Smaller companies should prepare to become “more familiar” with the auditor attestation requirement under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, an SEC commissioner told a group of compliance officers gathered in Washington D.C.
The SEC’s cost-benefit study on Section 404 is “close to final” and the anecdotal evidence is that “the hard learning that the large accelerated filers have done, the work by the PCAOB in re-doing Auditing Standard No. 5, and guidance given by groups such as COSO have all tended to help create a more scalable system,” SEC commissioner Luis Aguilar told attendees at Compliance Week’s annual conference.
