دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی حسابرسی پیوسته سیستم های آنلاین - امرالد 2018

Abstract

The evolution of MIS technology has affected traditional auditing and created a new set of audit issues. This paper describes the Continuous Process Auditing System (CPAS) developed at AT&T Bell Laboratories for the internal audit organization that is designed to deal with the problems of auditing large paperless real-time systems. The paper discusses why the methodology is important and contrasts it with the traditional audit approach. CPAS is designed to measure and monitor large systems, drawing key metrics and analytics into a workstation environment. The data are displayed in an interactive mode, providing auditors with a work platform to examine extracted data and prepare auditing reports. CPAS monitors key operational analytics, compares these with standards, and calls the auditor’s attention to any problems that may exist. Ultimately, this technology will utilize system probes that will monitor the auditee system and intervene when needed.

Discussion

The set of analytics and heuristics used in CPAS will ultimately include a wide variety of algorithms ranging from flow-based rules to expert algorithms developed using techniques in knowledge engineering12.[13] These algorithms will be used both in the auditor platform, as analytical supplements, as well as impounded into software probes in the monitoring stage. Audit knowledge is needed to supplement the simple comprehension of the system being audited and to deal with the very complex stage of data gathering, analysis, and knowledge organization [Buchanan and Shortliffe, 1984] necessary for programming the auditing probes. The CPAS prototype was tested on two very large financial systems and is currently being applied to a third. The first application of the CPAS technology was an evolving system whose features changed rapidly. The idea was to put a prototype in place that contained basic analytics and then work with the auditors, as they used CPAS, to build more expertise into the system. It was found that only a few heuristics really existed, perhaps because of the nature of tools available to the auditor or because of the lack of longevity of auditors on the job. With the use of CPAS, auditors started to suggest heuristics that previously required cumbersome or not economically feasible audit procedures (e.g., time series tracking of discrepancies in a particular reconciliation). Another explanation for the limited number of heuristics identified is that the problem domain in question tended to be one with “diffuse knowledge” [Halper et al., 1989], where a large set of sources of knowledge were necessary and where knowledge ultimately was captured from a much wider set of experts than originally conceived.