The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 forces the companies to conform to the tough laws regarding the confidentiality of the records. The Act covers areas like what information must be maintained; for what period the information must be retained; the accounting procedures for maintaining the information and the civil and criminal penalties levied on not conforming to the act. However, the Act does not say anything on the method of storing the information. The major features of SOX are as follows: -

- No information can be changed or manipulated by any employee of the organization.

- There should be a clear track record of the data. A serialized order of the transactions must be maintained. The date of creation of the data should be evident.

- Access is provided when required but only to authorized personnel.

- All information related to any audit report is to be stored for a period not less than seven years.

The Securities Exchange Act was formulated by the SEC in 1934 to protect the investors from deceitful or misguiding claims in the securities industry. This was amended in 1997 to enable brokers to store data electronically. The SEC defines stringent rules for the management of electronic data. These rules are effective from May 12 2003. They apply to all financial accounting papers and communications thereof. The main features are: -

- The data is to be stored in a non-rewritable and non-erasable format.

- The superiority and accuracy of the storage media must be authenticated.

- The original and duplicated data is to be kept in a serialized manner. The data is to be stored until the end of its retention period. This period varies for each data and can vary from a day to seven years.

- The stored data should be easily downloadable at any time a desired media.

- A duplicate copy of the data must be stored for the retention period.

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