In 2002, Mr. Rollerball started Mighty Mouse, Inc, a small, 75-employee firm that produces and sells wireless keyboards and other devices to vendors through its manufacturing plant in Little Rock, Arkansas. In its first 2 years of business, MM saw a substantial growth in sales and at current capacity was unable to keep up with demand. To compete, MM enlarged its manufacturing facilities. The new facility increased to 250 employees. During this period of expansion, MM has paid little attention to internal control procedures.

Security

Recently, systems problems and hardware failures have caused the operating system to crash. Mr. Rollerball was extremely concerned to discover that confidential company information had been printed out on the printers as a result of these crashes. Also, important digital documents were erased from storage media.

Malicious programs such as viruses, worms, and Trojan horses have plagued the company and caused significant data corruption. MM has devoted significant funds and time trying to fix the damage caused to its operating system.

Out of necessity to get the job done, as well as for philosophical reasons, system administrators and programmers have provided users relatively free access to the operating system. Restricting access was found to inhibit business and impede recovery from systems failures. From the outset, an open approach was regarded as an efficient and effective way to ensure that everyone obtained the information they needed to perform their jobs.

Required

a. What internal control problems do you find?

b. How can MM improve internal controls?