Compliance Sarbanes Oxley

what exactly does is do and why ?

go on wikipedia

would a graduate certificate in Accounting due? or do i need a masters in accounting?

To answer your question, either could would probably give you what you need… which boils down to a foot in the door, so that you can work at a company that needs to comply with SOX requirements. The best place to learn about this sort of stuff is in the real world, not in a classroom.

A question back at you: why do you want to specifically become a SOX expert? If you focus on this too much, there’s a risk that you’ll become redundant when the regulations change again, which seems to happen every few years. And along these same lines, the latest talk I’ve heard is that people are pushing for relaxation of SOX requirements anyway, as they’re impacting US firms’ ability to compete with European and Asian companies… might be just talk, but you never know…

Can anyone tell me what if any requirements there are relative to email and/or disater recovery and co-locattion facilities from a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance perspective?

While many public companies have increased the attention they place on having adequate disaster recovery and data-backup plans because of theoretical Sarbox concerns, I don’t believe Sarbox has specific requirements per se on email and disaster recovery.

Sarbox primarily (1) prohibits certain kinds of actions (officer loans, using auditors for non-audit services without pre-approval) and (2) requires more stringent internal controls and procedures (mostly relating to insuring prevention of fraud in financial statements). Unless your auditors require you to show that there are adequate disaster recovery plans as a condition to certifying you have adequate internal controls and procedures (which I don’t think is the case), I don’t think it bears directly.

There should be a web site that explains it.

I am an accounting major and I think accountants and auditors are in greater demand because of this act. If it were done away with it could effect the market for accountants.

1. Ask your instructor to cite a source for this, and check it out.

2. Auditors are in greater demand because of sarbanes oxley. Meanwhile SOX costs companies millions, and hasn’t prevented the financial crisis. It might be better for the economy if SOX is modified to be less costly to business.

3. Accountants and auditors will always be in demand, with or without SOX.

Who watches the little guys?

There’s no exact equivalent – but the IRS has a certain tendency to audit private firms who are perhaps trying to naively enter some famous accounting misrepresentations into their books.

Penalties are quite large for the unethical ‘little guys’ too!