Abstract
Continuous auditing has the potential to transform the existing audit paradigm from periodic reviews of a few accounting transactions to a continuous review of all transactions which thereby could vastly strengthen an organisation’s risk management and business processes. Although some continuous auditing implementations are occurring now, their adoption is slower than expected. Continuous auditing systems require that human judgement be formalised and automated which can be a complex, costly and computationally intensive endeavour. However, continuous auditing systems have similarities with emergency management and response systems which integrate continuous auditing’s detection and alerting functions with the tracking of decisions and decision options for situations that could be more effectively handled by human judgement. Emergency management and response systems could provide an effective prototype to help overcome some of the implementation obstacles that are impeding the implementation rate of continuous auditing systems.
With the goals of providing an empirical and methodological foundation for future continuous auditing systems and accelerating their rate of implementation, this chapter provides several definitions of continuous auditing, suggests possible architectures for these systems, lists some common implementation challenges and describes a few successful implementations.
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Acknowledgement from Robert Baksa
I would like to thank Edison Properties L.L.C. and Gupton Marrs International for their financial support while pursuing this endeavour. I would also like to sincerely thank all my clients and colleagues for providing a challenging environment in which to grow and learn, my friends and wonderful family especially my wife, Sharon, and my two daughters, Rachel and Grace, for their continued support and encouragement, and the whole NJIT Information Systems Department, especially Professors Turoff and Hiltz, whose insight, patience and guidance have proven invaluable. Finally, a special thanks to my empathetic listeners, inspiring supporters, savants and those helpful in enabling research.
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Baksa, R., Turoff, M. (2011). Continuous Auditing as a Foundation for Real Time Decision Support: Implementation Challenges and Successes. In: Burstein, F., Brézillon, P., Zaslavsky, A. (eds) Supporting Real Time Decision-Making. Annals of Information Systems, vol 13. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7406-8_12
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