Some things won’t change post-Covid-19, and the growth of remote working is one of them. So, how does a virtual auditor cope with the potential challenges ahead?
In an age of massive and unexpectedly speedy change, the software industry is under the pump to develop products that assist individuals in all sectors to continue working. The outbreak of Covid-19 created an unprecedented need for companies to ensure their employees, across every sector, could move seamlessly between office-bound and remote worker.
Leading this speedy change is the software industry and data scientists, charged with ensuring people could get their work done while maintaining the standards required by their professions and the cyber safety required to send data back and forth.
In reviewing the accounts of organisations to ensure the validity and legitimacy of their financial records, auditors are constantly on the lookout for compliance with client-specific regulation, business fraud, and solutions that close the gap on irregularities or potential risks. And now, they’re doing it remotely.
According to a recent article by Darya Shneyder in Accounting Today, while audits have already proven both efficient and successful, it’s important that businesses ensure careful planning remains a vital part of the process.
Says Shneyder: “With some additional time spent on planning, remote audits were able to be performed and completed despite the COVID-19 shutdown. It is likely that remote auditing will continue to evolve and become common in the future, both as a result of the pandemic and also because auditing remotely can be done very efficiently especially when clients can plan ahead.”
Three key areas to pay attention to when setting up remote auditors and audits are:
This is one of the most important ways of safeguarding a company’s assets and information. The management assessment of a company’s internal controls assists auditors in conducting a proper audit.
Importantly, software that facilitates remote work security assessments can mitigate the threat of breaches or being hacked. The software should assess both the internal and remote environments and personnel to ensure water-tight operations.
Access to data is what enables auditors to audit remotely – which means it may also be vulnerable to access by hackers. To reduce risk, many companies employ cloud-based software that not only hosts the general ledger function, but includes the electronic copies of supporting documentation.
It would be prudent to use a system that provides auditors with “read only” access to the company’s cloud-based software, which will ensure that data cannot be altered while still enabling auditors to view all documentation and analyze the audit trail.
According to the ninth Allianz Risk Barometer 2020 published by IT-Online earlier this month, cyber-security attacks the top risk faced by South African businesses today – and the risk grows when employees work from home.
Firstly, remote employees must understand the various types of security breaches they may face, such as phishing and malware. Companies must keep all personnel updated when new mechanisms are developed by hackers.
Robust cybersecurity must aim to prevent the loss and corruption of information vitally important to a company’s audit process. While nobody can give an absolute guarantee that a company will not be hacked, they more solid your security is, the more difficult it is to find gateways for criminals.
Because cyber security is such a vital part of secure and successful remote audits, you’d be best advised to call in professionals to set up and maintain your systems and ensure remote workers are fully trained from the get go.