How active learning and process mining can act as Continuous Auditing catalyst

In the context of Continuous Auditing, different approaches have been proposed to incorporate data analytics to accomplish a continuous audit environment. Some work suggests the use of data mining, some the use of process mining; some work reports on concrete case studies, where other work presents a conceptual approach. In this paper, we present an actionable framework to address one specific level of continuous auditing: the transaction verification level. This framework combines the techniques of data mining and process mining on one hand, and includes the auditor as a human expert to deal with the typical alarm flood on the other hand. Further, different research opportunities are identified in this context.

[1]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Principles of Analytic Monitoring for Continuous Assurance , 2004 .

[2]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Genetic process mining: an experimental evaluation , 2007, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.

[3]  Boudewijn F. van Dongen,et al.  Towards Improving the Representational Bias of Process Mining , 2011, SIMPDA.

[4]  Boudewijn F. van Dongen,et al.  Alignment Based Precision Checking , 2012, Business Process Management Workshops.

[5]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Continuous monitoring of business process controls: A pilot implementation of a continuous auditing system at Siemens , 2006, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[6]  Hajo A. Reijers,et al.  Connecting databases with process mining: a meta model and toolset , 2016, Software & Systems Modeling.

[7]  Diego Calvanese,et al.  Ontology-Driven Extraction of Event Logs from Relational Databases , 2015, Business Process Management Workshops.

[8]  Benoît Depaire,et al.  A comparative study of existing quality measures for process discovery , 2017, Inf. Syst..

[9]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Aligning Event Logs and Process Models for Multi-perspective Conformance Checking: An Approach Based on Integer Linear Programming , 2013, BPM.

[10]  Bart Baesens,et al.  A multi-dimensional quality assessment of state-of-the-art process discovery algorithms using real-life event logs , 2012, Inf. Syst..

[11]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Workflow mining: discovering process models from event logs , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

[12]  Koen Vanhoof,et al.  A Process Deviation Analysis - A Case Study , 2011, Business Process Management Workshops.

[13]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Process Mining , 2016, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

[14]  David C. Yen,et al.  A business process gap detecting mechanism between information system process flow and internal control flow , 2009, Decis. Support Syst..

[15]  Uday S. Murthy,et al.  Continuous Auditing of Database Applications: An Embedded Audit Module Approach1 , 2018 .

[16]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Fuzzy Mining - Adaptive Process Simplification Based on Multi-perspective Metrics , 2007, BPM.

[17]  Uday S. Murthy,et al.  Information fusion in continuous assurance , 2012, ECIS.

[18]  Hajo A. Reijers,et al.  Detecting Inconsistencies Between Process Models and Textual Descriptions , 2015, BPM.

[19]  Roger Debreceny,et al.  The Development of Embedded Audit Modules to Support Continuous Monitoring in the Electronic Commerce Environment , 2003 .

[20]  Boudewijn F. van Dongen,et al.  Workflow mining: A survey of issues and approaches , 2003, Data Knowl. Eng..

[21]  Koen Vanhoof,et al.  A Process Deviation Analysis Framework , 2012, Business Process Management Workshops.

[22]  Sander J. J. Leemans,et al.  Discovering Block-Structured Process Models from Event Logs - A Constructive Approach , 2013, Petri Nets.

[23]  Hoang Nguyen,et al.  Mining Business Process Deviance: A Quest for Accuracy , 2014, OTM Conferences.

[24]  Steve G. Sutton,et al.  Continuous Auditing in ERP System Environments: The Current State and Future Directions , 2010, J. Inf. Syst..

[25]  Kees M. van Hee,et al.  Auditing 2.0: Using Process Mining to Support Tomorrow's Auditor , 2010, Computer.

[26]  Yiyu Yao,et al.  Three-Way Decision: An Interpretation of Rules in Rough Set Theory , 2009, RSKT.

[27]  Ed O'Donnell,et al.  The Influence of Business‐Process‐Focused Audit Support Software on Analytical Procedures Judgments , 2003 .

[28]  J. P. Krahel,et al.  Consequences of Big Data and Formalization on Accounting and Auditing Standards , 2015 .

[29]  Alexander Kogan,et al.  Exception Prioritization in the Continuous Auditing Environment: A Framework and Experimental Evaluation , 2016, J. Inf. Syst..

[30]  Lotfi A. Zadeh,et al.  Fuzzy Sets , 1996, Inf. Control..

[31]  Mieke Jans,et al.  Categorizing Identified Deviations for Auditing , 2016, SIMPDA.

[32]  A. Faye Borthick Designing Continuous Auditing for a Highly Automated Procure-to-Pay Process , 2012, J. Inf. Syst..

[33]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  The Continuous Audit of Online Systems1 , 2018 .

[34]  Koen Vanhoof,et al.  Fuzzy-Rough Cognitive Networks , 2018, Neural Networks.

[35]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  The case for process mining in auditing: Sources of value added and areas of application , 2013, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[36]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  A Field Study on the Use of Process Mining of Event Logs as an Analytical Procedure in Auditing , 2014 .

[37]  Mieke Jans Auditor Choices during Event Log Building for Process Mining , 2019 .

[38]  Alexander L. Wolf,et al.  Discovering models of software processes from event-based data , 1998, TSEM.

[39]  Neal M. Snow,et al.  Perspectives on Past and Future AIS Research as the Journal of Information Systems Turns Thirty , 2016, J. Inf. Syst..

[40]  Jan vom Brocke,et al.  The missing link between BPM and accounting: Using event data for accounting in process-oriented organizations , 2014, Bus. Process. Manag. J..

[41]  William R. Titera,et al.  Updating Audit Standard - Enabling Audit Data Analysis , 2013, J. Inf. Syst..

[42]  Dimitrios Gunopulos,et al.  Mining Process Models from Workflow Logs , 1998, EDBT.

[43]  Koen Vanhoof,et al.  Rough cognitive ensembles , 2017, Int. J. Approx. Reason..

[44]  Koen Vanhoof,et al.  A business process mining application for internal transaction fraud mitigation , 2011, Expert Syst. Appl..

[45]  Glenn Shafer,et al.  Belief-Function Formulas for Audit Risk , 2008, Classic Works of the Dempster-Shafer Theory of Belief Functions.

[46]  Benoît Depaire,et al.  Measuring the Quality of Models with Respect to the Underlying System: An Empirical Study , 2016, BPM.

[47]  Kevin C. Moffitt,et al.  How Big Data Will Change Accounting , 2015 .

[48]  Dirk Fahland,et al.  Discovering interacting artifacts from ERP systems (extended version) , 2015 .

[49]  Anindya Datta,et al.  Automating the Discovery of AS-IS Business Process Models: Probabilistic and Algorithmic Approaches , 1998, Inf. Syst. Res..

[50]  Jorge Munoz-Gama,et al.  Conformance Checking and Diagnosis in Process Mining , 2016, Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing.

[51]  Moe Thandar Wynn,et al.  Evaluating and predicting overall process risk using event logs , 2016, Inf. Sci..

[52]  Koen Vanhoof,et al.  Rough Cognitive Networks , 2016, Knowl. Based Syst..

[53]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Innovation and practice of continuous auditing , 2011, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[54]  Jan Mendling,et al.  Process Model Generation from Natural Language Text , 2011, CAiSE.

[55]  Martin Schultz,et al.  Enriching Process Models for Business Process Compliance Checking in ERP Environments , 2013, DESRIST.

[56]  Miklos A. Vasarhelyi,et al.  Putting Continuous Auditing Theory into Practice: Lessons from Two Pilot Implementations , 2008, J. Inf. Syst..

[57]  Wil M. P. van der Aalst,et al.  Conformance checking of processes based on monitoring real behavior , 2008, Inf. Syst..

[58]  Michael Werner,et al.  Financial process mining - Accounting data structure dependent control flow inference , 2017, Int. J. Account. Inf. Syst..

[59]  R. P. Srivastava,et al.  The Bayesian and belief-function formalisms a general perspective for auditing , 1990 .

[60]  Hajo A. Reijers,et al.  Process Mining on Databases: Unearthing Historical Data from Redo Logs , 2015, BPM.

[61]  Boudewijn F. van Dongen,et al.  On the Role of Fitness, Precision, Generalization and Simplicity in Process Discovery , 2012, OTM Conferences.

[62]  Boudewijn F. van Dongen,et al.  Process Mining and Verification of Properties: An Approach Based on Temporal Logic , 2005, OTM Conferences.

[63]  Hussein Issa,et al.  Behavioral Implications of Big Data's Impact on Audit Judgment and Decision Making and Future Research Directions , 2015 .

[64]  Zdzislaw Pawlak,et al.  Rough Set Theory and its Applications to Data Analysis , 1998, Cybern. Syst..