SEC urged to extend deadline

Small business advocates continue to urge the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to give small public companies more time to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's costly internal controls reporting requirements, reports the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

The SEC issued guidance on 23 May that aims to make compliance with the act's Section 404 requirements easier, by allowing companies to tailor their internal controls over financial reporting to their particular circumstances.

Small public companies "should benefit from its scalability and flexibility", said SEC Chief Accountant Conrad Hewitt. As a result, the SEC saw no need to extend the deadline for small companies' compliance with Section 404.

US companies seeking the knowledge, tools and advice to help them adopt best practice IT governance and information security have a new, dedicated resource to turn to, reports Compliance Home.

The IT Governance Limited Web site was launched as a one-stop-shop for all the key ISO27001/ISO17799 standards, books and tools currently available and is deliberately tailored to the needs of the United States.

ISO27001 is the new, international standard of information security best practice. It provides the blueprints for private and public sector organisations to build an effective information security management system.

The march of the compliance management frameworks has begun, and some of the industry's largest vendors are looking to grab the lead, reports Forbes.

IBM has launched a broad effort to help users with IT governance, compliance, and risk management. Big Blue's framework is headed by the Business of IT Dashboard, a suite of asset-based services designed to help enterprises assess their current strengths and weaknesses in critical areas of IT governance, including security.

IBM's announcements come just a day after Symantec launched an updated version of its Symantec Control Compliance Suite, which is "designed to reduce the cost and complexity of IT policy management and compliance by automating the assessment of policies against industry regulations, standards, and best practices", the company said.