The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) is a legislative measure enacted by the U.S. Congress to safeguard shareholders from accounting inaccuracies and deceptive practices. SOX affects not only publicly traded companies, but also privately held entities seeking public capital and those in the process of becoming publicly traded.
Section 404 of SOX, which pertains to Management Assessment of Internal Controls, presents significant challenges to companies due to its extensive requirements concerning internal controls over financial reporting. TruTek specializes in implementing and providing ongoing support for SOX programs, employing a risk-based, top-down approach to enhance both efficiency and effectiveness within the program.
TruTek’s Comprehensive Approach to SOX Compliance:
Our team of dedicated IT, financial, and operational audit professionals boast extensive experience across diverse industries of all sizes. We collaborate with your company to aid in the implementation and maintenance of a comprehensive SOX program. Our approach to SOX entails evaluating the design and testing the operational effectiveness of controls.
During our assessment of control design, we adopt a top-down, risk-based methodology to ensure your organization has identified significant risks related to material misstatements and established appropriate key controls to mitigate these risks effectively. We work closely with management to ascertain the adequacy of identified key SOX controls for this purpose. Upon confirming the sufficiency of these key controls, we collaborate with management to conduct walkthroughs and document tests to understand the processes implemented to mitigate identified risks.
Once we have gained a thorough understanding of the design of key SOX controls, we collaborate with management to plan and execute tests to assess their operational effectiveness. Our testing methodology is designed to be comprehensive, with sample sizes selected based on the frequency of controls in place. We work in tandem with management to gather evidence necessary to form opinions and conclusions regarding the operational effectiveness of key controls. Our testing culminates in a comprehensive report generated for management, detailing the outcomes of our design and operational effectiveness testing, alongside recommendations to enhance the control structure.
We accomplish this by: