Separation of Duties Separation of Duties is a term defined as “a security principle that says no one person should be able to effect a breach of security” (Definition of: separation of duties, 2008). What this means, is that one person should not be, on the whole, responsible for both the design and implementation of security within an organization. The goal being that there is not one single point of failure where one person can subsequently take advantage of a process inside a company and benefit from ill-gotten gains. This principle is readily practiced in the area of finance and is becoming more popular within the Information Technology field. For example, within the area of finance, the Department of General Services of California has a section within its State Administrative Manual that quotes the requirements of the Financial Integrity and State Manager’s Accountability Act of 1983, which “…requires that the head of each State agency establish and maintain an adequate system of internal control within their agencies. A key element in a system of internal control is separation of duties” (Department of General Services of California, 2008). The manual then goes on to list explicitly how entities are designated, the actions they may take, the number of actions each entity may take, and the level of authorization for each duty. In general, Information technology takes the same approach, by following the same principle; that certain key duties should be performed by different individuals. Such duties may be the physical custody or access to certain assets; authorization or approval of transactions affecting those assets; recording transactions for those assets; control or review responsibility for those assets. (The University of British Columbia, 2006). By having these and other duties performed by separate individuals, there becomes a system of checks and balances that is established. This also creates a system of reducing errors and/or fraud from going undetected. The adage of John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton’s “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” is the core principle; making sure that no one person has total control of an asset. According to the SANS Technology Institute, “Intellectual property is the lifeblood of an organization and process should be designed to protect it,” (SANS Technology Institute, 2008) and Riordan would be well advised to take this into account as well. SANS goes on to outline several suggestions that are well advised, such as:
The people at the helm of affairs are responsible for formulating rules, procedures and guidance and are for enforcing the rules. There are clear cut boundaries for each of the roles.
[Separation of power is when the government is divided into 3 distinct branches. Doc B, proving separation of powers is protecting the states from tyranny, is an excerpt from Federalist Paper #47 by James Madison. Federalists papers were created by 4 delegates, including James Madison, trying to convince the majority of the 13 states to ratify the constitution.] According to Doc B, “three great departments of power should be separate and distinct.” James Madison is explaining, to guard against tyranny the states needed to keep the three branches separate and unique with their own powers and restrictions. This is shown throughout the three branches responsibilities. The legislative power is given to congress, while the executive power is given to the president, last the judicial power is given to the supreme court. These branches then have their own jobs. *Separation of powers guard against tyranny by making sure no one branch has more power and no one branch holds all the power, preventing
The goal of the Codification is to simplify the organization of thousands of authoritative U.S. accounting pronouncements issued by multiple standard-setters. To achieve this goal, the FASB initiated a project to integrate and topically organize all relevant accounting pronouncements issued by the U.S. standard-setters including those of the FASB, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), and the Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF)
placed on the local level such as the counties and subsequent agencies within those counties.
Section 5062 of the California Accountancy Act refers to professional standards. To which professional standards do you think they are referring?
Separation of powers is “the doctrine that political power and governmental functions should be divided among several bodies or branches of government as a precaution against tyranny” (Landy and Milkis, Glossary - 10). Political power and governmental functions in America are divided amongst three distinct bodies, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government. This separation of powers goes hand in hand with the concept of checks and balances, “a governmental structure that gives different branches or levels of government some degree of oversight and control over the actions of the others so that no government institution exercises a monopoly of power” (Glossary - 2). By a system of checks and ba...
The Company observes the practice of decentralization where the responsibility and authority in all decision-making for the divisions’ operations lie in its respective division managers, except those relating to overall company policy.
Two catagories are mentioned by Foster a primary and a secondary. Primary he mentions to be the patrol of a police departement as we would discuss in class he states the same the backbone of the agency is patrol. Secondary are what comes in or after patrol meaning investigation and youth. He adds on the support funvction of the organization structure the staff and auxilary or technical. Staff resonsibilities deal with recruiting new employees, trainers to train the new and to inftroduce new information to the ones already in the police force. The auxilary support responsibilty are to deal with jail, property, evidence, commmunication, and record stated Foster. He keep on writing in great law enforcement agencies strictly enforced policies and procedures exist and should be in all agencies. He describes polices being statements of expectations the agency require and procedures are how the intructions are done step by step. He also wriites the rules are towards behaviors and regulations a focus on
if each department will still think of the welfare of the other departments in the
Filing information and documents (manually and using computerised databases) and being able to find them again when necessary. They must also ensure confidentiality of private and sensitive information.
In any corporate setting or military installation, a need to define proper boundaries and procedures for safeguarding data can be a daunting and sometimes a seemingly impossible task. Delineating, clarifying, and communicating the responsibilities for protecting and defending information resources is the first step in creating a culture that is sensitive and responsive to information security issues.
...le, in order to reduce fraud or errors. In this case different people are involved in indicating cash inflows and outflows, verification of the cash flow and the actions that translated to such cash flows. For example, the authorization function requires a supervisor to authorize a purchase order. Then the recording function involves an accounts receivable clerk to match the order before billing clients. The teller takes custody of the money whether directly or indirectly, that is, receipts of cash, checks and credit cards. The internal audit department then conducts reconciliation to establish whether fraud has been committed. This chain of information separation in an organization reduces chances where conflict of interest may arise. For instance, if the audit team handles cash and/or assets and at the same time conduct audits, a conflict of interest may arise.
...puter technology are rooted in the general ethical issues that people in society deal with. For example, the ethical issues such as invasion of privacy, theft, and fraud have been around since human beings began interacting with each other. The fact is that elements of these ethical issues are not unique to the computer field or computer technology. These current technologies raise the same ethical dilemmas with conditions that are unique to computer and cyber technology. This explains why we general ethical issue are such as privacy, theft and fraud are reexamined as informational privacy, identity theft and computer fraud in computer technology.
This paper will first look at the need for such measures and present the current standards employed at companies. Then we will present case studies on incidents that were high-profile examples of failure in this area. The paper will then come up a more effective implementation
The consistent use of information and communication technology (ICT) in modern world enables us for countless opportunities for individuals, institutions, business organisations and scientists, but it also raises difficult ethical and legal problems. In particular, ICT helped to make societies more complex and thus even harder to understand. The use of ICT has led to changes in concepts: ownership, buying and selling, right to possession, theft, justice in the distribution of resources and access rights. During the nineties, the internet has grown into all business segments resulting in a large number of questions running. It has been noted that during those time period there has been merging of computers, telecommunications, and media which is further emphasized by the emergence of new issues and strengthening old ones.