IT – CAATS

SOX Cost Reductions through Data Analytics

According to the Protiviti report, ‘SOX Compliance and the Promise of Technology and Automation1’ SOX compliance costs have shown year-over-year increases but are starting to level off. It also states that organizations are beginning to make greater use of technology and automation to support the compliance process. However, implementing automation in the SOX compliance process is difficult for many organizations. Understanding and defining requirements, getting stakeholder buy-in, and the investment…

July 5, 2021

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Making IT Audit more Effective and Relevant – part #2

The next area that will need to be address by CAEs is ensuring that risk-based audit plans are relevant and that selected audits provide maximum value to senior management. Today’s business environment changes rapidly to adjust to market conditions, evolving legislation and economic forces; and the risk-based audit plan must keep pace with this rapid change if it is to properly identify and assess emerging risks that can impact the…

September 10, 2018

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Making IT Audit more effective and relevant – part #1

Are you an IT auditor who takes comfort in your specialized knowledge and feels secure in assessing general and application controls – but does no more? Then you need to wake-up to today’s business environment and step out of your comfort zone. You also will probably need to pull the general auditor away from the safety of pure compliance audits. The notion of the integrated auditor was usually applied to…

September 2, 2018

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New System – control weaknesses

It is always important to test controls when systems and/or processes change. Sometimes a current process may have adequate controls, but the new process may not be as secure. Equipment Serial Numbers A large company with several plants purchased expensive, highly specialized, equipment for use in its manufacturing plants. A central purchasing organization made all the purchases and the inventory held until required by a plant. The inventory manager was…

December 7, 2016

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Year 15 – 2002 – Part 2 – IT Audit

Second part of article on making IT Audits more effective and value-added …. The next area that will need to be address by CAEs is ensuring that risk-based audit plans are relevant and that selected audits provide maximum value to senior management. Today’s business environment changes rapidly to adjust to market conditions, evolving legislation and economic forces; and the risk-based audit plan must keep pace with this rapid change if…

June 27, 2016

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Year 15 – 2002 – Part 1 – IT Audit

Many audit shops rely on IT auditors to support their use of data analytics; however, the IT audits typically focus on general and application controls. Around this time I wrote an article for the EDPACS magazine which encouraged IT auditors to look beyond the black box – to look at how IT supports, drives, and impact business processes. I have included below. IT Auditors need to come out of the…

June 20, 2016

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