Isaca CISA Exam Questions & Answers

Correct Answer: D

The best tool for detailed testing of a business application's data and configuration files is an audit analytics tool. An audit analytics tool is a software that helps auditors to analyze large sets of data and identify anomalies, trends, and patterns that are relevant to the audit objectives. An audit analytics tool can also provide audit evidence and support the auditor's professional judgment and conclusions. Some of the benefits of using an audit analytics tool are: It can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the audit by reducing the time and effort required to perform manual tests and procedures. It can enhance the quality and reliability of the audit by increasing the coverage and accuracy of the data analysis and testing. It can enable the auditor to perform more complex and sophisticated tests and procedures that may not be possible or feasible with traditional methods. It can help the auditor to discover new insights and risks that may not be apparent or detectable with traditional methods. Some examples of audit analytics tools are: IDEA: A data analysis software that allows auditors to import, analyze, and visualize data from various sources and formats. It also offers features such as sampling, stratification, gap analysis, duplicate detection, Benford's law, and regression analysis.ACL: A data analysis software that helps auditors to access, analyze, and report on data from various sources and formats. It also offers features such as sampling, stratification, gap analysis, duplicate detection, Benford's law, regression analysis, and scripting.2 TeamMate Analytics: A data analysis software that integrates with Microsoft Excel and provides auditors with a range of tools and functions to perform data analysis and testing. It also offers features such as sampling, stratification, gap analysis, duplicate detection, Benford's law, regression analysis, and scripting.

Correct Answer: B

Correct Answer: C

Data Mart layer ?Data mart represents subset of information from the core Data Warehouse selected and organized to meet the needs of a particular business unit or business line. Data mart can be relational databases or some form on-line

analytical processing (OLAP) data structure.

For CISA exam you should know below information about business intelligence:

Business intelligence(BI) is a broad field of IT encompasses the collection and analysis of information to assist decision making and assess organizational performance. To deliver effective BI, organizations need to design and implement a

data architecture. The complete data architecture consists of two components

The enterprise data flow architecture (EDFA)

A logical data architecture

Various layers/components of this data flow architecture are as follows:

Presentation/desktop access layer ?This is where end users directly deal with information. This layer includes familiar desktop tools such as spreadsheets, direct querying tools, reporting and analysis suits offered by vendors such as Congas

and business objects, and purpose built application such as balanced source cards and digital dashboards.

Data Source Layer ?Enterprise information derives from number of sources:

Operational data ?Data captured and maintained by an organization's existing systems, and usually held in system-specific database or flat files. External Data ?Data provided to an organization by external sources. This could include data

such as customer demographic and market share information.

Nonoperational data ?Information needed by end user that is not currently maintained in a computer accessible format.

Core data warehouse ?This is where all the data of interest to an organization is captured and organized to assist reporting and analysis. DWs are normally instituted as large relational databases. A property constituted DW should support

three basic form of an inquiry.

Drilling up and drilling down ?Using dimension of interest to the business, it should be possible to aggregate data as well as drill down. Attributes available at the more granular levels of the warehouse can also be used to refine the analysis.

Drill across ?Use common attributes to access a cross section of information in the warehouse such as sum sales across all product lines by customer and group of customers according to length of association with the company. Historical

Analysis ?The warehouse should support this by holding historical, time variant data. An example of historical analysis would be to report monthly store sales and then repeat the analysis using only customer who were preexisting at the start

of the year in order to separate the effective new customer from the ability to generate repeat business with existing customers.

Data Mart Layer ?Data mart represents subset of information from the core DW selected and organized to meet the needs of a particular business unit or business line. Data mart can be relational databases or some form on-line analytical

processing (OLAP) data structure.

Data Staging and quality layer ?This layer is responsible for data copying, transformation into DW format and quality control. It is particularly important that only reliable data into core DW. This layer needs to be able to deal with problems

periodically thrown by operational systems such as change to account number format and reuse of old accounts and customer numbers.

Data Access Layer ?This layer operates to connect the data storage and quality layer with data stores in the data source layer and, in the process, avoiding the need to know to know exactly how these data stores are organized. Technology

now permits SQL access to data even if it is not stored in a relational database.

Data Preparation layer ?This layer is concerned with the assembly and preparation of data for loading into data marts. The usual practice is to per-calculate the values that are loaded into OLAP data repositories to increase access speed.

Data mining is concern with exploring large volume of data to determine patterns and trends of information. Data mining often identifies patterns that are counterintuitive due to number and complexity of data relationships. Data quality needs

to be very high to not corrupt the result.

Metadata repository layer ?Metadata are data about data. The information held in metadata layer needs to extend beyond data structure names and formats to provide detail on business purpose and context. The metadata layer should be

comprehensive in scope, covering data as they flow between the various layers, including documenting transformation and validation rules.

Warehouse Management Layer ?The function of this layer is the scheduling of the tasks necessary to build and maintain the DW and populate data marts. This layer is also involved in administration of security.

Application messaging layer ?This layer is concerned with transporting information between the various layers. In addition to business data, this layer encompasses generation, storage and targeted communication of control messages.

Internet/Intranet layer ?This layer is concerned with basic data communication. Included here are browser based user interface and TCP/IP networking.

Various analysis models used by data architects/ analysis follows:

Activity or swim-lane diagram ?De-construct business processes.

Entity relationship diagram ?Depict data entities and how they relate. These data analysis methods obviously play an important part in developing an enterprise data model. However, it is also crucial that knowledgeable business operative is involved in the process. This way proper understanding can be obtained of the business purpose and context of the data. This also mitigates the risk of replication of suboptimal data configuration from existing systems and database into DW.

The following were incorrect answers:

Desktop access layer or presentation layer is where end users directly deal with information. This layer includes familiar desktop tools such as spreadsheets, direct querying tools, reporting and analysis suits offered by vendors such as

Congas and business objects, and purpose built application such as balanced source cards and digital dashboards.

Data preparation layer ?This layer is concerned with the assembly and preparation of data for loading into data marts. The usual practice is to per-calculate the values that are loaded into OLAP data repositories to increase access speed.

Data access layer ?his layer operates to connect the data storage and quality layer with data stores in the data source layer and, in the process, avoiding the need to know to know exactly how these data stores are organized. Technology

now permits SQL access to data even if it is not stored in a relational database.

Reference:

CISA review manual 2014 Page number 188