If your business requires annual audits to validate your financial statements, and your information technology systems are critical to your business operation and business marketing, perhaps you should consider having your CPA conduct an IT audit.
As we know, a financial audit is directed toward enabling the CPA to render an opinion on the accuracy of your financial statements. If your use of IT is limited to purely financial transactions like accounts receivable, and general ledger reporting, the complexity of IT component of a regular audit can be relatively limited. However, if your IT systems are critical to the core mission of your business, the IT audit will be more complicated, and possibly mandatory.
If you rely on automated systems for such functions as sales order management, purchasing, shop floor control, inventory control, or the handling of patient health care information, and IT audit definitely deserves your attention and consideration.
There are several reasons why IT audit should be important to the business owner of chief executive.
Some of the most important ones may include the following:
1) Without an appropriate IT audit, important IT controls within an organization may not be fully tested. This can lead to higher levels of risks, including regulatory compliance risks and real financial risks.
2) An IT audit is a measurement of IT risk management, which translates into business risk management.
3) Improper management of IT risks carries severe business impacts if regulatory non-compliance is revealed.
4) Against a landscape of increasing cybersecurity threats, vulnerabilities and regulatory compliance demands, information security, the need for evidence than adequate governance of information security has been implemented and operates effectively across the scope of organization and its IT infrastructure will increase.