XBRL-Trail: A model for introducing digital forensic readiness to XBRL

Kotze and Olivier

2009

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Abstract

Business has become heavily reliant on Information Technology to process and share business data and financial data. Proprietary, non-standardised formats often hinder such sharing of financial and business data as not all stakeholders can read and access the data. As a result, a standardised, open format was needed in order to ensure that all stakeholders have the ability to read and process the relevant data.

XBRL (The eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is rapidly becoming the standard format for sharing financial data. This is mainly due to the easy sharing of information facilitated by it, as it is based on a publicised standard. Not only is this format easily readable, but it can also be interpreted by computer as it contains semantic data.

The usage of XBRL does however pose the significant risk of fraud, as it is rather trivial to edit the financial records in a fraudulent manner. Such cyber crime is typically investigated by a digital forensics team, whose duties are significantly complicated by XBRL’s very scant retention of forensic evidence (forensic readiness).

This article addresses XBRL’s lack of forensic readiness and proposes a model to enhance the forensic readiness of XBRL. Using a mediator, placed between the users of the XBRL data and the XBRL data itself, we show that forensic evidence can be captured in real time, which would significantly reduce the investigation time.

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