Information Technology is constantly evolving and becoming ever more critical to your business. To maintain assurance over the financial and operational risks you face and to meet your external audit responsibilities, a strong, effective IS Audit review is growing increasingly important.
IT Audit helps you turn risk to advantage. Whether it is assurance over services such as financial transactions, telecommunication pricing or retail sales, etc. controlling ever-increasing volumes of data or keeping control over outsourced service providers, organisations are faced with a huge challenge in managing the integrity of business and financial risks.
The IT Audit Team will work with the financial audit team to deliver audit quality and efficiency by ensuring that your IT systems can be relied upon prior to financial audit testing. Where IT systems are weak, we would discuss the advantage of having a strong IT systems environment where the financial audit team could place greater reliance on system controls resulting in less testing and overall lower financial audit costs.
How we can help turn risk into advantage?
The BDO IT Audit Team can help:
Provide effective analysis of the IT financial process to help facilitate the External Audit planning process.
Provide qualified expert resources to undertake IT Audits, including expert guidance/recommendations on information risk management and requirements of IT.
Advise financial audit personnel on risks and the developments in IT.
- Work closely with the financial audit teams to address IT risks and controls in a coordinated approach.
The IT Audit Team are experienced in delivering IS Audit services to our clients, and we recognise that every client is different. Our experience, knowledge, capability, flexibility and pragmatic approach means we can develop an audit plan that is tailored to your business whilst remaining risk-focused.
Benefits to you
Greater understanding of your IT audit risk profile, Our IT Audit specialists, will help to provide independent assurance over IT controls (which the finance team relies upon), thus helping the audit teams take the most efficient audit approach.
Assurance activity focused on financial risk
We ensure that the IT Audit activity is risk-focused on optimising the value you get from the External Audit. We will also ensure that new risks are identified and proactively rolled into the audit plan as required.
Industry Insights into best practice
We share industry insights and best practices with you to optimise the value you get from the IT Audit. Also, we will ensure that new risks are proactively communicated into your external audit plan as required.
Improve the skills of your current staff
We will work with your internal audit team and the financial audit team (where applicable) to transfer our experience and knowledge to improve efficiencies and the value brought to your external audit process.
What sets us apart?
Integrated teams
BDO has a uniquely integrated IT Audit and Financial Audit team. As well as having strong IS Audit and control skills, many team members have real-world experience of their chosen specialist area. Our team offers a wealth of cross-industry insight to enable them to really get to the crux of the issues. We draw on specialists from across the firm (e.g., Audit, Tax, and Advisory) to augment our approach and to ensure you maximise the value you derive from your investment.
Access to market-leading technology - We have a range of automated tools, enabling us to offer the right support to meet your needs. We provide you with access to a wide range of IT tools including data analytics, data interrogation, and risk databases.
Forward-looking - The skills we have in our IT Audit practice means we can focus on emerging risks within IT and how they may affect the audit process. By being forward-looking and balancing the need to focus on business as usual with understanding the risks associated with future developments in IT, we can help you deal with the uncertainties that lie ahead.
There is no one size fits all; we tailor our services to ensure that we meet the specific needs of each client. Our approach is to work in partnership with our clients and their teams to ensure we are closely aligned to their businesses and key stakeholders to deliver maximum value.
IT Audit Strategy and Practice development - Helping clients to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their IT Internal Audit function, we are able to provide recommendations to our clients on a range of issues, including optimising financial control process design, advice on the use of CAATs (Computer Assisted Audit Techniques) and audit tools, continuous auditing and monitoring and training of client staff.
In summary
What we’re about
Delivering quality service and value to the financial audit, i.e.:
- Helping audit teams take the most efficient audit approach (i.e., reduce the amount of substantive testing)
- Delivering clear recommendations including performance improvement points that can be delivered to your management teams including the Audit Committee
- Help your IT teams to create and protect value by the innovative use of technology to support strategic business objectives
The BDO Approach
We currently work with our clients in the following ways:
- Co-sourcing- We provide specialist IT Audit skills and resources to our clients to assist in the delivery of External Audits requiring IT audit expertise. This helps our clients with delivery of the annual audit plan using suitably skilled auditors.
- Outsourcing – We provide an outsourced IS Audit service providing the full lifecycle of External Audit activities, including risk assessment and prioritisation, development of audit plans, stakeholder management, delivery of audits and reporting to the Audit Committee.