SOX COMPLIANCE

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and associated rules adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) require certain businesses to report on the effectiveness of their internal controls over financial reporting. Effective internal controls ensure information integrity by mandating the confidentiality, privacy, availability, controlled access, monitoring and reporting of corporate or customer financial information.

Companies that must comply with Sarbanes-Oxley include U.S. public companies, foreign filers in U.S. markets and privately held companies with public debt. U.S. companies with market cap greater than $75M and on an accelerated (2004) filing deadline are required to comply for fiscal years ending on or after Nov. 15, 2004. All others are required to comply for fiscal years ending on or after April 15, 2005.

The role of email in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance cannot be overstated. At a high level, email is the primary internal and external communication tool for corporations. However, a more granular inspection of email’s role, especially as pertaining to corporate information security, reveals that it can make or break a company’s efforts to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. Email systems are critical to ensuring effective internal control over financial reporting, encryption of external messages and active policy enforcement, all essential elements of compliance.

Complying with Sarbanes-Oxley

The changes required to ensure Sarbanes-Oxley compliance reach across nearly all areas of a corporation. In fact, Gartner Research went so far as to call the Act “the most sweeping legislation to affect publicly traded companies since the reforms during the Great Depression.” Since the bulk of information in most companies is created, stored, transmitted and maintained electronically, one could logically conclude that IT shoulders a lion’s share of the responsibility for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Enterprise IT departments are responsible for ensuring that sound practices, including corporate-wide information security policies and enforced implementation of those policies, are in place for employees at all levels. Information security policies should govern:

• Network security
• Access controls
• Authentication
• Encryption
• Logging
• Monitoring and alerting
• Pre-planning coordinated incident response
• Forensics

These components enable information integrity and data retention, while enabling IT audits and business continuity.

SafetySend provides a comprehensive solution to Sarbanes-Oxley requirements as they relate to protecting corporate financial information that is transmitted and stored via email. Everything from message privacy/encryption to email firewall and intrusion protection to content filtering is included in the SafetySend solution.

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