The XYZ Company is a large automotive secondary market manufacturer. The automotive secondary market involves manufacture of after-market parts for many different brands and models of automobiles. For example, if your car needs a replacement muffler, starting motor, generator, etc. then you have the choice of buying the part from the original manufacturer (OEM), which is usually expensive, or from a secondary market manufacturer, usually substantially less expensive.
XYZ has manufacturing plants located in Detroit Michigan, Newark New Jersey and Oakland California. It also has distribution warehouses in seven cities in the U.S., two in Europe, one in China, three in Japan, one in Mexico and two in South America.
XYZ has a centralized purchasing system that is located in the headquarters in Detroit. The procedure that is followed to acquire materials and supplies varies with the type of goods that are being purchased. There are four categories of goods and services that areacquired. They are:
• the goods and services that are used for production of the products that the company produces,
• the acquisition of the fixed production assets,
• services that involve contract negotiation,
• the goods and services that are acquired for the normal support of the general operations of the firm.
Examples of the each of these categories follow. The first category of acquisitions includes the raw materials and subassemblies used for producing the finished goods. This includes metal castings, various grades of wire, bulk plastics for injection molding, oils and lubricants and many other similar products. The ordering of this category of goods is initiated by the inventory control personnel. This ordering activity must be coordinated with the planned production activity and the projected sales and marketing activity.
The second category of acquisitions involves the ordering of heavy production equipment such as serialized machines, turret lathes, pneumatic presses, and other similar production equipment. The initiation of the ordering of these types of goods is done by the production engineers. This activity is coordinated with the long-term strategic production plans (included in the capital budgeting process) and the research and development engineers.
The third category of acquisition involves contracting of services. For example, all maintenance and service contracts for equipment fall under this category. In addition, contracts for consulting and outsourcing services are also included in this category. These transactions involve quite a bit of legal contract negotiation and hence XYZ has a staff of lawyers that are involved in these transactions.
The last category of acquisitions includes the office supplies that are used by all support personnel, computer equipment and supplies, and similar items. This activity is originated by individual employees.
Since the business processes are different for each category, each of the four above categories has a separate area within the centralized purchasing organization that deals with the acquisition of those goods and services. In this assignment, you are only asked to examine the business process and controls involved in the fourth acquisition category.
Acquisition Business Process
The company uses the following steps to acquire goods for their employees:
Ordering Goods:
• An XYZ employee determines that there is a need for goods in order to do their job.
• An XYZ employee fills out a purchase requisition form for the desired goods.
• An XYZ employee signs the purchase requisition and submits it to another XYZ employee.
• An XYZ employee approves the purchase requisition.
• An XYZ employee sends acknowledgement and disposition of the requisition back to the originating employee, (if the requisition wasn’t approved, the process stops here).
• An XYZ employee submits the approved purchase requisition form to centralized purchasing and other appropriate people.
• An XYZ employee records the purchase requisition information.
• An XYZ employee determines the appropriate product to order.
• An XYZ employee determines the appropriate vendor to order from and checks to see if the vendor’s master data is in the system and is correct.
• If the vendor master data is not in the system or is incorrect, then an XYZ employee confirms the master data and payment terms with the vendor and enters the master data into the system.
• An XYZ employee consolidates purchase requisitions and creates a purchase order.
• An XYZ employee sends the purchase order to the vendor and other appropriate people.
• An XYZ employee receives an order acknowledgement from the vendor.
• An XYZ employee records the purchase order information.
Receiving and Storing Goods:
• The vendor ships the goods with a packing slip to the destination on the purchase order and an XYZ employee receives the goods at the receiving dock at our location.
• An XYZ employee counts the goods in the shipment.
• An XYZ employee removes the packing slip from the box and sends it to the appropriate people.
• An XYZ employee fills out a receiving report that has details on the time of the arrival and the items received.
• An XYZ employee records the packing slip information.
• An XYZ employee records the receiving report information.
• An XYZ employee passes the goods on to the designated recipients.
• An XYZ employee who requested the goods receives the desired goods.
Paying for Goods:
• The vendor sends the invoice and remittance advice for payment and an XYZ employee receives the invoice and remittance advice.
• An XYZ employee compares all of the documents for the order (that is, a voucher package is compiled).
• An XYZ employee approves payment of the invoice.
• An XYZ employee creates the payment check.
• An XYZ employee sends the payment check and remittance advice to the vendor.
Verification:
• Periodically an XYZ employee verifies all of the documentation to be sure that the transaction has been handled correctly.
Security and Information Assurance
XYZ is very concerned about security and information assurance. With the recent passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley law, XYZ now realizes that solid financial accounting controls are extremely important for the corporation. Originally XYZ had an open security model in which the computer system users were only restricted from doing specific functions if it was obvious that an access authorization presented a security risk or an information assurance risk. For example, the system administrators knew that normal business users should not be allowed to create new user accounts or to add new tables to the database. Hence, these authorizations were restricted to system administrators and application developers. However, for most business transactions, it was thought that restricting access was not necessary. In fact, the philosophy was that the more access an employee had, the more they would learn about the system and hence the more useful they would be to the company.
XYZ realizes that a closed security model must now be adopted. A closed security model grants access to users based on the business function for which they are responsible; that is, a user is only allowed access to the functions of the system that they need to do their job. Of course, a closed security model is much more difficult to enforce than the open model. It is necessary to determine exactly what functions a user should be allowed and restrict the user to only those authorizations. Determining the authorizations is not as easy as one might think. If we issue too many authorizations to a user, then we risk loss of control over our financial transactions, which could lead to errors or fraudulent or criminal activity. If we restrict the authorizations too much, then the controls become disruptive and the users cannot do their jobs. The ideal situation is for the user to have only the needed authorizations and nothing more. That is one objective of this assignment.
Part 1 – Risk Analysis
You are to assess the risks involved in the purchase transaction. Since you are not familiar with the controls used by the company in this case, we are asking you to only assess the threats to the system and are not asking you to assess the vulnerabilities. With respect to the threats, you are to determine if the source of the threat is external, coming from outside of the company or internal, coming from a source within the company. For example, an error can originate outside of the company, such as the vendor sending us the wrong goods, but most errors would originate within the company. Under each category (External Threats, Internal Threats) you are to list the individual types of threats and then determine if the specific threat could be mitigated by enforcing segregation of duties (SOD). If you believe that SOD mitigates the risk, then you need to state how it does.
In a normal business assessment of risk, the next step would be to assess the vulnerabilities and then suggest internal controls that could be used to mitigate each of the threats. In this case, we are only concerned with the segregation of duties control.
The XYZ Company is a large automotive secondary market manufacturer. The automotive secondary market involves manufacture of after-market parts for many different brands and models of automobiles. For example, if your car needs a replacement muffler, starting motor, generator, etc. then you have the choice of buying the part from the original manufacturer (OEM), which is usually expensive, or from a secondary market manufacturer, usually substantially less expensive.
XYZ has manufacturing plants located in Detroit Michigan, Newark New Jersey and Oakland California. It also has distribution warehouses in seven cities in the U.S., two in Europe, one in China, three in Japan, one in Mexico and two in South America.
XYZ has a centralized purchasing system that is located in the headquarters in Detroit. The procedure that is followed to acquire materials and supplies varies with the type of goods that are being purchased. There are four categories of goods and services that areacquired. They are:
• the goods and services that are used for production of the products that the company produces,
• the acquisition of the fixed production assets,
• services that involve contract negotiation,
• the goods and services that are acquired for the normal support of the general operations of the firm.
Examples of the each of these categories follow. The first category of acquisitions includes the raw materials and subassemblies used for producing the finished goods. This includes metal castings, various grades of wire, bulk plastics for injection molding, oils and lubricants and many other similar products. The ordering of this category of goods is initiated by the inventory control personnel. This ordering activity must be coordinated with the planned production activity and the projected sales and marketing activity.
The second category of acquisitions involves the ordering of heavy production equipment such as serialized machines, turret lathes, pneumatic presses, and other similar production equipment. The initiation of the ordering of these types of goods is done by the production engineers. This activity is coordinated with the long-term strategic production plans (included in the capital budgeting process) and the research and development engineers.
The third category of acquisition involves contracting of services. For example, all maintenance and service contracts for equipment fall under this category. In addition, contracts for consulting and outsourcing services are also included in this category. These transactions involve quite a bit of legal contract negotiation and hence XYZ has a staff of lawyers that are involved in these transactions.
The last category of acquisitions includes the office supplies that are used by all support personnel, computer equipment and supplies, and similar items. This activity is originated by individual employees.
Since the business processes are different for each category, each of the four above categories has a separate area within the centralized purchasing organization that deals with the acquisition of those goods and services. In this assignment, you are only asked to examine the business process and controls involved in the fourth acquisition category.
Acquisition Business Process
The company uses the following steps to acquire goods for their employees:
Ordering Goods:
• An XYZ employee determines that there is a need for goods in order to do their job.
• An XYZ employee fills out a purchase requisition form for the desired goods.
• An XYZ employee signs the purchase requisition and submits it to another XYZ employee.
• An XYZ employee approves the purchase requisition.
• An XYZ employee sends acknowledgement and disposition of the requisition back to the originating employee, (if the requisition wasn’t approved, the process stops here).
• An XYZ employee submits the approved purchase requisition form to centralized purchasing and other appropriate people.
• An XYZ employee records the purchase requisition information.
• An XYZ employee determines the appropriate product to order.
• An XYZ employee determines the appropriate vendor to order from and checks to see if the vendor’s master data is in the system and is correct.
• If the vendor master data is not in the system or is incorrect, then an XYZ employee confirms the master data and payment terms with the vendor and enters the master data into the system.
• An XYZ employee consolidates purchase requisitions and creates a purchase order.
• An XYZ employee sends the purchase order to the vendor and other appropriate people.
• An XYZ employee receives an order acknowledgement from the vendor.
• An XYZ employee records the purchase order information.
Receiving and Storing Goods:
• The vendor ships the goods with a packing slip to the destination on the purchase order and an XYZ employee receives the goods at the receiving dock at our location.
• An XYZ employee counts the goods in the shipment.
• An XYZ employee removes the packing slip from the box and sends it to the appropriate people.
• An XYZ employee fills out a receiving report that has details on the time of the arrival and the items received.
• An XYZ employee records the packing slip information.
• An XYZ employee records the receiving report information.
• An XYZ employee passes the goods on to the designated recipients.
• An XYZ employee who requested the goods receives the desired goods.
Paying for Goods:
• The vendor sends the invoice and remittance advice for payment and an XYZ employee receives the invoice and remittance advice.
• An XYZ employee compares all of the documents for the order (that is, a voucher package is compiled).
• An XYZ employee approves payment of the invoice.
• An XYZ employee creates the payment check.
• An XYZ employee sends the payment check and remittance advice to the vendor.
Verification:
• Periodically an XYZ employee verifies all of the documentation to be sure that the transaction has been handled correctly.
Security and Information Assurance
XYZ is very concerned about security and information assurance. With the recent passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley law, XYZ now realizes that solid financial accounting controls are extremely important for the corporation. Originally XYZ had an open security model in which the computer system users were only restricted from doing specific functions if it was obvious that an access authorization presented a security risk or an information assurance risk. For example, the system administrators knew that normal business users should not be allowed to create new user accounts or to add new tables to the database. Hence, these authorizations were restricted to system administrators and application developers. However, for most business transactions, it was thought that restricting access was not necessary. In fact, the philosophy was that the more access an employee had, the more they would learn about the system and hence the more useful they would be to the company.
XYZ realizes that a closed security model must now be adopted. A closed security model grants access to users based on the business function for which they are responsible; that is, a user is only allowed access to the functions of the system that they need to do their job. Of course, a closed security model is much more difficult to enforce than the open model. It is necessary to determine exactly what functions a user should be allowed and restrict the user to only those authorizations. Determining the authorizations is not as easy as one might think. If we issue too many authorizations to a user, then we risk loss of control over our financial transactions, which could lead to errors or fraudulent or criminal activity. If we restrict the authorizations too much, then the controls become disruptive and the users cannot do their jobs. The ideal situation is for the user to have only the needed authorizations and nothing more. That is one objective of this assignment.
Part 1 – Risk Analysis
You are to assess the risks involved in the purchase transaction. Since you are not familiar with the controls used by the company in this case, we are asking you to only assess the threats to the system and are not asking you to assess the vulnerabilities. With respect to the threats, you are to determine if the source of the threat is external, coming from outside of the company or internal, coming from a source within the company. For example, an error can originate outside of the company, such as the vendor sending us the wrong goods, but most errors would originate within the company. Under each category (External Threats, Internal Threats) you are to list the individual types of threats and then determine if the specific threat could be mitigated by enforcing segregation of duties (SOD). If you believe that SOD mitigates the risk, then you need to state how it does.
In a normal business assessment of risk, the next step would be to assess the vulnerabilities and then suggest internal controls that could be used to mitigate each of the threats. In this case, we are only concerned with the segregation of duties control.
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