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The Impact of Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on IT audit and controls
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Experiences from various organizations and companies shows that the effects of the Information Technology audits that have been conducted in line with the Sarbanes Oxley as well as its IT section, which is the Section 404, displays significant differences with the kind of focus traditional IT audit does (NetIQ Corporation, 2006). Typically, traditional IT audit tends to focus on the component, the subsystem, and on certain occasions, the audible issues on a system level; in that environment that is being audited. However, this method tends to have a very strong bias towards the security matters. The kind of IT audits that is done under the SOX act adds a whole new layer of governance, a layer of financial, as well as controls the matters that are associated to the audit process (TLK Enterprise, 2006). This method, as opposed to the traditional method and system, is mainly aimed at ensuring that the CFO, CEO, as well as the audit committee are assured of the accuracy, and the reliability of the financial information in the IT systems that the company or organization is reporting to the SEC.
Description of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SAX) The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in the year 2002 by the United States Congress in order to protect the company investors from the always imminent possibilities of fraudulence in the accounting activities of the companies (IT Governance Institute, 2006). The SOX mandated very strict reforms in order to improve various financial disclosers from the companies as well as to prevent any possible accounting fraud. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was indeed enacted as a way of responding to the numerous accounting scandals which shook the country at the turn of the millennium. Some of these scandals include; Tyco,

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