With the rapid advancement in technology, automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are becoming increasingly popular in various industries. One such industry that has been greatly affected by these technological advancements is the field of IT auditing. IT auditors are responsible for ensuring and judging the security and reliability of an organisation's IT infrastructure, systems, and processes.

Saving Time and Effort

One of the most significant benefits of automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in IT auditing is that it can save a tremendous amount of time and effort for both auditors and their clients. IT audits are complex and time-consuming, and they require auditors to go through massive amounts of data to identify potential risks and issues. IT-auditors need full cooperation and attendance of their client’s system administrators, making the tasks even more labour intensive. With automation and AI, auditors can automate many of the repetitive and time-consuming tasks, such as data collection and analysis, thereby saving their own precious time and effort, as well as that of their clients’ system administrators.

For instance, automation tools such as Easy2audit can automatically audit systems in an organization’s IT infrastructure and identify security risks and vulnerabilities. This saves auditors the time and effort required to manually examine the infrastructure, allowing them to focus on more critical tasks such as analyzing the results and determining appropriate actions. For example, the complete manual audit of a Windows Server system can easily take up to 8 hours for both the IT-auditor and a system administrator. The complete process with a tool like Easy2audit can be finished within minutes.

Artificial intelligence is developing fast, even in the last months. What it is specifically suited for, is finding patterns and relations in vast amounts of data without the need for statistical models to be specified by researchers beforehand. AI’s are however dependent on what they have seen before, the better they have been “trained”, the better they will perform. It takes a lot of data to train an AI well, so this is something our industry will have to work towards. In IT-auditing we can build larger and larger datasets that help AI to accurately calculate risks and predict probabilities of unwanted (cyber) events.

In simplified terms, when an AI has been trained well, one can dump vast amounts of data in a black box and find relationships between variables.

Improving the Quality of Work

Automation and AI can also help improve the quality of work performed by IT auditors. By automating many of the repetitive tasks, auditors can reduce the risk of human error, which is a common problem in manual audits. Automation ensures that all necessary data is collected and analyzed, leaving little room for human error. Additionally, AI-powered tools can analyze large amounts of data quickly and accurately, identifying risks and issues that auditors may have missed during manual audits.

Moreover, automation and AI can also improve the consistency of audit findings. Human auditors may interpret data differently, leading to inconsistent findings. However, with automation and AI, the same data is analyzed using the same algorithms, ensuring consistency across all audit findings.

Other Benefits

Aside from saving time and effort and improving the quality of work, automation and AI can provide other benefits to IT auditors. One such benefit is that they can help auditors keep up with the fast-paced changes in technology. With new technologies emerging regularly, it can be challenging for auditors to keep up with the latest developments. However, tools that are being developed specifically (and continuously) for auditing can keep auditors up to date with the latest technologies, identifying potential risks and issues for the latest versions of e.g. operating systems.

Another benefit of automation and AI in IT auditing is that they can help auditors identify patterns and trends in the data. This can be particularly useful in identifying potential fraud or other anomalies in an organization’s financial records. By analyzing large amounts of data quickly, auditors can identify patterns that may indicate fraud or other irregularities.

Conclusion

In conclusion, automation and AI are powerful tools that can help IT auditors save time and effort, improve the quality of their work, and provide other benefits. Automation and AI can automate many of the repetitive and time-consuming tasks, reducing the risk of human error and improving the consistency of audit findings. Additionally, they can help auditors keep up with the fast-paced changes in technology and identify patterns and trends in the data that may indicate potential risks or issues. As such, it is recommendable, arguably even essential for IT auditors to embrace automation and AI and incorporate them into their daily work.