The Sarbanes-Oxley Act explained: Definition, purpose, and provisions

Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Summary and definition

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (sometimes referred to as the SOA, Sarbox, or SOX) is a U.S. law to protect investors by preventing fraudulent accounting and financial practices at publicly traded companies. Passed in 2002 in the wake of a series of corporate scandals and the bursting of the dot-com bubble, Sarbanes-Oxley imposed a number of reporting, accounting, and data retention mandates to ensure that business practices at big companies remain above board.

While many Sarbanes-Oxley provisions center on financial and accounting matters, proper treatment of corporate data is the cornerstone to many aspects of how the law works—and that has a huge impact on IT, which we’ll focus on in this article.

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