software-risk

SOX Security:- High Tower

2006-10-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

High Tower a vendor of security event management software has added functionality to its Security Event Manager (SEM) appliances.

New features include:-

* Expanded MetaRules engine with expanded template-based rules system.
* compliance-focused report generation with Sarbanes-Oxley and PCI pre-configured bundles
* Easier to view graphics.
* Improved back-up to networked storage.

For more SOX and security resources

SOX TOOLS: RazorSight

2006-10-02T12:54:00.000-07:00

Razorsight has launched Automated Invoice Management, which it claims will show a return on investment in less than a year.

The suite is a "turn-key" solution offering automation, business workflow and analytics of direct costs.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) integrates with existing ERP or financial systems and automates the capture and analysis of all invoice data. Automated 4-way matching is also conducted.

For more Razorsight news.

Board Changes For Sarbanes-Oxley

2006-09-20T15:42:00.000-07:00

The composition of America's boards has changed since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The finding is from a new survey of boards and their directors by Spencer Stuart.

In particular CEOs are taking on fewer directorships. Companies are having to expand their views on what they seek in a new director.

The average number of outside corporate directorships held by CEOs of S&P 500 companies has fallen to 0.8, from 1.2 in 2001 and 2.0 in 1998. Active CEOs now comprise only 29 percent of new independent directors in the S&P 500, down from 47 percent in 2001.

SOX & NONPROFITS

2006-09-19T15:36:00.000-07:00

Two fifths of American charities or non-profits would have difficulty implementing the Sarbanes-Oxley according to a new survey.

The research from the Urban Institute, National Survey of Nonprofit Governance. 5115 nonprofits took part in the survey.

Only 20% had audit companies. Even amongst those with $40m plus expenses, the figure was 58%. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires publicly listed companies to have such a committee.

Of the nonprofits without an audit panel, 51 percent said it would be somewhat or very difficult to create one. Among the smallest nonprofits, 28 percent indicated it would be very difficult, compared with fewer than 10 percent with over $2 million in expenses.

IDENTITY TOOLS

2006-09-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

Sun Microsystems has released Sun Java™ System Identity Manager 7.0 at Digital ID World. The main enhancement is the combination of the capability to prevent inappropriate user access whilst detecting violations in the company's user access policies.

The two technologies are user provisioning - creating, updating and deleting user access across applications and systems. The other is identity auditing - analyzing applications and systems for identity control violations, notifying compliance officers and addressing policy exceptions.

CFO PEOPLE

2006-09-11T15:50:00.000-07:00

Catcher Holdings, vendor of the CATCHER(TM) device, a portable, ruggedized, wireless, handheld computer and communications control device, has appointed Debra Hoopes as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

Charles Sander, CEO of Catcher Holdings said, "We are very pleased to have Debra coming on board as part of our operational consolidation in Virginia. Her experience as a CFO at Intersections, Compel, and CityNet will prove invaluable as Catcher completes is transition from a development to commercial entity. Because of Sarbanes-Oxley and the other existing market rules, we had to have someone who could hit the ground running and who had experience in investor relations as well as accounting and reporting. Debra meets and exceeds these requirements, and we are all looking forward to working with such a high-caliber financial professional."

Hoopes said, "I am very excited about joining Catcher at this important time in its development. The Company's management understands that the needs of an operating publicly-held company in its financial reporting are much more intricate and vital than those of a development stage concern. They have built an amazingly robust and flexible command control device with the CATCHER(TM) unit, and the next challenge for me is to ensure that its marketplace success is reported accurately and in a timely fashion."

TEST AUTOMATION:Spirent and MRV

2006-09-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

MRV Communications, a vendor of service aware networking products has signed a partnership deal with Spirent Communications. Media Cross Connect and LX 4000T console server from MRV is to be incorporated into the Spirent Test Automation Lab.

Spirent is currently trying to reduce its lab configuration time, testing time, whilst at the same time offering automation proof-of-concept capabilities.

SECURITY TOOLS: Security Vendor News

2006-09-06T15:18:00.000-07:00

CipherPass Corporation announced a partnership agreement today with Contego Information Security Services to provide C~suite as a managed service. Contego's launch of C~suite builds on their ability to provide strategic security solutions by enabling secure email, file and folder encryption, digital document signing, authenticated web access, and two-factor authentication for remote VPN and wireless users.

"Based on demand from large enterprises for security solutions that apply to their business needs, we are pleased to offer C~suite to both our current and prospective customers. C~suite provides an industry standard, trusted digital certificate solution that is easy to use and deploy. The secure email and file/folder encryption as part of C~suite exceeds the global security compliance demands of our customers," states Tony Fairclough, President of Contego Information Security Services.

RECORDS COMPLIANCE: Best practices

2006-09-06T15:10:00.000-07:00

Records Compliance software vendor Open Text has recommended 11 best practices for companies to follow to help compliance from the start.

The software Open Text supplies are in the Enterprise Content Management segment.

Practices inlcude:-
* Focus on business processes.
* Present the bigger ROI picture
* Consider a full assessment
* Use what is already created
* Align records management with your corporate ECM strategy
* Tap existing IT systems
* Create a communication plan
* Demonstrate benefits to users
* Build in measures for success
* Share best practices

For more records management info

TAX SOFTWARE - Movers and Shakers

2006-09-04T15:45:00.000-07:00

Ryan & Company has acquired Certisoft Solutions. The deal expeands Ryan's offerings of tax technology.

"The CertiSoft Solutions acquisition provides Ryan & Company with the opportunity to expand and optimize its full-service tax technology solutions by adding top-rated tax certificate management capability," said G. Brint Ryan, Managing Principal of Ryan & Company. "Our clients are often responsible for managing thousands of such certificates covering millions of transactions. CertiSoft Solutions' product suite provides the ability to effectively manage this function and avoid the potential tax liability associated with missing, incomplete, and invalid certificates."

"We are thrilled to be part of Ryan & Company," said Janet Spann (of CertifSoft). "Ryan & Company's transaction tax consulting practice, the U.S. market leader, includes many clients that can benefit from our product suite. Our proprietary software provides clients with a unique and efficient system of managing tax certificates, while helping them comply with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements."

ENTERPRISE SECURITY: ArcSights Common Event Framework

2006-08-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

Enterprise security management (ESM) vendor ArcSight has launched an open log management suite called the Common Event Format.

The CEF seeks to improve the interoperability of different security and network devices and applications. ArcSight claims that its experience across more than 30 different security and network technology categories. CEF enables technology companies and customers to use a common event log format so that data can be easily collected and aggregated for analysis by an enterprise security management system. For more enterprise news see the main site.

NFP: Start to feel Compliance Heat

2006-08-23T14:48:00.000-07:00

The IRS is turning its attention on Not-For-Profit organisations in their pursuit of excessive executive compensations. The warning comes from Compensation Resources.

Citing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, FASB requirements on stock options and SEC rules, the company claims are aimed at public companies, NFPs are also at risk.

For more on Not-for-profit organisation news

SARBOX TOOLS:- Vendor News

2006-08-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

Shorts from the world of Sarbanes-Oxley tool vendors.

SARBOX PEOPLE:- Movers in the Compliance Arena

2006-08-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

Movers within the compliance and BPO industry.

INTERNAL CONTROL: Spreadsheet Risks Highlighted

2006-08-15T14:56:00.000-07:00

Xactly is pushing a paper by Dr. Raymond Panko of the University of Hawaii. The paper highlights risk of the use of spreadsheets in complying with Sarbanes-Oxley.

Remarkably, Xactly is a vendor of automated on-demand sales compensation software. The products aim to completely sidestep the use of spreadsheets.

SARBOX: In the Papers

2006-08-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Cunningham writing on the Social Science Research Network puts his head above the parapet by saying that Sarbanes-Oxley could actually work!

Global trade is increasingly connecting the world, bringing consumers lower prices and a wider selection of goods, and creating jobs. But when government regulations vary enormously from one nation to the next, they become roadblocks to the smooth flow of international commerce, and hurt both consumers and workers. Comment on Think Tank Town.

Expensive, onerous and unnecessary -- those are a few of the complaints U.S. publicly traded companies have leveled at the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, designed to keep companies honest. Yet auditors say an increasing number of closely held companies are complying with parts of the corporate-reform law -- even though they don't have to according to the Wall Street Journal (Needs subscription).

Some of these private-sector companies have investors who hope the company will one day go public, or will be acquired. Others think adhering to the law's requirements will make their businesses more efficient. Still others face pressure from lenders or customers, including government agencies, who value the strong ...

SARBOX TOOLS: OpenPages Secures New Deals

2006-08-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

OpenPages a vendor of governance and compliance software has added to its roster of cclients.

New additions include PCCW, TD Ameritrade, Unitrin, AVX and BMO Financial Group.

For more OpenPages news.OpenPages

The company website is at www.openpages.com

SARBANES-OXLEY: Biotechs Pleased with SEC Proposals

2006-08-10T14:20:00.000-07:00

The Biotechnoloy industry lobby group, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) praised the SEC. The source of good news was a package of proposals giving small companies an effective exemption from having to comply with the infamous Section 404.

"The proposal demonstrates that the SEC is considering the full weight of Section 404 on smaller public companies," said Greenwood. "Section 404 is creating costly, unintended burdens on smaller firms that frequently operate with limited or no revenues."

Smaller companies or accelerated filers are those which have a market capitalization between $75m and $700m. They would not have to comply with Section 404 until Dec. 15 2008. This means they would not have to file an attestation report.
Newly listed companies will also be able to delay the report.

"Four years after enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it is necessary to correct sections that are having unforeseen and detrimental effects on smaller public companies. BIO will continue to work with other affected industries and the SEC to ensure that emerging companies remain competitive and are not forced to divert valuable research and development dollars to administrative tasks," Greenwood said.

For more info on small companies and Sarbanes-Oxley on our main site.

SARBANES-OXLEY: Section 404 Loosening Proposals

2006-08-10T06:59:00.000-07:00

The SEC has proposed giving foreign companies a further years exemption from having to comply with Section 404. The proposals come as foreign companies choose to list in lighter regulated London instead of New York.

Section 404, which requires companies to attest to the effectiveness of internal controls is the most contentious part of the Act.

Small American companies, those with a market capitalisation of less than $700m would also receive an extra years grace.

COMPLIANCE: GlobalSantaFe Chooses Certus for Governance

2006-08-08T14:54:00.000-07:00

GlobalSantaFe is to implement Certus Governance to support its compliance and corporate governance initiatives.

The suite will be used to streamline reporting procedures, automate internal controls and generally improve efficiency of its compliance processes.

Books on Sarbanes-Oxley can be found in our bookshop.

RISK: RiskWatch on IT Risk Assessment

2006-08-08T14:48:00.000-07:00

RiskWatch has launched a new how-to-guide for IT Risk Assessment.

The guide covers methodology, structure and risk assessment forms.

Forms for collecting information about asset values and threat incidents are included in the Guide to Risk Assessment, as well as the latest FFIEC (Federal Financial Institutions Examiner's Council) regulations.

Companies perceive a rising level of risk and plan to increase their investment in risk management over the next three years, but a lack of alignment with the strategy of their business means many are not getting the full benefits from their risk approach, says a new survey from Ernst & Young. The global survey, "Companies on Risk: The Benefits of Alignment," published in March 2006 by Ernst & Young, interviewed 441 senior decision-makers in large organizations in 16 countries, with the emphasis on the larger financial centers.

The guide is available from the RiskWatch website.

Edge Dynamics Announces Release 3.5 Of Channel Commerce Management Solution

2006-08-08T14:38:00.000-07:00

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – August 7, 2006 – Edge Dynamics, the leading provider of channel commerce management (CCM) solutions for life sciences, today announced the general availability of Edge Dynamics 3.5. Release 3.5, available as both hosted and on-premise offerings, delivers an enterprise-class solution for financial compliance, which includes the industry's only comprehensive and auditable channel system of record and the first channel policy audit capability. This new release also provides pre-built integration support for third-party business intelligence tools, as well as numerous enhancements that make the solution easier to deploy and use.

Edge Dynamics' powerful CCM solutions ensure that life sciences manufacturers can easily and more effectively collaborate with channel partners, manage trade agreements, gain inventory visibility, control products moving through channels, and comply with increasingly stringent federal regulations. Edge Dynamics' CCM solutions now manage more than $100 billion in annual revenues for leading pharmaceutical manufacturers.

"Financial compliance is increasingly critical in today's regulatory environment," said John Jacko, director of IT at Daiichi Sankyo, one of the first customers for Edge Dynamics 3.5. "Edge Dynamics has already established itself as a leader in channel commerce management, but release 3.5 further raises the bar by providing a comprehensive and auditable system of record for channel data that can help us demonstrate we made the right decisions for the right reasons every time."

Release 3.5 expands on the already powerful capabilities of Edge Dynamics' hosted and on-premise channel commerce management solutions. New features include:

First comprehensive and auditable channel system of record – Edge Dynamics 3.5 includes the first and only enterprise-class repository for storing and managing all EDI documents involved in channel management, including current and emerging standards. This repository can also include a variety of other valuable enterprise data from areas such as orders and production, shipping and logistics, and forecasts. The solution receives, validates, and transforms data to enable informed business decisions, including managing the performance of fee-for-service agreements. It also automatically records transaction-level decisions and their justifications in a single location for easy access during audits.
First Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) - and Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) -compliant channel management capability – Edge Dynamics 3.5 facilitates audits of operational requirements mandated by SOX, SEC and Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and enables auditable testing of stringent SOX 404 security and access control requirements. Pre-built reports streamline audit compliance across order management, policy changes, scorecarding, and data management and make it easer to comply with FASB policies such as revenue recognition; government pricing requirements; and SEC reporting milestones such as 10-K, 8-K and 10-Q statements.
First solution to support pre-built integration with third-party business intelligence (BI) tools – Edge Dynamics 3.5 uniquely supports standards-based integration with leading BI tools such as Excel, Cognos, Business Objects, and Hyperion to enable analysis of channel trends.

The new channel system of record capabilities in Release 3.5 address a key area of need faced by many companies today by greatly enhancing their ability to meet increasing financial compliance requirements. According to a recent study published by industry analyst firm IDC, end users are learning from their experiences in the first two years of SOX compliance, and they are increasingly aware of the opportunity to automate key business processes and leverage common data sets and components. IDC also believes that the upcoming amendments to the Federal Rules on Civil Procedure for Electronic Discovery underscore the need for organizations to "get their records and information house in order." Further, a recent study by Deloitte & Touche LLP estimates that 85% of compliance controls are still manually tested and compiled for reporting purposes. This lack of automation not only results in higher costs for adhering to regulations, but also in greater business risk because companies will not be able to see anomalies until it's too late.

"With Edge Dynamics 3.5, we are setting a new standard for channel commerce management, by addressing the critical issue of financial compliance and continuing to enhance business performance and collaboration for all channel participants," said Henry Olson, chief products officer at Edge Dynamics. "Customers such as Bristol-Myers Squibb and Purdue Pharma will benefit from having access to an enterprise-class solution built on our unique patent-pending technology platform that has been proven in deployment with many of the leading life sciences manufacturers."

Industry Thought Leaders Embrace Edge Dynamics 3.5

John D'Urso, Managing Partner, Life Sciences, BusinessEdge Solutions – "Edge has a proven track record for delivering an enterprise-class solution to improve operations performance for leading pharmaceutical manufacturers. Release 3.5 adds critical new capabilities in the area of financial compliance that ultimately help companies make better decisions and more effectively manage risk. We are excited to be partnering with Edge to achieve continued success with our joint customers."

Hussain Mooraj, Research Director, Life Science, AMR Research – "Compliance in the pharmaceutical industry is best achieved if it is part of an organization's operational excellence strategy and addressed through a confluence of business process and technology. Edge Dynamics' new release will help life sciences companies take a bold new step in this direction, along with providing better demand visibility and management."

Pricing and Availability

Edge Dynamics 3.5 includes the CCM platform; the CCM application; a comprehensive set of modules including Order Compliance Automation, Downstream Channel Management, Forecast Gap Control, Chargeback Reconciliation, Returns Reconciliation, Vendor Managed Inventory, New Product Introductions, Continuous Channel Scorecarding, Product Tracking and CCM Analytics. Edge Dynamics 3.5 is now available for the Windows, Solaris, and Linux operating systems; pricing is on a per-server basis.

Edge Dynamics' hosted CCM services are available as a monthly subscription without requiring any upfront investment in hardware or software. For more information, please contact a sales representative at (866) 737-EDGE, send an email to info@edgedynamics.com, or visit www.edgedynamics.com.

About Edge Dynamics
Edge Dynamics is the pioneer and leading provider of channel commerce management (CCM) solutions to the life sciences industry. Edge Dynamics uniquely provides a full range of on-premise, hosted and hybrid solutions that enable manufacturers to optimize their transaction stream processing to address critical business challenges in the areas of operations performance, regulatory compliance, and brand integrity. Deployed at leading pharmaceutical manufacturers, the Edge Dynamics solution currently optimizes more than $100 billion in annual channel revenues. Edge Dynamics has offices in Redwood City, Calif. and Philadelphia, Pa. For more information, visit www.edgedynamics.com, send email to info@edgedynamics.com, or call (866) 737-EDGE.

# # #

Contact:
Scott Bauman
Greenough Communications
(617)275-6518

# # #

Edge Dynamics and the Edge Dynamics logo are trademarks of Edge Dynamics, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other company and product names mentioned are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

BA Extends CyberSource by 3 Years

2006-08-08T14:26:00.000-07:00

British Airways has extended its agreement to usins CyberSources payment services for by three years. The services allow BA to accept credit and debit card payments online and via their call center.

CyberSource is also supplying its Payer Authentication service. The service enables BA to access Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode programs to verify the cardholder's identity, increasing payment security and reducing the risk of fraud.

Deborah Dickens, British Airways senior manager global distribution, said, "Developing our website, BA.com, is a core part of our sales strategy, so we welcome this long term partnership to further enhance the site's payment processes."

"Our experience in managing payments for sites with high security requirements and high transaction volumes has proven to be a key element in securing this new contract," commented Nathan Jackson, managing director of CyberSource Ltd.

2006-08-08T05:31:00.000-07:00

Mercury Interactive Corporation , the vendor of business technology optimization (BTO) software, announced a new webinar featuring Carey Schwaber of Forrester Research, who will share her insights on the criteria for selecting functional testing solutions and present the findings reported in the new Forrester market studies, "The Forrester Wave: Functional Testing Solutions, Q2 2006" (i) and "Mercury Continues to Dominate in Functional Testing."(ii)

Hosted by Mercury, this webinar will be presented on Wednesday, August 9 at 10:00am PST. All attendees will receive a complimentary copy of the Forrester Wave Report: Functional Testing Solutions Q2 2006 by Carey Schwaber of Forrester.

For additional information on this webinar or to register, please visit www.mercury.com/forresterwebinar.

Intel Teams With Top Universities for Software-Related Research, Curriculum for Future Multi-Core Processors

2006-08-08T05:16:00.000-07:00

45 Universities Worldwide Will Offer Multi-Threading Courses to Equip Students to Take Advantage of Multi-Core Platforms
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 7, 2006 – Intel Corporation today announced a global effort to prepare university students for a new paradigm of software development as Intel transitions its processors from single-processor engines to ones that will have multiple cores and threads. This evolution will transform software design and require entirely new thinking and innovation in order to leverage this kind of processing power.

As part of its higher education program, Intel is providing 45 of the world's top universities with expertise, funding, development tools, educational materials, on-site training and sustained collaboration with Intel to incorporate multi-core and multi-threading concepts into their computer science curricula.

By the end of this year, Intel expects more than 75 percent of its mainstream server, desktop and laptop PC processors to ship as dual-core processors; with four-, eight- and many-cores on the horizon.

"To usher in a new generation of computing technology and bring creative new products to market, it's crucial to educate tomorrow's software developers to architect, develop and debug the next generation of software for modern, multi-core platforms," said Renee James, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel's Software and Solutions Group. "The full potential of multi-core based systems to deliver great performance and expanded usages is unleashed when software is designed to take advantage of the full capabilities of the machine. Working with the world's best universities, Intel is creating the future for performance computing."

Universities participating in the worldwide effort include Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Michigan and University of Washington, as well as leading academic institutions across Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, Taiwan and several European countries. The first courses will be offered during the fall term this year and Intel expects hundreds more universities to participate in 2007 and beyond.

"Intel's support in multi-core education is critical for two reasons," said Karsten Schwan, professor of College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology. "First, getting early access to advanced technology and new equipment is something that always excites students. Second, companies like Intel have a perspective that looks beyond research to see the broader potential for technology."

The curriculum provides an introduction to Intel multi-core architecture and teaches computer science students how to achieve maximum performance of their programs on threaded, multi-core and multi-processor systems using Intel compilers and threading tools. It also covers the importance of parallelism, threading concepts, threading methodology and programming with threads (Windows*, OpenMP*, PThreads*).

Included in the endeavor are faculty training sessions delivered by Intel® Software College multi-threading experts from around the world. Intel also provides course materials, laptops powered by dual-core processors for instructor use in the classroom, as well as licenses for Intel® Software Development Products and access to forums and technical support.

This effort is part of the Intel Software College and the Intel® Higher Education Program. Additional information is available at www.intel.com/software/college and www.intel.com/education/highered.

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Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom

Intel and Intel logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

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