So much for “better luck next year.” A new survey of public companies indicates that a solid majority of them will struggle through Sarbanes-Oxley compliance in 2005 much as they did in 2004: understaffed, overworked, and awash in a sea of manual controls that require expensive testing and remediation.
Hopes that last year’s inaugural efforts at compliance would lead to more automated testing this year have not delivered, according to the poll of 247 auditors at large companies. Instead, nearly 60 percent say they will plod through Section 404 testing this year using the same painstaking methods as last year.
