Patent Application
20210012255
The present disclosure relates generally to a graphical user interface, and more specifically to concisely and efficiently rendering a user interface for disparate compliance subjects.
Modern organizations or enterprises have complex corporate structures, including many entities such as business units, subsidiaries, as well as many third party companies within a supply chain for the corporation. For example, the following areas have various risks that require compliance within an organization: antitrust, business ethics awareness, business gratuities, conflict minerals, cost accounting system requirements, cybersecurity, data breach laws, and other compliance subjects.
Existing user interfaces and other technologies (e.g., web applications) include functionality for computing enterprise-related tasks (e.g., via linear-based calculations). For example, some applications can calculate loss of profits, merchandise damages, risk assessment, and risk compliance. Existing user interfaces and applications require the arduous drilling down, navigation, and browsing of various views or pages in order to view specific enterprise-related computations, such as risks for certain business units and whether there is certain compliance for such risk. Further, the specific computation functionality of these user interfaces and technologies is static and inaccurate, and causes unnecessary computer resource consumption (e.g., network latency), as described in more detail herein.
Moreover, real-time instantaneous changes distributed among different business units or other such entities and concerning such disparate compliance subjects are not only difficult to track, but are likewise difficult to compare and quantify in real-time. Making sense of large amounts of compliance data across multiple entities within the corporate structure, as well as the resulting implications for an organization's compliance risks in a comprehensive and efficient manner is not possible with today's data management tools. For example, electronic spreadsheet applications with different columns, rows, or tabs for different entities or compliance subjects could be utilized, but the complexity of large spreadsheets has long been a problem for users and would not allow simultaneous and effective comparisons of such disparate data. Such spreadsheets of data also require scrolling to see all of the data and/or navigating between tabs.
Embodiments of the present disclosure describes a system configured to provide a tool and user interface to manage compliance matters based on a behavioral risk assessment of rationalization, opportunity, and pressure characteristics. As described below, the system plots a risk indicator based on human behavior analysis. Other tools are described within to facilitate managing the risk associated with the risk indicator. Existing user interfaces and technologies fail to simultaneously present (e.g., via a summary portion) and effectively weigh various risks and related considerations in regards to disparate data from different entities within or associated to an organization and disparate compliance subjects having varying requirements and factors associated therewith Accordingly, existing user interfaces and technologies tend to be inaccurate and require the arduous drilling down, navigation, and browsing, thereby negatively affecting the user experience. This also negatively affects computer resource consumption, such as throughput and network latency. However, the present technological solution provides a highly intuitive, user-friendly interface solution providing simplified navigation and presentation of disparate data, thereby improving the efficient functioning of computers as described herein. Specifically, the present solution overcomes the deficiencies of existing technologies in terms of a specific user interface configured to better aggregate, quantify, compare, and display an organization's risks and consequences in regarding to various compliance subjects. For example, various embodiments generate a “summary portion” and “summary reports” and reduce network latency, as described in more detail herein. The risks are quantified by scoring methods described herein which standardize diverse data regarding diverse compliance subjects and presents such data in a manner that is simple to interpret and to navigate, thereby providing a structured output from an otherwise unstructured input.
According to one aspect of the present disclosure, a method is provided for standardized tracking and comparison of risks and consequences associated with a plurality of compliance subjects using a graphical user interface. The method includes determining a risk score for an entity in an organization or enterprise. The risk score indicates a likelihood of misconduct associated with a compliance subject by an employee within the entity. The method further includes determining a consequence score associated with the compliance subject, generating a graphical user interface comprising a risk plot region, and causing a rendering of a graphical indicator in a specific location within the risk plot region. The rendering is caused within the graphical user interface at least partially in response to the determining of the risk score and the consequence score. The graphical indicator comprises a frequency count of compliance subjects having the associated risk score and corresponding consequence score.
In another exemplary aspect, a system for monitoring status of compliance subjects using a graphical user interface is provided. The system includes a display device, and a processor. The processor is configured to determine a risk score for an entity in an organization, wherein the risk score indicates a likelihood of misconduct associated with a compliance subject by an employee within the entity. The processor is further configured to determine a consequence score associated with the compliance subject. The processor is configured to generate, for display on the display device, a graphical user interface comprising a risk plot region, wherein the risk plot region comprises at least one graphical indicator associated with the compliance subject and rendered in a location within the risk plot region based on the risk score and corresponding consequence score. The at least one graphical indicator further includes a frequency count of compliance subjects having the associated risk score and corresponding consequence score.
According to another exemplary aspect, a computer-readable medium is provided comprising instructions that comprises computer executable instructions for performing any of the methods disclosed herein.
The above simplified summary of example aspects serves to provide a basic understanding of the present disclosure. This summary is not an extensive overview of all contemplated aspects, and is intended to neither identify key or critical elements of all aspects nor delineate the scope of any or all aspects of the present disclosure. Its sole purpose is to present one or more aspects in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description of the disclosure that follows. To the accomplishment of the foregoing, the one or more aspects of the present disclosure include the features described and exemplarily pointed out in the claims.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated into and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate one or more example aspects of the present disclosure and, together with the detailed description, serve to explain their principles and implementations.
Exemplary aspects are described herein in the context of a system, method, and computer program product for monitoring status of compliance subjects using a graphical user interface. Those of ordinary skill in the art will realize that the following description is illustrative only and is not intended to be in any way limiting. Other aspects will readily suggest themselves to those skilled in the art having the benefit of this disclosure. Reference will now be made in detail to implementations of the example aspects as illustrated in the accompanying drawings. The same reference indicators will be used to the extent possible throughout the drawings and the following description to refer to the same or like items.
The present disclosure includes embodiments that provide a tool to manage disparate compliance matters for disparate entities and sub-entities based on a behavioral risk assessment of rationalization, opportunity, and pressure characteristics. As described below, various embodiments plot a risk indicator based on human behavior analysis. Other tools are described within to facilitate managing the risk associated with the risk indicator. Existing user interfaces and technologies struggle to simultaneously present and effectively weigh various risks and related considerations in regards to disparate data from different entities within or associated to an organization and disparate compliance subjects having varying requirements and factors associated therewith. For example, although technologies such as “THE LOGICGATE RISK CLOUD,” and “CYBERGRX” include risk management and risk compliance functionality, these technologies as well as others, such as electronic spreadsheets, require users to drill down various pages to find relevant information. For example, if users wanted to view risk compliance for different sub-departments, users must drill down from a dashboard or landing page into a department page (e.g., a marketing sales department page), and then have to drill down yet again from the department page to the sub-department page (e.g., a product X marketing team page). This is not only arduous and time consuming to negatively affect the consumer experience, it unnecessarily consumes computer resources, such as network latency and throughput, among other things.
Each drill down click or other user input requires packet generation costs (e.g., input header information) for network protocols (e.g., TCP/IP), which increases network latency after repeated drill-downs are transmitted over a network. For instance, each time a user clicks on a page or issues a different query obtain various enterprise-related information, packet headers are exchanged and the payload of the data has to traverse the network. Further, if users repetitively issue queries to get the desired enterprise-related information, it is computationally expensive. For example, an optimizer engine of a database manager module calculates a query execution plan (e.g., calculates cardinality, selectivity, etc.) each time a query is issued, which requires a database manager to find the least expensive query execution plan to fully execute the query. This decreases throughput and increases network latency, and can waste valuable time. Most database relations contain hundreds if not thousands of records. Repetitively calculating query execution plans for extensive drilling to obtain the desired enterprise-related information decreases throughput and increases network latency.
However, the present solution provides a highly intuitive, user-friendly interface solution. Specifically, the present solution overcomes the deficiencies of existing technologies in terms of a specific user interface configured to better aggregate, quantify, compare, and display an organization's risks and consequences in regard to various compliance subjects. The risks are quantified by scoring methods described herein which standardize diverse data regarding diverse compliance subjects and presents such data in a manner that is simple to interpret and to navigate, thereby providing a structured output from an otherwise unstructured input. For instance, using the example above, instead of the user having to drill down various pages to obtain enterprise-related information for the sub-department, that sub-department's page information can be provided to a “summary portion” or “summary report,” along with various other departments or sub-departments, which is described in more detail herein. This reduces the requirement for extensive drilling down, browsing, clicking, and querying needed to obtain specific department or other enterprise-related information.
In another example, scores assigned to entities for different compliance subjects are determined based on various criteria stored, accessed via the systems described herein, and/or selected by a user. Specifically, risk scores determined herein are based on an ability of the employee to justify an act of misconduct, a difficulty with which the employee can commit the act of misconduct, and a motive for the employee to commit the act of misconduct. Consequence scores corresponding to financial or reputational impact of an act of misconduct are also calculated for each entity. A method herein plainly and efficiently displays this information on a risk cube plot, with one axis corresponding to risk score and another corresponding to consequence score, and circles at a plurality of coordinates thereon indicating a frequency count of the compliance subjects having the associated risk score and corresponding consequence score. Separate risk cube plots may be displayed for each entity and/or one risk cube plot may be displayed for a combination of multiple entities associated with an organization. Furthermore, the methods and systems described herein can allow the frequency counts on the risk cube plot to be selectable by a user, such that selection thereof results in a display of the names of compliance subjects associated with that risk assessment point.
Thus, the user interface described herein improves user experience by providing an at-a-glance overview of risks and consequences for an organization and/or its associated entities and the frequency count of compliance subjects associated with those risk and consequence scores. It also advantageously improves user experience by providing a more simplified way of navigating such data, via user selection of the frequency count, to identify and display the compliance subjects represented by that frequency count. Methods of using the risk cube plots disclosed in detail herein thus allows a user to visually identify when numerous compliance subjects have risk and consequence scores of concern in a given situation within an organization and to instantly select and view a listing of those compliance subjects, as opposed to more complex filtering techniques for parsing such data. This unique configuration also allows a user to avoid the burdensome task of excessive scrolling and/or navigating through data in separate windows using arbitrary filtering techniques to identify compliance subjects of concern.
Because the user does not have to perform extensive drilling, browsing, querying, and navigating, computing resource consumption is also improved. For example, by generating a user interface that summarizes or displays all the relevant risk and consequence information on a single page or dashboard, there are only network generation costs for requesting the page or dashboard, and no packet header formulation and payload exchange needed for navigating to different pages because the user does not need to keep drilling down to request information from various sub-pages, and the like. This means that there is no network protocol communication between a user device (e.g., a client device, such as a mobile device) and one or more servers hosting web pages, and the like. Accordingly, there would be no header formation of packets and handshake steps (e.g., SYN, SYN-ACK, an ACK) subsequent to the providing of the summary portion or report. Therefore, there is less overhead and reduced traffic exchange, thereby freeing up bits to be transferred over the entire network for any given time slice for bandwidth purposes.
In one aspect, the CAMS module 101 may be implemented as a multi-tier web application. Accordingly, the system 100 may include a web server 102 and a database server 104. The web server 102 may include the CAMS module 101, a governance risk compliance module 114, and a boost module 116 executing as software components of an application server 118. Examples of the application server 118 include Adobe ColdFusion®, PHP Application Server, or Java Application Server®. The web server 102 may further include web server software 120 executing in an operating system 122. In one example, the web server 102 may include Internet Information Services® (IIS) web server made available from Microsoft® executing on a Microsoft Windows Server®. The application server 118 may be configured to communicate with a backend component, such as a database server 104 having an SQL server 124 and a database 126 executing in an operating system 128. Examples of SQL servers 124 may include MS SQL Server®, MySQL®, and MongoDB®. It is understood that other types of databases or data stores may be used in the described system, such as NoSQL-type databases.
In operation, a web browser 106 submits one or more user requests, via a network 105 (e.g., Internet), to the CAMS module 101. In response, the CAMS module 101 may generate a graphical user interface having a compliance subject status dashboard. The compliance subject status dashboard may assist a user with determining what can be done to reduce the likelihood of misconduct within the organization. The compliance subject status dashboard may further provide an evaluation of the risk assessment based on rationalization, opportunity, pressure, and consequence (collective referred to as “ROPC”) over time. The CAMS module 101 may be further configured to generate a mitigation strategy based on the risk assessment, and provide management tools that enable a user (e.g., compliance officer) to drive risk reduction by managing the plan's status regularly. In some embodiments, the CAMS module 101 may aggregate risk data in order to generate streamlined visualizations of the risk data.
In some aspects, the CAMS module 101 may be configured to identify one or more core elements within an enterprise, as well as one or more risk considerations related to those core elements, and perform risk assessment based on the core elements and risk considerations. The phrase “core elements” as used herein may refer to compliance-related categories or compliance subjects, such as antitrust, business ethics awareness, business gratuities, cybersecurity, data breach laws, discrimination (EEO Compliance), environmental, FAR mandatory disclosures, Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS), federal political activities, harassment, health and safety, human trafficking, import/export, insider trading, and other subjects.
The method 200, begins at step 201, which the CAMS module 101 may determine a rationalization component score (“R”) that represents the ability of an employee to justify an act of business misconduct. In some embodiments, the CAMS module 101 may retrieve the rationalization component score associated with one or more compliance subjects from a database, such as the database 126. In one embodiment, the CAMS module 101 may use numeric terms to represent the likelihood of misconduct within the rationalization component score (as well as opportunity and pressure component scores described below). For example, the likelihood terms may correlated to a numerical scale from 0 to 5, where the higher the number, the more “likely” an act of misconduct could occur. In determining the R score, the CAMS module 101 may take further considerations into account when determining the risk level of an employee, such as the availability of training, the effectiveness of training, communication campaigns, whether an employee understands disciplinary actions, whether disciplinary action have been demonstrated recently in the past, the tone from the top on this subject, the tone in the middle, whether a core element is “new”, indications of potential issues that relate to this particular topic, and whether any other data or events within the business element are relevant to this core element, including audits, studies, awards, and customer feedback results.
Tables 1 to 4 below provide criteria used by the CAMS module 101 to determine rationalization, opportunity, and pressure component scores, and the consequence score. In each table, the descriptions of various likelihood levels provides a risk assessor(s) with criteria that, if true, would correspond to the “likelihood” 0-5 score. If the risk assessor(s) determine that the criteria of a level is not “true,” the accessor(s) would move to the next level until a criteria is determined to be “true.” Table 1 below is a chart for determining a rationalization component score that represents the ability of an employee to justify an act of business misconduct.
At step 202, the CAMS module 101 may determine an opportunity component score (“0”) that represents the ease or difficulty with which an employee can commit misconduct. In some embodiments, the CAMS module 101 may determine the component score by retrieving the opportunity component score associated with one or more compliance subjects from a database, such as the database 126. In determining the 0 score, the CAMS module 101 may take further considerations into account when determining the risk level of an employee, such as whether controls exist, whether the controls have demonstrated effectiveness, whether there are leading indicators that exist but are not monitored, whether misconduct has occurred for a period of time before a control detects it, the results of any recent controls audits, and whether any misconduct has been self-reported. The CAMS module 101 may further determine the 0 component score based on whether there are any corrective actions or internal findings on record, considerations of other stakeholder functions in the assessment of the controls, and further based on any other data or events within the business unit relevant to the core element, such as audits, studies, awards, and customer feedback results. Table 2 is a chart for determining an opportunity component score (“0”) that represents the ease with which an employee can commit misconduct, from a scale from 0 to 5.
At step 203, the CAMS module 101 may determine a pressure component score (“P”) representing a motive or incentive for employees to commit misconduct. In some embodiments, the CAMS module 101 may determine the component score by retrieving the pressure component score associated with one or more compliance subjects from a database, such as the database 126. In some aspects, the CAMS module 101 may determine the P component score based on whether the organization has engaged in messaging and behavior that emphasizes performance with integrity, evidence of strong “tone” from all levels of leadership on ethics and compliance, whether the behavior could result from the measures in place, retaliation scores, and engaging in misconduct for this core element has good engagement scores. The CAMS module 101 may further determine the P component score based on whether the employee has been trained on ethics and compliance and is familiar with the compliance plans, whether the employee has achieved targets in the past, whether the employee has benefits from misconduct in the past, whether support structures and resources are readily available, whether known recent or future events give cause for concern that an employee could perform an act of misconduct in retaliation of the event, whether goals and expectations were communicated on a regular basis and were understood, whether feedback on performance (positive, constructive, etc.) was received, and any other data or events within the business unit relevant to the core element (e.g., audits, awards, studies, customer feedback). Table 3 is a chart for determining a pressure component score (“P”) that represents the motive or incentive for employees to commit misconduct.
At step 204, the CAMS module 101 may determine a risk score for an entity in an organization based on the rationalization component score, the opportunity component score, and the pressure component score. The risk score indicates a likelihood of misconduct associated with a compliance subject by an employee within the entity. In some aspects, the CAMS module 101 may calculate the risk score as a summation of numerical values of the rationalization component score, the opportunity component score, and the pressure component score.
At step 205, the CAMS module 101 may determine a consequence score associated with the compliance subject. The consequence score (“C”) may represent a determination of financial impact or reputational impact of an act of misconduct. In some embodiments, the CAMS module 101 may determine the consequence score by retrieving the consequence score associated with one or more compliance subjects from a database, such as the database 126. Table 4 below is a chart for determining a consequence score that represents the financial impact or reputational impact of an act of misconduct.
>$5-$10M
In one embodiment, the consequence score may be represented on a numerical value on a scale from 1-5 that correlates to the determination of impact, where the lower the score, the lower the impact (see “Impact” column). The “Financial” Column of Table 4 indicates a level of financial impact based on a determined range of monetary impact that would cause concern for the company. The lower the financial monetary value, the lower the concern and correlating impact score. It is noted that the financial thresholds in this column may vary depending on the size of the company. For example, a company with sales in excess of $1B may have a Level 5 threshold of $30M whereas a company with sales around $50M may have a Level 5 threshold of $5M. Finally, the Reputation column describes varying levels of impact to a company's reputation in the event of a misconduct.
At step 206, the CAMS module 101 may generate a graphical user interface having a risk plot region. The risk plot region may include at least one graphical indicator associated with the compliance subject and rendered in a location within the risk plot region based on the risk score and corresponding consequence score. In some aspects, the graphical indicator includes a frequency count of compliance subjects having the associated risk score and corresponding consequence score. An example of a risk plot region is shown in
In some aspects, the CAMS module 101 may generate a graphical user having a mitigation status region. The mitigation status region may indicate a first proportion of open mitigation plans for reducing risk of misconduct, a second proportion of completed mitigation plans, and a third proportion of past due mitigation plans. In some aspects, the CAMS module 101 may further generate a graphical user interface having a training summary region. The training summary region may indicate a first proportion of employees having completed training related to the compliance subject and a second proportion of remaining employees to complete the training. Examples of mitigation status and training summary regions are shown in
As shown in
In one aspect, the risk cube plot 301 may be colored with different colors indicating areas of low risk (e.g., green) and high risk (e.g., red). In some aspects, the risk cube plot 301 may be colored with a color gradient from green to red backgrounds from one corner of the risk cube plot 301 to the opposing corner. For example, the risk cube plot 301 may have a color gradient from green background squares in the lower left area (e.g., plots A1, B1, B2), transitioning to yellow background squares in a middle band regions (e.g., plots E1, D2, C3, B4, A5), and ending with red background squares in the upper right area (e.g., plots E4, E5, D5).
As described herein, the risk management method of the present disclosure provide the user with certain advantages over conventional systems. In contrast to conventional systems, the described graphical user interface method quickly generates a risk assessment overview of an entire organization across a multitude of compliance subjects. As described earlier, a modern corporate organization can span across large sub-organizations which may be independently operated with individual business processes. And the large sub-organizations, such as business units or subsidiaries, can each employ thousands to millions of employees. The described graphical user interface method enables a user, such as a top-level employee in an organization, to rapidly assess and take initiative to ameliorate the dangers of possible misconduct within minutes, instead of in weeks or months as otherwise might occur with conventional systems. For example, the prioritized risk summary portion 402 and risk summary portion 403 provide the user with concise information about risk assessments for all business units and subsidiaries within the organization. This saves users from navigating to records of different sub-organizations or different compliance subjects to enable data of interest to be seen and presents a unique risk assessment overview that allows a user to more accurately and efficiently determine overall organizational risks than merely viewing specific risk factors in isolation. Furthermore, instead of the user having to drill down various pages to obtain enterprise-related information for the sub-department, that sub-department's page information can be provided to the prioritized risk summary portion 402 and risk summary portion 403. This reduces the requirement for extensive drilling down, browsing, clicking, and querying needed to obtain specific department or other enterprise-related information.
As shown in
In some aspects, each risk assessment point 412 may be configured to, responsive to receiving input from a user (e.g., a click from a user input device), “drill down” to or identify the compliance subjects having the associated risk score and corresponding consequence level. For example, upon selecting a risk assessment point 412, the CAMS module 101 may generate an inset GUI displaying the names of the compliance subjects associated with that risk assessment point 512. In other examples, the inset GUI may be implemented as a modal window, pop-up window, tooltip, or link to a compliance risk summary report (as shown in
In another aspect, the GUI 500 may include a mitigation status region 504 indicating a first proportion of open mitigation plans for reducing risk of misconduct, a second proportion of completed mitigation plans, and a third proportion of past due mitigation plans. For example, as shown in
The described graphical user interface method provides the user with concise information about the status of training and mitigation plans within an organization. In contrast to conventional systems which might require multiple contacts and time-consuming progress meetings, the described graphical user interface method rapidly provides the user with summaries, across a business entity, of ongoing progress in addressing the risk issues within the organization.
Similar to the GUI 600 described above, the described graphical user interface 700 shown in
In one embodiment, the CAMS module 101 may generate a compliance risk comparison report that provides a comparison of core elements between business units or divisions. This comparison report allows visibility into whether like core elements are assessed differently across the entire enterprise. In some embodiments, the CAMS module may generate a training summary report, which is a list of compliance training and statistics depending on the search criteria. As noted earlier herein, this is advantageous because instead of the user having to drill down various pages to obtain enterprise-related information for the sub-department, that sub-department's page information can be provided to one or more of the summary reports described herein. This reduces the requirement for extensive drilling down, browsing, clicking, and querying needed to obtain specific department or other enterprise-related information.
In some aspects, the GUI 1000 includes a risk cube plot 1012 associated with the compliance subject of which the core element home screen specifies. The risk cube plot 1012 includes a risk assessment point 1014 which is a graphical indicator (depicted as a circle shape) for the current level of risk assessed for the compliance subject. The risk cube plot 1012 further includes a risk mitigation point 1016 which is a graphical indicator (depicted as a triangle shape) for a target level of risk that will be achieved after completion of a risk mitigation plan for the compliance subject.
The described graphical user interface method ensures a uniform risk assessment methodology is applied across a corporate organization by clearly indicating the criteria and considerations to be used for assessing a risk level of a compliance subject. In contrast to conventional systems, this graphical user interface prevents an individualized or ad hoc approach to risk assessment, which would otherwise reduce the accuracy of any risk summaries derived therefrom. The described graphical user interface advantageously ensures that the risk assessment produced by the system 100 for a given compliance subject can be accurately compared to another compliance subject in another part of the enterprise. This can be contrasted with alternatives, such as merely providing a spreadsheet or index of such disparate data, which would not only lack the comparable context provided through the graphical user interface described herein, but would require scrolling or otherwise navigating through more data than could be readably displayed on a single page on most electronic devices or display screens thereof.
The described graphical user interface method advantageously provides a reliable method for generating a risk mitigation plan and directing resources to quantitatively address risk issues. The described graphical user interface enables a user to generate a centralized and formalized plan with concrete target delivery dates and assignments.
As shown, the computer system 20 (which may be a personal computer or a server) includes a central processing unit 21, a system memory 22, and a system bus 23 connecting the various system components, including the memory associated with the central processing unit 21. As will be appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art, the system bus 23 may comprise a bus memory or bus memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus that is able to interact with any other bus architecture. The system memory may include permanent memory (ROM) 24 and random-access memory (RAM) 25. The basic input/output system (BIOS) 26 may store the basic procedures for transfer of information between elements of the computer system 20, such as those at the time of loading the operating system with the use of the ROM 24.
The computer system 20, may also comprise a hard disk 27 for reading and writing data, a magnetic disk drive 28 for reading and writing on removable magnetic disks 29, and an optical drive 30 for reading and writing removable optical disks 31, such as CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and other optical media. The hard disk 27, the magnetic disk drive 28, and the optical drive 30 are connected to the system bus 23 across the hard disk interface 32, the magnetic disk interface 33 and the optical drive interface 34, respectively. The drives and the corresponding computer information media are power-independent modules for storage of computer instructions, data structures, program modules and other data of the computer system 20.
An exemplary aspect comprises a system that uses a hard disk 27, a removable magnetic disk 29 and a removable optical disk 31 connected to the system bus 23 via the controller 55. It will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that any type of media 56 that is able to store data in a form readable by a computer (solid state drives, flash memory cards, digital disks, random-access memory (RAM) and so on) may also be utilized.
The computer system 20 has a file system 36, in which the operating system 35, may be stored, as well as additional program applications 37, other program modules 38, and program data 39. A user of the computer system 20 may enter commands and information using keyboard 40, mouse 42, or any other input device known to those of ordinary skill in the art, such as, but not limited to, a microphone, joystick, game controller, scanner, etc. Such input devices typically plug into the computer system 20 through a serial port 46, which in turn is connected to the system bus, but those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that input devices may be also be connected in other ways, such as, without limitation, via a parallel port, a game port, or a universal serial bus (USB). A monitor 47 or other type of display device may also be connected to the system bus 23 across an interface, such as a video adapter 48. In addition to the monitor 47, the personal computer may be equipped with other peripheral output devices (not shown), such as loudspeakers, a printer, etc.
Computer system 20 may operate in a network environment, using a network connection to one or more remote computers 49. The remote computer (or computers) 49 may be local computer workstations or servers comprising most or all of the aforementioned elements in describing the nature of a computer system 20. Other devices may also be present in the computer network, such as, but not limited to, routers, network stations, peer devices or other network nodes.
Network connections can form a local-area computer network (LAN) 50 and a wide-area computer network (WAN). Such networks are used in corporate computer networks and internal company networks, and they generally have access to the Internet. In LAN or WAN networks, the personal computer 20 is connected to the local-area network 50 across a network adapter or network interface 51. When networks are used, the computer system 20 may employ a modem 54 or other modules well known to those of ordinary skill in the art that enable communications with a wide-area computer network such as the Internet. The modem 54, which may be an internal or external device, may be connected to the system bus 23 by a serial port 46. It will be appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art that said network connections are non-limiting examples of numerous well-understood ways of establishing a connection by one computer to another using communication modules.
In various aspects, the systems and methods described herein may be implemented in hardware, software, firmware, or any combination thereof. If implemented in software, the methods may be stored as one or more instructions or code on a non-transitory computer-readable medium. Computer-readable medium includes data storage. By way of example, and not limitation, such computer-readable medium can comprise RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM, Flash memory or other types of electric, magnetic, or optical storage medium, or any other medium that can be used to carry or store desired program code in the form of instructions or data structures and that can be accessed by a processor of a general purpose computer.
In various aspects, the systems and methods described in the present disclosure can be addressed in terms of modules. The term “module” as used herein refers to a real-world device, component, or arrangement of components implemented using hardware, such as by an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or field-programmable gate array (FPGA), for example, or as a combination of hardware and software, such as by a microprocessor system and a set of instructions to implement the module's functionality, which (while being executed) transform the microprocessor system into a special-purpose device. A module may also be implemented as a combination of the two, with certain functions facilitated by hardware alone, and other functions facilitated by a combination of hardware and software. In certain implementations, at least a portion, and in some cases, all, of a module may be executed on the processor of a general purpose computer (such as the one described in greater detail in
In the interest of clarity, not all of the routine features of the aspects are disclosed herein. It would be appreciated that in the development of any actual implementation of the present disclosure, numerous implementation-specific decisions must be made in order to achieve the developer's specific goals, and these specific goals will vary for different implementations and different developers. It is understood that such a development effort might be complex and time-consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking of engineering for those of ordinary skill in the art, having the benefit of this disclosure.
Furthermore, it is to be understood that the phraseology or terminology used herein is for the purpose of description and not of restriction, such that the terminology or phraseology of the present specification is to be interpreted by the skilled in the art in light of the teachings and guidance presented herein, in combination with the knowledge of the skilled in the relevant art(s). Moreover, it is not intended for any term in the specification or claims to be ascribed an uncommon or special meaning unless explicitly set forth as such.
The various aspects disclosed herein encompass present and future known equivalents to the known modules referred to herein by way of illustration. Moreover, while aspects and applications have been shown and described, it would be apparent to those skilled in the art having the benefit of this disclosure that many more modifications than mentioned above are possible without departing from the inventive concepts disclosed herein.
This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/809,519, titled “System and Method for Rendering Compliance Status Dashboard” and filed on Nov. 10, 2017, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety and claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/531,049, filed Jul. 11, 2017.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 62531049 | Jul 2017 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 15809519 | Nov 2017 | US |
| Child | 17034756 | US |
