The Big Data qualities of Volume, Velocity, Variety, and Veracity contribute to the creation of the following Big Data Gaps: Data Consistency, Data Integrity, Data Identification, Data Aggregation, and Data Confidentiality. These Big Data Gaps create challenges for current CA systems. The paper outlines possible solutions to these gaps along with needed research topics with the aim of increasing the applicability of continuous auditing systems to Big Data. Big Data is a business phenomenon that is here to stay, and CA systems need to adapt to its challenges.
Zhang, J., X. Yang, and D. Appelbaum. 2015. Toward Effective Big Data Analysis in Continuous Auditing. Accounting Horizons 29 (2): 469-476.
Big Data originates from traditional transactions systems, as well as new sources such as emails, phone calls, Internet activities, social media, news media, sensor recordings and videos, and RFID tags. Since much of this Big Data informs and affects corporate decisions that are important to both internal and external corporate stakeholders, auditors will need to expand their current scope of data analysis.
Certain qualities, known as the four Vs, define the term Big Data: namely, massive Volume or size of the database, high Velocity of data added on a continuous basis, large Variety of types of data, and uncertain Veracity. Due to volume and velocity, the application of continuous auditing (CA) has become increasingly relevant for the automation and real-time analysis of Big Data. However, massive volume and high velocity also introduce gaps between the present state of audit analytics and the requirements of Big Data analytics in a continuous audit context. Moreover, variety and uncertain veracity present challenges beyond the capability of current CA methods. The purpose of this paper is to identify these gaps and challenges and to point out the need for updating the CA system to accommodate Big Data analysis.
This article is a commentary.
The authors identify and discuss potential remediation for the five Big Data Gaps:
The authors identify the nine CA Challenges: