SOA compliance: Will IT sabotage your efforts?

Abstract

Your IT department's actions are crucial to meeting the new demands of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOA). But IT people often don't recognize their critical role in implementing financial controls, warn the authors. To make matters worse, you may have additional problems: incorrect or missing systems documentation, not including IT in SOA discussions, and IT attitudes or knowledge gaps that hinder your SOA compliance. So how can you overcome these worrying difficulties? © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Information Technology Controls Quality and Audit Fees: Evidence From Italy

“…Ashton et al, 1991; Hamilton & Wright, 1982; Nichols, 1987), we find that the segregation of duties is a sound principle leading to high-quality ICFR, and our study emphasizes that it also has a positive influence on IT Controls quality. Because of the requirement for highly trained skills in the field of IT, the segregation of duties in many cases means the concentration of two duties (responsibility and remediation) and the separation of testing (Cannon & Crowe, 2004; Hermanson et al, 2000; IFAC, 1995; McCausland, 2004; Norman et al, 2009). Consistently with this, excessive segregation of duties in the manufacturing and services industries is not efficient and in fact increases audit fees.…”

“…IT requires specific skills often possessed only by system designers. But compliance with both SOX and with Law 262/2005 requires business and audit skills possessed only by managers and evaluators (Cannon & Crowe, 2004; McCausland, 2004). Nichols (1987) and R.…”

Does Auditor Objectivity Impact on the Relationship Between Information Technology and Efficiency and Effectiveness of Auditing: Evidence from Iraq

“…It usage is becoming crucial towards increasing the effectiveness of the audit process, where it ensures that the design, implementation, and maintenance of the business processes remains effective. IT also dictates the collection, processing, and storage of compressed data included in financial statements (Cannon & Crowe, 2004).…”

“…However, its benefits come at a cost, where several risks of IT usage include the loss of computer assets, errors in records, fraud, competitive disadvantage via the selection of erroneous information, the loss and theft of data, breach of privacy, and business disruption (Abu-Musa, 2006). Cannon and Crowe (2004) believe that several internal controls can be used in the case of financial data. These controls can be integrated into computer programs, processes, and IT systems.…”

Evaluation of Information System Effectiveness Level Using COBIT Framework 5

“…The information technology (IT) function is responsible for designing, implementing and maintaining many of controls over an organization's business processes [2]. IT governance is defined as a set of processes that ensure the effective and efficient use of IT that enables an organization to achieve its goals [3].…”