Network World Article: SOX - Five years of headaches 2129



  • This is one of the better articles I’ve recently read related to SOX. It shares how the expense aspects of SOX have been exacerbated due to the difficulties in interpreting how to properly comply. Hopefully, improvements will be forthcoming with the New SOX guidelines that should be in effect by year-end. Some quotes from the article are noted below: %0ANetwork World Article: SOX - Five years of headaches%0APlease paste to browser and add www%0Anetworkworld.com/news/2007/072607-sox.html It hasn’t been cheap: spending on SOX compliance was USD5.5 billion in 2004 and is now more than USD6 billion annually, according to AMR Research. %0AIt was millions of dollars extra that was spent. This was due to people overcomplying, doing far more testing than was necessary, …%0AWhereas today companies focus on 31 so-called key controls, in the days after SOX, public firms were testing for as many as 200 controls, he says. %0AIt was extremely painful for everybody. Nobody really knew how to comply, Kamens says. Because there was so much pressure on public companies to pass, everybody was scared and they did exactly whatever auditors told them to do. Failure was not an option. %0ASmaller public companies  technically those with less than USD75 million of stock in the hands of public investors  have been granted numerous extensions allowing them to postpone compliance. Currently, they are scheduled to face the requirements of SOX on Dec. 15. %0AA compliance project approached correctly should cost 50% to 75% less than what companies have been spending, but many businesses insist on an inefficient, bottom-up approach that audits process-level controls like expenditures, payroll and property …


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