-As the local business development level directly shapes the regional economy, the variety of internal and external risks these very enterprises are subject to in their daily activities, truly complicates their identification. Tackling this issue presents a major challenge for selecting specific management instruments like accounting, control and analysis, planning and forecasting. It is the lack of an integrated approach to the process of threat identification and prevention that characterizes the current state of economic security systems in place. This study is aimed to both assess the overall quality of such systems utilized by the local businesses and to elaborate a set of organizational and methodological measures to raise their efficiency. The research also provides an analysis of the utilized conceptual apparatus. The article defines the economic security subsystems as well as the principles and procedures they are based upon as a comprehensive provision for the economic safety of the region on the whole, with contemporary internal control methods as the main tools. The authors have investigated the internal control framework with its close ties with accounting and economic analysis, while distinguishing accounting control functions from control functions as a system. An internal audit service is finally suggested to ensure the economic security of the Volgograd region city-forming businesses.

The economic independence of rural settlements' budgets is an important factor of a region's socio-economic development and is the efficiency criterion of its budget policy and budgeting process in general. That is why it is necessary to elaborate a set of measures on fundraising rural settlements in order to enhance a region's economic security. The authors have analyzed Volgograd Oblast's rural settlements' budgets independence by their dynamics and structure. Due to the absence of a comprehensive budgets' independence assessment methodology, the authors have carried out the analysis based on the indicators noted in various research works related to this study. The calculations have shown a strong budgets' dependence on subsidies and inter-budgetary transfers. Taking into account the functioning conditions and demands of each rural settlement, the study suggests a set of measures on increasing the settlements' revenue. The study also proposes a prediction calculation of the revenue value and the independence indicators' fluctuation. Finally, the study presents methodological problems in assessing the budgets' independence, the absence of standards for the educed indicators and the difficulty in elaborating universal approaches to enhancing the independence.