IT GRC Forum

CIS-Partners, a consulting firm specializing in compliance strategies for the pharmaceutical industry, wrote an article entitled, “Don’t Get Burned”. The main focus of this article is to discuss how organizations are shifting to third-party vendors and in turn, how internal auditors need to respond to the risks associated with this process.

New companies with a market capitalization under USD 1 billion will now be able to opt-out of regulations within section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act for the first ten years after going public. This option was previously available to companies under USD 75 million.

Is there really a difference between rules, standards and models, and does it matter to IT governance? From 28-30 September I attended the ISACA Information Security and Risk Management Conference in Las Vegas. I shared my ideas on integration of the IT governance, risk, security and compliance functions. More importantly for this article, I had the time to attend presentations from other experts in the field. This gave me a number of new insights; “good stuff” for future articles. One of the presentations was titled “Harmonization of Standards” by Todd Fitzgerald. Todd is a well known figure in ISACA circles and I attended his presentation with serious expectations. As in the past, I was not disappointed. During his presentation Todd made one remark that stuck with me. He basically said that there is a lot of discussion about the difference between rules, regulations, standards and models and that in his opinion the difference was academic and of no particular interest in real life. I have seen a similar attitude with tool vendors. It is not uncommon to read claims like “tool X describes CobiT, ITIL, ISO 27000, SOX, PCI, etc.” or something to that effect. Basically I think that treating rules, standards, and models as more of the same is wrong and here comes the reason why. But first, to Todd: if I misunderstood your comment - my apologies.

Interview With Lyle Smith, Director of Global SOX Compliance at Walmart Stores Inc.

Oct 29 2010 - Since the enacting of the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act 2002, publicly quoted businesses have experienced a tightening of financial reporting regulations. Lyle Smith, Director of Global SOX Compliance, Walmart Stores Inc. gives his insight as to how the SOX provisions are continuing to impact companies across America. Lyle is a speaker at our partner event the 20th Edition SOX Compliance & Evolution to GRC Conference from November 4-5, 2010 at the Doubletree Hotel in Philadelphia, PA.