Accounts, IFA’s and bookkeeping services are very regulated and how they handle their data is extremely important..
Access to personnel records
The Data Protection Act (DPA) applies to most personnel records, whether held in paper, microform, or computerised format. Under the DPA data must not be kept any longer than is necessary for a particular purpose.
Computerised systems are covered by the law, as are certain manual systems: to be covered, manual systems must be organised into a ‘relevant filing system’. Even manual filing systems in existence before 24 October 1998 when the DPA came into force are now required to comply fully with the Data Protection Directive.
By backing up your data with GBData, you will be helping to comply with the requirements of the data protection act. GBData online backup encrypts all of your data before it leaves your computers. Further information on how secure your data is can be found here:
Achieving SOX Compliance
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 aims to protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures. The legislation, often referred to as SOX, amends mail and wire fraud infractions with harsher punishments and imposes fines and prison sentences of up to 20 years for anyone who knowingly alters or destroys a record or document with the intent to obstruct an investigation. While most provisions of the act focus on financial records, they were clearly not meant to stop there. For example, during an investigation, discovery requests can be submitted to IT departments. In addition, such requests could require access to all e-mail communication.
Data retention policies and procedures
Sarbanes-Oxley requires that strict records retention policies and procedures must be in place, but it does not specify a specific data storage format. It does require corporate officers to institute internal controls on their information to ensure completeness, correctness, and quick access. One exception to the specifics: accounting firms are specifically mentioned in Sarbanes-Oxley. The act calls for accounting firms that audit publicly-traded companies to keep related audit documents for no less than seven years after the completion of an audit. Violators can face fines of up to $10 million and 20 years in prison.
Using the GBData online backup service, you can set the data retention to what ever value you wish. You can set monthly copies, quarterly, and yearly copies, in order to comply with the act. In addition if any of your backups overlap, you will not use more storage, as the software detects this.
Quick data retrieval
Quick data retrieval is another requirement under Sarbanes-Oxley, and it’s just a good idea anyway. After all, if your company is subpoenaed, do you really want to make your legal team wait three days for IT to be able to pull the right records, or do you want the team to be able to immediately begin crafting a defense?
Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley is also known as the internal control provision of the act. Under Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, publicly traded companies must have policies and controls in place to secure, document, and process material information dealing with their financial results. Compliance date for Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley for certain smaller companies: Under the SEC’s March 2 extension, non-accelerated filers (and foreign private issuers filing annual reports on Form 20-F or 40-F) must begin to comply with the internal control over financial reporting requirements for their first fiscal year ending on or after July 15, 2006.
With GBData you can restore your data in many ways; you can restore it from the PC that performed the backup, from any PC via our web portal, or ask us to send you a disk with the data on. With these methods, you can access your backups quickly.
