It’s the disappointing truth about much of Corporate America’s IT efforts: Despite years of overhauls, tweaks, and projects, many companies still remain unprepared for lawsuits, audits, or regulatory probes because they lack the IT infrastructure to manage their data effectively and apply it to compliance efforts. So say two recent studies trying to gauge the […]
Dunn Christine
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
Internal Auditors Start Issuing Own Opinions
Internal auditors may be coming under increased pressure from audit committees and senior management to issue opinions on entity-wide internal controls, as well as the company’s internal control over financial reporting. PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2006 State of the Internal Audit Profession Study, which surveyed 392 companies, found that almost 37 percent of internal auditors issue an entity-wide […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
Score: Ranking Your Internal Audit Woes
Red, yellow, green. Once a quarter, Sunterra Corp.’s Chief Audit Executive Allan Misner meets with the company’s audit committee and provides a summary on the current standing of recent audits performed by his group. As part of the presentation, Misner uses a color-based, “stoplight” rating system for the audits he presents. An audit with no […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Talking Compliance And ERM At RadioShack
In the latest of our weekly Q&As with governance and compliance executives, we talk to Jolene Miller, senior director of ethics and corporate compliance for RadioShack Corp. An index of previous conversations is available here. How long has RadioShack had an ethics and corporate compliance group? RadioShack has had an ethics and compliance program for […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
IIA To Conduct Global Internal Audit Study
The Institute of Internal Auditors, which has experienced unprecedented growth in membership the past couple of years, is reaching out to its global membership to conduct the organization’s biggest-ever research study of the internal-auditing profession. As reported in last week’s Accounting Industry Update, at the end of this month, the Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based group will […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Internal Audit & Holistic Risk Assessments
Convergence has long been a buzzword among business executives seeking more cost-effective ways to cope with compliance regulations while managing their enterprises’ risks. As Compliance Week has covered extensively over the past four years, companies have been seeking a unified strategy for risk and compliance. The “holistic” initiative has gotten a big push over the […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Flowcharts See Revival As Auditing Tool
A picture is worth a thousand words. And that principle can prove very useful in the endless drive for more efficient auditing of internal controls. Flowcharts—those simple diagrams created to depict how a transaction unfolds—have seen a surge in popularity in the last three years, as internal auditors struggle to find ways to document internal […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Managing Outsourced Auditing Functions
ATMI Inc. knew it would have a lot to swallow if it tried to manage Sarbanes-Oxley compliance alone. So the $305 million materials company did the usual thing, and hired an outside consulting firm to help. Then came the other usual thing: a bill from the consulting firm, for far more than expected. In ATMI’s […]
Posted inInternal Controls
The Challenge Of Internal Auditing At Small Cos.
When Andrew Ng joined Magma Design Automation 18 months ago, one of his top priorities at the $165 million software maker was to build an internal audit department. Ng faced what many small public companies, or those businesses with small internal audit departments, must address: no internal staff, reliance on consulting firms for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance […]
Posted inInternal Controls
The Case For (And Against) Continuous Auditing
The fast pace of business is pressuring internal auditors to speed up their audit cycles and processes, creating momentum for the increased use of “continuous auditing,” according to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The study, PwC’s annual “state of the industry” report on internal auditing, found that 81 percent of 392 companies surveyed say they either […]
