A Finance person auditing an IT infrastructure is like a Security Assessor auditing the end year results of a company. I find it very ironical and old school thinking from those days when I.T used to Fall under Finance department/Division. Back then, the systems were simple and geared towards very specific tasks. That is no longer the case nowadays.
A company's systems infrastructure has become very comples, look at a situation where a company has several DMZ,s each hosting different systems, several Server Farms, Webhosting Facilities, a super big ERP....and then you bring an accountant to do a security audit of the systems or rather perform an entire audit meaning management, financial and security audit....forgive me but i find it plain stupid!
The positive thing is that most companies are now realising the importance of a information security role within their ranks. Once someone in charge of security is in place then chances of being audited on Security by a CPA-K are reduced because the I.T guy will spot their incomptencies from a mile away...
On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 8:33 AM, Edmund Okumu <edmund.okumu@gmail.com> wrote:Most Audit firms do exactly that. It is not right at all to have a finance guy audit IT. Let me state categorically that even if a finance person has taken the CISA exams and passed, they still don't qualify to audit IT as IT audit requires an IT Audit professional with some level of deep understanding in the particular field of audit. Preferably the IT auditor should come from a technical background e.g. Systems Development, Systems and Network Administration or Database Administration.
Such people employed by audit firms usually right nasty audit reports based on findings that do not satisfy the expectations of the forms downloaded from the Internet. The audit reports therefore do not give a true reflection of the particular IT department of interest.
Can someone from ISACA the kenyan chapter respond to this issue and tell us the way forward. We need some level of regulation on this.--On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Cynthia Wahome <cwahome@jambo.co.ke> wrote:
Dear All
Let me get your thoughts on this.
Is it right for a Finance guy to come and do an audit to an IT department
yet the Finance guy has no clue about IT.
I wont name the audit firm here but i wonder,when they go to the net and
download a form then they come and ask you silly questions makes me
question them
People my question is this
Who should do an IT audit? Finance People? or IT People
I stand to be corrected
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