In cloud computing, data owners host their data on cloud servers and users (data consumers) can access the data from cloud servers. Due to the data outsourcing, however, this new paradigm of data ...hosting service also introduces new security challenges, which requires an independent auditing service to check the data integrity in the cloud. Some existing remote integrity checking methods can only serve for static archive data and, thus, cannot be applied to the auditing service since the data in the cloud can be dynamically updated. Thus, an efficient and secure dynamic auditing protocol is desired to convince data owners that the data are correctly stored in the cloud. In this paper, we first design an auditing framework for cloud storage systems and propose an efficient and privacy-preserving auditing protocol. Then, we extend our auditing protocol to support the data dynamic operations, which is efficient and provably secure in the random oracle model. We further extend our auditing protocol to support batch auditing for both multiple owners and multiple clouds, without using any trusted organizer. The analysis and simulation results show that our proposed auditing protocols are secure and efficient, especially it reduce the computation cost of the auditor.
A review of the IFRS adoption literature De George, Emmanuel T.; Li, Xi; Shivakumar, Lakshmanan
Review of Accounting Studies,
09/2016, Volume:
21, Issue:
3
Journal Article, Book Review
Peer reviewed
Open access
This paper reviews the literature on the effects of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption. It aims to provide a cohesive picture of empirical archival literature on how IFRS ...adoption affects: financial reporting quality, capital markets, corporate decision making, stewardship and governance, debt contracting, and auditing. In addition, we also present discussion of studies that focus on specific attributes of IFRS, and also provide detailed discussion of research design choices and empirical issues researchers face when evaluating IFRS adoption effects. We broadly summarize the development of the IFRS literature as follows: The majority of early studies paint IFRS as bringing significant benefits to adopting firms and countries in terms of (i) improved transparency, (ii) lower costs of capital, (iii) improved cross-country investments, (iv) better comparability of financial reports, and (v) increased following by foreign analysts. However, these documented benefits tended to vary significantly across firms and countries. More recent studies now attribute at least some of the earlier documented benefits to factors other than adoption of new accounting standards per se, such as enforcement changes. Other recent studies examining the effects of IFRS on the inclusion of accounting numbers in formal contracts point out that IFRS has lowered the contractibility of accounting numbers. Finally, we observe substantial variation in empirical designs across papers which makes it difficult to reconcile differences in their conclusions.
In light of the growing importance of internal audit functions (IAF) and the limited archival evidence on internal audit quality, we examine an interactive model of IAF quality (comprised of ...competence and independence) to better understand the determinants of IAF effectiveness as a financial reporting monitor. Our tests support the hypothesis that the joint presence of competence and independence is a necessary antecedent to effective IAF financial reporting monitoring. In sum, our results show that, the answer to "what is the effect of internal audit competence (independence) on financial reporting quality?" is "it depends on the independence (competence) of the internal auditor." Our study extends the understanding of IAF quality determinants in the realm of financial reporting as it relates to ongoing discussions by researchers, standard setters, regulators, and practitioners.
If businesses and other organizations are to meet the many and complex challenges of sustainable development, then they all, both public and private, need to embed sustainability considerations into ...their decision-making and reporting. However, the translation of this aspiration into effective action is often inhibited by the lack of systems and procedures that take sustainability into account.
Accounting for Sustainability: Practical Insights will help organizations to address these issues. The book sets out a number of tools and approaches that have been developed and applied by leading organizations to:
embed sustainability into decision-making, extending beyond an organization's boundaries to take into account suppliers, customers and other stakeholders;
measure and link sustainability and financial performance;
integrate sustainability into 'mainstream' reporting, both to management and external stakeholders.
In-depth cases studies from Aviva, BT, the Environment Agency, EDF Energy, HSBC, Novo Nordisk, Sainsbury's and West Sussex County Council show in detail how accounting for sustainability works in practice in a wide range of organizational contexts.
Published with The Prince's Charities: Accounting for Sustainability
Predicting Material Accounting Misstatements DECHOW, PATRICIA M.; GE, WEILI; LARSON, CHAD R. ...
Contemporary accounting research,
Spring 2011 (March), Volume:
28, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We examine 2,190 Securities and Exchange Commission Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs) issued between 1982 and 2005. We obtain a comprehensive sample of firms that are alleged to ...have misstated their financial statements. We examine the characteristics of misstating firms along five dimensions: accrual quality, financial performance, nonfinancial measures, off-balance sheet activities, and market-based measures. We compare misstating firms to themselves during nonmisstatement years and misstating firms to the broader population of all publicly listed firms. We find that managers appear to be hiding diminishing performance during misstatement years. We find that accruals are high and that misstating firms have a greater proportion of assets with valuations that are more subject to managerial discretion. In addition, the extent of leasing is increasing and there are abnormal reductions in the number of employees. Misstating firms are raising more financing, have higher price-to-fundamental ratios, and have strong prior stock price performance. We develop a model to predict accounting misstatements. The output of this model is a scaled logistic probability that we term the F-score, where values greater than one suggest a greater likelihood of a misstatement. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
We address whether SOX 404(b) internal control audits under two auditing standards regimes and SOX 404(a) management assessments are associated with improved internal control system quality, an ...important and largely unstudied potential benefit. In 2013, the PCAOB disclosed that 15 percent of inspected control audits were ineffective, suggesting that the current control auditing standard may not be sufficient to induce implementation of high-quality control systems. We use an indirect measure of internal control system quality—future unaudited accruals quality—to proxy for internal control quality because sustained internal control improvements should be exhibited in future quarterly financial reports unaltered by contemporaneous financial statement audits. We find that internal control audits initially provided internal control quality benefits. After the 2007 auditing standards change, internal control quality deteriorated for ICFR audited versus unaudited firms. Finally, we find limited evidence that management assessments affect internal control quality. Results indicate that recent PCAOB concerns may have merit.
A large auditing literature concludes that Big N auditors provide higher audit quality than non-Big N auditors. Recently, however, a high-profile study suggests that propensity score matching (PSM) ...on client characteristics eliminates the Big N effect Lawrence A, Minutti-Meza M, Zhang P (2011) Can Big 4 versus non-Big 4 differences in audit-quality proxies be attributed to client characteristics?
Accounting Rev.
86(1):259–286. We conjecture that this finding may be affected by PSM’s sensitivity to its design choices and/or by the validity of the audit quality measures used in the analysis. To investigate, we examine random combinations of PSM design choices that achieve covariate balance, and four commonly used audit quality measures. We find that the majority of these design choices support a Big N effect for most of the audit quality measures. Overall, our findings show that it is premature to suggest that PSM eliminates the Big N effect.
This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting
.
This open access book discusses the most modern approach to auditing complex digital systems and technologies. It combines proven auditing approaches, advanced programming techniques and complex ...application areas, and covers the latest findings on theory and practice in this rapidly developing field. Especially for those who want to learn more about novel approaches to testing complex information systems and related technologies, such as blockchain and self-learning systems, the book will be a valuable resource. It is aimed at students and practitioners who are interested in contemporary technology and managerial implications.
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