Compliance Week Podcasts …

 This week’s podcast features Russ Berland of the law firm Stinson Morrison & Hecker talking about how to use new guidance from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development as a blueprint for better FCPA compliance programs. Hear the podcast now.

… and Compliance Week on Twitter!

 You can also follow Compliance Week Editor Matt Kelly on Twitter, for the latest regulatory observations and updates. More than 2,100 followers and ranked the most influential Twitter feed on compliance!

Compliance Week LinkedIn Group

 Visit the Compliance Week has a companion group on LinkedIn, where members can network and discuss the compliance and governance news of the day among themselves. Open to all, free to join.

Webcast of the Week

 Risk Oversight and the New SEC Rule
Sponsored by OpenPages

Help Wanted: Ad of the Week

 Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer
Submitted by Morgan Samuels

Event of the Week

 Is Employee Ethics Training Mandatory?
Sponsored by ELT

Thought Leadership of the Week

Global survey into the integration of GRC
Courtesy of KPMG

The Resource Exchange

Sample Risk Acceptance Request
Submitted by Circuit City

Risk Inventory
Submitted by Cognizant Technology

Featured Databases

CEO, CFO Disclosure Certifications
CEO, CFO Certifications From 3,000 Cos.

Management Discussion & Analysis
Compare How Peers Disclose Risk

GRC Illustrated Series

 The IFRS Ripple Effect
The 23rd Installment in This Exclusive Series

Compensation Survey

 Compliance, Audit & Risk Compensation Survey
Empsight’s 2010 Compensation Survey is now open for participation. It is the leading source of its kind and reports on Fortune 500 and other large multinationals.

Global Integrity Survey

2009 Global Integrity Survey
Download the findings of the 2009 Global Integrity Survey, compiled by Compliance Week and sponsored by Integrity Interactive.

Recent Coverage Of Internal Control Issues (SOX 404)

Below is some of the most recent Compliance Week coverage related to the internal control provisions of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, ubiquitously known as “Section 404 of SOX.” Includes extensive coverage of ICFR issues, including the PCAOB’s Audit Standard No. 5, and related audit and “top-down, risk-based” approach issues. See also The Resource Exchange for checklists, process maps, surveys, questionnaires, and other tools submitted by public company executives to assist them in complying with SOX 404.

  Title & Description Date Type of Article
1. Small Filers Struggle With Internal Controls Over Fraud
A large school of thought has developed to support the argument that non-accelerated filers should be exempt from compliance with Section 404(b) of Sarbanes-Oxley, which requires external auditors to review and attest to the strength of a company’s internal controls.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
03/16/10 Compliance Week Coverage
2. Getting Ready for the 2010 Proxy Season
Are you ready for the 2010 proxy season? Companies are faced with new rules for expanded disclosure of executive compensation and director experience in the proxy statement. They have more issues that will come under more scrutiny from more people, be they activist investors, proxy advisory services, pension and union funds, or the media. Here’s what you need to consider to be prepared for the proxy season ahead.
 By Louis M. Thompson, Jr., Compliance Week Columnist
02/17/10 Columns & Editorials
3. Study: Policy Management Needs Improvement
Compliance officers might be a bit dispirited by a new study of policy-management efforts in Corporate America, which shows that companies are making some improvements at the task but still struggling to achieve the mythical “effective” compliance program amid increasing regulation and tough budgets.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
02/09/10 Compliance Week Coverage
4. Study: Cos. Still Lagging on Records Management
A new study of corporations’ records management programs paints a troubling picture of companies still struggling to keep pace with the huge compliance demands piling onto them, despite the strides made in the last several years.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
01/26/10 Compliance Week Coverage
5. How to Manage Communication About Risks
Every corporate director knows he or she needs relevant information to carry out oversight responsibilities effectively. But it’s not easy to know exactly what that information should be, the form it should take, or where it should come from. Unfortunately, experience shows that too often boards of directors don’t sufficiently focus on these issues, get caught by surprise, and pay a high price.
 By Richard M. Steinberg, Compliance Week Columnist
01/20/10 Columns & Editorials
6. Chief Compliance Officer Now a Full-Time Job
Two new studies confirm what those tasked with oversight of corporate compliance probably already know: More and more often these days, the chief compliance officer’s job is a full-time, stand-alone gig, rather than a secondary duty one handles while wearing some other title.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
12/15/09 Compliance Week Coverage
7. Navigating Import-Export Compliance
Compliance executives at companies conducting business internationally may want to add a check of their import-export compliance policies to their to-do list. You might have more work to do on that front than you think.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
12/08/09 Compliance Week Coverage
8. Podcast: SAS 70 Audits
Compliance Week editor Matt Kelly talks with David Barton of UHY Advisers about SAS 70 audits for service providers, and the assurance those audits do—and do not—provide.
 		11/30/09 Compliance Week Coverage
9. Case Study: Small Alaska Utility Gets SOX Compliant
Doing business as an electric utility in Alaska has its special challenges, such as bad weather and sometimes-uncertain fuel supplies. But as the leaders of Chugach Electric Association, Alaska’s largest electric utility, will tell you, regulatory compliance is much the same there as in the Lower 48.
 By Todd Neff
11/10/09 Compliance Week Coverage
10. 404 Study Shows Little Automation Yet
Automated internal controls may be the buzzword for compliance with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, but most companies still rely on old-fashioned manual controls even today, nearly six years after 404 first started going into effect.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
11/03/09 Compliance Week Coverage
11. Why ERM Fails at Small Companies
In my 34 years of experience as an internal auditor, I’ve seen a wide variety of enterprise risk management control failures. And to my thinking, they all share one common denominator: a failure by the board or the CEO to implement an effective ERM program that addressed the right risks.
 By Bill Stephens
10/06/09 Compliance Week Coverage
12. Constructing a Privacy-Risk Assessment
At the request of subscribers, Compliance Week offers a Remediation Center, in which readers can submit questions—anonymously—to securities and accounting experts. Compliance Week’s editors will review all questions and then submit them—confidentially, of course—to specialists who can address the issues. The questions and responses will then be reprinted in a future edition of Compliance Week. Below is one of the Q&As; ask your own questions by clicking here.


By David Wood

10/06/09 Compliance Week Coverage
13. Maintaining Efficiency, Despite Cutbacks
“Doing more with less” sounds like a wise, if unwanted, business policy these days—right up until reckless cost-cutting alienates employees and weakens carefully crafted segregation of duties.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
09/15/09 Compliance Week Coverage
14. Auditing Governance: It Can Be Done
A few columns ago, I posited the idea that you can develop an integrated approach to auditing corporate governance, risk, and compliance. First I explored auditing compliance, and the risk. Now I will conclude the series and explain (finally) how governance (the “G” in GRC) provides the foundation that binds these disciplines together in a coherent way.
 By José Tabuena
09/09/09 Columns & Editorials
15. Amid Anxiety, Red Flag Rules Take Effect
The Federal Trade Commission’s compliance deadline for its so-called Red Flag Rules has finally arrived, requiring banks and other creditors to have written programs in place to find, stop, and mitigate theft of consumers’ personal data.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
07/28/09 Compliance Week Coverage
16. Podcast: Red Flag Rules
In this week’s podcast, Compliance Week editor Matt Kelly talks with Vita Zeltser, a corporate governance lawyer at the law firm Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell, about the impending compliance deadline for the Federal Trade Commission’s Red Flag Rules.
 		07/24/09 Compliance Week Coverage
17. Podcast: Spreadsheet Controls
In our latest podcast, Compliance Week editor Matt Kelly talks with Kurt Underwood, head of the IT control practice at consulting firm Protiviti, about spreadsheets and how to manage the risk to internal control that they present.
 		07/02/09 Compliance Week Coverage
18. Overseeing Subsidiaries’ Internal Controls for SOX
At the request of subscribers, Compliance Week offers a Remediation Center, in which readers can submit questions—anonymously—to securities and accounting experts. Compliance Week’s editors will review all questions and then submit them—confidentially, of course—to specialists who can address the issues. The questions and responses will then be reprinted in a future edition of Compliance Week. Below is one of the Q&As; ask your own questions by clicking here.


 By Brian Gramm, Milo Belle Consultants
06/23/09 Compliance Week Coverage
19. SOX Compliance in the Tech Sector
A KPMG survey of technology companies has found that the cost of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance is falling, the number of key controls shrinking, and, most surprisingly, the number of automated controls declining as well.
 By Todd Neff
06/16/09 Compliance Week Coverage
20. Podcast: Continuous Auditing
Compliance Week editor Matt Kelly talks with Norman Marks, vice president of governance for SAP Business Objects, about ”continuous auditing“ and how to implement such a program.
 		06/16/09 Compliance Week Coverage
21. Toy Story: Industry Mounts Compliance Campaign
Earlier this year, the toy industry knew it had a big problem: tough new product-safety rules barreling down the regulatory turnpike, and most toy businesses too small to manage compliance with those rules well.
 By Todd Neff
06/09/09 Compliance Week Coverage
22. Managing IT Controls for SOX Compliance
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is considered by many to be the road to redemption for the past sins of Enron, WorldCom, and other corporate players who subverted the rules of business by using financial engineering to inflate the performance of their businesses. Advocates for SOX consider this legislation an approach to ensure corporate responsibility for financial reports. Others call it over-regulation at its best.
 By James Bone
06/02/09 Columns & Editorials
23. Achieving a Risk-Free Outsourcing System
Corporations face brutal economic conditions these days. To improve business performance, many have cut costs by outsourcing some of their business processes to cheaper labor, often based overseas.
 By Yanan Bledsoe
05/27/09 Columns & Editorials
24. Tips, Tactics, and Tools for Managing Disclosure Risk
For most corporate counselors and advisers, hardly a day passes now when we’re not talking or reading about the latest cautionary tales about risk assessment and management.
 By Rick Hansen
05/12/09 Columns & Editorials
25. Podcast: Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles
Compliance Week editor Matt Kelly talks with Robert Pulzello, treasurer of ARMA International, about the organization’s new Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles and how to put them into practice.
 		05/01/09 Compliance Week Coverage
26. Preventing Fraud in the Era of Budget Cuts
The cost-cutting craze sweeping Corporate America is leaving internal control systems full of holes that could be potential entry points for fraud, even as temptation to commit fraud is soaring, a new survey says.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
04/28/09 Compliance Week Coverage
27. As 404(b) Nears, Small Filers Hear Advice
Non-accelerated filers may still be hoping for yet another delay in full compliance with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, but the wise ones should prepare for the inevitable now rather than risk incurring more audit costs later this year.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
04/21/09 Compliance Week Coverage
28. Scoping Out an Audit of Privacy Programs
Any corporation of any size today must worry about privacy and information security. Protecting sensitive information has always made good sense, but most developed nations now have laws that restrict some uses of at least some types of data.
 By Dan Swanson, Compliance Week Columnist
04/07/09 Columns & Editorials
29. The Simple Truth Behind the Complex Idea of Risk
Perhaps nothing in business circles today generates more heated debate than risk and risk management—not only in financial institutions, but also in every industry, and from the lowest manager level to the boardroom.
 By Richard M. Steinberg, Compliance Week Columnist
03/24/09 Columns & Editorials
30. Boosting Control With Third-Party Codes of Conduct
Despite increased risks posed by supply chains, companies still have a long way to go when it comes to establishing ethics and compliance standards for their vendors, suppliers, and other business partners. So says a recent benchmarking survey by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
03/24/09 Compliance Week Coverage
31. Rules for Disclosing a CEO’s Unexpected Absence
Rudyard Kipling’s classic poem, “If,” written in 1895, talks about rewards to be reaped if we’re able to “keep our head[s] when all about [us] … are losing theirs.” The reality of corporate life, however, is that public companies can’t keep their heads, or their other key executives. Eventually, CEOs and senior executives die, suffer debilitating accidents or illnesses, become immersed in legal or ethical issues, retire, cease to be effective, or move on.
 By Harvey L. Pitt
02/24/09 Columns & Editorials
32. Doing More With Less: Slashing the GRC Budget
In the rearview mirror, corporate scandals that sparked increased attention over the need for better corporate governance, risk management, internal control, and compliance may appear smaller than they really are. Yet, despite the evident need, many companies are slashing GRC budgets.
 By Scott L. Mitchell
02/24/09 Compliance Week Coverage
33. Small Cos. Pained by Internal Control Under SOX
Companies continue to improve in their compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, even though smaller companies just entering the Section 404 realm have lots of ground to cover.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
02/18/09 Compliance Week Coverage
34. How to Use the COSO Monitoring Guidance
Long-awaited guidance on how to monitor internal controls has finally arrived and could mean less year-end work for companies attesting to the effectiveness of their internal control over financial reporting.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
02/10/09 Compliance Week Coverage
35. When You Can Avoid 404(b) Compliance
Question
 By Bob Benoit
01/06/09 Compliance Week Coverage
36. Making Sure Your ID Management System Works
Consider the passport security breach of three presidential candidates last year. Did the State Department have appropriate security controls that should have prevented the breach? Why did senior State Department staffers not learn of the improper access until more than two months after they first occurred?
 By José Tabuena
01/06/09 Columns & Editorials
37. Study: SOX Compliance Can Still Improve
Most companies could still wring more efficiency out of their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance efforts, according to a new study, even after four years of practice at SOX compliance and relaxed standards from the Securities and Exchange Commission issued last year.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
12/09/08 Compliance Week Coverage
38. Creating a High-Performance GRC System
A high-performing GRC system will always deliver value. Always. The value of a business activity or department directly relates to its contribution to business objectives. For that reason, focusing on measuring GRC activities themselves (risk assessment, policy management, training and communication, or control management, for example) isn’t sufficient. Rather, executives must place a special focus on the desired system outcomes that result from those activities.
 By Scott L. Mitchell
12/02/08 Compliance Week Coverage
39. How to Avoid Export Controls Violations
All companies experience the effect of the global economy, but compliance managers have much more to worry about as they assess trade compliance risk rather than just traditional import and export activities. For example, it’s quite likely that your company has U.S.-based employees who are foreign nationals—and that raises the issue of the so-called “deemed export” rule of U.S. export controls laws.
 By Eric J. Rudolph
12/02/08 Compliance Week Coverage
40. Survey: Many Fearful of Fraud Spike in 2009
An exclusive Compliance Week survey shows that many corporations are bracing for a drop in revenues next year and a spike in fraud—not that they have the internal controls ready to fight it.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
12/02/08 Compliance Week Coverage
41. Internal Control Support for External Reporting
QUESTION
 By Kevin Hyams
11/18/08 Compliance Week Coverage
42. Advice for Conflict-of-Interest Audits
Perhaps no other area of business conduct is as fraught with potential peril as are conflicts of interest. In my October 2008 column, I wrote on how abuse of travel and entertainment expenses can hint at bigger fraud problems. We’re in luck; similar irregular spending habits can also be red flags for potential conflicts of interests.
 By José Tabuena
11/04/08 Columns & Editorials
43. Avoiding Segregation-of-Duties Woe in IT
With the United States in the grips of an economic crisis, now is as good a time as any for Corporate America to reassess its internal controls. And segregation of duties is always crucial to reducing the occurrence of fraud or error within an organization.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
10/14/08 Compliance Week Coverage
44. Auditing T&E Programs: Where to Find the Fraud
In his August 2008 column, Dan Swanson wrote about returning to internal auditing roots by looking at specific departments (finance, human resources, and so forth) rather than auditing’s flavor of the month—such as enterprise risk management, information security, and fraud control.
 By Jose Tabuena
10/07/08 Columns & Editorials
45. Will Solid 2009 Remediation Plan Curb Weakness in 2008?
Question:
 By Jonathan Marks
09/23/08 Compliance Week Coverage
46. Twitchy Economy, SOX Maturation Lead to Big 4 Layoffs
Reforms to alleviate the burden of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance may finally be taking a bite out of the Big 4 firms, which reportedly are laying off waves of workers now that demand for their services has diminished.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
09/09/08 Compliance Week Coverage
47. COSO Monitoring Guidance Moves Closer
New guidance for compliance executives and internal auditors on monitoring internal controls should be in hand as soon as next month.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
09/03/08 Compliance Week Coverage
48. Editorial: Strength From Weaknesses: SOX Compliance and Why We’re Here
As subscribers know, Compliance Week is constantly tracking critical issues for legal and financial executives at public companies. And for the last six years, much of our coverage on the financial side of the house has dealt with fallout from The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, particularly Section 404. Much of that coverage has focused recently on how to comply, or how to do so more efficiently; however, occasionally it’s worth remembering why we comply as well.
 By Matt Kelly
09/01/08 Columns & Editorials
49. SEC to Consider IFRS Rule; SOX Lives; More
The New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and Amex stock exchanges have all revised their director independence standards to bring them in line with Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure requirements.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
08/26/08 Compliance Week Coverage
50. 2007 Material Weaknesses Plummet
The number of material weaknesses large companies are reporting has plunged in the last two years, according to an exclusive Compliance Week analysis—further evidence that Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, as onerous as it is, has compelled a dramatic improvement in companies’ internal control over financial reporting.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
08/05/08 Compliance Week Coverage

Records per page: Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8