（2004）Machine-independent Audit Trail Analysis：A Tool for Continuous Audit Assurance.pdfVIP

INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS IN ACCOUNTING, FINANCE AND MANAGEMENT 85 MACHINE-INDEPENDENT AUDIT TRAIL ANALYSIS Intell. Sys. Acc. Fin. Mgmt . 12: 85–102 (2004) Published online in Wiley InterScience (). DOI: 10.1002/isaf.243 MACHINE-INDEPENDENT AUDIT TRAIL ANALYSIS—A TOOL FOR CONTINUOUS AUDIT ASSURANCE PETER J. BEST,* GEORGE MOHAY AND ALISON ANDERSON Queensland University of Technology, Australia SUMMARY This paper reports the results of a research project which examines the feasibility of developing a machine- independent audit trail analyser (MIATA). MIATA is a knowledge-based system which performs intelligent analysis of operating system audit trails. Such a system is proposed as a decision support tool for auditors when assessing the risk of unauthorized user activity in multi-user computer systems. It is also relevant to the provision of a continuous assurance service to clients by internal and external auditors. Monitoring user activity in system audit trails manually is impractical because of the vast quantity of events recorded in those audit trails. However, if done manually, an expert security auditor would be needed to look for two main types of events—user activity rejected by the system’s security settings (failed actions) and users behaving abnormally (e.g. unexpected changes in activity such as the purchasing clerk attempting to modify payroll data). A knowledge-based system is suited to applications that require expertise to perform well-defined, yet complex, monitorin