Continuous auditing
Assurance performed on a short, repeating cycle rather than annually — testing that re-runs as a definition instead of being rebuilt as a project each period.
Continuous auditing is often described as a technology change. It is really a change in what a test is. In the annual model a test is a project: someone scopes it, requests evidence, performs procedures, and writes it up, and next year someone does that again. In the continuous model a test is a definition — population, criteria, exception logic, evidence source — and running it again costs almost nothing.
That reframing is what makes the cadence question a policy choice. Once the marginal cost of re-running is near zero, “how often should we test this?” is answered by risk appetite rather than by headcount.
Two cautions. First, continuous auditing is not achieved by testing the same sample more often; without population coverage you have simply increased the frequency of a guess. Second, and more seriously, it is not the same thing as continuous monitoring — see continuous controls monitoring for why conflating the two costs you your independence.
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