Abstract:

(IT Audit Trends Within Framework of Balkan Countries) This paper tries to present an analysis of the IT audit worldwide trend from methodological and technological point of view as well as the IT audit activities within the Balkan countries.Traditional financial reports and conventional ways of performing an audit proved to be not always enough because the lack of the essential element in today’s business environment -updated information. Nowadays, organizations are required to produce standardized financial information on a real-time, online basis.The IS audit process must continually change to keep pace with innovations in technology. New topics to address these emerging changes include control self-assessment, automated work papers, integrated auditing and continuous auditing. Moreover, audit teams are creating their audit work papers (risk analysis, audit plan, audit programs, results, test evidences, conclusions, reports and other complementary information such as business information) with the help of specialized applications, designed for delivering an automated format.Integrated auditing can be defined as the process where appropriate types of audit are combined for assessing key internal controls over an operations, process or entity. The integrated audit demands a focus on business risk and a drive for creative control solutions.Continuous auditing involves a large amount of work because the company practicing continuous auditing will provide financial reports on a more frequent basis, and not just one report at the end of a quarter. Continuous auditing should be independent of continuous control or monitoring activities. When both continuous monitoring and auditing take place, continuous assurance can be established. Simpler continuous auditing and monitoring tools are already built into many ERP, CRM, SCM packages and most operating system and network security packages.In the Balkans, the IT Audit emerged as a discipline in the past years and is growing quite fast.

Keywords: