In the modern world, information technologies and data are the foundation of running business. Data protection is crucial to ensuring normal business operations and reduce the likelihood of unplanned disruption. There are four objectives of data protection: data availability, data preservation, data responsiveness, and data confidentiality.
Your organization may incur the situation where an internal review needs to be conducted to support external auditors, an operation audit to ensure the effectiveness of the operations, a compliance audit to make sure your organization is in compliance with policies or regulations, or a fraud investigation that needs to be confidential.
Why Do You Need a Consultant?
Some years ago, I witnessed a failed purchase order (PO) system implementation. The application had its out-of-box and solid program for the PO approval process for conventional organizational reporting structure. The client company’s organizational reporting structure was not conventional.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) started in early 2000s following the Act passing in 2002, which required all qualifying SEC-registered organizations to document, evaluate, monitor and report on internal control over financial reporting. SOX has been raising the stakes for Chief Information Officers and information technology departments by requiring certification on the performance of systemic internal controls that contribute to the accuracy and integrity of financial reporting.
Improving financial controls using BlackLine’s native features
The first time I used BlackLine, most of the accounts were reconciled by the respective parties without a hitch. I was the lucky recipient of the difficult to reconcile accounts, now several months overdue (including the first year end). I was told they would likely take me days to research all of the balances in some of the accounts.
COBIT5 is a framework developed by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), which provides a comprehensive framework that assists enterprise in achieving their objectives for the governance and management of enterprise IT.
With the corruption of Enron and WorldCom, internal controls became more and more important. An effective internal control system is a requirement of the Sarbanes- Oxley Act of 2002 which regulates reporting and testing of internal controls over financial reporting for public companies.
In a previous blog, we discussed Internal Control Testing. Evidence is a critical component of internal control testing. Management and auditors are expecting to obtain persuasive evidence to support the determination that internal controls are present and functioning.
Monitoring activities are these actions that an organization develops and performs to ascertain whether the components of internal control are present and functioning. These activities are performed on an ongoing basis or a separate evaluation.
Segregation of duties (SOD) is a type of control activity and it is a fundamental element of internal controls. The principle of SOD is to share responsibilities in a key process, and no one individual should perform two or more of the following functions.