Complying with corporate governance regulations is essential for all publicly-traded companies, other companies that do business with them and, increasingly, the public sector.
Part of the growing emphasis on corporate governance is driven by regulatory requirements, such as the Companies Act in South Africa and Sarbanes-Oxley in the United States, as well as codes like King III, which while voluntary is mandatory for companies listed on the JSE.
“However, compliance is only one aspect of corporate governance – it is also emerging as a genuine competitive differentiator as the link between responsible business practices and shareholder returns is better recognised,” says Nick Perkins, divisional director at Bytes Systems Integration’s Identity Management division. “Following good corporate governance practices makes good business sense before all else.”
At the very least, solid corporate governance means that investors, shareholders and broader stakeholders can have confidence in the business and its financial reporting. And, of course, it also mitigates the risk of fines and other sanctions resulting from non-compliance.
Perkins goes on to explain that IT systems have a key role to play in helping compliance and other corporate officers discharge their obligation of certifying that a company’s financial systems and transactions are secure. This is because financial processes are now wholly digital.
Aside from certifying annual and quarterly reports, corporate officers need to validate that adequate internal controls protect the financial reporting process. They also need to be able to notify the marketplace whenever material events occur that could affect the financial results.
“A large company will have many people accessing its financial systems and literally thousands of transactions, making the task of the compliance officer potentially very difficult,” says Perkins. “Bytes has put together an integrated technology solution to help them discharge their responsibilities both easily and accurately.”
The foundation of the Bytes solution is the Softex OmniPass product family. OmniPass software is available for stand-alone and enterprise IT systems allowing IT staff to manage all the users and generate reports.
The Omnipass software provides identity management, access control and logging – a solid foundation for compliance. OmniPass integrates easily with multiple types of authentication devices, such as biometric fingerprint readers, smart cards, contactless badges and tokens.
In this way, OmniPass secures the corporate systems by requiring secure log in using a variety of authentications – unsafe passwords are eliminated. Sensitive files and e-mails can be encrypted, thus adding further protection.
Equally important, a full audit trail of log-in authentication and times are kept, ensuring that compliance officers can quickly and easily investigate any issues.
“This approach means that even if a laptop with saved passwords is compromised, corporate governance is not,” Perkins points out. “A thief with just a password could not log onto the system, and every instance of a person accessing the financial systems is recorded.”
Bytes Identify Management Solutions recommends pairing OmniPass software with the Futronic FS80 fingerprint reader and /or ACS ACR card readers. In this way, concludes Perkins, multi-factor authentication can easily be implemented, thus creating a secure and auditable environment that fully supports corporate governance.