Fraud Prevention
The term prevention is self-explanatory—to stop something from happening. Common sense tells us that it is more costly to make a change after the completion of product, project or IT application, than to have the right design in the beginning. Fraud prevention applies to activities auditors are already undertaking today. Auditors have an increasing influence on the early stages of development of a business product, process or IT application. Wherever controls are found to be inadequate to protect against fraud risks, or the risk level is rated as being "more than remote" or higher and simultaneously at a "more than inconsequential" level (or greater) in terms of financial value, appropriate measures should be designed, selected and integrated to prevent, detect and/or minimize the fraud in a timely manner (refer to figure 3). These measures can be built-in controls (BICs), integrated as part of particular processes to deter potential frauds, or early warning signals (EWSs) on occurrence of frauds. Figure 5 provides samples of BICs and EWSs for consideration.