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This is a theme editorial written exclusively by the guest editor for this special issue. This opinion piece demonstrates the impact of technology convergence on the internal control mechanism of an enterprise. It is important for an auditor to be aware of the security hazards faced by financial or the entire organizational information system. Author attempts to bring security systems design and the organizational vulnerabilities in the context of the convergence of communication and networking technologies with the complex information technology in business processes.

This editorial is mostly conceptual analysis of the current state of affairs.

Being an editorial, there are no specific findings presented in this piece.

Theme editorials, being conceptual expositions of a particular current issue generally lack support of data analysis. However, advantage can be obtained by the future researchers by designing a study around the theme propounded in it here.

Its conceptual contribution is mostly knowledge enhancement and skill building for the professional external, internal or information systems auditor and budding researchers in the field of internal controls, new technologies and security.

It is an original piece written with a purpose of presenting the importance of convergence of technology vis‐à‐vis its impact on the internal controls in an organization and the matters of security.

Auditors provide high assurance to executives amidst information and database risk. A framework is provided for auditors within cyber entities. The categories of e‐commerce, business‐to‐business, business‐to‐customers and mobile commerce use different core technologies. The common factor remains unchanged from the auditors' perception, i.e. risk and its potential to harm the integrity and accuracy of the data and decisions based thereon. E‐commerce requires audit to identify risks and show their impact on the information system. The American Institute of CPAs and Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants jointly offer seals of assurance at Web and system levels. The limitations of these certifications are important for an auditor since they are set by these accounting bodies. The role and functions of an auditor are beyond those of the assurance approval auditors. Organizational decision‐making processes depend on segments of information bases, whereas these assurance providers audit a limited amount related to their interest.

The security of e‐commerce is a serious concern of all the major players in the digital business arena who rely heavily on distributed processing in their routine daily operational chores. The security breaches and the related frauds have cost billions of dollars to the businesses and the industries as a whole and consumers suffer also. It is possible that business models of transaction processing that are viable in conventional commerce might be wrong abinitio in the context of digital business. There is a growing need for robust tools and equally rigorous auditable methodologies in the design and verification of the correctness of the digital processing systems that operate over the Internet. This paper focuses on the economic reasoning of business process design. The author has decided to develop a secure online auction protocol as an attempt to apply the design of mechanism reasoning framework in the direction of information systems audit and control of e‐commerce.

The exponential growth in corporate reporting on the internet has created numerous opportunities and challenges for the accounting and auditing profession, and regulators. This study aims to examine internet reporting practices of companies in Malaysia for the purpose of exploring their auditing implications.

An examination of the 100 Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange Composite Indexed (KLSE CI) companies in Malaysia in 2003 and 2004.

Although there has been an increase in both the number of companies and the types of information provided on the internet, the quality of internet reporting information to users has little improved. This problem is compounded because auditors have little control over web contents and the changes that can be made to audited information. Further guidance to standardise the types of internet reporting information may help protect the interest of users, provide more certainty to what information needs to be audited and reduce audit risks.

The hosting of audited information on an auditor's web site may provide auditors with better control, reduce audit risks and further improve the credibility and reliability of information to users.

Provides information on the financial reporting and auditing challenges posed by internet reporting.

In the current global economy, the survival of an insurance company depends on its ability to respond to the customer demands. One of the demands of customers is efficient settlement of insurance claims. All insurance companies face the conflicting goals of authenticating claims and settling claims quickly. The use of human adjusters in claim settlement process leaves room for subjective judgment and the use of discretion while finalizing a claim. It has been observed that the opportunity exists for claim adjustors to settle insurance claims in favor of the claimants simply by colluding with the claimant and sacrificing the monetary interest of the insurers. The increasing cost of human experts for authentication (fraud detection) has led many companies to develop technological solutions such as expert systems to assist in the authentication of processed claims.

We have used fuzzy math in combination with the expert systems technology to design this model system.

We develop a fuzzy logic based expert system that can identify and evaluate whether elements of fraud are involved in insurance claims settlement.

We could not obtain real life data from any one of the insurance companies even after various attempts in Canada. Canadian Privacy Legislation does not permit these organizations to share them with any one.

This expert system can help decide if settled claims are genuine or if an element of fraud might exist which needs substantive testing by an auditor. The proposed methodology has been illustrated with an example that tends to model insurance claims in general.

The model designed in this paper is original and carries a substantial value to internal/external auditing professional who has access to these data to train the inference engine.

Computer assisted audit techniques (CAATs) encompass a range of computerized techniques that internal and external auditors use to facilitate their audit objectives. One of the most important CAATs is generalized audit software (GAS), which is a class of packaged software that allows auditors to interrogate a variety of databases, application software and other sources and then conduct analyzes and audit routines on the extracted or live data. This study seeks to evaluate the nature and extent of the utilization of CAATs in financial institutions. In particular, the study establishes the extent and nature of use of GAS by bank internal auditors and their external auditors. The study is conducted with large local and international commercial banks in Singapore, a major financial center. Given the limited research on GAS in general and in the financial services sector in particular, the study uses exploratory qualitative research.

Qualitative research employing depth interviews with internal and external auditors of financial institutions.

The research finds that the extent and range of use of GAS varies widely between the institutions in the sample. Internal auditors see GAS primarily as a tool for special investigations rather than as a foundation for their regular audit work. External auditors make no use of GAS, citing the inapplicability of this class of tool to the nature of testing the financial statement assertions or the extent or quality of computerized internal controls maintained by the bank.

This is a small sample study. While the data are rich, the findings cannot necessarily be extrapolated to broader populations.

This study provides guidance on the role that CAATs play in the audit process of financial institutions that is relevant for the audit community.

This is the first in‐depth study of the application of CAATs to financial institutions.

The Managerial Auditing Journal (MAJ) started publication in 1986 and celebrates its 35th year of publication in 2020. The purpose of this study is to provide a detailed bibliometric analysis of the journal’s primary trends and themes between 1986 and 2019.

This study uses the Scopus database to analyse the most prolific authors in the MAJ along with their affiliated institutions and countries; the work also identifies the MAJ articles cited most often by other journals. A range of bibliometric devices is applied to analyse the publication and citation structure of MAJ, alongside performance analysis and science mapping tools. The study also provides a detailed inter-temporal analysis of MAJ publishing patterns.

The MAJ publishes around 40 articles each year with citations of this work steadily growing over time. The journal has attracted contributors from around the globe, most often affiliated with the USA, the UK and Australia. Thematic evolution of the journal’s themes reveals that it has expanded its scope to include topics such as internal auditing, internal control and corporate governance, whilst co-authorship analysis reveals that the journal’s collaboration network has grown to span the globe.

As this study uses data from the Scopus database, any shortcomings therein will be reflected in the study.

This study provides the first overview of the MAJ’s publication and citation trends as well as the evolution of its thematic structure. It also suggests future directions that the journal might take.

While there has been extensive research on understanding the effects of online reviews on product sales, there is not enough investigation of the inter-relationships between online reviews, online search and product sales. The study attempts to address this gap in the context of the Indian car market.

The research uses text mining and considers six important review features volume, valence, length, deviation of valence, sentiment and readability within the heuristic and systematic model of information processing. Panel data regression is used along with mediation analysis to study the inter-relationships between features of reviews, online search and sales.

The study finds that numerical heuristic features significantly affect sales and online search, numerical systematic feature affects sales and the textual heuristic and systematic features do not affect sales or online search in the Indian car market. Further, online search mediates the association between features of reviews and sales of cars.

Although only car sales data from India is considered in this research, similar relationships between review features, online search and sales could exist for the car market of other countries as well.

This research uncovers the unique role of online search as a mediator between review features and sales, whereas prior literature has considered review features and online search as independent variables that affect sales.