What is sox compliance in it?

The legislation set new and expanded requirements for all U.S. public company boards, management, and public accounting firms with the goal of increasing transparency in financial reporting and formalizing systems for internal controls. In addition, penalties for fraudulent activity are much more severe.

The stated goal of SOX is "to protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures."

As such, public company management must individually certify the accuracy of financial information. SOX also increased the oversight role of boards of directors and the independence of external auditors who review the accuracy of corporate financial statements.

Meeting SOX compliance requirements is not only a legal obligation but a good business practice. All organizations should behave ethically and limit access to their financial data. It also has the added benefit of helping organizations keep sensitive data safe from insider threats, cyber attacks, and security breaches.

The data security framework of SOX compliance can be summarized by five primary pillars:

To skip ahead to the SOX compliance checklist, click here.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in 2002 as a reaction to several major financial scandals, including Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems, and WorldCom. These scandals cost investors billions of dollars when the companies' share prices collapsed and impacted public confidence in US securities markets.

The act contains eleven titles covering additional corporate board responsibilities and criminal penalties. The enforcement and implementation of these requirements were left in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Harvey Pitt, the 26th chairman of the SEC, led the adoption of the rules and created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which is in charge of overseeing, regulating, inspecting, and disciplining accounting firms in their roles as auditors of public companies. SOX also covers auditor independence, corporate governance, internal control assessments, and enhanced financial disclosure.

It was approved in the House by a vote of 423 in favor, 3 opposed, and 8 abstaining, along with a vote of 99 in favor and 1 abstaining in the Senate.

When signing SOX into law, President George W. Bush stated it was "the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The era of low standards and false profits is over; no boardroom in America is above or beyond the law."

The Act was named after its bill sponsors, U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and U.S. Representative Michael G. Oxley (R-OH).

Canada (2002), Germany (2002), South Africa (2002), Turkey (2002), France (2003), Australia (2004), India (2005), Japan (2006), Italy (2006), and Israel (2006) have since followed the United States and introduced their own SOX-like regulations.

All publicly-traded companies, wholly-owned subsidiaries, and foreign companies that are publicly traded and do business in the United States must comply with SOX. SOX also applies to accounting firms that audit public companies.

SOX places a barrier between the auditing function and accounting firms. The firm that audits the books of a publicly held company may no longer do the company's bookkeeping, audits, or business valuations and is also banned from designing or implementing information systems, providing investment advisory and banking services, or consulting on other management issues.

Private companies, charities, and non-profits generally do not need to comply with all of SOX, however, they shouldn't knowingly destroy or falsify financial information. SOX also imposes penalties on organizations for non-compliance.

In addition, whistleblower protection applies, such as retaliating against someone who provides a law enforcement officer with information about a possible federal offense and is punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment.

Private companies planning their Initial Public Offering (IPO) must comply with SOX before going public.

Finally, SOX contains mandates regarding the establishment of payroll system controls. A company's workforce, salaries, benefits, incentives, paid time off, and training costs must be accounted for. Certain employers must adopt an ethics program that includes a code of ethics, a communication plan, and staff training.

The cooperation of IT departments is critical for SOX compliance because their efforts are necessary to ensure financial data security and financial record availability.

IT department must provide documentation proving that the company's internal processes are well within the data security thresholds outlined in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

To fulfill their specific compliance obligations, IT departments must:

Sections 302 and 404 of the SOX act specify reporting parameters for IT departments to prevent internal and external agents from maliciously modifying financial information.

Learn about the best practices for compliance monitoring.>

To comply with SOX regulations, organizations must conduct a yearly audit of their financial statements. The objective of this audit is to confirm the integrity of all data-handling processes and financial statements. The public company being audited must supply proof of all SOX internal controls ensuring data security and accurate financial reporting.

The most important SOX compliance requirements are considered to be 302, 404, 409, 802, and 906. Compliance in these areas is especially important for organizations engaged in data protection.

Every public company must file periodic financial statements and the internal control structure with the SEC.

Section 302 states that the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) are directly responsible for the accuracy, documentation, and submission of all financial reports and the internal control structure to the SEC.

In addition, they are responsible for establishing and maintaining internal SOX controls and must validate those controls within 90 days before issuing the report.

Section 404 is the most complicated, contested, and expensive part of all the SOX compliance requirements. It requires that all annual financial reports include an Internal Control Report stating that management is responsible for an "adequate" internal control structure and an assessment by management of the effectiveness of the control structure.

Any shortcomings must also be reported. In addition, a registered independent auditor must attest to the accuracy of the company management assertion that internal accounting controls and internal control framework are in place, operational, and effective.

Both management and the external auditor are responsible for performing their assessment in the context of a top-down risk assessment, which requires management to base the scope of its assessment and evidence gathered on risk.

The essence of Section 409 is that companies must disclose any material changes in the financial condition or operations on an almost real-time basis. This is designed to protect the interests of investors and the public.

Section 802 imposes penalties of up to 20 years imprisonment for altering, destroying, mutilating, concealing, or falsifying financial records, documents, or tangible objects with the intent to obstruct, impede, or influence legal investigations.

Additionally, it imposes penalties of up to 10 years on any accountant, auditor, or other who knowingly and wilfully violates the requirements of maintenance of all audit or review papers for a period of 5 years.

Section 806 encourages the disclosure of corporate fraud by protecting employees of publicly traded companies and their subsidiaries who report illegal activities. It authorizes the U.S. Department of Labor to protect whistleblower complaints against employers who retaliate and further authorizes the Department of Justice to criminally charge those responsible for the retaliation.

The criminal penalty for certifying a misleading or fraudulent financial report can be upwards of $5 million in fines and 20 years in prison.

Formal penalties for non-compliance with SOX include fines, removal from delistings from public stock exchanges, and invalidation of D&O insurance policies. Under the Act, CEOs and CFOs who wilfully submit an incorrect certification to a SOX compliance audit can face fines of $5 million and up to 20 years in jail.

A SOX compliance audit is a mandated yearly assessment of how well your company manages its internal controls, and the results are made available to shareholders. The primary purpose of a SOX compliance audit is to verify the authenticity of a company's financial statements, however, cybersecurity is becoming an increasingly important factor in SOX audits.

Companies hire independent auditors to complete the SOX audit as they must be separate from any other audits to prevent conflicts of interest that could result in tampering or other issues.

Auditors can also interview personnel and verify that compliance controls are sufficient to maintain SOX compliance standards. Specifically, SOX sections 302, 404, and 409 require the following parameters and conditions must be monitored, logged, and audited:

Digital transformation is expanding the range of potential pathways to processes handling financial data, making financial processes increasingly vulnerable to cybercriminal compromise. Future SOX audits will likely focus more on the role of internal control and cybersecurity frameworks in maintaining financial data integrity.

To prepare for this inevitable future, finance organizations must implement attack surface monitoring solutions to secure their private data.

Update your reporting and internal audit systems so you can pull any report the auditor requests quickly and verify that your SOX compliance software is working as intended, so there are no unforeseen issues.

Your SOX auditor will focus on four main internal controls as part of the yearly audit. To be SOX compliant, your organization will need to demonstrate 4 primary security controls:

‍Access control means physical controls like doors, badges, and locks, and electronic controls like role-based access control (RBAC), the principle of least privilege, and permission audits.

By maintaining a robust permissive access model, you can demonstrate that each user only has access to what they need to do their job. Limiting user access to only the necessary controls can greatly prevent the risk of unauthorized access should a breach occur.

Learn about access control >

‍Security means that you can demonstrate security controls that prevent data breaches, close data leaks, and mitigate cyber threats. This will generally include vendor risk management, continuous security monitoring, and attack surface management.

UpGuard Vendor Risk can help you continuously assess the external security posture of third-party vendors, and UpGuard BreachSight automatically finds data leaks and attack vectors in your attack surface. They'll also help report to the board, shareholders, and management by creating easy-to-understand security ratings.

‍SOX requires financial services companies to maintain SOX-compliance off-site backups of all financial records. Any central data center containing backed-up data is also regulated by SOX.

Learn how to mitigate data breaches >

‍SOX requires that you have defined processes to add and manage users, install new software, and when you make changes to databases or applications that manage your company's financials.

A good way to document this is through configuration management.

For IT departments and executives, compliance with SOX is an important ongoing concern. However, SOX compliance is more than just passing an audit. Appropriate data governance processes and procedures and have a number of tangible benefits on your business.

According to a 2019 survey:

When SOX was hurriedly passed, many executives wondered why they should be subjected to the same compliance burdens as those that had been dishonest or negligent. Smaller companies complained about the monopolization of executives' time and compliance costs running into millions of dollars.

SOX compliance benefits all publicly-listed companies by communicating a baseline level of financial assurance, promoting investor confidence, stakeholder trust, and market certainty.

SOX provides executives with a reason to divert some company profits to improving financial management processes and capabilities, which protects shareholders, reduces the risk of lawsuits, and improves company operations by helping them avoid bad decisions.

The SOX Act has allowed companies to standardize and consolidate key financial processes, eliminate redundant information systems, minimize inconsistencies in their data loss prevention policy, automate manual processes, reduce the number of handoffs, and eliminate unnecessary controls.

In short, the biggest benefits of SOX compliance are:

There are two common SOX compliance challenges most organizations face:

‍Spreadsheets continue to be a staple in the SOX workflow, partly due to their ability to link data across different documents and automate basic tasks. However, modern audit projects now require more attributes and details about controls which can lead to version control issues, partial or incomplete data, typos, deleted data, analysis of incomplete data sets, and process owners who are left in the dark.

‍While SOX has brought many benefits to financial reporting and data security, remaining SOX compliant continues to rise in cost.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is over 60 pages and has spawned a number of related concepts, committees, and policies that relate to the auditing process:

Your organization's degree of compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 can be evaluated with the following set of questions. To conveniently keep track of each addressed item, these questions can be downloaded in the form of an editable PDF by following the link below

Download the SOX compliance checklist >‍

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is meant to increase company security and prevent accounting scandals like these from happening again.

How? By establishing strong and transparent internal control over financial reporting (ICFR). Any American or overseas public company that has registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) must demonstrate SOX compliance. Same goes for any company providing financial services to any of these firms. According to CFO.com, more than half of the larger companies registered with the SEC will pay $1 million or more to achieve SOX compliance.

What part of this is relevant to you as an IT pro? In 2007, the SEC issued SOX compliance guidance clarifying the IT team's responsibilities: to identify the company's biggest priorities when reporting financial risk, sometimes with help from auditors. Your role, then, is to support the processes that minimize all identified risks. The most pertinent sections of SOX for IT teams are 302, 404, 409 and 802. Here is what they mean for you:

SOX requires the CEO and CFO to vouch for the accuracy of a company's financial statements. They need to attest that they've evaluated ICFR within 90 days of certifying the financial results.

The IT team's role is to deliver real-time reporting on their internal controls as they apply to SOX compliance. This requires automating tasks like testing, evidence-gathering, and reporting on remediation efforts. Reporting should be delivered in both auditor- and executive-friendly language.

According to SOX, all businesses should have internal controls in place for accurate and transparent financial reporting. An external auditor should review these controls every year, assessing how well businesses document, test, and maintain those internal controls.

The IT team's role here is to identify key IT systems and processes involved in initiating, authorizing, processing and summarizing financial information. This material usually involves security, application testing, the verification of software integrations, and automated process testing. The goal is to ensure all procedures support the accurate and complete transmission of financial data while keeping asset-bearing accounts secure from unauthorized access.

Certain events — like mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcy, the dissolution of a major supplier or a crippling data breach — can significantly shift a company's fiscal prospects. SOX compliance mandates the timely disclosure of any information that could affect a public company's financial performance.

The IT team's role is to support SOX compliance software that uses alert mechanisms that could trigger this timely disclosure requirement, as well as mechanisms for quickly informing shareholders and regulators of any changes in the company financial statement.

Today's SMBs keep both paper and electronic copies of sensitive records when bookkeeping. Spreadsheets on an end user's computer, email messages, IMs, recorded calls discussing money, financial transactions — all of these have to be preserved and made available to auditors for at least five years.

The IT team's role in SOX compliance to preserve these records with internal automated backup processes and ensure the proper function of document management systems (which may or may not include an archive of email and related unified-communications content). IT pros also have the organization control to maintain the availability of these records as they migrate to new technologies, such as from old tape-based systems to cloud backup.

The Unified Compliance Framework (UCF) aggregates requirements from big regulations like SOX, HIPAA and PCI DSS, along with requirements from federal and state laws. With UCF, the IT team can adopt a set of controls to satisfy multiple regulations.

Network Frontiers, which manages UCF, keeps it up to date, which is a huge time saver for your team. Ron Markham, co-founder of Intreis and former CIO for IBM's Software Group-Business Analytics, used UCF to cut IBM's audit time to two weeks and reduce audit-related costs by 80 percent.

In addition to what Markham calls his "test once, comply many" approach, Markham recommends a unifying platform that automates workflows. The solution should integrate a configuration management database (CMDB) and serve as IT's system of record.

Documenting processes and packaging them in a way that's easy to audit, both for management and outside auditors, prevents frantic pre-audit scrambling. It also saves those most precious of resources: time and money.

Similarly, the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO)'s five framework components work to create an effective internal control system. You can use the five components of the COSO framework to help your team create a foundation for internal organizational control through, "directed leadership, shared values and a culture that emphasizes accountability for control." COSO also advocates for a risk-based approach that frequently identifies and assesses risk at all levels of the company.

SOX compliance is an annual obligation derived from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) that requires publicly traded companies doing business in the U.S. to establish financial reporting standards, including safeguarding data, tracking attempted breaches, logging electronic records for auditing, and proving compliance.

In 2002, the United States Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) to protect shareholders and the general public from accounting errors and fraudulent practices in enterprises, and to improve the accuracy of corporate disclosures. The act sets deadlines for compliance and publishes rules on requirements. Congressmen Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley drafted the act with the goal of improving corporate governance and accountability, in light of the financial scandals that occurred at Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco, among others.

All public companies now must comply with SOX, both on the financial side and on the IT side. The way in which IT departments store corporate electronic records changed as a result of SOX. While the act does not specify how a business should store records or establish a set of business practices, it does define which records should be stored and the length of time for the storage. To comply with SOX, corporations must save all business records, including electronic records and electronic messages, for “not less than five years.” Consequences for noncompliance include fines or imprisonment, or both.

As a result of SOX, IT departments are responsible for creating and maintaining an archive of corporate records. They seek ways in which to do this that are both cost effective and that are in complete compliance with the requirements of the legislation. Three rules in Section 802 of SOX affect the management of electronic records.

The best plan of action for SOX compliance is to have the correct security controls in place to ensure that financial data is accurate and protected against loss. Developing best practices and relying on the appropriate tools helps businesses automate SOX compliance and reduce SOX management costs.

Data classification tools are commonly used to aid in addressing compliance challenges by automatically spotting and classifying data as soon as it is created and applying persistent classification tags to the data. Solutions that are context aware have the ability to classify and tag electronic health records, cardholder and other financial data, confidential design documents, social security numbers, PHI, PII, and other structured and unstructured data that is regulated.

Section 906 of the SOX Act requires a written statement to be submitted by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). This statement is to be submitted with a periodic report, also required by the Act. The content of the written statement, according to section 906 “shall certify that the periodic report containing the financial statements fully complies with the requirements of section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U.S.C. 78m or 78o(d)) and that information contained in the periodic report fairly presents, in all material respects, the financial condition and results of operations of the issuer.”

It’s paragraph “(c)” in section 906 where penalties for violations are recorded. These penalties are for either;

1. Knowingly certifying a report that does not “comport” with the requirement of section 906 2. Willfully certifying a report that does not “comport” with the requirement of section 906

The fine for a knowing violation will be “not more” than $1,000,000 or imprisoned “not more” than 10 years in prison, or both. A willful violation is significantly more costly at “not more” than $5,000,000 or 20 years in prison, or both.

Data classification enables security teams to more easily monitor and enforce corporate policies for data handling. Depending on the sensitivity of data and its applicable regulations, it may need to be encrypted, compressed, or saved to a different file format. With the correct policies in place, corporations can prevent unauthorized users, even those with administrative rights to the system, from viewing regulated data. The best solutions also prevent data egress through copying to removable storage devices. Another feature of security solutions that are worth the investment is its ability to safeguard shared data. These so-called “masking” features give users access to necessary information while ensuring compliance with regulations.

Being in SOX compliance and complying with other regulatory standards is nearly impossible without the correct security solutions in place. Providing evidence of compliance is even worse because evidence must prove written controls are in place, communicated, and enforced while supporting non repudiation. The correct security software solution provides the supportable evidence so that all of your compliance efforts are worthwhile.

A software solution for meeting compliance requirements should be able to monitor data, enforce policies, and log every user action. With evidentiary-quality trails, all of the data needed for compliance is in place. Protect your data and your business with a software solution that ensures SOX compliance and rest a little easier during your next audit.

The United States Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, also known as SOX, in 2002. SOX compliance protocols were developed to protect the public from fraudulent or erroneous practices by business entities. By implementing SOX financial security controls, organizations can protect their sensitive data from theft and cyberattacks.

The following SOX compliance requirements are applicable to IT organizations:

A. Corporate responsibility for financial reports: If your organization is public, it is mandatory to report its financial situation in a regular, timely manner to the Security Exchange Commission (SEC). The company's CFO and CEO must authenticate each financial report and they will be held accountable for the content in the report. This is a major SOX compliance requirement according to SOX compliance requirement section 302.

B. Assessing internal controls: Every organization must develop an internal control process, and both management and external auditors must assess how effective the process is and determine possible flaws in the process that could lead to a SOX violation. This control is mandated by SOX compliance requirement section 404.

C. Maintaining transparency: The organization's officials must inform their investors and the public if there is a major change in the organization's financial situation and its ability to operate. This control is mandated by SOX compliance requirement section 409.

During a SOX compliance IT audit, your organization's IT department must prove its adherence to SOX compliance standards by providing documentation that shows how the organization has met the mandated financial transparency and data security thresholds.

While documenting, make sure your organization's IT department is familiar with the security controls, access privilege, and log management standards required for the financial records across the organization.

ManageEngine Network Configuration Manager provides SOX compliance policies by default. You can apply these policies to your IT devices and check if any device is violating the policy. Network Configuration Manager also allows you to see all the rule violations and helps you fix them. You can also download SOX compliance reports and submit those reports during audits. This enables you to improve the overall security of your company's financial data, be SOX compliant, and avoid huge penalties.

1. Who is personally liable if there is a compliance violation?

The company's CFO and CEO will be liable if there is a compliance violation. They will be subject to penalties or imprisonment in case of a violation.

2. We accidentally revealed nonpublic financial information inappropriately across our network. Is that a SOX violation?

It is a SOX violation. If nonpublic information is inappropriately disclosed on your network, you must rapidly execute a response program to identify the extent of the exposure, assess the effect on the corporation and its customers, and notify all affected parties.

The Act passed in the wake of notorious financial scandals. Corporate giants Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco faced charges of significant fraud, with WorldCom folding in a $104-billion-dollar bankruptcy. According to FiveThirtyEight, the damages associated with the burst of the dot-com bubble beginning in 2000, an event to which many of these fraud scandals contributed, “[destroyed] $6.2 trillion in household wealth over the next two years.”

Given the massive deleterious impact of financial securities fraud in publicly traded companies, Congress recognized the need for stricter oversight, better internal controls, and more meticulous auditing practices in corporate regulation.

What is SOX compliance? While the details of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are complex, “SOX compliance” refers to the annual audit in which a public company is obligated to provide proof of accurate, data-secured financial reporting.

To this end, while SOX measures seek to govern the financial operations and disclosures of corporate entities and any of their contracted financial service providers, the regulations pertain to a breadth of departments, and a few to IT. SOX reporting specifically involves IT departments because adequate SOX internal controls require complete file safety and full visibility into financial record history—conditions which require each IT employee to understand his or her role in demonstrating SOX compliance.

In a SOX IT audit, the IT department proves compliance by providing documentation showing that its employer has met mandated financial transparency and data security thresholds.

To align with SOX regulation law, IT departments must be familiar with the security, access privilege, and log management standards required for their financial records. The first step in cementing SOX internal controls is creating a “control environment,” which should:

In previous cases of corporate fraud, organizational stakeholders had tampered with high-clearance files to intentionally misrepresent the financial status of their company—misleading investors and costing the stock market trillions when they had to reissue their reports.

To prevent fraudulent agents (whether internal or external) from tampering with sensitive financial information in the future, SOX issued Act Sections 302 and 404 to specify the parameters of reporting regulations as they apply to IT departments.

Section 302 dictates that the principal executive officer and chief financial officer sign and review their annual or quarterly report testifying to SOX compliance. In so doing, they must certify that the information included is wholly true and representative of the company’s financial status, to the best of their knowledge. To this end, these agents must do the following:

To sum up, Section 302 obliges organizational stakeholders—namely, senior-level executives and financial officers—to ensure the security of financial data, to stay informed, and to honestly represent the state of their finances and security systems to SOX auditors.

Relatedly, Section 304 mandates that all organizations under the Act have systems in place to provide the data required by a compliance audit. It stipulates the rules of required annual reports, which must:

This speaks to the actionability of SOX internal controls reporting: it’s not enough for companies to issue a report claiming that they have ensured file security and financial transparency. When faced with a SOX compliance audit, companies must be able to demonstrate that they’ve complied with regulations for at least the past 90 days with reliable documentation. Because of this SOX requirement, system data must be both secure and available for reference when independent auditors conduct their assessments.

This renders tracking and cataloging functions necessary because companies must report successful or attempted security breaches and their resolutions. In other words, security information and event management (SIEM) is crucial. Auditors must have a paper trail to evaluate, so they must be able to access event log data to verify security systems are effective, documents are unaltered, and access is properly restricted.

Understandably, providing extensive documentation of SOX compliance and keeping fastidious records of change management in privileged financial information for an entire company can be an overwhelming—if not impossible—task when done manually.

Further, the organizational stakes of noncompliance are incredibly high. According to Section 906 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, companies bear the responsibility for inaccurate reporting, regardless of intentionality. As it pertains to the “failure of corporate officers to certify financial reports,” false information reported accidentally is punishable by a fine up to $1 million or a prison sentence up to 10 years in length. When misinformation is reported “willfully,” officers face up to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $5 million.

Due to the burdensome, confusing, and high-stakes nature of compliance reporting, it’s important to choose sophisticated software that automates many auditing responsibilities. SOX compliance software is capable of tracking relevant data, flagging security threats, generating compliance reports in accordance with common templates, or populating easily individualized reports with cataloged data and computer-executed analyses.

SIEM software is most helpful in its ability to consolidate log management to analyze trends and flag the most salient information. Many SIEM tools automatically detect security threats with intelligence feeds that identify malware, hackers, and unauthorized personnel. Additionally, these tools recognize familiar suspicious activity and push notifications or set alarms to indicate potential sources of trouble.

Of course, cybersecurity entails more than policing, or offensively detecting data loss, and who has breached secure data—it’s preventative as well, regulating who has access to data in the first place. To identify unauthorized users who have tampered with financial records, for example, IT departments must have already systematically secured files by giving full access to privileged users, endowing others with read-only access, and restricting access entirely for some.

Access rights management tools provide a holistic view of access across servers and locations, preparing information for compliance reports, minimizing guesswork, demanding auditing operations, and reducing data loss.

Another option is to utilize an email archiving solution. These tools permanently store messages in a centralized and safe location, where they’re easy to access if needed. This helps you demonstrate SOX compliance, since you’ll be able to store and retrieve your organization’s email records at any time.

Mail Assure (from the SolarWinds family), is an all-in-one email management tool that can help. Along with robust email archiving, it also offers advanced threat protection for both inbound and outbound emails, and a variety of other handy features. Plus, it’s a great option for managed service providers, since it can be used to handle email archiving for a high volume of individual clients’ businesses.

Whether a SOX IT audit is impending or months away, corporations should have a long-term strategy for demonstrating SOX compliance requirements. While software decreases the labor of log management, intelligent threat detection, and form generation, it’s critical that publicly traded companies understand how to implement software effectively.

Educating the IT team ensures that all employees handle data securely, stay cognizant of security threats, and use SOX compliance software correctly to optimize the ease and accuracy of financial reporting. For this to happen, responsible organizations must facilitate a productive dialogue between their respective departments such that financial personnel and senior-level executives communicate their needs with the IT department, which in turn can provide their high-level cybersecurity insights.

Used properly, SOX compliance software facilitates the process of establishing internal controls, streamlines the preparation of compliance documentation, and positions corporations for continued success.

• Secure Access Control Management.
• Demonstrate a Resilient Cybersecurity Framework.
• Demonstrate Data Backup Protocols.
• Change Management.