Secure financial data - section 404 oxley sarbanes

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The 404 oxley sarbanes section demands that corporations take appropriate steps to control access to and ensure the security of financial data. This is especially relevant in the climate of offshoring and in the wake of an Indian Call centre scandal where a rougue employee sold 7,000 bank account details for 3 ponds each including card numbers and expiry dates to an undercover reporter from Murdoch's News International UK newspaper, The Sun.

Information technology is helping companies meet the demands of this act and it is essential to adequately manage who has access to financial information.

With Section 404 oxley sarbanes, companies must assess internal financial controls and report findings to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Foreign business partners are becoming more aware of U.S. regulatory requirements as well.

CEOs andCFOsof certain midsize and foreign public companies must still execute and file certifications about their internal controls under Section 302 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act, even though the Securities and Exchange CommissionSECrecently gave them an extra year to comply with Section 404,

The SEC did extended the compliance date ayear for financial disclosure set by Section 404 of Sarbanes Oxley for those U.S. companies with a market cap under 75 million.

Foreign companies are especially interestedas well as they may offshore for US firms or have a US stock market listing themselves, or plan a US listing.

Public companies are turning to CPA firms for the new Section 404 internal control work created by the legislation.

Implementing Sarbanes Oxley has created considerable strain for SEC registered companies in Europe, in terms of both management time and financial cost.

Many European businesses are removing themselves from the American stock market due to the compliance cost.

The US already has much higher reporting requirements than Europe, though the Basel II requirements for Banks and European financial institutes is providing direction on this.

Strong internal systems that can catch an employee trying to commit fraud are extremely important in the 404 section.

With this requirement for information sharing, its no wonder that nearly 90of companies have elected to establish cross functional Sarbanes Oxley compliance teams.

Senior executives breaking the law of Section 906s provisions face a fine of up to 5 million dollars and 20 years in prison.

Competent and freedom loving executives should ensure there are some means of independent verification in order to have any degree of confidence that they will not go to prison.

In summary, Section 404 of theManagement Assessment of Internal Controls Requires companies to provide in each annual report an internal control report assessing the effectiveness of their internal control structure and procedures.

An Organisation inability to control many variables, change every password, patch every PC and updateusers will affect the outcome of Sarbanes oxley. audits.