SAS successfully completes ASP examination

-- Examination confirms company’s commitment to compliance and customer security ---

MILANO, 6 dicembre 2005 -- SAS, the leader in business intelligence, has received an unqualified opinion from independent auditors who examined the system governing the company’s application service provider (ASP) network environment (general controls). Using the ASP model, companies transmit data to SAS for analysis instead of analyzing it in-house. Application hosting brings state-of-the-art applications to companies that prefer them to be managed by subject matter experts.

Auditors for Ernst & Young LLP conducted a SAS 70 Type II examination at the company’s world headquarters in Cary, N.C. SAS 70 (referring to the Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70, Service Organizations) is an auditing standard developed and maintained by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to allow service providers to show that they have processes and controls in place to provide a stable and secure environment that can perform transaction processing and safely exchange company data.

The audit was conducted over six months and covers the SAS® ASP network hosting environment. Receiving a favorable Type II result is a key requirement for customers and aligns SAS’ SAS 70 Controls with current regulatory requirements.

“Regulatory compliance and security issues are of paramount importance to our clients,” said Suzanne Gordon, SAS chief information officer and vice president of information technology. “SAS’ SAS 70 Type II examination credibly assures our clients that they can use our services with confidence and that we can assist their compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations. We invest heavily to achieve the control objectives our clients value, and SAS 70 makes these investments more tangible to them.”