Questions:
1. What are CAATs and why would or should they be used?
2. Segregation of duties is required by Sarbanes Oxley Act for publically traded organizations. It is a proven management technique that organizations of all sizes can benefit from. By assigning responsibilities to ensure crosschecking, an organization can prevent innocent errors and deliberate fraud. In addition, each company and each department needs to be protected by having different employees covering different tasks. Other than reduction or elimination of possible fraud, how organizations can organizations benefit from segregation of duties in accounting department?
3. Segregation of duties also has expanded from financial functions to IT functions. In the financial area there is a need to segregate authorization, custody, record keeping, and reconciliation. In IT, segregation of duties addresses the need to segregate system development and operations, operations and data control, and database administration and system development. Why would companies go through this process? Support your statements.
4. Of the 10 steps to using CAATs outlined in Ch. 8 of Core Concepts of Information Technology Auditing, which is the most important and why? If you had to add an additional step, what would it be and why?