Cloud computing is broadly accepted in the IT industry. Its development
brings in benefits such as cost saving, ease of use, scalability,
flexibility, and environmental sustainability. This new technology adds
value to the society, however, it is like a giant that may not be easy to
handle, especially with regard to IT auditing practices.
In order to understand the inner insinuation of this new area, this
paper conducts a study to investigate the implications of IT auditing,
cloud computing, and cloud computing auditing. After examining the
development horizon, this paper lays down a number of challenges
that face the field of cloud computing, including technological complexity,
security risk, its weaknesses and immaturity, lack of cloud computing
audit standards, and contractual issue such as SLA. A future
development issue could be knowledge worker’s training and knowledge
management system’s construction.
We wish that this study could provide some guidance to those IT
auditors who are going to conduct cloud computing audits in the near
future.