For Affiliated Computer Services, a Dallas-based IT and business-process outsourcing firm that does business in 100 countries, identity management had become not only a compliance concern by 2008—it was a business risk and productivity drain as well. Many of ACS’s 74,000 employees work in jobs known for high turnover, such as handling calls for major […]
Todd Neff
Posted inTechnology
Case Study: Managing Post-Trade Compliance
Principal Funds, a group of 112 mutual funds, had a problem with post-trade compliance: It wanted some way to confirm that all its transactions stayed within investment trading rules, and to confirm that every day. The problem? The sheer volume of testing compliance every day would require a staffer to work all day at the […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Case Study: Small Alaska Utility Gets SOX Compliant
This “case study” is the latest in a series of articles aimed at helping public companies understand how other organizations are using technology to comply with new regulations and standards. These are not advertisements or marketing vehicles for the companies mentioned; Compliance Week’s editorial staff speaks with the public company that has deployed the technology, […]
Posted inData Privacy
Cloud Computing Vs. Internal Controls
John Bace, a research analyst at the Gartner Group, had just finished a presentation for a corporate client. Discussion shifted to the company’s data storage, and the client’s CIO mentioned he planned on moving much of that data to “the cloud.” The general counsel looked across the table and asked him what he meant. He […]
Posted inInternal Controls
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. The third annual report, surveying controllers, compliance managers, and chief audit executives from 41 electronics and software businesses, does not purport to […]
Posted inInternal Controls
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. So, like the band of heroes in Pixar’s animated film “Toy Story,” the businesses united to answer a common challenge. Their […]
Posted inTechnology
Using XBRL to Attack Systemic Risk
Already hard at work making Security and Exchange Commission filings interactive, XBRL technology now finds itself at the heart of plans to save the U.S. financial system from future calamity. A group of risk-management leaders in the financial industry has begun studying how XBRL might bring clarity and transparency to the murky world of financial […]
Posted inTechnology
XBRL: Who Will Use This Stuff?
When Christopher Cox, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, heralded the arrival of XBRL technology last year as the greatest advance in financial reporting in 20 years, he declared: “Interactive data will enable new analysis tools to put key information at every investor’s fingertips within seconds, exactly as the investor wishes to see […]
Posted inData Privacy
Security Control Threats in Tight IT Budgets
For all the improvements companies have made to their IT security and control systems in the last five years, one menace still looms large these days: that layoffs will wreck the compliance system you’ve carefully crafted. The most significant threats to a company have always lurked within its own walls. Now, as job security diminishes […]
Posted inTechnology
IT Security Benchmarks Help Battle Hackers
IT security may be a routine part of doing business, but it retains an unmistakable aura of a black art, where recovering hackers in white hats battle evil black-hats using various forms of digital sorcery. However whimsical that imagery may sound, it’s a problem, says Elizabeth Nichols, partner in security consulting firm PlexLogic and a […]