Meet SOX IT Compliance Requirements with the Zerto Cyber Resilience Vault

How the Zerto Cyber Resilience Vault Keeps Your Data Compliant

In today’s business landscape, where data security breaches are becoming increasingly common, complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) has become more critical than ever. As a business owner or financial executive, you are responsible for safeguarding your company’s sensitive financial information from unauthorized access and tampering. Storing your data in an ironclad solution is immensely beneficial. By ensuring that your data is secure, tamper-proof, and recovered quickly with ease , you can stay compliant with SOX regulations and avoid potential legal and financial consequences.

In terms of safeguarding crucial data, adherence to SOX compliance necessitates that companies establish policies and protocols that aim to avert, detect, and remediate cybersecurity threats and breaches. Moreover, businesses must demonstrate that they possess functional data protection measures and procedures, such as dependable access management, preemptive security measures, and reliable and secure data copies.

More specifically, IT departments should pay attention to two principal sections pertaining to security: Section 302 and 404. Sections 302 and 404 of the SOX Act specify data protection and reporting parameters for IT departments to prevent internal and external agents from maliciously modifying financial information.

What are SOX Sections 302 & 404?

Section 302 of SOX compliance outlines the requirements to prevent faulty financial reporting. The section covers various safeguards that must be established, including preventing data tampering, establishing timelines, and maintaining internal controls. Verifiable controls to track data access must also be established, and safeguards must be operational at all times. Additionally, periodic reporting on the effectiveness of safeguards is required, and security breaches must be detected promptly.

Having a provable audit trail is the primary goal of Section 404 of SOX Compliance. This section elaborates on the requirements for independent auditors to verify the safeguards mentioned in Section 302 and other related sections. It includes three sub-sections, namely 404.A.1, 404.A.2, and 404.B. The first sub-section requires the disclosure of security safeguards to independent auditors, the second sub-section mandates the disclosure of security breaches, and the third sub-section necessitates the disclosure of failures of security safeguards. These requirements aim to ensure external verification of the effectiveness of the security safeguards implemented by a company to protect its financial information.

Rock Your SOX Compliance – Introducing the Zerto Cyber Resilience Vault

The Zerto Cyber Resilience Vault is a solution that simplifies the complex demands on enterprise IT by being designed from scratch. It combines the best-in-class hardware and disaster recovery software, which includes HPE Alletra, HPE ProLiant, and Zerto for data protection.

Together, these technologies ensure a complete compliance of these SOX IT requirements:

Section 302 – Layers of Protection with Rapid Air-Gapped Recovery

The Zerto Cyber Resilience Vault offers layers of protection with near-second RPOs backed by an air-gapped vault solution, ensuring your data is tamper-proof yet recoverable in near-seconds. It employs a zero-trust architecture and hardened Linux virtual appliances that follow the principles of least privilege. Additionally, immutable offsite and offline copies are secured using an unremovable Virtual Lock, while tamper-proof protection ensures data integrity. The system also includes inline and real-time ransomware detection, providing the utmost protection of data.

Section 404 – Anomaly Detection & Intelligent Insights at the Ready for Audits

The Zerto Cyber Resilience Vault provides a secure audit trail by logging all activity inside the vault to keep a record. Enjoy built-in safeguards by streaming near-synchronous data replication, protect every production write in real-time, and immediately detectand alert on any suspicious anomalies. Additionally, HPE InfoSight—included with HPE Alletra—performs anomaly scanning on all data.

Leverage the built-in features of Zerto Recovery Reports used during live and test failovers as well as Zerto Analytics to prove Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for auditing and compliance.

Summary

This blog post discussed the importance of complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and how storing data in an air-gapped solution can be immensely beneficial in safeguarding sensitive financial information. IT departments should pay attention to the requirements outlined in Sections 302 and 404 of the SOX Act, which specify data protection and reporting parameters to prevent internal and external agents from maliciously modifying financial information.

Meeting these demands with ease is the Zerto Cyber Resilience Vault. This solution combines best-in-class hardware and disaster recovery software to ensure complete compliance with SOX IT requirements. The solution offers layers of protection with near-second RPOs backed by an air-gapped vault solution and provides a secure audit trail by logging all activity inside the vault to keep a record.

Are you ready to rock your SOX IT compliance? Take a deeper dive into the Zerto Cyber Resilience Vault architecture by reading the datasheet.

Anthony Dutra