The task before you is huge. You need to stay up-to-date with the latest employment laws. Now you might have operations in any of fifty states, or overseas in the European Community, Eastern Europe, or in Asia or Australia. In this article, we'll focus on U.S. Federal work and labor laws.  

Below we've compiled a list of free resources that should be helpful.

IAM/SSO Trends of 2015

This summer NetworkWorld.com, one of the premier online providers of information, intelligence, and insight for network and IT executives, released an updated report on seven of the market’s top SSO service providers. Drafted with the practitioner audience in mind, the report highlighted several trends among current top providers.

1. SSO products now offer increased support for additional authentication factors.

All of the industry’s top IAM/SSO providers now offer products with solid multifactor authentication (MFA) protection. This increases SSO’s effectiveness as a protective tool and increases login security.

2. Vendors are moving towards integrating mobile device management (MDM) with their other identity service offerings.

Both NetworkWorld.com and analysts at Gartner see this as an important step to maintaining securing in an increasingly mobile-focused workplace. Although most vendors are still working on true MDM tools, generic SSO already provides an important level of security for mobile applications beyond that of basic password logins.

The Macguires and Developing Tradition

 The origins of Labor Day can be found in the 1800s during America’s Industrial Revolution. The average American might have started working as early as six years old and was forced to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week to support themselves and their families. These hardships led to the rise of labor unions and a collective desire for change.

Nice To Meet You

He’s the tenth person to approach you since you walked into the event.

He offers his name with a smile and a firm handshake.You smile back. “Nice to meet you.”

And, just like that, you shake hands and completely forget whatever he said his name was.

As you know, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) permits eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specific family and medical reasons. We’ve previously discussed six common FMLA leave request errors that can trigger lawsuits.

This August, the Department of Labor (DOL) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced their specific areas of focus on FMLA and reasonable accommodation enforcement for 2015 through 2016. Jeff Nowak, an employment law attorney and the author of the blog FMLAInsights.com, offered some important takeaways.

In 2013, Gartner predicted that, in light of potential security breaches in single sign-on (SSO) systems, federated single sign-on would be the predominant SSO technology through 2016. Sharing information across multiple entities and trust domains, federated identity management (IAM), such as SSO, allows identity attributes to be transferred from one trusted identifying and authenticating entity to another for authentication and authorization purposes. Simply put, federated IAM SSO provides convenient and efficient system access to identified individuals.

It’s time to update the latest in timesheet fraud. You’d think that after years of splashy headlines, employees would know better than to cheat their employers in such big yet obvious ways. But no. Apparently they have not.

1. Lax Supervision in the U.S. Patent Office Emboldens Timesheet Fraud

It was all so promising. An award-winning telework program for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), started in 1998, worked like a dream. Building step by step, it expanded slowly over time. Eventually saving big dollars in gas costs for employees. It significantly reduced the cost of employee space. It made it far easier to attract and retain higher-powered patent examiners and attorneys who, avoiding lengthy commutes, could now work from outside a 50-mile radius from headquarters.  According to Danette R. Campbell, senior advisor for telework in the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer at USPTO, by 2013, 3,464 teleworkers “working from home four to five days a week save $5,220,102 in gas per year and reduce emissions by 20,957 tons per year. More than 3,000 teleworkers who work from home one day a week save $1,033,824 in gas per year and reduce emissions by 4,150 tons per year.”

In August 2014, the Washington Post reported several issues with the program. It turns out an internal investigation discovered that these employees were poorly supervised. In some cases, union rules limiting supervisor’s oversight of their employees was to blame.

Single sign-on (SSO) was popularized in the early 2000’s as a way to make it easier for users to log into applications. User portals, where once they logged in, would grant users access to many applications. Today, security concerns and increased user mobility, that so many workers do their work outside company facilities and firewalls, has demanded a new approach. Identity and access management systems seem to be providing answers.

In this article, we feature three leaders in this space: Ping Identity, Okta and OneLogin. Pacific Timesheet is certified and integrates with all three vendors using the SAML 2.0 interface.