Features

• Information systems audit: the basics

  By Jennifer Bayuk | 18 May, 2009 23:57

  In the early days of computers, many people were suspicious of their ability to replace human beings performing complex tasks. The first business software applications were mostly in the domain of finance and accounting. The numbers from paper statements and receipts were entered into the computer, which would perform calculations and create reports. Computers were audited using sampling techniques. An auditor would collect the original paper statements and receipts, manually perform the calculations used to create each report, and compare the results of the manual calculation with those generated by the computer. In the early days, accountants would often find programming errors, and these were computer audit findings.