The bottom line is: If you own a retail store or restaurant that accepts credit cards (Do you know any that don’t?) then you owe it to yourself to spend 13 minutes watching this video! This might be the most important thing you can do to protect yourself against data theft and associated PCI fines that could put you right out of business. Like they say, it is what you don’t know that can hurt you.

In the video they talk about insuring that your Point of Sale System, POS, is compliant with the Payment Application Best Practices, PABP, put out by VISA and last revised in February 2012. In this document they list Payment Application Vendors and the validated PABP versions. You should check this list for the vendor of your POS. If nothing else you should at least have the conversation with you vendor to insure that magnetic stripe data, CW2, Pin Blocks from the cards are not stored anywhere in your system. If that data is stored on your system you should find out what file(s) it is in and remove it from your hard drive. That is the information that will get you in serious trouble if compromised. Remember, if you don’t need the data for a business practice, then don’t store it. It is permissible to store the Cardholder’s Name, Primary Account Information, Expiration date and Service Code, but these need to be stored using PCI DSS.

Can Finances Affect Your Mental Health?

Kapnick Insurance Group's Amy Dekeyser (Risk Solutions Manager) provides some basic, yet often overlooked tips for preventing Slips, Trips and Falls on your property.

With the Government Roll-out of the Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare), other areas of government oversight such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have been overshadowed and been largely pushed off of Page 1. A recent suggested change by OSHA is the reporting of Injury and Illnesses electronically rather than the Hard Copy OSHA logs that employers have used for decades. This proposed change is suggested to only apply to employers with at least 250 employees. At the very least this will help employers organize their OSHA reportable Injuries and have the ability to look at historical reports. This Electronic reporting is also going to enable employers to compare their results to other employers. For employers and business owners that would like to know more about this proposed law, please visit OSHA.gov. OHSA is taking comments on this proposed law through Feb 6, 2014.

This week we are going to discuss how financial stress affects our health and ways to help lower financial stress. First I want to describe just what stress does to your body. When your brain senses danger (or some type of stressor), it goes into fight or flight mode and sends orders to outposts in the adrenal and pituitary glands to mobilize the hormones adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones send reinforcements to different areas of the body to increase your blood pressure, heart rate, and energy for you to either fight or flee (basically how you will handle the “stressor”). If you experience this type of stress everyday your body will feel the consequences.

Learn to identify and prevent the different forms of workplace violence by attending this seminar. The event takes place on Wednesday, November 20th from 8:30 AM to Noon at our Ann Arbor office.

This week we are going to discuss how health behaviors/status and finances are related. The first thing I would like to point out is the cost of unhealthy habits. Imagine saving $3,600 annually by just cutting out your $10 a day smoking or junk food habit. This is just an example of the immediate savings, think about the long-term savings too! By cutting out that junk food habit you are likely able to decrease your weight and delay the possible onset of diabetes and/or other health issues.

From an agent’s perspective, this question is certainly a double-edged sword. When a client tests the water to see what other options might be available in the insurance marketplace, this could present either opportunity for gain or loss.

Did you know that 24% of all data breaches affect retail environments and restaurants? (Source: 2013 Verizon Data Breach Report)