 Hello and welcome to this session in which we will discuss the concept of standing data or data controls. What is this concept standing data controls? Well, it's a mechanism or policies and procedures that are put in place to manage and control the integrity, accuracy and consistency of something we call standing data within an organization information system. Now, what is data by itself data is any type of information that is collected and stored. It can take many forms. You can have numbers, text, images, videos, any form of digital or analog representation. However, standing data, also known as master data, refer to the core and persistent data element that are essential for business operation and decision making process. What would they include? This information include this data or the standing that standing data include information about customers, which is vital to the operation, suppliers, product, employees, financial account and other critical entities. This is what we mean by standing data. Think of it as the master data or data that's critical to the core operation of the business. What do we need to learn about the standing data controls? Well, we need to know what for what purpose do we have this controls? Why do we have to have controls and what type of controls do we have to have since this data is important? Now, overall, this topic is important for the CPA exam because every time you hear the word data, the CPA exam is covering data from different perspectives. So everything that you will see in this recording, you might touch upon in different sessions as we talk about data security, as we talk about change management. So some of it will be repeat of little bit before we proceed any further. I have a public announcement about my company, farhatlectures.com. Farhat Accounting Lectures is a supplemental educational tool that's going to help you with your CPA exam preparation as well as your accounting courses. My CPA material is aligned with your CPA review course, such as Becker, Roger, Wiley, Gleam, Miles. My accounting courses are aligned with your accounting courses broken down by chapter and topics. My resources consist of lectures, multiple choice questions, true-false questions, as well as exercises. Go ahead, start your free trial today. Let's go ahead and get started. So what is the purpose of the standing data controls? Well, it's to make sure the master data, that important data, remain reliable, up-to-date and consistent across different system and business units, especially if we have different system and they are not integrated, if we don't have an ERM, where we have different system, we have different business units. We want to make sure they're all up-to-date. It's easier when we have one integrated system. And these controls help maintain data quality. We want to have good data and prevent errors, mistake, duplication, inconsistencies that can occur during the manual data entry or system integration issues. Now, how can we have this standing data controls? What can we do? Well, we could have few tools. We could have data validation or steps. We could have data standardization. We could have data governance. We could have data security. We could have data integration, data management, change management, data auditing. And if you know anything about FARHAT, every time I have a list, what am I going to do? I'm going to go through each step in this list. Again, you're going to see, we already learned about some of those. Yes, we did. Repetition is important. Starting with data validation. What do we mean by data validation as part of the control? We want to make sure that the input is proper. Whatever we are adding to our data is proper. Implementing data validation checks for data entry or import processes to verify the accuracy, completeness and integrity. Is it accurate? Did we have everything? Is it integrity? Is it truthful data? Okay, this can include validating format, ranges, relationship between data elements. So simply put, for example, when a new customer is added to the database, we could have a data validation control to check to see if all the required fields are there. The name of the person, their address, their contact information, their tax ID, so on and so forth. It can also verify that the email follow a format, a specific format. For example, someone's name at a server.com or .edu or .gov that matches the address also matches the postal code of the selected country. This is data validation. And we talked about input data validation in another session, but same thing when we're verifying the data, that's part of it. Data standardization, establishing and enforcing data standard and naming conventions to ensure consistent and uniform representation of standing data across organization. Well, for example, an organization, it can be implemented through by, by naming everything the same. I'll give you a simple example. It's a really simple example. Nevertheless, it's a powerful example. For example, where I used to work at the university, the way we name a syllabus has to have the course code. It has to have the semester. It has to have this, you know, fall or spring. It has to have the year. So it's the course code semester year. Then the course ID. There's a course ID as well. So this is how then you'll have your initial in the name of the syllabus. So this is a naming convention. For example, all product names could be required to follow a specific format. For example, capital letters, followed by lowercase, no special character ensuring uniformity across different systems and department. That could be an example of data standardization. Another form of control is data governance. And we have a separate recording for this, but this is part of data control, implementing data governance practices and policies to the fine ownership, responsibilities and processes. Who's responsible for what? Who's responsible for this data? It's called a stewardship. Okay. Data governance control me assigning data steward responsible for maintaining and managing the accuracy. For example, of employee record, the data steward can oversee the processes such as verifying employees information during onboarding, making sure we have their full name, their address, their social security, emergency contact, updating records for job position changes, ensuring data quality by resolving any inconsistency inconsistencies or errors. So part of data governance, we have an individual responsible for making sure everything is, is proper security data security. Those two topics are very important data by itself and security by itself, but combining data and security and you know, cyber security data, it's even more important. So implementing access control, not giving access to data, but to anyone and data security measures to protect. That's the whole purpose, standing data from unauthorized access. Remember, we want to protect this standing data from modification or disclosure. Again, this here we might involve defining users role who are responsible for what, who can access what, implementing encryption techniques, which we'll talk about that's in a separate session. When we talk about security, monitoring data access and changes. So to protect financial accounting information, data security control can be implemented such as role based access control. What does that mean? It means only the people responsible should be able to view the data or change the data only authorized finance personnel should have access to the sensitive financial data while other employees are restricted from viewing or modifying that data. Another, another, another procedure is data integration. This is establishing mechanism to integrate standing data across all across the organization through different systems and application, because in a company, again, they might have different system, company A might buy company B, C and D, and they have different system, but now they have to be part of the same company. So they have to communicate. This is to ensure consistency and eliminate duplication. This involved data integration tools, data mapping, we talk about this in a separate session, data synchronization processes. For example, an organization uses a different software system for their CRM and accounting system. Well, data integration can be established to synchronize customer data between these system. So if they are using, you know, different CRM, customer, the way they maintain the database and of their customers and the accounting system may not be the same. Therefore, they have to find a way to integrate this data. Therefore, they are synchronized. So whenever a new customer is added or existing customer details are updated in the CRM, the integration control ensures that the changes are reflected accurately as well in the accounting system. Change management. That's a big topic. We have, you know, separate recording about change management, but we're talking about change management within data, data control, implementing a change management processes to control and document changes to standing data. Who can, who can change the standing data? We should have a policy change management. This includes defining change request procedures. Who can request how much they can change conducting impact assessment? If we make a change, what is the impact? What's the impact on other parts of the data, obtaining proper approval before modifying standing data? This is, this is all about change management. You cannot make a change unless we have proper procedure. So not everyone is changing the data whenever they want to. So for example, when a product's price is updated, change management control can be implemented to ensure proper handling of the change. For example, a change request must be submitted, including detail of the price update and its effective date. That request will go through an approval process. And once approved, the change implemented systematically across a relevant system. This is part of change management. Changing a price is very simple. Sometime you might have to change the software or some features in the software and that's required more security procedures and approval. Data auditing while conducting regular audits and reviews of the standing data to make sure everything is good, to identify and resolve data quality issues, inconsistencies or anomalies. Just take a look at the data every once in a while, run through it, run some statistics to see everything looks good. This help ensure ongoing data accuracy and integrity. Okay, your regular data update can be conducted to ensure accuracy and integrity. That says it's always good if the system is working. Regular audit, go back and review, make sure it's still working. For instance, an audit might involve comparing customer records across different databases or system to identify and resolve any discrepancies or duplicate entries. Well, you're saying, you know, we should have the same information across the system. Well, let's test this. Let's make sure it's working as you are claiming it's working. So all of those are tools for what purpose to protect the purpose of this whole session is to ensure that master data, that important data remain reliable, up-to-date and consistent across organization by implementing data validation, data standardization, data governance, data security, data integration, change management and data auditing. What should you do now? Go to far hat lectures, practice some MCQs just to kind of know the difference between data validation versus data integration, which will help you do what do better on the CPA exam. Good luck, study hard. I'm always here for you and stay safe.