Thought Leadership of the Week

Compliance Making You Feel Like a Sitting Duck? Free Forrester Trends Report, Courtesy IBM

The Resource Exchange

Job Description: Chief Compliance Officer
Submitted by CCO at $1 Billion Pharma

Job Description: Chief Compliance Officer
Submitted by CCO at $310 Million Apparel Co.

Upcoming Webcasts

Gaining Control By Eliminating Spreadsheets
Nov. 20, Free, Sponsored by Blackline Systems

CPE Credit: Income Tax in IFRS
Dec. 2; Part of Our Ongoing IFRS Webcast Series

Featured Databases

Corporate Bylaws & Policies
Search Incorporation Certificates, Bylaws, More

Whistleblower Guidelines
Compare How Companies Handle Complaints

Featured Job Listing

Sarbanes-Oxley Manager
General Motors - Detroit, MI

Event of the Week

Keeping on Top of PCI Compliance
Free Webcast Courtesy of SafeNet

Compliance And Technology

Below is some of the most recent Compliance Week coverage on issues related to the intersection of compliance, risk and technology. These articles typically explore information-technology issues as they pertain to reliable financial reporting, internal controls, records retention, ERM, privacy, security, and other global requirements or standards. The list below shows the most recent articles first.

  Title & Description Date Type of Article
1. Advanced IR Section Crucial to Corporate Websites
Last June, the director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance, John White, addressed the annual conference of the National Investor Relations Institute. His message: “Communications is a big theme for the SEC. Companies, more and more, are using corporate Websites to provide information that we require. We at the Commission are on board with this, and we want to encourage it.”
 By Louis M. Thompson, Jr., Compliance Week Columnist
10/21/08 Columns & Editorials
2. New Ideas on Corporate Disclosure
A consensus is beginning to emerge that the Securities and Exchange Commission should scrap its 20-year-old system of electronically filed periodic reports—although nobody knows just what new system should be built to haul the SEC into the 21st century.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
10/14/08 Compliance Week Coverage
3. IT Security Benchmarks Help Battle Hackers
IT security may be a routine part of doing business, but it retains an unmistakable aura of a black art, where recovering hackers in white hats battle evil black-hats using various forms of digital sorcery.
 By Todd Neff
10/07/08 Compliance Week Coverage
4. Editorial: Experienced XBRL Filers Offer Tips, Recommendations, and Pitfalls to Avoid
Good judgment comes from experience. Unfortunately, as the writer and Emmy-nominated screenwriter Rita Mae Brown once noted, experience often comes from bad judgment.
 By Matt Kelly
10/01/08 Columns & Editorials
5. Perfecting Your IT Infrastructure, the Backbone of GRC
An integrated approach to governance, risk, and compliance will not work without an IT infrastructure to support it; after all, take the wiring out of your Maserati and see how much good its fine-tuned Italian engineering does.
 By Scott Mitchell, The Open Compliance And Ethics Group
09/30/08 Compliance Week Coverage
6. Online Shareholder Forums Slow to Catch On
Despite rule changes aimed at facilitating online communication between companies and their shareholders, it seems electronic shareholder forums are an idea whose time hasn’t come, just yet.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
09/23/08 Compliance Week Coverage
7. Spy vs. Spy: Battling Fraud in Social Networks
You did it! You finally joined the 21st century and created a Facebook page. Now, proudly displayed on your profile for the whole world to see are your date of birth, dating status, hometown, college affiliation, and complete employment history.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
09/09/08 Compliance Week Coverage
8. Views on XBRL Adoption
Editor’s note: The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to publish a rule mandating XBRL technology for financial statements as soon as this fall. To hear how much of a challenge XBRL implementation can be, we caught up with four financial reporting executives at companies that have already been participating in the SEC’s voluntary pilot XBRL filing program. These are their stories. If you're interested in hearing first-hand the experiences of the speakers below, join Compliance Week at our XBRL Primer, Nov. 19 in New York City.
 By Compliance Week
08/26/08 Compliance Week Coverage
9. Advice on IT Governance After a Merger
Christian Phillips, chief security officer at payment processing company Regulus and an old hand at running corporate IT departments, knows all too well the challenges of blending IT departments after a merger.
 By Jabulani Leffall
08/26/08 Compliance Week Coverage
10. SEC to Shed EDGAR for New IDEA
As companies await a final Securities and Exchange Commission rule that will force them to use XBRL technology in their financial filings as soon as next year, the SEC has unveiled an XBRL push of its own: scrapping the EDGAR database in favor of a new system to handle “interactive data” filings.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
08/26/08 Compliance Week Coverage
11. XBRL Validation—Can It Be Trusted?
The Securities and Exchange Commission can mandate use of XBRL technology for financial reporting all it wants. Ultimately, however, the investing public must take one key action to make companies’ investments in XBRL worth all that time and money.
 By Todd Neff
08/12/08 Compliance Week Coverage
12. Cautious Support for Proposed XBRL Rule
Corporate America is generally voicing support for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed rule to mandate that corporations file financial statements using XBRL technology, although a few gripes remain about the timetable for adoption and about the difficulty of handling footnotes.
 By Todd Neff
08/05/08 Compliance Week Coverage
13. New PCI Rules Arrive, Confusion Remains
Another flurry of IT security rules to protect consumers’ credit card data went into effect this month—not that they will be much help to bewildered and frustrated retailers across the country.
 By Jabulani Leffall
07/15/08 Compliance Week Coverage
14. Explaining IT Risks to Senior Management
Explaining IT risk to senior executives and board directors in a meaningful way has always been difficult for computer folks. Now two major independent efforts to bridge the language gap have begun, with a third to follow later this year.
 By Todd Neff
07/08/08 Compliance Week Coverage
15. Survey: Many Unprepared for XBRL
A new Compliance Week survey suggests that most of Corporate America is barely aware of XBRL, the financial reporting technology the Securities and Exchange Commission is poised to mandate later this fall.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
07/01/08 Compliance Week Coverage
16. XBRL Meets Modern Investor Relations
Three years ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission introduced a financial reporting “tagging” concept called eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). Seventeen pioneers—including 3M Company, Altria Group, Microsoft, Pfizer, and Xerox—volunteered to file their financial statements using XBRL, to see what this new technology could do.
 By Louis M. Thompson, Jr., Compliance Week Columnist
06/17/08 Compliance Week Coverage
17. SEC Gets Worldwide Report Card on XBRL
As the Securities and Exchange Commission marches toward the mandatory adoption of XBRL technology, it is hearing encouraging words from its counterparts around the globe already using the eXtensible Business Reporting Language.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
06/17/08 Compliance Week Coverage
18. SEC Wants Quick Action on XBRL
The Securities and Exchange Commission has released the details of its proposal to mandate XBRL technology for financial filings and begun a full-court press to get a rule passed as quickly as it can.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
06/10/08 Compliance Week Coverage
19. Auditing a Company’s IT Strategies
Today’s IT solutions are complex, and they are getting more challenging to implement all the time. One of the great questions for management at any company these days is simply whether all the investment in those systems is worth it. Internal auditing can play a critical role there, measuring and inspecting how the IT investment process—specifically, how IT investment is managed—works.
 By Dan Swanson, Compliance Week Columnist
06/03/08 Columns & Editorials
20. The Early Questions on XBRL Adoption
The Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to release its formal proposal that companies start adopting XBRL technology for financial reports starting as soon as next year—so Corporate America is engaging in some good old rampant speculation until then.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
05/28/08 Compliance Week Coverage
21. Three Years to Get Moving on XBRL
Anyone closely following the Securities and Exchange Commission has long known that sooner or later, the agency would order companies to start filing financial reports using XBRL technology.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
05/20/08 Compliance Week Coverage
22. SEC Delays Meeting on XBRL Proposal
Securities and Exchange Commission plans to transform corporate financial reporting through the use of interactive data are, apparently, on hold for a few more weeks.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
04/22/08 Compliance Week Coverage
23. Educating Staff Leads to Improved IT Security
In today’s business environment, information security and protection of information assets are vital to the long-term success of all organizations. Information is the lifeblood of corporations and a vital business asset. IT systems connect every internal department of a company and connect the whole company to myriad suppliers, partners, customers, and others on the outside, too.
 By Dan Swanson, Compliance Week Columnist
04/01/08 Columns & Editorials
24. FTC Identity Theft Rules Put Cos. on Alert
Financial institutions and other creditors soon will be under the close eye of the Federal Trade Commission and banking regulators, which are stepping up their scrutiny of how those businesses detect and respond to identity theft.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
03/25/08 Compliance Week Coverage
25. Software, Printing Vendors Prep for XBRL
Many public companies have been, ahem, less than enthusiastic about adopting XBRL for their financial-reporting processes. Software vendors, however, are just about doing handsprings for what they see as their moment finally arrived.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
03/18/08 Compliance Week Coverage
26. PCI Group Publishes Self-Assessment Tests
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.
 By Jabulani Leffall
03/04/08 Compliance Week Coverage
27. 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 a client some much-needed document.
 By Colleen Cunningham
02/26/08 Columns & Editorials
28. 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.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
02/26/08 Compliance Week Coverage
29. 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.
 By Neil Baker
02/26/08 Compliance Week Coverage
30. Spreadsheet Control Marches Forward
With apologies to Mark Twain, rumors of the spreadsheet’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
 By Todd Neff
02/12/08 Compliance Week Coverage
31. 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.
 By Yuriko Nagano
01/23/08 Compliance Week Coverage
32. Take Five: Keys to Identity Management
The field of identity management is enduring a bit of split personality these days.
 By Todd Neff
01/15/08 Compliance Week Coverage
33. 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.
 By Matt Kelly
12/11/07 Compliance Week Coverage
34. 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.
 By Todd Neff and Melissa Klein Aguilar
10/11/07 Compliance Week Coverage
35. Surviving Data Breaches in the PCI World
I heard TJX Cos. was compliant with the PCI standards for data privacy and hackers still swiped 45.7 million customer records. Is that true? Does PCI compliance protect me against a breach? If it doesn’t, what should I be doing?
 By Compliance Week
10/10/07 Compliance Week Coverage
36. What the SEC’s XBRL Moves Mean for You
In the latest of our conversations with players in the compliance and governance realm, we talk to founding Chairman of XBRL International Mike Willis, who stands behind extensive use of XBRL in financial reporting. Compliance Week recently caught up with Willis to hear his thoughts on the future of XBRL, the chance of the SEC mandating its use, and how companies can prepare now for a future tagged in XBRL. The conversation is below.
 By Compliance Week
10/10/07 Compliance Week Coverage
37. Ensuring Technology Changes Are Well Managed
Information technology is critical to the long-term success of most organizations. It is a key reason for the cost of operations, and cost of operations tends to be a vital component of overall profitability. It facilitates the introduction of new business initiatives, as well as the ongoing improvement of current processes, and allows the management team to monitor and report on performance. IT enables business operations through connectivity, information processing, business intelligence, and the like.
 By Dan Swanson, Compliance Week Columnist
10/02/07 Columns & Editorials
38. PCI Standard Catches Lawmakers’ Eyes
The credit card industry has been trying to force stronger data privacy rules onto the banking and retail sectors for more than a year. Now state legislatures are getting into the act.
 By Todd Neff
10/02/07 Compliance Week Coverage
39. Another Step Forward for XBRL Adoption
Extensible Business Reporting Language, the much-touted and little-used computer language the Securities and Exchange Commission hopes will revolutionize financial filings, takes another big step forward this week with the debut of its latest incarnation.
 By Todd Neff
09/25/07 Compliance Week Coverage
40. The Secret Life of Application Controls
Viruses. Worms. Trojans. Denial-of-service attacks. IT security professionals have long wrestled with these and many other external threats, and a bustling industry has sprung up to fend off the pests.
 By Todd Neff
08/14/07 Compliance Week Coverage
41. Auditing IT: Where to Focus Your Attention
For most of today’s competitive business environment, it’s a manager’s cliche: “Seconds count.” But when the job is auditing an IT system, the concept applies literally.
 By Christine Dunn
08/07/07 Compliance Week Coverage
42. Defense Giants Step Up IT Security Controls
The U.S. Army describes its Future Combat Systems program as a “cohesive system-of-systems” comprised of software, networks, and hardware (as in next-generation tanks) that will allow the future soldier “to see first, understand first, act first, and finish decisively.”
 By Todd Neff
07/03/07 Compliance Week Coverage
43. Case-Study: GeoEye’s Process Improvement
The Challenge: GeoEye needed an enterprise modeling system to facilitate and automate the documentation, tracking, and update of their business processes. Sarbanes-Oxley compliance triggered the initial need; a subsequent acquisition and ISO 9001 certification efforts underscored the value of using an enterprise architecture design tool.
 By Todd Neff
06/12/07 Compliance Week Coverage
44. Adding Compliance Solutions To ERP Systems
Companies invest a lot of time and money in enterprise resource planning software—and yet, at the end of the day, those weighty ERP systems still don’t necessarily fulfill all a company’s needs when it comes to financial reporting requirements, such as those outlined under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
 By Christine Dunn
06/05/07 Compliance Week Coverage
45. Effective Access Control: Communication, Simplicity
The need for a fancy identity-management system to control access to IT systems depends on how big and complex you are and how much pain your company can take. Linda DiPaola, with less than 500 employees to track, does just fine without system at all.
 By Todd Neff
05/22/07 Compliance Week Coverage
46. Designing Seamless IT Compliance Systems
Once upon a time, Corporate America used technology pretty much for one reason: to help companies do things.
 By Christine Dunn
04/24/07 Compliance Week Coverage
47. Battling The Wide World Of Data Breaches
There is no “typical” data breach and, unfortunately, no simple set of steps to secure an organization’s critical information, according to a study of 345 U.S. data breaches reported in the year ended April 1.
 By Todd Neff
04/17/07 Compliance Week Coverage
48. Could IT Spot Backdating? Experts Say No
With hundreds of companies under investigation in the ongoing stock option backdating scandal and billions in shareholder wealth up in smoke as a result, one would think the seemingly straightforward, inexpensive solution of time servers—computers to track and confirm when an option is granted—would catch on.
 By Todd Neff
03/20/07 Compliance Week Coverage
49. XBRL In 4 Hours? Press Releases For 10-Ks?
The time has come for the Securities and Exchange Commission to mandate that public companies file at least some periodic reports in eXtensible Business Reporting Language, according to at least one technology analyst.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
03/13/07 Compliance Week Coverage
50. Electronic Discovery: Know What You Have Before Your Adversary Does
Excellent, brief Alert from the law firm Duane Morris warns that failure to understand the technological landscape at the onset of litigation "may result in the loss or alteration of important evidence, impairing the ability to prosecute or defend against claims."
 By Duane Morris
03/07/07 Compliance Week Coverage

Records per page: Page: 1 | 2 | 3