In 2002, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was formed due to a huge business scandal that took place involving three large companies. These three companies, Enron, Arthur Andersen, and Worldcom, ended their business endeavors with prison sentences, countless layoffs, and billions of invested dollars lost. This act was formed in order to increase company security and prevent a large-scale accounting scandal from happening again.
With this act, businesses establish a strong and transparent internal control over all of their financial reporting. A SOX audit is required for all public, private, in-country, and overseas businesses. A company will be asked to hire a third-party auditor and comply with the SOX guidelines. A business team’s responsibilities are to identify the company’s biggest priorities when dealing with financial risk.
This act is 66 pages in total but has only a few very important sections that businesses can prepare for. The most important sections of this act are 302, 404, 409, and 802.
SOX Section 302
Keeping executives in the loop of all business activities is the baseline of this section. CEOs and CFOs are required to personally vouch for their company’s financial standards. These two in management need to state that they have evaluated ICFR within 90 days of certifying final financial results. The IT team’s role is to then deliver real-time reporting, based on their internal controls. These controls must apply to the SOX guidelines. This usually requires automating tasks, such as testing, evidence fathering, and even reporting on remediation efforts. These reports should be given to the auditor and management.
SOX Section 404
In this section, establishing the proper business controls to support all accurate financial reporting is crucial to a business’s livelihood. Many organizations don’t have the resources or time to perform a full SOX audit every year. Fortunately, they can outsource this burden by hiring an external auditor who will provide them with peace of mind that their financials are accurate and transparent while saving them from spending valuable man-hours on internal audits.
The IT team is an integral part of the company’s financial data management. The wide variety of tasks they undertake includes protecting information from unauthorized access, ensuring accuracy and completeness in all given information, fixing bugs that have been identified by application testing or software integration verification to ensure processes run smoothly and quickly with maximum possible security for clients’ assets.
In order to ensure the accuracy and completeness of all given information, a business’s IT team is responsible for security measures. In the case of a SOX audit, this may involve testing software integration or performing automated process tests in an effort to prevent unauthorized access to asset-bearing accounts – which could be damaging both financially and logistically.
SOX Section 409
SOX section 409 ensures the timely disclosure of any information that could shift a public company’s financial performance. Certain events such as mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcy, or crippling data breaches will sometimes be the cause of this type of effect on companies’ stocks.
To avoid any major financial disruption, it is important for public companies to be sure they are in compliance with SOX. In the rare occasion that this does happen, there must be timely disclosure of information about what happened so shareholders know how best to handle their investments accordingly
The IT team’s main and most important role is to support SOX compliance software. This software typically uses alert mechanisms, as well as quick ways of informing shareholders and regulators. These tools are used for timely disclosure requirements, in order to ensure the company stays on top of any changes or missteps with financial statements.
SOX Section 802
Paper and electronic records are often kept by small businesses today, but this is not always a safe decision. Spreadsheets on an end user’s computer, email messages, Instant Messages, recorded calls discussing money, or financial transactions should be carefully monitored for security purposes as they must be preserved to provide auditors with the information needed during audits of your business finances.
The IT team’s role in SOX compliance regulations is to preserve records with internal backup processes, and additionally, need to make sure document management systems are operating properly. These processes may or may not include an archive of old email content, depending on the organization’s needs and technological capabilities. The professionals also have control over maintaining accessibility for these documents in the most modern ways.
How to Ensure a SOX Audit Goes Smoothly
The Unified Compliance Framework (UCF) is the perfect way for IT teams to satisfy multiple regulations. With this framework in place, an organization can adopt a set of controls that will meet all compliance needs, no matter how strict they are.
Documenting processes before they happen will save both time and money in the long run. If you’re ready for any audit, whether it be from your boss or an outside auditor, then the process is easy to document as well. Listed below are a few different frameworks that can be used when undergoing a SOX audit.
COSO Framework
The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, which is known as the COSO, has created a framework for creating an effective internal control system. You can use their five components, directed leadership, shared values, and culture that emphasizes accountability for control as well as risk-based approach to help create your foundation on organizational controls through identifying and assessing risks at all levels, in order to prevent costly mistakes from happening again.
COBIT Framework
The COBIT framework is a valuable tool for organizations looking to create an internal control system. This comprehensive set of guidelines combines compliance with other requirements, such as SOX and technical issues that companies may have faced when implementing their corporate governance within IT teams. With the help of this guide, businesses are able to better understand how they can maximize the potential value gained from their IT team while also simplifying implementation for a successful enterprise-wide management policy.
Your team’s role to document and package the process, as well as support systems that minimize risk is vital for SOX compliance. Preventing accounting oversight will help your company stay in line with industry standards by ensuring it stays compliant all year long.
