It’s been nearly 20 years since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed. Since that time, the speed of technology improvements and globalization in the financial world has exceeded all expectations, especially in the last year when we were all stuck in our homes and needed more remote, technological options.
Consequently, the pressure for continuous auditing and monitoring of systems has never been higher. Disparate teams, integrated systems, turnover, and mergers all contribute to the challenges of Sox Compliance.
What is Sox Compliance?
Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) was created after a series of major account scandals rocked corporate America. It mandates improvements in financial disclosures from corporations that prevent accounting fraud. It also carries with it enhanced financial disclosure, corporate governance measures, and internal control assessment.
Who is required to comply with SOX?
SOX compliance is required of all public companies in the U.S., and wholly-owned subsidiaries and foreign publicly traded companies doing business in the U.S. Further, private companies getting ready to go public with an IPO need to prepare to comply with SOX. It also regulates the accounting firms that execute audits for any of those public companies.
What are the top Controls and Requirements for IT departments under SOX?
Sarbanes-Oxley doesn’t specifically require anything of IT departments BUT it does have a big impact on information systems and the security of those systems in particular.
The main compliance areas of SOX include:
- Corporate Responsibility for Financial Reports
- Management Assessment of Internal Controls
- Real-Time Issuer Disclosures
- Criminal Penalties for Altering Documents
- Corporate Responsibility for Financial Reports
The Need for Continuous Auditing and Reporting
In order to fulfill the requirements of SOX and be in full compliance, a system for continuous auditing and monitoring of financial systems within the corporate environment is not only ideal, it is necessary. That’s where FinwatchCloud comes in. FinwatchCloud is the first full stack Monitoring and Management application focused on financial applications that keeps an eye on not only changes within your financial apps themselves but although throughout the entire environment from where they run.
FinwatchCloud allows for:
- Continuous Auditing
- Gives Finance and Audit teams continuous auditing capability
- Full Stack Auditing (Application + Server + Cloud)
- Applications
- Cloud and on-premises apps supported
- Changes to the app (business rules, security, access)
- Not Intrusive … We take your application backups
- Server and Cloud
- Full flexibility, standard Server and cloud scripts included
- Bottom Up, Verification of compliance…We detect changes
- Consistent reporting
- Near real-time
- Custom email alerts
- Audit Reports include Point in time state reports as well as change, alert, and acknowledgment reporting
Contact us today for your own FREEMIUM version of FinwatchCloud and try it out for yourself.