More on SOX and subprime
In 2002, a high profile client asked the company I was involved with what our position/compliance was on ISO17799. The managing director called me up and asked if I could “put something together for him” by the next day.
So I put something to him. Two words to be exact. “Non compliant”.
The irony was that I had actually been trying to win support for adopting *some* ISO17799 principles as a yardstick to measure ourselves, knowing full well that at some point we were going to be asked. But I never was able to get any management behind the idea. Why? Because it was seen as not particularly critical to the business.
Then, they were asked by a client, and heaven forbid, it has to be done by the next day!
What this highlights to me is the general disinterest among many in business of things that are seen as ‘getting in the way’. These days I’m better at appreciating why this is the case and I’m better at providing quantifiable explanation/justification, but it is still disheartening nonetheless.
So I was thinking to myself whether the attitude I experienced was similar at all to the current subprime victim in the news, Bear Stearns.
