Essay on Data Analysis for Accounting

Introduction

Accounting is the preparation and keeping of financial record in a firm. Keeping of records in accounting is important because it helps one to calculate loses and profits of a business as well as offering strategic orders in the firm. Accounting can be divided into different types such as financial accounting, management accounting, auditing and information systems accounting. (Bansah, 2018)

Data analysis refers to the application of statistical ways to describe and evaluate data. (Cockcroft & Russell, 2018) .Therefore, data analysis for accounting can be simply be described as the way accountants use analytics of data to help the firm or organization drill insights and knowledge within their management, auditing and information systems, financials, so as to increase the efficiency and reduce loses. Thus this essay will deal with threats in accounting, mitigation to curb those threats, and ethical consideration of employees in the firm.

Threats of Accounting

 Apart from cyber-attacks, one of the biggest threats of accounting is the setting of weak passwords in emails for firms or at individual level. Nowadays people send documents through gmails accounts. Many accountants don’t set different passwords in different accounts. Most likely their will set the same password so as it will be easy for them to remember. This simply means if a hawker access one account, he or she can easily access others gmail passwords account. A strong password is needed in this case and refrains from using general numerals such as date of birth. (Bansah, 2018)

Another threat is the breeching of data mostly caused by employees. You will find that most firms shift to cloud accounting so as to enable their employees to acquire information or software in different locations. Many tend to even allow their workers to bring devices for businesses purposes and finally leading to insecurity and updates that are required to keep the information safe. Every accounting firm must detect, and prevent emerging threats before it can be too late to be controlled.

Mitigation

Accounting firms needs to come up with ways to curb security threat. Such ways include;

Team work

Team work is important as you provide a transparency for your risk team. (Han,et al,2020). They should not be limited to have a check in your business records. They may help to identify the errors that may cost money in your business. One can do this by planning meetings, so as they can even help you to come up with ways to improve the profitability of the firm, as well discussing the challenges that may be encountered in the accounting strategies.

Putting internal controls.

This is easily done by choosing a trusted internal person to identify any theft and fraud inside your firm daily transactions. He oversees the whole accounting process without other employee’s notifications and this will reduce such frauds. (Han, et al, 2020)

Ethical Consideration

Accountings firms simply need the aspect of being the and honest which is referred to as integrity. (Korankye, 2018) This enables the firm to run smoothly if integrity is considered as a priority.

Conclusion

This essay has looked up some of the threats, mitigation to curb such threats, and ethical consideration in accounting. Accounting firms need to be alert of cyber-attacks which have become one of the most known threats which are caused by setting poor or weak password, and giving passwords to all employees in the firm. This can be mitigated by working out factors in the firm, such as building team work and choosing internal trustee to oversee the firm. Integrity has to be considered as a moral behaviour of every employee in the entire firm.

References

 Bansah, E. A. (2018). The threats of using computerized accounting information systems in the banking industry. Journal of Accounting and Management Information Systems, 18(3), 440-461.

Butkova, O. (2020). The definition of «capital» as an economic and accounting category. In E3S Web of Conferences (Vol. 175, p. 13011). EDP Sciences.

Cockcroft, S., & Russell, M. (2018). Big data opportunities for accounting and finance practice and research. Australian Accounting Review, 28(3), 323-333.

Han, T., Jan, S. R. U., Tan, Z., Usman, M., Jan, M. A., Khan, R., & Xu, Y. (2020). A comprehensive survey of security threats and their mitigation techniques for next‐generation SDN controllers. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 32(16), e5300.

Korankye, G. A. B. R. I. E. L. (2018). Personal Values, Perceived Importance Of An Ethical Issue And Ethical Decision Making Of Accounting Students (Doctoral dissertation, University Of Ghana).