Which controls would best mitigate the following threats? 1) The accounts receiv

Question

Which controls would best mitigate the following threats?

1) The accounts receivable file was destroyed because it was accidentally used to update accounts payable

2) A salesperson mistakenly entered an online order for 50 laser printers instead of 50 laser printer tower cartridges

3) A fire destroyed the data center including all back up copies of the acconts receivable files

4) A customer order for an important part did not include the customers address. Consequently, the order was not shipped on time and the customer called to complain

5) A visitor to the company's website etered 400 characters into the five-disgit zip code field, causing the server to crash

6 The warranty department manager was upset because special discount coupons were mailed to every customer who had purchased the product withing the past three years, instead of only those customrs who had purchased the product within the past three months

7 A customer filled in the wrong account number on the portion of the invoice being returned with payment. Consequently, the payment was credited to another customer's account

8) Sunspot activity resulted in the loss of some data being sent to the regional office. The problem was not discovered until several days later when anagers attempted to query the database for that information

Explanation / Answer

Answer:

1) The accounts receivable file was destroyed because it was accidentally used to update accounts payable.

All files should have header labels to identify their contents, and all programs should check these labels before processing transactions against the file.

      There should also be a clearly marked external label to reduce the risk of an operator loading the wrong file.

2) A salesperson mistakenly entered an online order for 50 laser printers instead of 50 laser printer tower cartridges.

A reasonableness test of quantity ordered relative to the product if 50 is an unusually large number of monitors to be ordered at one time.

      Closed-loop verification to make sure that the stock number matches the item that is ordered.

3) A fire destroyed the data center including all back up copies of the acconts receivable files.

FILES: A backup copy of the files should be stored off-site.

      HARDWARE: A hot or cold site arrangement

      BOTH: Real-time mirroring, so that when one site is down the other site(s) can pick up the slack.

      A disaster recovery plan

                  Liability and business interruption insurance

4) A customer order for an important part did not include the customers address. Consequently, the order was not shipped on time and the customer called to complain.

A completeness check to determine whether all required fields were filled in.

5) A visitor to the company's website etered 400 characters into the five-disgit zip code field, causing the server to crash.

A size check would prevent 400 characters from being entered into a field that allows for only 5 characters.

6 The warranty department manager was upset because special discount coupons were mailed to every customer who had purchased the product withing the past three years, instead of only those customrs who had purchased the product within the past three months.

A limit check based on the original sales date.

7 A customer filled in the wrong account number on the portion of the invoice being returned with payment. Consequently, the payment was credited to another customer's account.

Turnaround documents should include account numbers on them.

8) Sunspot activity resulted in the loss of some data being sent to the regional office. The problem was not discovered until several days later when anagers attempted to query the database for that information.

Parity checks and checksums will test for data transmission errors.

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