Thank you , Enron and Anderson!

Ever hear of SOX 404? Spent my lunch-time today being informed about what impact the Sarbanes-Oxley Act will have on my team. The Public CompanyAccounting Reform and Investor Protection Act. This is the act that was entered into law after the implosions of ENRON and WORLDCOM. Now this is a good thing. Just think of all those folks that were bilked out of their retirement by those thieves! Hopefully it won't happen again. Following is a quote from the WebCPA site. Good judgment and thorough disclosure -- from both auditors and issuers -- are the keys to restoring investor confidence in the capital markets as well as the accounting profession, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Chairman William McDonough told a gathering of financial executives here. Stating that the implosions at Enron and WorldCom were the result of failures of private sector leadership, McDonough said that despite some companies and groups saying and doing the right things toward the restoration process, "vastly more needs to be done." "Disclosure, disclosure, disclosure," emphasized McDonough, who said that in the event of a problem in financial reporting or during the course of an audit, both clients and auditors have specific roles in the disclosure process. "From an issuer's standpoint, it should be, 'Here's what the problem is, here's what we're doing to fix it, and here's how long we think it will take to fix it.' From the auditor's perspective, it should be, 'Here's what we found,' and here's what you need to do to fix it.'" McDonough's remarks came during the annual conference of Financial Executives International, a 15,000-member trade group comprised of chief financial officers, treasurers, controllers and similar C-level financial officials. From the Sarbanes-Oxley website But as a security administrator, these requirements take already tough (for us) SOD (Segregation Of Duties) issues and make them into a logistical nightmare! I can only thank the Supreme Being that I don't have to deal with the Accounting, Purchasing, etc, pieces of this, except from an IT perspective, which is bad enough! But come on, shouldn't good judgment and thorough disclosure have already been a part of business plans everywhere?