During the last 5 years, I have been involved with ongoing discussions with organizations regarding the best method to track and monitor the huge amount of Sarbanes Oxley key controls, test results, gap remediation, and overall reporting. Read more »

In January 2009, COSO published “Monitoring Guidance” to help organizations better monitor the effectiveness of their internal control system, and take corrective action if needed. This has direct implications for ongoing SOX work, so I thought it would be useful to highlight some of the more salient points. Read more »

Organizations can often benefit from the additional resources, expertise and independence provided by external consultants, such as Gary Schein of GFS Consulting. Gary has been involved with SOX process documentation, test designs, testing, and risk assessments with publicly traded companies for over 4 years. In addition, Gary is a member of the Institute of Internal Auditors, and has over 25 years of financial management, accounting and internal audit experience with public, private and non-profit organizations.

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Given the credit crisis and financial turmoil during September and October 2008, it makes me wonder whether all the effort regarding SOX has been effective. In other words, SOX improved safeguards around internal controls, financial reporting, conflict of interests, transparency etc. Therefore, should we have expected the SOX program to have prevented or at least mitigated the financial crisis in the US? Read more »

GFS Consulting was one of the “early adopters” and began using Microsoft VISTA during October 2007.

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The bankruptcies of Enron in 2001 and Worldcom in 2002 were due, in large part, from financial reporting irregularities. The sheer magnitude of Enron’s collapse (Enron had revenues of over $100 billion), the nature of some of their accounting practices, and complicity of other firms who turned a “blind eye” to the questionable transactions, created a crisis in confidence for investors who rely upon the financial statements of publicly traded companies in making investment decisions. Read more »