The study of Accountants Perceptions of Different Security Systems Adopted in the Public Accounting Sector in Lebanon

Public Accounting is one of the very rising sectors in the industry. The aim is to produce bulk of financial information that can be further used for making informed decisions by the stakeholders. The wrong information or might jeopardize the involved businesses and thus it is necessary to protect this sort of information from outside and vulnerable attacks. As, the transparency and accountability of financial statement is very crucial for the stakeholder’s trust as well as the investment, the security of financial information is very essential for the relevance, validity, and reliability of the financial data. However, there is always a lingering risk of security breaches such as brute force attacks to get the information. The main focus of this paper is to examine the security systems and the strategies used by the public accountants in Lebanon to secure the financial data and relevance of financial reports. To carry out this study a quantitative methodology was applied and a survey was conducted with a representative sample of accountants, who are currently employed in the Lebanese governmental sector. The survey questionnaire was prepared to measure their perceptions regarding the security of the public accounting in Lebanon and to also evaluate their efficiency in protecting the data as well as detecting threats. The research conducted is likely to determine the quality of financial data protection in public accounting in Lebanon and suggest possible solutions in increasing security. As, the security measures are an integral part of the IPSAS implementation process this study highly contributes to both the theory of the IPSAS adoption and the practice of aligning local accounting practices in accordance to the international standards by doing exorbitant efforts to strengthen the security management in Lebanon’s Public Accounting Sector.