Auditability & Evidence
Auditability is a foundational requirement of modern public-company disclosure. Regulators, auditors, and counsel must be able to determine what information was released, when it was released, how it was disseminated, and whether the record has remained intact over time.
Fundamentals Wire is designed to support issuer disclosure workflows by producing verifiable, timestamped distribution artifacts that may assist issuers in demonstrating compliance with applicable securities laws and internal disclosure controls. The platform does not make legal determinations and does not substitute for issuer judgment, legal advice, or regulatory review.
Why Auditability Matters in Public Disclosure
U.S. securities regulation places significant emphasis not only on whether material information was disclosed, but also on the issuer’s ability to substantiate the manner and timing of that disclosure. In enforcement actions and examinations, the absence of reliable records can itself become a point of scrutiny.
The SEC has repeatedly emphasized that issuers must maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures, including mechanisms that allow management to evaluate the timeliness and completeness of public disclosures. See, for example, Exchange Act Rules 13a-15 and 15d-15 and related Commission guidance (SEC Release No. 33-8124).
In this context, auditability refers to the practical ability to reconstruct a disclosure event after the fact: identifying the distributed content, its public availability, and the channels through which it was made accessible.
Evidence Produced by Fundamentals Wire
Fundamentals Wire generates and preserves structured distribution artifacts at defined points in the disclosure lifecycle. These artifacts are intended to function as contemporaneous records of dissemination activity and may be retained by issuers as part of their broader compliance documentation.
Depending on the distribution format used, such artifacts may include immutable message identifiers, canonical URLs, publication timestamps, and machine-readable representations of the disclosed content. For example, RSS and Atom feeds expose stable item identifiers and update timestamps, while NewsML push distributions produce structured payloads suitable for downstream archiving.
These records are designed to be reproducible and referenceable over time, supporting internal review, audit inquiries, or regulatory requests without reliance on transient interfaces or third-party screenshots.
Relationship to SEC Recordkeeping and Enforcement
While Regulation FD does not mandate a specific dissemination technology, enforcement history makes clear that the SEC evaluates disclosure practices holistically, including the issuer’s ability to demonstrate that public dissemination occurred as represented.
In selective disclosure and insider trading cases, the Commission has examined contemporaneous records such as press releases, wire timestamps, webcast logs, and archived disclosures to assess compliance (SEC Litigation Releases). Systems that generate durable, timestamped records may therefore assist issuers in responding to such inquiries.
Fundamentals Wire is designed to align with these evidentiary expectations by emphasizing traceability, immutability of published artifacts, and consistent public access paths.
Interaction with RSS, Atom, and NewsML
Auditability in Fundamentals Wire is format-agnostic but format-aware. Different distribution mechanisms serve different compliance and operational needs.
RSS feeds provide a widely recognized, time-ordered public index of disclosures suitable for monitoring and alerting systems. Atom feeds extend this model with stable identifiers and XHTML-safe content structures, which may be advantageous for archival and indexing use cases.
For issuers requiring higher-fidelity records or regulator-facing distribution workflows, NewsML push distributions offer structured, schema-validated payloads commonly used by professional newswires and market infrastructure providers.
Issuers may use one or more of these formats concurrently, depending on their disclosure controls, investor relations strategy, and legal guidance.
Important Limitations
Fundamentals Wire does not determine whether information is material, whether a disclosure is required, or whether a particular dissemination method satisfies an issuer’s legal obligations. Those determinations remain the responsibility of the issuer and its advisors.
Use of the platform does not create a presumption of regulatory compliance. Rather, the system is intended to support disciplined disclosure practices by producing consistent, reviewable records that may be incorporated into an issuer’s overall compliance framework.