Chapter 13 - Processing Integrity and Availability Controls

Question 1

What are the five principles of the Trust Services Framework?

Answer 1

Security, confidentiality, privacy, processing integrity, and availability.

Question 2

What is a field check?

Answer 2

An edit check that tests whether the characters are of the correct field type (e.g. numeric data in numeric fields)

Question 3

What is a sign check?

Answer 3

An edit check that verifies that the data in a field have the appropriate arithmetic sign.

Question 4

What is a limit check?

Answer 4

An edit check that tests a numerical amount against a fixed value.

Question 5

What is a range check?

Answer 5

An edit check that tests whether a data item falls within predetermined upper and lower limits.

Question 6

What is a size check?

Answer 6

An edit check that ensures the input data will fit into the assigned field.

Question 7

What is a completeness check?

Answer 7

An edit check that verifies that all data required have been entered.

Question 8

What is a validity check?

Answer 8

An edit test that compares the ID code or account number in transaction data with similar data in the master file to verify that the account exists.

Question 9

What is a reasonableness test?

Answer 9

An edit check of the logical correctness of relationships among data items.

Question 10

What is a check digit?

Answer 10

A number that is calculated based on the entered numbers in the ID code, and can be used to test for data entry errors by recalculating the digit.

Question 11

What is check digit verification?

Answer 11

Recalculating a check digit to verify that a data entry error has not been made.

Question 12

What is a sequence check?

Answer 12

An edit check that determines if a transaction file is in the proper numerical or alphabetical sequence.

Question 13

What are batch totals?

Answer 13

The sum of a numerical item for a batch of documents, calculated prior to processing the batch when the data are entered, and subsequently compared with computer-generated totals after each processing step to verify that the data was processed correctly.

Question 14

What is a financial total?

Answer 14

A type of batch total that equals the sum of a field that contains monetary values.

Question 15

What is a hash total?

Answer 15

A type of batch total generated by summing values for a field that would not usually be totaled (e.g. invoice numbers)

Question 16

What is a record count?

Answer 16

A type of batch total that equals the number of records processed at a given time.

Question 17

What is prompting?

Answer 17

An online data entry completeness check that requests each required item of input data and then waits for an acceptable response before requesting the next required item.

Question 18

What is closed-loop verification?

Answer 18

An input validation method that uses data entered into the system to retrieve and display other related information so that the data entry person can verify the accuracy of the input data.

Question 19

What is a header record?

Answer 19

A type of internal label that appears at the beginning of each file and contains the file name, expiration date, and other file identification information.

Question 20

What is a trailer record?

Answer 20

A type of internal label that appears at the end of a file; in transaction files, the trailer record contains the batch totals calculated during input.

Question 21

What is a transposition error?

Answer 21

An error that results when numbers in two adjacent columns are inadvertently exchanged.

Question 22

What is a cross-footing balance test?

Answer 22

A processing control that verifies accuracy by comparing two alternative ways of calculating the same total.

Question 23

What is a zero-balance test?

Answer 23

A processing control that verifies that the balance of a control account equals zero after all entries have been made.

Question 24

What are concurrent update controls?

Answer 24

Controls that lock our users to protect individual records form errors that could occur if multiple users attempted to update the same record simultaneously.

Question 25

What is a checksum?

Answer 25

A data transmission control that uses a hash of a file to verify accuracy.

Question 26

What is a parity bit?

Answer 26

An extra digit added to every character; used to check transmission accuracy.

Question 27

What is parity checking?

Answer 27

A data transmission control in which the receiving device recalculates the parity bit to verify accuracy of transmitted data.

Question 28

What is fault tolerance?

Answer 28

The capability of a system to continue performing when there is a hardware failure.

Question 29

What is a redundant array of independent drives?

Answer 29

A fault tolerance technique that records data on multiple disk drives instead of just one to reduce the risk of data loss.

Question 30

What is an uninterruptible power supply?

Answer 30

An alternative power supply device that protects against the loss of power and fluctuations in the power level by using battery power to enable the system to operate long enough to back up critical data and safely shut down.

Question 31

What is a recovery point objective?

Answer 31

The amount of data the organization is willing to reenter or potentially lose.

Question 32

What is recovery time objective?

Answer 32

The maximum tolerable time to restore an organization’s information system following a disaster, representing the length of time that the organization is willing to attempt to function without its information system.

Question 33

What is a full backup?

Answer 33

An exact copy of the entire database.

Question 34

What is an incremental backup?

Answer 34

A type of partial backup that involves copying only the data items that have changes since the last partial backup This produces a set of incremental backup files, each containing the results of one day’s transactions.

Question 35

What is a differential backup?

Answer 35

A type of partial backup that involves copying all changes made since the last full backup. Thus, each new differential backup file contains the cumulate effects of all activity since the last full backup.

Question 36

What is deduplication?

Answer 36

A process that uses hashing to identify and backup only those portions of a file or database that have been updated since the last backup.

Question 37

What is an archive?

Answer 37

A copy of a database, master file, or software retained indefinitely as a historical record, usually to satisfy legal and regulatory requirements.

Question 38

What is a disaster recovery plan?

Answer 38

A plan to restore an organization’s IT capability in the event its data center is destroyed.

Question 39

What is a cold site?

Answer 39

A disaster recovery option that relies on access to an alternative facility prewired for necessary telephone and Internet access, but does not contain any computing equipment.

Question 40

What is a hot site?

Answer 40

A disaster recovery option that relies on access to a completely operational alternative data center not only prewired but also contains all necessary hardware and software.

Question 41

What is real-time mirroring?

Answer 41

Maintaining complete copies of a database at two separate data centers and updating both copies in real time as each transaction occurs.

Question 42

What is a business continuity plan?

Answer 42

A plan that specifies how to resume all business processes in the event of a major calamity.