naughty naughty HQ-bank for falsification of financial statements

 

So information security in financial reporting is unnecessary? So you think… I guess you’re not following the HQ-Bank saga in Sweden? Well the stars of this saga are going to prison to pay for falsification of financial information. It seems that even the KPMG auditor (Johan Dyrefors) approved 2009 and 2010 accounts. Credit to KPMG that it didn’t get approved internally. Evidence of malpractice started in 2009. It seems that this was just the tip of the iceberg of accounting malpractices for HQ-Bank.

You know information security is not purely about protecting the confidentiality of financial information, it is about protecting its integrity; ensuring absolute traceability back to the originating source, which is the identity in whichever role they are acting within when financial records are submitted. The financial reports that are submitted should be digitally time-stamped and digitally signed to protect integrity.

It is XBRL that gives transparency. XBRL gives a single language for all financial information from creation through to consumption. However in order to enforce Accountability, Responsibility and Traceability (ART), i.e. quality and integrity in financial reporting, you need information security. You know those deep cryptographic magical stuff that tells you if the financial information has been tampered with.

Lars Berlöf is going to be talking about this at the Nordic IT Security Conference on 5th November, I may even keep him company on stage, for a short time 😉 Lars knows about the challenges of transparency in financial reporting and is driven to enforce traceability hence, legality in all financial reporting, in Sweden, and across the whole world!

Here is a taster of what we will be talking about……

[youtube=http://youtu.be/an1yIoby_pc]