Of the many reforms enacted through Sarbanes-Oxley, one major goal was to regain public confidence in the reliability of financial markets in the wake of corporate scandals such as Enron, WorldCom and Waste Management.

Section 404 of Sarbanes Oxley mandated that public companies have an independent Audit of internal controls over financial reporting.

While it has been discussed by many authoritative sources such as the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Practice Aid Series, "Fraud Detection in a GAAS Audit: SAS No.

99 Implementation Guide," (explicitly) The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO), "Internal Control – Integrated Framework," (implicitly) and the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts Certified Fraud Deterrence Analyst (CFD) designation (recently merged into the Certified Forensic Financial Analyst (CFFA) designation), an actual definition of the term "fraud deterrence" has been difficult to find.

Identifying the action(s) that deter unhealthy weight gain is the key to understanding fraud deterrence in this analogy.

While the standard was intended to assist auditors in detecting fraud during a financial statement audit, its application was more pervasive.

Some subcomponents of the Control environment include: integrity and ethical values; commitment to competence; board of directors or Audit committee participation; management’s philosophy and operating style; organizational structure; assignment of authority and responsibility; and human resource policies and practices (Arens, Elder, Beasley, Auditing and Assurance Services).

"Risk Assessment is a forward looking survey of the business environment to identify anything that could prevent the accomplishment of organizational objectives.

"Policies and procedures, in addition to those included in the other four components, that help ensure that necessary actions are taken to address risks in the achievement of the entity’s objectives" (Arens, Elder, Beasley, Auditing and Assurance Services).

Both communication channels must function effectively to safeguard the organization" (Cendrowski, Martin, Petro, The Handbook of Fraud Deterrence).

"Monitoring activities deal with ongoing or periodic assessment of the quality of internal control performance by management to determine that controls are operating as intended and that they are modified as appropriate for changes in conditions" (Arens, Elder, Beasley, Auditing and Assurance Services).