SOX stands for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was passed by Congress in 2002 with the objective of protecting investors with the improvement of the reliability and accuracy of corporate disclosures made pursuant to security laws. Thus, it resulted in a stricter protocol designed for internal controls affecting financial reporting and security in publicly traded companies. Since publicly traded companies received the greatest impact on financial securities fraud, Congress acknowledged the need for meticulous auditing, enhanced internal controls, and stringent oversight in corporate regulation.
SOX compliance pertains to the annual audit where a public company must provide proof of data-secured and accurate financial reporting. Compliance requires data to be secure and not tampered and attempted security breaches and resolutions must be tracked. Moreover, event logs must be maintained and ready for independent auditing, and compliance must be proven for the past 90 days. Although SOX measures aim to govern disclosures of corporate entities, financial operations, and any contracted financial service providers, regulations refer to a series of departments. So, reporting also includes IT departments, as SOX internal controls need full visibility and overall file safety into the financial record history. That said, IT every IT employee must know and understand their role in showing SOX compliance.
IT departments can prove compliance by delivering documentation showing that their employer has met the mandated data security and financial transparency thresholds. Aligning with the regulation law requires IT departments to know the access privilege, log management, and security standards needed for financial records. To achieve this, they must have a controlled environment that recognizes the need for better transparency, regulation, and internal balances. The environment must do its best to perform control actions to mitigate risk and guarantee reliability and inviolability of financial information.
DBHawk offers a database security audit that can help your IT departments and your company as a whole to ensure SOX compliance. The service provider delivers a centralized server-based solution to monitor database activity, and you can use the platform to securely access databases on-premise or in the cloud.
