Oversight Systems.

• Position: COMPLIANCE SOFTWARE - Introduces Oversight 4.0 - Brief article

Oversight Systems has released Oversight 4.0, which the Atlanta-based company calls "the first risk-based solution for managing segregation of duties across all financial systems and financial processes."

Segregation of duties (SOD) is a key component of preventing fraud; for example, it stipulates that a person who has responsibility for billing isn't also involved with collections and could write a check to himself or herself. However, says Oversight, some conflicts may be a necessary part of structuring wide-ranging responsibilities.

Oversight, which does continuous monitoring of transactions and matches them against user privileges, enables companies to:

* Automate the detection of SOD conflicts within financial systems;

* Prioritize conflicts based on risk; and

* Continuously monitor and analyze activities to eliminate risk from unresolved SOD conflicts.

"Internal controls monitoring and automation is the second wave of [Sarbanes-Oxley] compliance software, which is rapidly gaining momentum," wrote Paul Hamerman, vice president of Forrester Research, in a report. "These...