E-commerce Audit Risk Causes And Prevention Research

E-business is an important product of the rapidly developing Internet. As a new orientation of network technology, e-business attracts more and more companies because of its Internet-based, global and paperless business mode and electronic payment. E-business has been changing the economic environment as well as the conventional mode of production, operation and management.In the environment of e-business, the audit risk, including inherent risk, control risk and detection risk, become more complicated. It is harder to control the e-business audit risk. Therefore, in addition to grasping knowledge of e-business and relevant procedures, laws and regulations, a major issue for CPAs is to identify the causes and features of audit risk, so as to take effective measures to control and decrease audit risk as much as possible.In recent years, most researches on audit risk concentrate on the theoretic study, few, however, concentrate on analyzing the causes of e-business audit risk and the countermeasures. With the development of the economic environment, especially the emergence of e-business, the conventional theories and measures for preventing audit risk do not adapt to the environment of e-business. Therefore, the author attempts to analyze the causes of e-business audit risk from three aspects: auditing environment, auditing objects and auditing subjects, and finally provides some suggestions. The aim of the research is to help CPAs and CPA firms to decrease the level of audit risk to some extent, and to be beneficial reference for regulators.This thesis is divided into six chapters, the following is the main content included in each chapter:Chapter 1 discusses the research background, research significance and framework of this thesis, and the profile of current domestic and overseas researches on e-business audit risk.Chapter 2 briefly introduces the concept, features, workflow and application systems of e-business and describes the concept and features of e-business audit.Chapter 3 discusses the general description of e-business audit risk. This chapter introduces the definition of audit risk, summarizes the pervasive nature of audit risk and the specialties of e-business audit risk, and closely explores the causes of audit risk building on the principal — agent theory, the game theory and the contract theory.Chapter 4 examines the causes of e-business audit risk. This chapter analyzes thecauses of e-business audit risk from three aspects: auditing environment, auditing objects and auditing subjects. The Internet brings the factors of insecurity to the environment of e-business. Besides, E-business activities themselves change the business-operating mode, causing higher business risk. The accounting information system changes the method of accounting information transfer and store so that it is more difficult to obtain audit clew and to ensure the reliability and authenticity of audit evidences. Moreover, the capability of CPAs and CPA firms is limited, and the audit methods and techniques do not adapt well to e-business audit. All these factors influence the e-business audit risk.Chapter 5 provides some suggestions against the objective factors of causing e-business audit risk - auditing environment and auditing objects. It is proposed to draw up and mature e-business laws and regulations, to improve the security level of network and e-business activities and so on, in order to reduce the inherent risks and control risks and finally reach the goal of decreasing e-business audit risk.Chapter 6 provides some suggestions against the subjective factors of causing e-business audit risk - auditing subjects, hoping that these suggestions can help CPAs and CPA firms in increasing the level of audit quality and decreasing the level of audit risk.