Sidebar: Guidelines Meld IT Governance, Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance

By Thomas Hoffman

July 14, 2003 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Among the tools available to companies grappling with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are standardized frameworks for IT governance and accounting controls that can be used to link Sarbanes-Oxley documentation activities with corporate IT management procedures.
For instance, the IT Governance Institute and the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, both of which are based in Rolling Meadows, Ill., publish a set of guidelines called Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies. The six-volume set, known informally as Cobit, contains an IT governance model as well as management guidelines for determining how effectively a company controls IT and improvements that could be made.
The two organizations released a third edition of Cobit in 2000. A majority of the documents are available for free download as an open standard at www.itgovernance.org and www.isaca.org/cobit.htm.
Cobit can serve as an effective bridge between IT governance and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance efforts, said Pamela Fredericks, a senior security consultant at Forsythe Solutions Group Inc. in Skokie, Ill. "If an IT organization follows Cobit, they'll have the documentation to help the CFO comply with [Sarbanes-Oxley]," she said.
Another framework that can be used to improve the quality of financial reporting has been developed by COSO, which is officially known as the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission. The commission is named for James C. Treadway Jr., a former member of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the initial chairman of COSO. All COSO publications are available through the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, which is based in New York and can be reached online at www.aicpa.org.
COSO's framework focuses on internal accounting controls and is one of the original sources used to create the Cobit guidelines. Companies can apply the accounting tenets set out by COSO to help them achieve Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, Fredericks said.

Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Additional Resources

POLL RESULTS

Leading IT Pros Weigh In on Top IT Issues

Accelerate your knowledge of the IT world you inhabit by viewing the results of a series of polls taken by your IT peers. These polls of 100+ IT professionals each are available for full viewing. They cover key topics such as virtualization, processor performance, green IT, cloud computing and many others. Be a part of the buzz.

WHITE PAPER

For Best Results, Think Beyond the Box

Technology is complex. Keeping it running productively shouldn't be. To that end, you want to minimize the number of solutions needed in-house to simplify operations, maintenance, and support. Kodak offers a best-practices model. One company provides support for both scanner and software, for fast problem resolution without vendor finger-pointing. Download now!

WHITE PAPER

Accelerating the Path to Demand Intelligence with a Demand Signal Repository

Utilizing demand intelligence improves the precision of pricing, product assortments, channel/store placement, and promotion, which are all essential for sustainable revenue management performance. Learn more, download this free whitepaper today.

White Papers & Webcasts

IT Modernization in Government
As IT budgets are slashed, IT management pressures rise and legacy systems linger in government organizations, modernizing the IT infrastructure and applications has...

Usability Is Everything
Learn what sets Workday's HR and Payroll solutions apart from the competition....

Sustaining SOX Compliance: Best Practices to Mitigate Risk, Automate Compliance, and Reduce Costs
Since the adoption of SOX, much has been learned about IT compliance. Discover how to make SOX efforts more effective in "Sustaining Sox...

The Value of Real SaaS at Workday
Cost savings, speed to value, and innovation brought to the enterprise by Workday's software-as-a-service solutions for HR and Payroll....

IDC White Paper: CCM for IT Compliance and Risk Management
Learn from industry analysts how IT organizations are using configuration management to meet compliance requirements and instill best practices. Find out how these...

SaaS at Flextronics, Inc.
Dave Smoley, CIO of Flextronics, discusses the real value of software-as-a-service and why he chose Workday for his HR solution....

Keep it Clean: Maintaining the Integrity of your CMDB through Change Detection
Learn how configuration drift can challenge configuration management database (CMDB) integrity and how a configuration audit tool and an effective change management process...

Why Compliance Pays
This OnDemand webcast explores the relationship that firms with best compliance records have higher revenue, greater customer retention, lower financial losses from data...

The Tripwire HIPAA Solution: Meeting the Security Standards Set Forth in Section 164
HIPAA requires businesses that handle personal health information (PHI) to set up strong controls to ensure the security and integrity of that information....

Agile Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for Rapid ROI
Find out how combining ECM and BPM will help adress issues about content rich business processes....

All White Papers | All Webcasts