Segregation of duties in accounting systems: A framework

Abstract

Developing systems to enforce segregation of duties in accounting information systems is a complex task in high-transaction-volume environments. We develop a framework for alleviating the drawbacks of many SoD systems: absence of skills and tasks in SoD data models, lack of interfaces with business processes, and weak detection of non-compliance during business execution. Assuming the goal of SoD is to have no tasks unassigned to employees, no task assigned to an employee that does not have the skills to perform it, and compliance with all SoD rules, the paper develops polynomial time algorithms for the verification of SoD compliance of task and role assignments to employees in a sales order processing example with three SoD rules to illustrate the concepts in the paper. We also discuss the relationship of our model with the work on computational auditing and suggest how the two together can provide a unified view of SoD.