Pace announced its successful completion of a rigorous Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS 70) Type II audit, demonstrating Pace's commitment to safeguarding client data by meeting the strictest of industry standards. The SAS 70 Type II certification confirms that effective operational controls are in place for its Energy and Carbon management (Pace ECM) services that are provided to its client portfolio, which includes leaders in the industrial, commercial, and utility sectors.
As energy markets become more volatile and uncertain and carbon reporting mandates are established by the EPA, SEC, and key customers, the management of energy and carbon data is fast becoming a critical requirement for many businesses - a requirement that companies are unprepared to meet with existing systems and resources. For most companies, spreadsheets have provided a low-cost stop gap for the past decade, however, it is clear that the quality standards and sheer volume of data are too great for any company to reasonably manage without proven processes and web accessible management systems that provide transparency to high quality information.
In today's economy, companies are looking to leverage the most cost effective solutions, which have them looking more toward outsourced solutions that can better leverage business scale to maximize value and minimize cost. As such, more and more customers require assurance that a service provider's processes and activities are documented, tested, and will stand up to the rigors of internal or external audit procedures. Service providers that do not have a SAS 70 Type II Audit in accordance with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' (AICPA) guidelines will not meet the necessary quality standards required to support such critical reporting requirements in the future. Additionally, the comprehensive Type II audit report can assist its clients in complying with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements
The scope of Pace's SAS-70 audit incorporates controls from every aspect of Pace's operational process. These areas include: Organization and Administration, Human Resources Security, Physical Access, Environment Security, Backup and Recovery, Computer Operations, Logical Access, Infrastructure Change Management, Media and Document Destruction, Disaster Recovery Preparedness, Customer Support, Invoice and Data Management, Commodity Services Management and Account Reconciliation.
Developments in energy and carbon strategies introduce complexities that require data and processes to be highly credible, rigorous and dependable. SAS 70 Type II certification is an important way of validating that Pace ECM services are made of the right stuff that the market requires going forward.
Read full report.