SOX
The IT general controls (ITGC) framework that public companies — and companies preparing to go public — must demonstrate to their external auditors annually under Sarbanes-Oxley.
Mapped, monitored, and audit-ready.
Every SOX control has a place in Talarity — with cross-mapping, automated evidence, and continuous validation.
Talarity's pre-built control library covering SOX, with linked evidence, owners, and testing schedules.
Answer once, prove everywhere. Talarity's mapping engine reuses your evidence across every framework you run.
- Privileged access reviews on financial systems
- Change management approvals for production deployments
- Segregation of duties matrices
- Backup and recovery testing records
- User access provisioning and deprovisioning logs
Your SOX dashboard
Every completed SOX assessment updates this automatically — where you stand now, how that has changed, and which areas need work.
What gets easier with Talarity.
ITGC walkthroughs and design tests are repeated annually — and the documentation goes stale between reviews.
Talarity keeps walkthroughs and process narratives versioned alongside the controls. Update the process; the test plan updates.
Segregation of duties violations only get caught during audit fieldwork — too late to fix.
Continuous SoD monitoring with rule-based detection. Conflicts raise findings immediately, not at year-end.
Internal audit and external audit ask for the same evidence three different ways.
Sealed evidence packages let you give external auditors read-only access to exactly the artifacts they need. Internal audit shares the same data live.
Material weakness disclosures are career-ending — but identifying remediation gaps is a manual, eyes-on-glass exercise.
Talarity flags control deficiencies as they emerge, scopes severity (significant deficiency vs. material weakness), and tracks remediation through closure.
SOX — common questions
- What are IT general controls under SOX?
- ITGCs are the controls over the IT environment that financial reporting depends on, conventionally grouped into access to programs and data, program change, program development, and computer operations. They matter because application controls and system-generated reports are only as reliable as the environment beneath them — if change management is not controlled, an automated control that tested effectively cannot be relied upon.
- What is the difference between SOX 302 and 404?
- Section 302 requires the principal executive and financial officers to certify each periodic report, including that they are responsible for disclosure controls and have evaluated them. Section 404 requires management to assess and report on the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting, and for accelerated filers requires the external auditor to attest to it. In short: 302 is a quarterly certification, 404 is an annual assessment of ICFR.
- What is a key report or IPE, and why does it get so much audit attention?
- Information Produced by the Entity is any report, query or spreadsheet used in the operation of a control or in the auditor's testing. Auditors test its completeness and accuracy, because a control performed diligently on an unreliable report proves nothing. Evidencing IPE usually means retaining the parameters and the moment the report was generated, not just the resulting figures — which is why screenshots taken later so often fail.
- How do deficiencies get classified?
- A control deficiency exists when a control does not allow management or employees to prevent or detect misstatements on a timely basis. A significant deficiency is less severe than a material weakness but important enough to merit attention by those responsible for financial reporting oversight. A material weakness is a deficiency, or combination of them, creating a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis — and it must be disclosed.
Working with SOX
Step-by-step walkthroughs from the Talarity library.
- Governance·6 min readCatch toxic access combinations with Segregation of DutiesDefine the pairs of duties no single person should hold — approve and disburse, accept a risk and own its control — and Talarity flags every user who holds both, with ten framework-mapped starter rules out of the box.
- Compliance·8 min readPackage your audit evidence once — for the auditor, regulator, or customerAn auditor asks for your evidence and it's scattered across framework reports, vendor attestations, policy sign-offs, and resilience tests. Evidence Distribution Packages assemble the signed artifacts you already produced into one immutable package, then hand it to each audience as a redacted, watermarked, time-limited copy — with a record of who received what.
- Compliance·7 min readFramework readiness to audit package — the whole cycle on one screenAudit prep usually means a spreadsheet scramble — chasing evidence, tracking which controls are covered, re-checking what's expired. Talarity keeps a live readiness picture for every framework (SOC 2, ISO 27001, CIS, and more) — coverage, gaps, evidence freshness — and packages it into an auditor-ready export in one click.
- Compliance·7 min readContinuous compliance is a tooling problem, not a process problemEvery compliance program eventually decides it needs to be 'continuous.' Most then try to fix it with process. The actual fix is upstream — in the tools that make evidence freshness a default, not a sprint.
Ready to ship SOX?
Start a 7-day trial and run this framework end-to-end on your own evidence — then buy online in-app when you're ready.