Ais Reflection - Adeline d12180144

Accounting Information System Reflection Essay
Accounting Information System and Its Implications in the Borderless World
As the world becomes more and more borderless everyday with the existence of the
internet that connects people and systems without considering about their whereabouts, the need
for an integrated system to organize all of the information on hand is also increasing. With the
arrival of computer, both computer programs and integrated systems have now replaced manual
procedures and most paper records are no longer stored in their physical form but digitally. In order
to achieve the goal and make the whole integration be able to add value to one’s organization, a
well-structured and designed system planning must be pronounced. A good information system
must therefore have the capability to benefit the company through quality, effectiveness and
efficiency improvements. Thus, the existence of good information system in an organization will
eventually drive its performance through the delivery of higher quality, more accurate or reliable,
and more effective decisions being made.
Here, accounting information system plays a prominent role in the accountant’s job scope,
especially on the collecting, storing, and processing financial and accounting data parts. The data
output will then be used by the internal managements for decision making purposes, whether it is
regarding to financial or non-financial transactions. The current modern system can store sensitive
financial data more securely through the application of password and biometric identification that
can prevent unauthorized file access. This is another aspect that must be taken into high
consideration, the possibility of fraud and confidentiality breach if companies do not create such a
high-secured protection.
There are few reasons why threats to accounting information systems are increasing. One of
them is that the information is being made available to a large number of populations, which is
definitely hard to control as both customers and suppliers have access to each other’s information. A
way to counterfeit the attack is by preventing it to happen in the very first place, detect, and correct
errors or problems immediately after they arose. All of these actions are parts of the internal
controls’ jobs, which is a process implemented by the company to make sure that that the entity is
minimized from fraudulent activities, thus, creating a s stable control environment. To achieve that
state, there are three frameworks that can be adopted; COBIT, COSO, and COSO – ERM. COBIT
(Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology) framework is meant to address control
from three point of views; business objectives, IT resources, and IT processes. COSO (The Committee
of Sponsoring Organizations), on the other hand, pronounced an integrated framework (IC) which is
broadly accepted as the authority on internal controls and adopted into terms and regulations used
in business activities. Last but not least, the result of COSO framework development, COSO-ERM
(Enterprise Risk Management), takes into account the management of risk. From my personal
vantage point, these three approaches of control to accounting information systems must be
reviewed by the company regularly as by following the guidance provided, one company can prevent
risk through early identifications, thus mitigating the loss that may occur if corrective actions are
necessary.
Moving on to the next control issue, controls for information security, there are two
fundamental underlying concepts to begin with; Security as a management issue, not a technology’s
and information security’s time-based model. We must first assume that even with all of the
advancement in the technology devices nowadays such as firewalls and highly-secured encryption,
management is also a very crucial sector for a successful security life cycle. After understanding this,
companies can consider employing a model of preventive-detective-corrective controls combination
through the “Protection of information assets > Detection of attack in progress + Response time”
formula. This will help companies on adopting the defense-in-depth strategy where it will create
such complex multiple layers of controls so that a single point of failure does not mean the end of
the world for the organization itself. In instance, the usage of VPN and encryption that helps the
protection of confidential and private data.
Holding a crucial role in the daily tasks of accountants, an omission of accounting

information system in one organization may lead to accountant’s inability to manage financial data
smoothly and efficiently, also higher chance of human errors that can not be avoided. As important
as the system itself, the actual role of accountant here is to design a system that has necessary
controls with taking into accounts the compliance to accounting regulations and principles. With
that being said, accountants will also need the system to cut their time-consuming tasks as the job
will not have to be done manually but automatically by the computer. This shows that both system
and the users using it really complement each other.
Even though with the help of technology and modernized system, the accountants will still
need to keep the physical form of sensitive and crucial data just in case of failure of system. In
conclusion, we can say that accounting information system is essential for the job of accountants out
there because it is one of the most important resources providing the economic, monetary, non-
financial and social information required for making the correct decision in this era.

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Accounting Information System Reflection Essay

Accounting Information System and Its Implications in the Borderless World

Holding a crucial role in the daily tasks of accountants, an omission of accounting

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