  Spreadsheets provide many of the key links between information systems,
closing the gap between business needs and the capability of central systems.
Recent regulations have brought these vulnerable parts of information supply
chains into focus. The risk they present to the organisation depends on the
role that they fulfil, with generic differences between their use as modeling
tools and as operational applications. Four sections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
(SOX) are particularly relevant to the use of spreadsheets. Compliance with
each of these sections is dependent on maintaining the integrity of those
spreadsheets acting as operational applications. This can be achieved manually
but at high cost. There are a range of commercially available off-the-shelf
solutions that can reduce this cost. These may be divided into those that
assist in the debugging of logic and more recently the arrival of solutions
that monitor the change and user activity taking place in business-critical
spreadsheets. ClusterSeven provides one of these monitoring solutions,
highlighting areas of operational risk whilst also establishing a database of
information to deliver new business intelligence.
