TheCorporateCounsel.net

October 16, 2018

Handling Edgar’s Outages: SEC Now Posting Notices!

Since I’ve been blogging so much about Edgar outages (here’s the latest), I decided to get a little more educated about the state of play for Edgar. About a year ago, the “Edgar Business Office” was created. This new office will eventually house “nearly everything Edgar” – including “Edgar Filer Support.” Among other things, the new “Edgar Business Office” is responsible for two main tasks: existing Edgar functions, as well as an Edgar redesign that will take several years to complete.

As for Edgar outages, my primary beef has been a lack of transparency as to when Edgar is down – and when it is back to being operational. As I understand it, this problem is more complicated than I realized. When Edgar is down, it might be just for a few companies (meaning Edgar works for most companies; but not all) – and it might be just for a few minutes. Another challenge for the SEC is that it might take them a little while to realize the magnitude of the problem. So you’re encouraged to contact “Edgar Filer Support” to report a problem.

Given all that, I can see how it would be challenging for the SEC to keep us apprised of what is happening with Edgar – unless there was such a big shortage that it would be apparent (and clearly material to our community as a whole). But there is good news! The SEC has started posting notices when Edgar problems impact the ability of filers to access Edgar – and when they are resolved. These notices are being posted on this “Edgar Systems Announcements” page

For what it’s worth, this recent update to the “Edgar Filer Manual” addresses warning messages for incorrect XBRL tags, preventing the system from retrieving & exposing a return copy of a test or live submission…

More on “Do You Read Footnotes?”

Recently, I blogged about whether it’s okay to use footnotes when you write. I received many responses from members – and the poll that I ran was popular: 35% said they read them only when they’re in the mood; 41% always read them; 18% only read them for court opinions & SEC releases (no one never reads them – and 7% selected the joke answer of wishing their significant other had the temperament of a footnote).

One member shared the sage advice of his civil procedure professor at Cornell Law – the late & incomparable Rudolf Schlesinger – delivered with a wagging index finger: “The children of lawyers who do not read footnotes will starve.” And Allen Matkins’ Keith Bishop wrote this blog about whether it’s legal to use footnotes…

Will Google Face a SEC “Cybersecurity Disclosure” Enforcement Action?

Over the past few years, the SEC has conducted a number of cybersecurity disclosure investigations – but not much has come out of that other than last year’s action against Yahoo. As detailed in this blog by John Stark, perhaps that will change due to the circumstances involving a data breach at Google…

Broc Romanek