Legal Risk
Legal risk refers to the potential for an organization to face legal consequences and financial or reputational harm as a result of its actions or decisions that violate laws and regulations.
Legal risk refers to the potential for an organization to face legal consequences and financial or reputational harm as a result of its actions or decisions that violate laws and regulations.
Accounting regulations for financial institutions are a set of rules and standards that govern how these institutions record, report, and interpret financial data.
Anti-money laundering (AML) regulations are a set of procedures, laws, and regulations designed to halt the practice of generating income through illegal actions, such as laundering money. The use of open source software may present risks related to anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance, particularly if the software is used to facilitate financial transactions.
Anti-trust laws apply to banks by promoting competition and prohibiting behaviors that restrict it.
Regulated industries need to track communications internally and externally. Keep in mind these broad principles about communication in regulated firms:
These laws require financial institutions to implement measures that prevent, detect, and report suspicious activities or transactions related to the financing of terrorism or terrorist organizations.
Many organisations are bound by what is allowed to cross their borders. For example: in Swiss banks, there are strong controls in place to make sure no data leaves Switzerland. This is a consideration for code too, as code contributed to GitHub is data leaving the organisation and there may be requirements around these obligations.
Cybersecurity regulation refers to legal measures and guidelines designed to protect networks, devices, programs, and data from digital attacks, theft, damage, or unauthorized access. These regulations impose standards, procedures, and responsibilities on individuals, organizations, and governments to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of digital information and systems.
Export controls are legal and regulatory measures implemented by countries to control the export of sensitive goods, technology, software, and information for reasons related to national security, foreign policy, or economic protection.
Open source software is typically distributed under specific licensing terms and conditions that may affect how the software can be used, modified, and distributed. Compliance with these licensing requirements is essential to ensure that the organization does not infringe on the intellectual property rights of the software developers or violate the terms of the license.
Labour laws apply to all sectors, including banking. While they don't specifically target the banking industry, they do have significant implications for how banks operate and manage their employees.
Leakage of personal information has a knock-on to Reputational Risk and Legal Risk, as explored in the section below. As noted in the BOK activities addressing supply chain security, incorporating secure development into the Software Development Lifecycle is therefore also a compliance issue.
Many countries are prevented from selling into certain territories (US into Iran for example).
The legal team is responsible for providing legal advice and support to the organization.
THIS IS A PLACEHOLDER
There are several key points that a large enterprise should consider to ensure compliance with open-source license obligations:
This course is intended for software developers, project managers, legal associates, and executive decision makers who already know the basics of what open source software is and how copyrights work, and are ready to take the next step towards building a formal compliance program for their organization.
This course is intended for developers, project managers and executive decision makers who already know the basics of what open source software is and how copyrights work and are ready to take the next step towards building a formal compliance program for their organization.
This article explains the concept of the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) and Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) and the practical implications of these for organisations consuming and contributing to open source.
This article looks at Data Loss Prevention (DLP) software commonly used in financial organisations and how these impact open source consumption and contribution. It is not a complete reference for the subject of DLP generally, but should act as a starting point for understanding the issues involved.
An open source policy is a set of guidelines that outlines how an organization will consume, contribute to, and create open source software. It defines the rules that govern the use, distribution, and licensing of open source software within the organization. It establishes processes for evaluating open source software, managing the risks associated with its use, and ensuring compliance with legal and ethical requirements.
This is content originally from the FINOS Reference FOSS Policy Project which has not been updated recently. Feel free to suggest edits.
This article provides some basic framing around the purpose of licenses within open source: