Added Sarbanes Oxley (Sox) to DocMaster in release 4.2

One of my responsibilities at work is to ensure that IT is Sox compliant. Unfortunately the usual manual processes based on spreadsheets and word documents simply don't work very well, and are a lot of effort to maintain. And since Sox procedures should be integrated with other IT procedures, it made sense to extend DocMaster to specifically support Sox.

Possibly the most useful feature added is the "Sox Documentation" view, which includes a color coded calendar showing the current status of Sox monitoring. This is a huge time saver, and has organized our Sox work so well that, at the end of May 08, we are completely up to date! See screen shot below with annotations.



Adding monitoring tasks to the calendar is pretty easy: simply check the appropriate month check box on the control document. See screen shot below.



Sox documentation usually consists of control narrative documents, which are summarized by a spreadsheet. The problem is that it is impossible to keep the narrative documents in sync with the spreadsheet. DocMaster solves this problem by using a separate document for each control, and then summarizing these documents in a Control Matrix view. That normalizes the information, and because the information is now only maintained in one place, total solves the synch problem. DocMaster has special views of the Sox control documents, but those control docs can also be put in folders, along with other policies & procedures.

Once Sox controls are in place, you are required to monitor them to ensure they are working. DocMaster allows you to attach monitoring documents to the controls. This means that when the next monitoring event is due, you can use previous monitoring as a template - a tremendous time saver. It also means that when auditors look at your documentation, they can easily find all monitoring - a tremendous money saver! To track actual monitoring there is a view of all monitoring, categorized by month. See screen shot below.



Release 4.2 also added document issues, but more on that tomorrow.