The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is gradually transforming the way companies—public and private—do business. It has established new guidelines that are becoming accepted throughout the corporate world as the “gold standard”. Public companies must comply.

As it applies to private companies, however, the Act should be viewed as a unique opportunity to learn from their public company counterparts who, in response to the Act, are defining best practices to mitigate risk, improve processes, and raise credibility among stakeholders and other constituents.

How can Private Companies Leverage Sarbanes Oxley compliance standards?

• New standards raise the bar
• Benefits along the Private Company continuum – pre-IPO/acquisition companies, multiple stakeholder companies, closely held companies
• Seizing opportunities, adopting best practices
• Be Proactive - preparing for today and tomorrow

Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) Small Business Sarbanes-Oxley Assistance Act of 2006 would enable the Small Business Administration to give out $25 million in grants over a five-year period to help small businesses pay for Sarbox compliance.

It sounds good to many SMB’s out there, but according to CFO.com, those who would actually be affected by it don’t think it’ll go far. Or that it will do enough if it does pass.

Many feel that ‘the bill, introduced near the beginning of a lame-duck congressional session, is unlikely to receive high priority. And it’s not the right approach. As one small business exec quoted in the piece notes, “changing [the] legislation to allow for the normal progress of growth that a company goes through [would be] more logical than throwing money at the problem.”

We here at Radian Compliance believe that Automation of the Compliance Process is KEY to keeping costs down and audits successful.  It’s nice to see others out there are agreeing on finding cost-effective processes.  We believe Education of your Corporate Culture is key to success, as it focusing on the Controls to put in place before rewriting all of your business processes to support IT.

5 lessons to Reduce Cost and Effort is a great place to start exploring for the IT Manager, CIO or Project Lead in the IT compliance effort.  It covers what to do with your Workforce, where to invest in Monitoring Software, and what to do with those consultants you brought in.