AUDIT ANALYTICS AUDIT

ESSAY 1: CONTINUOUS AUDITING—A NEW VIEW
alleviate the multiple problems generated by the proliferation of
audit-like organizations.
1.3 Guidance on Continuous Auditing
The first guidance on continuous auditing was published jointly by the
CICA and AICPA (1999) and is often called the Red Book. This current
volume attempts to update the Red Book along several dimensions. Since
the publication of the Red Book, the Institute of Internal Auditors
published its GTAG 3 Continuous Auditing: Implications for Assurance,
Monitoring, and Risk Assessment (IIA, 2005) and ISACA its IT Audit and
Assurance Guidelines, G42, Continuous Assurance, (2010). In 2010, the
Australian Institute of Chartered Accountants also published its
Continuous Assurance for the Now Economy.
Leveraging this statutory work, continuous auditing literature reviews
(Brown et al, 2007; Chiu, Liu, & Vasarhelyi, 2014), and literature from
practice, this essay will summarize some basic theory postulates for
continuous assurance. Assurance, for purposes of this essay, is defined as
an umbrella of services that include the traditional audit and other services of a
similar or complementary nature that are emerging or being facilitated by new
technologies and business needs. (Vasarhelyi & Alles, 2006)
Considering the new assurance needs in control structure, control
compliance, data, and the existing guidance on continuous auditing, a
reconsideration and expansion of the elements in the concepts of
continuous assurance is needed.
2. THE ELEMENTS OF CONTINUOUS
ASSURANCE REVISITED
The advent of new information and analytic technologies has brought
about new products as well as new ways to perform business processes.
Since the early years of continuous auditing, business has substantially
evolved the continuous monitoring processes of production into many
other areas of activity including accounting and finance.
2.1 Continuous Auditing Versus Continuous
Monitoring
Considerable thought has been given to the problem of overlap between
management and assurance processes when they progress in the
automation route. KPMG (Littley and Costello, 2012) described it in
operational terms, as shown in table 1-3. Another approach would be to
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