How to Reduce Costs when Complying with SOX 404
Section 404 contains the most onerous and most costly requirements you’ll ever encounter in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). In this article, we?ll take a closer look at the salient points of this contentious piece of legislation as it relates to IT. We?ll also explain why companies are encountering difficulties in complying with it. Then as […]
How COBIT helps you achieve SOX Compliance
First released way back in 1996, COBIT has already been around for quite a while. One reason why it never took off was because companies were never compelled to use it ? until now. Today, many CEOs and CIOs are finding it to be a vital tool for achieving SOX compliance in IT. Thanks to […]
How Internal Auditors can win The War against Spreadsheet Fraud
To prevent another round of million dollar scandals due to fraudulent manipulations on spreadsheets, regulatory bodies have launched major offensives against these well-loved User Developed Applications (UDAs). Naturally, internal auditors are front and center in carrying out these offensives. While regulations like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Dodd-Frank Act, and Solvency II can only be effective if […]
Solutions to Password Overload
If only technologists had their way, passwords and PINs would have long been replaced with more innovative (and admittedly, better) security solutions. But such is not the case. Those alternative solutions, which include biometrics, smart cards, and password fobs, effective as they may be, are just way too expensive to implement. So although passwords and […]
Disadvantages of Spreadsheets – Obstacles to Compliance in the Healthcare Industry
Most of the regulatory compliance issues we talked about concerning spreadsheets have been related to financial data. But there are other kinds of data that are stored in spreadsheets which may also cause regulatory problems in the future. In the US, a legislation known as HIPAA or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is changing […]
How To Get Started with your IT Compliance Efforts for SOX
There’s no question about it. For many of you top executives in the corporate world, all roads leading to a brighter future have to go through SOX compliance. And because the business processes that contribute to financial reporting (the crux of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act) are now highly reliant on IT systems, it is important to […]
Without Desktop Virtualisation, you can’t attain True Business Continuity
Even if you’ve invested on virtualisation, off-site backup, redundancy, data replication, and other related technologies, I?m willing to bet your BC/DR program still lacks an important ingredient. I bet you’ve forgotten about your end users and their desktops. Picture this. A major disaster strikes your city and brings your entire main site down. No problem. […]
Spreadsheet Risks in Banks
No other industry perhaps handles such large volumes of critical financial data more than the banking industry. For decades now, spreadsheets have become permanent fixtures in the front-line reporting tool sets of banks, providing organised information when and where needed. But as banks enter into a period of heightened credit risks, elevated levels of fraud, […]
Can you do away with the Project Initiation Meeting?
Project initiation meetings are often skipped to fast-track projects. Once a sponsor is found, organisations go straight to project planning and execution. But based on our own experience, holding a project initiation meeting can actually eliminate many issues that may crop up in the future and hence may speed things up instead in the long […]
Still Looking For A Way To Consolidate Excel Spreadsheets?
When it’s time to consolidate Excel data, I won’t be surprised if you wished there was an easy way.
