No, COSO’s recently published Fraud Risk Management Guide is not mandatory, but there are some compelling reasons audit committees and compliance officers should study and consider it—perhaps most importantly because it could eventually become a de facto requirement.
COSO, the same collaborative organization that authored the Internal Control—Integrated Framework that provides the most widely accepted path to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, has published the new fraud guide to elaborate on the 8th principle required under the internal control framework. That’s the principle that says the organization has considered the potential for fraud in assessing the risks to the achievement of objectives.
