Only one in 10 CFOs and financial executives surveyed by IBM Consulting Services believe their company’s internal controls comply with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act today — despite a compliance deadline only eight months away.

The survey results, announced Wednesday, revealed that top executives from some of the largest U.S. companies expect to meet the deadline, but not without big changes in the way they do business.

"The current environment of regulatory compliance requirements is forcing companies in all industries to rethink the way they manage data and business information transparently across the enterprise," said Jim Bramante, partner, Financial Management, IBM Business Consulting Services.

The survey said a majority of the CFOs surveyed see the new compliance requirements as an opportunity to streamline systems and improve efficiency.

For example, IBM is helping Viewpointe Archive Services capture and analyze information to help the company meet government requirements. Viewpointe Archive Services is the largest provider of check and document image archiving and retrieval services in the U.S. IBM technology allows the company to archive and access more than one billion new check images a month.

CEO John G. Lettko said IBM products and services allow his company to offer financial institutions a storage and retrieval system that costs far less than an in-house solution. "This powerful combination allows our customers to address their regulatory requirements at significantly lower costs and gain an archive with proven operational excellence, world-class disaster recover capability, and retrieval speeds that are unmatched in the banking industry," he said.

In light of the explosive growth of data and the need to manage it to meet the federal deadlines, IBM is offering new hardware, software and services to customers of all sizes. They include anti-money laundering services, e-mail archive and records management, a software platform to comply with data retention regulations, and more.