No More SOX

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No More SOX

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Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Posted Saturday, May 30, 2009 10:25 PM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item No More SOX

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Post #726282

Jeff Moden

Posted Sunday, May 31, 2009 11:36 PM

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SOX actually made my life a little easier. I no longer have to argue with a bunch of people about locking down the Production Servers. I no longer have to listen to interminable dribble and explain over and over about why I don't believe Developers should have anything other than Read Only access to the Production Servers, if that.

Now, I have a "3" word reason that they can't argue with. "It's the Law". Period. End of Story. Next problem please. And, oh yes, take your whiney hiney and your boss' gotta-have-it-now-'cause-I-dunno-how-to-write-a-schedule PITA attitude down the hall and put your cruddy, performance challenged, inaccurate, untested, POS code through a code review and some decent Unit and UAT Testing before you give it to me for promotion to Production. Make sure you have a backout plan, too, sonny. Tongue

Truly Yours,
BSOFH on SOX steroids Hehe

p.s. That goes for your bloody undocumented, just-as-performance-challenged GUI code, too! BigGrin

--Jeff Moden

"RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for "Row-By-Agonizing-Row".

First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
Stop thinking about what you want to do to a row... think, instead, of what you want to do to a column."

For better, quicker answers on T-SQL questions, click on the following...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/

For better answers on performance questions, click on the following...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQLServerCentral/66909/

Post #726417

Jeff Moden

Posted Sunday, May 31, 2009 11:52 PM

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Heh... sorry... I'm holding back... I should tell you how I really feel. Wink

--Jeff Moden

Post #726423

Tom Fischer

Posted Monday, June 01, 2009 6:15 AM

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Have to (strongly) agree with the ambiguous Mr. Moden. Smile

One of the downsides of SOX that I’ve witnessed has been its casual interpretation to justify requests. For example, one manager used SOX to justify hiring another DBA. Another involved requesting hardware upgrades.

Post #726570

Mike Hinds

Posted Monday, June 01, 2009 6:32 AM

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SOX gave us a start to prepare for what was to come. As mentioned by all above, we now have the law on our side when we ask for controls, and the time and materials to implement them.

The regional bank I work for was hit by eastern European hackers a year ago. SOX helped in two ways:
1) We were partially prepared for the intrusion, and as such the actual damage to customer data was limited. Law enforcement gave us a huge P/R boost in assuring our customers that we had been well prepared.
2) Many staff were prepared to respond quickly and appropriately, by having done many of the steps in lesser intensity over the last five years.

Regards, Mike

Post #726590

Andrew Peterson-472853

Posted Monday, June 01, 2009 7:02 AM

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We do need SOX, but corporate executives hate it.

It limits their ability to softly manage their short term reported financials, and makes them responsible. In one of my past careers (I am a CPA) I audited the financials of many companies. If you remember the collapse of Enron and Arthur Andersen, I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that it was only a matter of time before a major accounting firm imploded.

The more you are prepared, the less you need it.

Post #726617

Someguy

Posted Monday, June 01, 2009 7:06 AM

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This was an interesting editorial for me because prior to this I had only heard Sarbanne-Oxley critisized for the "Mark to Market" provisions. See link below as an example:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/29/mark-to-market-oped-cx_ng_0929gingrich.html

Apparently SOX is more complex than this single issue. Thanks for the enlightenment.

I haven't had time to read the whole act (and I don't feel too guilty about that - it seems most of Congress doesn't have time to read their own legislation nowadays). Might it be that it is a series of provisions that need to be considered individually? Perhaps those of you who have implemented applications in response to the act could further enlighten us...

___________________________________________________
“Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.”

Post #726621

Hugo Shebbeare

Posted Monday, June 01, 2009 7:24 AM

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Glad to see from above the support for Internal Controls, certainly makes not only the DBAs life easier, but also, more importantly, the strength of an organisation's systems' integrity.

I went into detail on this already here, with an anecdote or two:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/hugo/archive/2009/02/15/the-importance-of-the-segregation-of-duties-with-respect-to-internal-controls.aspx

Here in Canada, we have (aka C-SOX) Bill C-158 - unfortunately, most developers here have to be convinced that this is the law and not just 'overhead' to make their lives difficult.

Town of Mount Royal, QC
514 812 5087 (txt also)
hugo@intellabase.com (msn im also)

Post #726639

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Posted Monday, June 01, 2009 7:36 AM

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Very interesting. I was expecting to see more complaints about SOX, but maybe I'm not out of touch as a DBA. This law definitely helps DBAS, or anyone that wants to better manage and control their environment, without such a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants attitude that used to predominate.

I guess the DBAs don't want this repealed.

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Post #726648

KWymore

Posted Monday, June 01, 2009 7:37 AM

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At my old company, data was managed very haphazardly and pretty much anyone could get access to systems internally if they asked the right people. SOX made us tighten down our systems, document our systems and actually come up with back up strategies which were barely there before. It actually required admins and dba's to learn the systems that they were working with better and in turn exposed a number of large potential issues that we might not have found before. After the first 2 years of SOX audits, it just became another yearly ritual for us, same as year end reporting and routine maintenance. One can imagine how many public companies might have fudged the numbers in today's economy if SOX wasn't a concern.

Post #726649

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