The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) changed the business world by formalizing management's responsibility for internal controls. This increased accountability requires documentation and testing of the processes and controls that support external financial reporting.

At its core, SOX is nothing more than a call to a strong control environment; hence, those organizations that embrace Sarbanes-Oxley can reap significant business value beyond mandatory compliance with SOX regulations:

• Improved and more timely business data to support better business decisions

• Better management of resources

• Greater effectiveness and efficiencies of operations

• Enhanced reputation for leadership and investor confidence

Our Sarbanes-Oxley Services are sufficiently structured to ensure that we address the most critical compliance issues, yet flexible enough to be tailored to specific organizational needs:

• Define an appropriate scope - Minimally, the scope for an engagement can include Section 302 & 404 compliance; optimally, it can include encompassing other regulatory compliance and business impacting issues. In addition, Capability Maturity Modeling can be used to provide a means of quantifying the current control environment and documenting future improvements

• Validate Buy-in - The full commitment of key management (Board, CEO / CFO / CIO) is essential. The "tone at the top" is one of the ingle most critical elements of a control environment

• Identify Control Deficiencies - Control procedures are reviewed and tested and deficiencies are identified according to specific financial reporting and disclosure risks or to a broader Risk Assessment approach

• Remediate & Document Controls - Control deficiencies are addressed and the resultant control environment is appropriately documented

• Monitor - Establish procedures for ongoing monitoring of internal controls