Control

A control is a system, process or scheme designed to mitigate a specific risk, usually the risks of error, fraud or legal action.

For example, requiring payments to be countersigned is a control that prevents the cashier from defrauding the organisation (by transferring cash to themselves).

Controls can be simple manual controls (such as the cash example above) or complex controls built into computer systems (passwords, data access restrictions, log files etc).

Controls are useful for auditors to mitigate audit risk.