Any retailers still unsure whether their data security standards can pass muster now have a new way to see how safe (or not) customer data really is. The Payment Card Industry Council has published a detailed set of “self-assessment questionnaires” for small and medium-sized retailers, who typically aren’t required to have their data security reviewed […]
Technology
Posted inTechnology
Preparing Yourself for the XBRL Wave
Once upon a time, I was a young auditor dutifully carrying around my audit bag filled with hand-written green ledger sheets (written with my Pentel, of course). I got on planes to Washington, D.C., to deliver filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission on their due date and walked across New York City to give […]
Posted inTechnology
Hard Feelings on Proxy Access; XBRL; More
The Securities and Exchange Commission may be setting forces into motion that will bring the battle for shareholder access to the proxy statement back into court—three months after the SEC approved a rule to kill proxy access for at least another year. SEC staff earlier this month issued no-action letters to numerous companies, including Bear […]
Posted inTechnology
Holland Takes a Different Tack on XBRL
If U.S. regulators want to see how they could wisely, successfully integrate XBRL technology into financial reporting, they might benefit from a visit to the Netherlands. While the United States—and Japan, and numerous other countries around the world—envisions XBRL as a way to bring more information to investors, Holland is taking a very different approach […]
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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 inTechnology
XBRL Takes Foothold in Japan
Japan has long been known for embracing technological innovations, and now another one is coming to financial reporting in that country: XBRL. Well ahead of the United States and many other countries, Japan plans to adopt the eXtensible Business Reporting Language for all publicly traded companies and investment firms listed there—some 8,000 registrants in total—starting […]
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 inTechnology
SEC Has Big Plans for XBRL in 2008
The XBRL community is gearing up for a full-court press to push the new technology into the financial reporting mainstream next year. Starting in January, the Securities and Exchange Commission will hold a series of forums to explore whether it should mandate use of the data language by the end of 2008. At the same […]
Posted inTechnology
XBRL Mandate, and Update, Coming in ‘08
The SEC is likely to propose a new rule next year that publicly traded companies file their financial reports using XBRL, the interactive data language SEC Chairman Christopher Cox has long hailed as a powerful tool for investors to study financial results. Speaking at a Sept. 25 press conference to unveil a new “taxonomy” of […]
Posted inData Privacy
Surviving Data Breaches in the PCI World
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. […]
