Pain relief for SOX audits

Got this note from a colleague today:

THERE IS HOPE :).. Here is what we turned up.... reading through the details to see what it REALLY means!:

The PCAOB's proposed changes could do just that. The governing body is proposing to allow companies to conduct a risk assessment, which will help them identify the most likely avenues for financial fraud. Auditors might then require more stringent compliance in those areas -- such as sophisticated forensics that allow auditors to find out who made changes to the general ledger and when -- while allowing less likely fraud avenues, such as backup tampering, to come under less scrutiny.

and

And the PCAOB is considering adopting more detailed guidelines for how SOX audits are conducted, Davis observes. "There have been some concerns because there's no real accreditation for SOX auditors, as there are for [Payment Card Industry] standards," he says. "This would help set some common standards for what a SOX audit entails and what qualifications an auditor has to have."

Looks like the PCAOB has also done extensive work to allow the auditors more latitude to scale the their work to match the size and complexity of an organizations -- Great news for smaller public companies.