An auditor is creating an audit program where the objective is to establish the adequacy of personal data privacy controls in a payroll process.
Which of the following is MOST important to include?
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A. B. C. D.A.
When auditing personal data privacy controls in a payroll process, it is important to consider several factors that can impact the adequacy of these controls. Out of the options given, the most important to include in an audit program would be segregation of duties controls (Option C).
Segregation of duties (SoD) is a fundamental principle in information security and internal control that involves assigning different roles and responsibilities to different individuals to prevent any one person from having too much control or influence over a process or system. This helps to prevent errors, fraud, and other malicious activities by ensuring that no one person can carry out a critical task from start to finish without oversight or intervention by other parties.
In the context of personal data privacy controls in a payroll process, SoD controls would ensure that different individuals are responsible for different parts of the process, such as data entry, data validation, approval of data changes, access provisioning, and audit logging. This helps to prevent unauthorized changes to personal data, unauthorized access to personal data, and other risks that could compromise the privacy and security of sensitive information.
While each of the options presented (approval of data changes, audit logging of administrative user activity, user access provisioning) is important to consider when auditing personal data privacy controls in a payroll process, segregation of duties is the most important factor to ensure that the controls are adequate.
Approval of data changes is important to ensure that changes to personal data are authorized and legitimate, but this control can be circumvented if the person responsible for approving changes is also responsible for making changes or has the ability to override approvals.
Audit logging of administrative user activity is important to detect and investigate suspicious or unauthorized activity, but it does not prevent the activity from occurring in the first place.
User access provisioning is important to ensure that only authorized individuals have access to personal data, but this control can be circumvented if the same person responsible for provisioning access is also responsible for performing other critical tasks in the process.
Therefore, while all of these controls are important, segregation of duties is the most fundamental and critical control to ensure the adequacy of personal data privacy controls in a payroll process.