Many in the accounting profession acknowledge that the accountant's role is evolving with respect to cybersecurity and that responses to risks in the form of controls would benefit the accountant's ability to provide public confidence with respect to control systems and financial statements.

Required:

Given this, what questions would you develop for an ICFR or preliminary survey in order to explore the cybersecurity risks of IT systems over manual systems. In addition to issues mentioned in the video, consider the risks of IT Systems in LO4 of Chapter 6 in your text when developing your ICFR or survey questions.

Important risks ofITsystems over manual systems include the following:

• TheITsystemmay produce a transaction trail that is available for audit for only a short period of time.
• There is often less documentary evidence of the performance of control procedures inITsystems.
• Files and records inITsystems are usually in machine-sensible form and cannot be read without a computer.
• The decrease of human involvement inITprocessing can obscure errors that might be observed in manual systems.
• ITsystems may be more vulnerable to physical disaster, unauthorized manipulation, and mechanical malfunction than information in manual systems.
• Various functions may be concentrated inITsystems, with a corresponding reduction in the traditional segregation of duties followed in manual systems.
• Changes in thesystemare often more difficult to implement and control inITsystems than in manual systems.
• ITsystems are vulnerable to unauthorized changes in programs, systems, or data in master files.
• Reliance is placed on systems that process inaccurate data, process data inaccurately, or both.
• Unauthorized access to data may result in the destruction of data or improper changes to data, including the recording of unauthorized or nonexistent transactions, or inaccurate recording of transactions.
• There may be inappropriate or unauthorized manual intervention.