of these incidents are rare, it is vitally important for schools to be adequately prepared in the case of an actual crisis.
Media Communication Takes on New Dimensions With RMP
It is puzzling why many companies are doing little to prepare the local press for the information that will soon become public. This may stem from the industry's long-standing mistrust of the media. The good news about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Risk Management Program (RMP) rule is that it could serve as the catalyst for improved relations between the chemical industry and the news media. The bad news is that both are going to have to learn a new set of rules. Before the RMP rule, a chemical company's communications with the local media took place on two levels - routine and crisis.
Crisis Management and Disaster Recovery: The New Reality - Response to 21st Century Threats
The unfortunate truth is that many companies have failed to recognize that physical events or nagging perceptions can be their undoing. As keepers of corporate reputation, people need to step up to one of their most important responsibilities: developing the capabilities for responding to threatening situations. In the process, if the planning is founded on ethical core values and implemented properly, it can help avert loss of public confidence. Today, up to 25 percent of every chief communicator's time requires attention to readiness planning. That planning had taken on new dimensions that will be discussed in this paper.


court in Santa Clara County, CA,or with the National Arbitration Forum. If the consumer does notvoluntarily withdraw his suit, then eBay will threaten to seekits lawyer fees to have the case dismissed. At this point, mostconsumers then drop their suits.

However, the arbitration clauses in the user agreements excludeclaims for equitable or declaratory relief. Accordingly, if theconsumer files his suit from the outset seeking equitable ordeclaratory relief, then the eBay user agreement defense willNOT prevent the lawsuit from going forward. With the lawsuitproceeding forward, the consumer can send eBay or Paypalinterrogatories to seek discovery. Interrogatories are writtenquestions sent to a party to a lawsuit that must be answered inwriting, usually within 30 days. With interrogatories, theconsumer can get access to information about the seller, as wellas the frequency with which consumers have complained aboutitems being delivered that were materially different from theitem pictures on eBay.

The consumer's local state court will have personal jurisdictionover the eBay and Paypal to hear claims for equitable anddeclaratory relief, because these firms have establishedsubstantial contacts the consumer's state. The followingnon-exhaustive list of activities and contacts by the eBay andPaypal in and with the consumer's state make it fair, equitable,and convenient for eBay and Paypal to defend these causes ofaction in the consumer's state:

(1) The controversy arose out of the consumer's purchase of someitem on eBay.com, which was shipped to him or her at theconsumer's address, and which arrived damaged and unusable. Thefunds used to pay for this transaction were drawn from a bank inthe consumer's hometown, and payment for this transactionoccurred in the consumer's hometown. The contract to purchasethe item and pay for shipping was most likely formed in theconsumer's hometown.

(2) For more than 10 years, eBay and Paypal have systematicallyand continuously advertised their services to the consumer andother Internet users in the consumer's state via advertising andelectronic mail. Over the years, eBay and Paypal have collectedfees on scores of millions of dollars in payments and sellerfees from businesses and residents in the consumer's state.

For circumstances in which a seller refuses to take back damagedmerchandise and issue a refund, the consumer can seek equitablerelief to bar that seller from any and all further transactionson the eBay and Paypal platforms. The consumer can seekdeclaratory relief that eBay and Paypal's Buyer Protection Plansubmission forms are riddled with computer errors and will notallow users to properly submit claims.

The consumer should also seek declaratory relief that eBay andPaypal's fraud violated the state Consumer Protection Act, whichthus gives the consumer a statutory right to prosecute eBay andPaypal independent of any breach of contract claim he or she mayhave related to the user agreement.

The consumer can also challenge in his local state court thevalidity of the arbitration clause as unconscionable. A claimthat the arbitration provision is unconscionable is a matter tobe decided by the courts and not the arbitrator, because itspecifically challenges the validity of the agreement toarbitrate irrespective of the validity of the whole contract. Ifthe state trial court determines that the arbitration clause isunconscionable, then the consumer will be entitled to pursuemonetary damages against eBay and Paypal. However, it isunlikely that a state court will find the arbitration clausesunconscionable, due to the pro-business tilt of the U.S. courtsystem.

For more information and free legal advice for cases againsteBay and Paypal, please contact the author through web pagehttp://michaelguth.com/prose.htm

About the author:Dr. Michael A. S. Guth, Ph.D., J.D., is an attorney at law basedin Oak Ridge, Tennessee. His practice focuses on enabling peopleto represent themselves pro se without a lawyer (and therebysave on legal fees), as well as full representation forappellate practice. One area his work has particularlyemphasized is child support defense and elimination of theunconstitutional debtor prisons that now saturate our courtjurisdictions across