QUESTION 1 (25 MARKS) You are in charge of the audit of Tissue (Pty) Ltd ("Tissue"), a company in Windhoek, Namibia, which sells tissues, toilet paper and related paper products. Recently, your firm's computer audit division completed a general controls review at Tissue, and the following points were raised in the report: Access to the computer room is restricted after working hours by a steel gate and the activation of an electronic surveillance system by the last person leaving the room at the end of the day. The IT Manager explained that the company's computer club (this is a group of people with computer knowledge which have access to the computers to use for any purpose) had access to the computer room after hours to do whatever computer fanatics do. About 6 months ago, an expensive piece of computer equipment had been damaged when a member of Tissue's computer club had, without noticing, spilled liquid on the device. Subsequently, the member opened the device to see what damage had been caused. By doing this, the data got lost or corrupted and processing had been disrupted for some time as nobody knew how to resolve the problem. Restructuring of the data had to be carried out from source documentation held in the user department. The company has a centralized data processing department linked to terminals in each of the departments, eg warehouse, debtors, marketing, etc. The computer room (in which the central processing unit and related equipment are located) is situated in a secure part of the head office. Earlier in the year some damage was caused to equipment in the computer room when heavy rain came through a window which had been left open overnight. The operator had opened a window during the day for some fresh air. YOU ARE REQUIRED TO: a) Distinguish between general controls and application controls in a computerized environment (4) b) State the recommendations you would make to improve the general controls at Tissue (Pty) Ltd based on the information given above. Justify your recommendation with reasons. (21)
