Digital information is the lifeblood of most businesses. According to Price Waterhouse Coopers, more than 70% of businesses that experience a significant data loss go out of business within a year. With the advent of legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), many documents and communications are subject to regulations pertaining to their retention, protection, and destruction.
Avantech’s Service Desk Complete plan, which includes Digital Safe, our very own online data backup software and solution, and our high-performance, cutting-edge, real-time proactive malware protection solution, provides a data protection solution that helps businesses satisfy SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) requirements, and ensure the lifeblood of their business remains available to authorized users only.
What is Sarbanes-Oxley?
Unfortunately, many small business owners don’t know what Sarbanes-Oxley is and it’s requirements when it comes to data protection. Named after Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael Oxley, who were its main architects, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, also known as the ‘Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act’ is not a set of business practices and does not specify how a business should store records; rather, it defines which records are to be stored and for how long. This act not only affects the financial side of corporations, it also affects the IT departments who store the information. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is mandatory. ALL organizations, large and small, MUST comply and the consequences for non-compliance are fines, imprisonment, or both.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act states that all business records, including electronic records and electronic messages, must be saved for “not less than five years.” The consequences for non-compliance are fines, imprisonment, or both. Another area that perhaps falls into the Act is security. Security underpins the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act so it is important to establish a credible and detailed data security policy, which can be done with Avantech’s Digital Safe service.
Helping Small Businesses Meet Sarbanes-Oxley Requirements
SOX Section 802 criminalizes the alteration, destruction, concealment or falsification of documents with the intent to impede legal proceedings.
- With Digital Safe by Avantech, we or you can set a company document retention policy which can backup both locally and offsite to our secure servers.
- Digital Safe automatically backs up files types and locations the admin specifies, and retains a copy of every version
Section 802 also directs accountants to maintain corporate audit records and review work papers for a period of five years.
- Digital Safe administrators set document retention periods for the entire company.
- Digital Safe automatically deletes backed up copies older than the retention period.
SOX requirements also apply to email.
To uphold retention policies for all emails (not just those saved between nightly backups), our email continuity service can capture the complete email traffic in and out of an organization.
Backed-up email records are then subject to the same retention policies set for electronic documents.
Quality Assurance and Reliability
Our premier online continuous backup service mitigates the risks businesses faces from hardware failure, computer viruses, fire and flood damage, human error or intent, improper tape storage, and loss or theft of critical machines.
Digital Safe is Simple and Always On!
Set it and forget it! Our backup software runs in the background on your computer, using minimal computing and internet resources. It immediately detects and saves file changes when you make them, so your backup is never out of sync with your data.
World Class Support
Our online tech support technicians are there when you need us with the click of a button! Our world class support center and staff are available at any time to answer questions or to help you.
Is Your Business SOX Compliant?
Sarbanes–Oxley requires you to implement and communicate document retention rules. As a company you can protect employees and shareholders with an easy solution. Read more about Digital Safe.