The Securities and Exchange Commission can mandate use of XBRL technology for financial reporting all it wants. Ultimately, however, the investing public must take one key action to make companies’ investments in XBRL worth all that time and money. They must trust that XBRL-tagged numbers work. That’s where validation—the art of confirming that, yes, all […]
Todd Neff
Posted inTechnology
Cautious Support for Proposed XBRL Rule
Corporate America is generally voicing support for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rule to mandate that corporations file financial statements using XBRL technology, although a few gripes remain about the timetable for adoption and about the difficulty of handling footnotes. The comment period for the rule proposal closed Aug. 1. All signs indicate the […]
Posted inTechnology
Explaining IT Risks to Senior Management
Explaining IT risk to senior executives and board directors in a meaningful way has always been difficult for computer folks. Now two major independent efforts to bridge the language gap have begun, with a third to follow later this year. Both the Open Group—long a major force in software standardization—and the International Organization for Standardization […]
Posted inUncategorized
State-Federal Tussle on Beneficial Owners
U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had asked states for years to close what he considers a gaping hole in America’s defenses: identifying the “beneficial owners” of newly formed companies. Levin regularly fires off statistics and telling details about the problem: 2 million corporations or limited liability companies formed in […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Achieving the Mythical ‘Mature’ GRC System
Companies with “mature” IT governance, risk, and compliance regimes have happier customers, make more money, and suffer fewer data-related disasters. To some extent, that sounds self-evident: If you’re a good company, you’re probably adept at many things, GRC being among them. But now, the fruits of GRC maturity have been statistically quantified. In the IT […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Big Blue Tries to Go Big Green
In the latest of our conversations with compliance and governance executives, we catch up with Steve Sams, head of Project Big Green at IBM, Corp. Readers can also visit our archive of Q&A interviews. DETAILS Sams Steven L. Sams is vice president of Site and Facilities Services in IBM Global Technology Services. He is responsible […]
Posted inTechnology
Spreadsheet Control Marches Forward
With apologies to Mark Twain, rumors of the spreadsheet’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. It has been nearly four years since PricewaterhouseCoopers published its wake-up call of a white paper, “The Use of Spreadsheets: Considerations for Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.” Alas, the paper landed in the inboxes of a Corporate America swept up […]
Posted inData Privacy
Take Five: Keys to Identity Management
The field of identity management is enduring a bit of split personality these days. On one hand, business software giants are gobbling up small companies that provide ID management solutions, to cobble together comprehensive offerings compliance and IT departments can tailor to their specific needs. At the same time, the overall need for ID management […]
Posted inData Privacy
PCI Standard Catches Lawmakers’ Eyes
The credit card industry has been trying to force stronger data privacy rules onto the banking and retail sectors for more than a year. Now state legislatures are getting into the act. A California bill forcing merchants to comply with key elements of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is a governor’s signature away […]
Posted inTechnology
Another Step Forward for XBRL Adoption
Extensible Business Reporting Language, the much-touted and little-used computer language the Securities and Exchange Commission hopes will revolutionize financial filings, takes another big step forward this week with the debut of its latest incarnation. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox is set to announce a new “taxonomy” of XBRL terms used to classify financial data—which, in theory, […]