Re: Sarbanes-Oxley / my opinion -- MIDRANGE-L

Comments a few places,

It's not clear how well the "report-it-to-the-investors" part of
the legislation is working. If anyone knows of an annual report
that has included a SOX-type complaint in an audit letter,
please tell me more about it.

I just got the IBM annual report and went looking for SOX statement fromthe auditors. I found an extremely wishy washy statement saying that IBMmaintained in all material aspects, effective internal control overfinancial reporting. In my opinion, the Ernst & Young breach wasnot effective internal control, but I am not sure if that happened beforeor after the date of the audit, and it could be that back stabbing 100% ofIBM employees does not qualify as a material aspect of SOX.

If annual reports of that genre
can't be found, then we're left with two hypotheses:


three hypotheses

  1. Thousands of publicly traded companies are doing a great
      job running their business with sound internal control
      regimens in all functional areas (including IS).

  2. The fear of annoying a client and not being invited to
      perform next year's audit has proved to be more compelling
      than the fear of failing to observe the letter of Sarbanes-Oxley.

3. Companies are failing to meet SOX standards, but auditors are alsofailing to locate the gaps.

      [Quite candidly, it's hard to believe hypothesis #1 given the
       testimonies I've personally heard from managers across a
       broad cross section of manufacturing industries.]

There are several other IT compliance requirements that pre-date
SOX and here's a link to information about the better known ones:

<http://www.unbeatenpathintl.com/ITstandards/source/1.html>http://www.unbeatenpathintl.com/ITstandards/source/1.html


You mention BRMS (Business Rule Management System)
software and that genre of tool can help an enterprise develop
and maintain operational policies.


Gee, I thought BRMS was just a fancy IBM backup system.

Milt Habeck
Founder/President
Unbeaten Path International

<http://www.upisox.com>www.upisox.com
(888) 874-8008

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From: "Mark Allen" <<mailto:scprideandms@xxxxxxxxx>scprideandms@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 14:45:59
Subject: SOX and BRMS saves of Application data and Objects

Looking for some ideas from somebody who's been thru this or at least part
of it.  I know a little about BRMS and not even sure "what" the SOX

Compliance people MIGHT be looking for. I know this is vague but its allI got for now. just looking for some general ideas.


-
Al Macintyre