Control Freak

Welcome back.

This blog is all about sharing our passion for continuous controls monitoring (CCM).

It’s a term often associated with “control freaks”—and that’s okay. We know it’s a rare breed that can take on the duties of monitoring financial anomalies for the good of an organization or business.

So this is your place. It’s where like-minded control freaks can share best practices and current trends. We’ll discuss corporate compliance, segregation of duties, continuous auditing, and mix in some acronyms like FISMA—the Federal Information Security Management Act.

We’re also here for all those “on the outside” who need to understand and work with Control Freaks. We’ll offer tips and tactics to keep things productive. And just maybe you’ll join our ranks!

Join the cause; subscribe today.

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We don’t often use this space to toot our own horns, shout about our awesomeness or remind you, our dear readers, that we’re kind of a big deal.

Which is why we’re sure you’ll understand this momentary divergence from tradition as we tell you about something we’re pretty excited about.

As we officially announced last week, Approva has joined the RSA Secured® Partner Program to certify interoperability between Approva One and the RSA Archer™ eGRC Platform from RSA, The Security Division of EMC (NYSE: EMC).

What’s that mean? It means that organizations can use our Approva One CCM suite to automatically monitor and test their controls for core financial applications including SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft – and then (and this is the really cool part) publish that control evidence and associated contextual information in the RSA Archer eGRC Platform.

This means that organizations using RSA Archer™ eGRC Platform will have seriously timely analytics about their financial and operational controls. This interoperability will let RSA Archer™ Compliance Management access rules directly in Approva One, so that the controls can be continuously monitored. If or when an exception arises, that information gets published – along with additional business context – back into the RSA Archer eGRC platform.

This builds what we call a “closed-loop” remediation process – so that controls are tested and potential errors, mistakes, or other exceptions are taken care of all within a single system.

What does that mean in real value terms? Reduced risk and reduced cost of compliance. Talk about your win-win situations.

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Ladies and gentlemen. Control Freaks. It’s that time again – the time that we at Control Freak HQ reach out to get thoughts and opinions from industry big-wigs on crucial issues affecting businesses the world over. The first in our “Out of Control” survey series, on fraud, gave us all kinds of useful insight into how companies are thinking about – and addressing – issues involving fraud. Our second survey, on financial controls, gave us a bird’s eye view into the state of financial controls at many of those same companies.

And today, we’re inviting you to help us out with our third survey, this one involving risk and security issues. As we explained when we first kicked off this series, the more people participate, the richer our data pool — and the richer our data pool of super-informed Control Freak fans, the more relevant our data will be.

So go ahead! Click the link, dive on in, and let us know what you think about Risk and Security. Oh, and if you happen to be interested in rewards even beyond the opportunity to talk turkey on these fascinating issues – well, there just may be something else very special in it for you. Survey participants will be entered in a drawing to win a new Apple iPad*. We look forward to reading your responses – and to sharing our findings with you once results come in.

*Individuals who participate in the Control Freak Survey “Risk & Security” no later than March 18, 2011 will be eligible to enter a drawing for a new 16GB iPad with Wi-Fi. To have your name submitted for the drawing you must complete the aforementioned survey, and include your contact information (in order for us to notify you should you be selected).

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As we’ve said before, there’s little we won’t do for fresh new data here at Control Freak. With that in mind, we’ve embarked on a survey series (not to be confused with a Subway series), wherein we ask industry bigshots about their thoughts on timely issues affecting business. Just a bit ago, we wrapped up our Fraud survey (some results of which you can see here). And today, we’re launching the very latest in our series – this one on Financial Controls Transformation. Some of the questions you might recognize, because we’re asking them across all our surveys to give us a sense of trends. Others are specific to this survey.

Either way, we want to know what you think. So much so that we’ve sweetened the pot a little bit and are offering a drawing for a free gift for those who respond to the survey. Without giving too much away, last time the prize drawing was for an iPad, so you can trust this time it’ll be something pretty cool as well.

Enough detail from us — get answering! (Please).

*Individuals who participate in the Control Freak Survey series “focused on financial controls” no later than November 5, 2010 will be eligible to enter a drawing for a new 16GB iPad with Wi-Fi. To have your name submitted for the drawing you must complete the aforementioned survey, and include your contact information (in order for us to notify you should you be selected).

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If it seems like we have been content-crazy lately at Control Freak, it’s for a good reason – we have. Today we are very excited to debut the latest in our ongoing celebration of “Type A” people everywhere, The Official Control Freak eHandbook – a handy step-by-step guide for helping ordinary folks embrace control in their lives and work.

Available here and now, our very first foray into the world of eBooks serves as a primer of sorts (though hopefully a fun one) on Continuous Controls Monitoring (CCM) and just what it can do for everyone from avowed controlphiles to the sloppiest freak wanna-be. Highlights include CCM 101, why Control Freaks are good for business, and a whole section on just what CCM has to offer you in your day-to-day work.

The OCFeB, as it is affectionately known, gives a soup-to-nuts rundown of CCM solutions, designed both to educate and to provide the occasional chuckle. In addition to walking readers through the CCM landscape, it features all sorts of fun real-world tips on how to leverage control in personal lives (including advice on how getting control of one’s work life can result in time, finally, for a personal one).

So take a look! And feel free to weigh in in the comments about how impressed you are now that we’re (self) published and whatnot.

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