Stonebridge Technologies Meets the IT Challenges of Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance With the SOX Ecosystem™

DALLAS, July 14, 2003 – Stonebridge Technologies, a leading provider of business solutions and technology integration services, today introduced the SOX Ecosystem™, Stonebridge’s unique approach for creating the optimum information technology environment to support the far-reaching disclosure control and procedure requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley.

Through the SOX Ecosystem, Stonebridge provides organizations with a structured framework for addressing the underlying technologies essential to support the activities involved with Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. The SOX Ecosystem provides the strategic focus, project management discipline, and technical tools to ensure that an organization’s IT environment can not only support your compliance activities but also make the process as pain-free and cost-efficient as possible.

Stonebridge created the SOX Ecosystem based on the economic principle of return on assets (ROA). Stonebridge’s market research indicates that most companies already have the essential technology tools in place needed to achieve Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

James Ivy, Stonebridge’s CEO, said, “The ongoing challenge of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance is leveraging what you have from an IT perspective and filling gaps where needed, creating a tightly controlled environment that promotes an informed awareness of operational activities.”

The SOX Ecosystem provides a strategic technology framework that allows you to:

• Map compliance activities to supporting business data sources and IT capabilities
• Provide auditable documentation of internal control processes and workflows
• Devise a standard and consistent taxonomy across the enterprise for accurate reporting and effective multi-system process controls
• Utilize executive dashboards to monitor a wide range of performance indicators in order to meet accelerated reporting requirements
• Identify existing technical capabilities to aid in compliance activities
• Pinpoint gaps and needed functionality in your existing IT environment
• Define and design new functionality to support compliance efforts
• Implement tools to facilitate compliance activitiesDevelop compliance-specific storage, retrieval, and backup systems and procedures

According to Ivy, the focus of the SOX Ecosystem is on modifying the existing systems environment and processes through a compliance-oriented enterprise integration program. This ROA-centric methodology enables organizations to:

• Assess the impact of the new regulations on existing operations, IT systems, capabilities, and processes
• Identify where gaps or weaknesses exist in the IT environment and create new functionality inherent in existing systems and, if necessary, implement new applications
• Develop the business case and strategic road map for subsequent additional compliance-related development efforts

To learn more about the SOX Ecosystem, contact Stonebridge at 800-776-9755 or via e-mail at info@sbti.com.

About Stonebridge Technologies

Stonebridge Technologies provides business and technology integration services to help organizations achieve a higher level of operational excellence through more effective integration of data, processes and technology. Stonebridge’s solutions are focused on business intelligence, knowledge management, business process integration and fully integrated server and storage networks, and are built on the company’s deep experience in technology consulting, systems integration, custom application development and packaged-solutions implementation and upgrades. More information about Stonebridge is available at www.sbti.com and by telephone at 800-776-9755.

Disclaimer: Stonebridge Technologies is a systems integration consulting firm with specialized knowledge of the technology aspects involved in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Stonebridge’s technology consulting services are intended to complement - but in no way replace - the specialized expertise, capabilities, and efforts of a public company’s internal audit committee or its external auditor. Additionally, while the SOX Ecosystem and its methodologies provide valuable insight into the underlying technology solutions involved in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, they are not in themselves a guarantee of audit approval.