Hot Issue

Auditing IT Investment Management: Aligning IT with Business Priorities

The “Holy Grail” for IT has always been to be closely aligned with business efforts. Ultimately, effective IT alignment really does require the ongoing and engaged involvement of all key participants. This article examines the never-ending process of aligning IT and business priorities and serves as a guide for implementation and improvement.

Auerbach Article

Get the Most from the Cloud (Without the Hidden Costs)

This article from Symantec Corp. Senior Product Marketing Manager Dave Elliott discusses common costs that businesses may be overlooking when taking advantage of the cloud's benefits.

Updated Questionnaire

Supply Chain Risk Questionnaire

The appropriate risk assessment approach applied to operational risks suggests the need for an end-to-end, extended enterprise view of the value chain, looking upstream to supplier relationships as well as downstream to channels. This document offers several questions to consider when evaluating supply chain risk.

Questionnaire

Control Self-Assessment Questionnaire: Ethics

Self-assessment is a recognized best practice and has been applied to risks and controls for many years. This questionnaire serves as a basis for gathering information, including violations of government laws or regulations, breaches of policies like sharing internal information with competitors, bribing government employees, and getting involved in acts of harassment.

Updated Sample

Business Process Benchmarking Tool – Sample

This template provides sample performance measures for the following business processes: accounts payable, accounts receivable, billing, close the books, commissions, finance and accounting, fixed assets, internal audit, inventory, payroll, purchasing, spare parts, supply chain, tax, and travel and entertainment.

Guide

Business Intelligence in the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry

This guide discusses the importance of implementing business intelligence (BI) solutions when working in the consumer packaged goods industry. It also includes a case study of a company that benefited from BI implementation.

CCH Tax and Accounting - Accounting Research Manager Updates

Weekly Summary of Accounting, SEC, and Auditing

Protiviti Survey

Protiviti’s 3rd Annual IT Audit Benchmarking Survey

How does your organization rate? You are invited to take our benchmarking survey, which analyzes the underlying IT audit trends facing the internal audit profession today. This study will help the profession gain valuable and important insight into the status and stature of IT audit processes across multiple industries and company sizes. It will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. No login ID or password is required to access the survey. We plan to compile the results of this survey and distribute a publication in the fall of 2013.

Featured Links

Auditing Social Media Risks for Financial Institutions

Internal auditors should pay attention to regulators’ guidance addressing social media when assessing their risk management program. This article from the Institute of Internal Auditors' FSA Times discusses key and current social media issues, including defined and key risks, risk management practices and the role of internal auditing. Source: theiia.org

Employees Expected to Bring Own Devices to Work

This article discusses findings from a survey of CIOs conducted by Gartner. The survey revealed that 38 percent of companies believed they would stop providing devices to workers by 2016, rising to half of all firms by 2017. Source: computerweekly.com

Featured KLplus CPE Training Course

Corporate Responsibility – Preventing, Detecting and Deterring Fraud

Fraud is a major problem affecting businesses around the world each year. While it may be impossible to totally eliminate fraud, much can be done to minimize the risk of, and opportunity for, fraudulent activity. To minimize risk, the root causes of fraud must be understood, including the possible pressure or crisis of need on the part of the fraudster, the opportunity to commit fraud, and the willingness to rationalize the act. The objective of this course is to help the learner understand what fraud is, how it can happen, and what can be done to prevent it. The completed course is worth 1.5 CPE credits and by the end of the course the learner will be able to:

• Define fraud
• Discuss common ways in which fraud can happen
• Describe management fraud
• Discuss how the Sarbanes-Oxley Act relates to fraud
• Establish an effective anti-fraud program
• Identify characteristics of effective whistleblower programs
• Detail what to do if fraud is suspected

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COSO Topic

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