Helping Firms Comply with Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX)
Orion Governance Use Case
The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, commonly known as SOX, is a U.S. law that governs financial record-keeping and reporting for U.S.-based companies. (Equivalent laws exist in many other countries.) The Act also contains provisions for accounting firms and their relationships with client firms. Obstruction of justice via evidence destruction or fraud is a criminal offense with severe penalties. Responsibility for the accuracy, transparency, and audibility of financial information is shared between top executives, boards of directors, and accounting firms. The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the primary enforcer of SOX and is charged with interpreting the law and creating enforcement processes.
Firms must commit considerable resources for SOX compliance. Those expenditures typically include the purchase and maintenance of software tools to allow full information transparency as well as complete audibility. The average costs range from $75k-$10K for small firms to $2-3M for firms with revenues in the multi-billion-dollar range. Costs for decentralized firms run higher.
Criminal penalties for significant violations include large fines and possibly lengthy prison time for company executives.
Orion Governance is Key to Sarbanes Oxley Act Compliance
Business Problem
SOX compliance is both challenging and expensive. Regular audits require access to relevant data regardless of where it exists in the enterprise. Enterprises often have a hard time showing auditors detailed data traceability to meet the requirements.
The Orion Governance Solution
Forward-looking enterprises have implemented comprehensive data governance programs for data transparency and visibility, both of which are needed to enable in-depth SOX audits. Orion’s EIIG platform is ideally suited for this purpose because the data fabric it presents makes the compliance challenge easier to manage.
Business Benefits with Orion Governance
A data governance program with Orion’s EIIG can yield many important benefits. The biggest one for SOX compliance is a drastic reduction of risk and the cost of providing auditors with data transparency and traceability .
