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Audit chain of custody

Definition

The documented record of when audit evidence was collected, by whom, from what source, and how it has been stored and accessed since collection. Less formal than forensic chain of custody but serves the same purpose: demonstrating that evidence is authentic and unaltered.

Related terms

Control criterion
The standard against which a control is evaluated. Criteria may come from an external standard (ISO 27001 Annex A, NIST CSF, PCI-DSS),...
Design effectiveness
The assessment of whether a control is designed in a way that would prevent or detect the risk it targets, if it...
Evidence sufficiency
The standard that evidence must meet to support an audit conclusion. Evidence must be relevant to the control being tested, reliable in...
Fieldwork
The active evidence-gathering phase of an audit, during which the auditor applies testing procedures to specific controls and collects the evidence that...
Operating effectiveness
The assessment of whether a control has consistently functioned as designed over the audit period. Requires evidence of actual operation, such as...

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