Abstract
In today's increasingly complicated governance, risk management , controls, and compliance landscape, both external audit firms and internal audit functions leverage recent advances in technology to revolutionize the way that audits are conducted. Specifically, both internal and external auditors are combining big data and analytics and exploiting greater access to detailed industry information to help them better understand the business. With the advent of the Internet era, the global flow of information across countries, economies, industries, and companies has reached a point that far outpaces human capacity to make sense of it. Continuous monitoring (CM) enables organizations to assess business performance, business risks, and associated control processes in a timely, economical, and effective manner. CM initiatives can be designed and targeted so as to mitigate risk, enhance performance, reduce cost, achieve regulatory compliance, improve business process efficiencies, strengthen internal controls, and, ultimately, drive value in a myriad of ways for organizations.