Business Technology Trends

1
Business Technology Trends

• Management
• Availability
• Business Continuity
• Disaster Recovery
• Security
• Safeguarding
• Confidentiality, Privacy
• Cost Containment
• Sourcing Management

• Technology
• WWW
• Intranet, Extranet
• E-Commerce Infrastructure
• On-line payment, billing, account management,
  etc.
• Customer Relationship Mgmt (CRM)
• Wireless/Mobile
• Infrastructure and Applications
• Application Integration

2
Professional Developments

• Numerous Business/ IT certificates striving for
  recognition
• Development of Acc/ IT interest groups Au, UK,
  US, Cda
• AICPA CITP
• ISACA/Gartner alliance around IT governance

• Spin off of IT consulting services
• Consolidation around IT risk management and
  security/privacy
• Harmonization of IT assurance services
• WebTrust
• SysTrust

3
AICPA Top Technologies 2001
4
Technology Issues

• Based on CICA/AICPA committees/TFs
• Secure Electronic Commerce, Info Security and
  Control, Internet, Internet payment systems,
  Privacy, Electronic Evidence, Disaster Recovery,
  Enterprise Systems, Year 2000 and Training were
  the significant issues

5
Secure Electronic Commerce

• Connection is an issue
• Firewalls and security need to be strong
• Hardware and software issues

6
Information Security and Control

• Security is critical especially now with complex
  systems
• We need to be able to audit and assess

7
Internet

• Kids can use it more effectively than we can
• Great opportunities for clients and us

8
Electronic Money/Inet Payment Systems

• Required on the web
• Digital cash presents new challenges including
  taxation and impact on monetary policies as
  ability for country to control inflows/outflows
  is diminished

9
Privacy

• Biggest issue worldwide on WWW
• Countries are legislating
• Great consulting/assurance opportunity

10
Electronic Evidence

• Use of paper in audit declining
• How do you authenticate evidence
• How do you authenticate working papers?
• What is permissible?
• No court decisions yet

11
Enterprise Resource Systems

• ERS
• SAP, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards becoming standard for
  large
• Moving to medium
• Complex
• Complex audit challenges

12
Disaster Recovery

• Plan is paramount
• 55 do not have one in place
• need to look at all business aspects
• New focus came with Y2K

13
Training and competency

• Need training
• current CAS and CPAs need technology training
• technology is more than Microsoft Office

14
Specialization Knowledge Areas

• CISA
• IS Auditing
• Management of IS
• Accounting Information Systems
• Introduction to Computers
• Computer Programming
• Data Base Management Systems
• Computer-based Communication Networks
• Systems Analysis and Design

• CITP
• Business IT Strategic Planning
• IS Management
• Enterprise IT Architecture
• System Reliability
• Business Process Enablement
• Systems Development/Acquisition and Project
  Management