We wrote this book for three primary reasons. First, we wanted to provide a concise, nontechnícal approach to ínformation technology (IT) auditing. Many financial auditing professors we talked with all over the country expressed an urgent desire to integrate IT auditing concepts into their courses. However, they have not done so because they could not find a book that was easy to understand and succinct, yet comprehensive. We believe that our IT auditing book fills this need perfectly, as it can be used as a supplemental resource in undergraduate and graduate financial auditing courses. We designed this book in such a way that auditing professors can ´pick and choose´ various IT auditing topics from the material to fulfill their own course objectives. Second, although this book reflects core concepts of IT auditing, the breadth and depth of coverage allows it to be used as a standalone text in an IT auditing class or a supplement to an Accounting Information Systems (AIS) course. The juxtaposition of comprehensiveness and conciseness in our book allows IT auditing and AIS instructors to cover a wide range of relevant topics and to complement their courses with guest speakers, handson audit software such as ACL (which is included with this text), inclass discussions, and cases. Indeed, we designed and tested our book with these objectives in mind, and the reviews and comments have been overwhelmingly positive! Third, the accounting profession is undergoing dramatic changes due to Enron, Xerox, Adelphia Communications and other high-profile accounting scandals. Consequently, the profession is faced with a variety of new rules and regulations to follow and enforce. Auditors, in particular, have been and continue to be deeply affected, as indicated by The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Statement of Auditing Standards 94, and Statement of Auditing Standards 99. Importantly, many of the new rules require auditors to more closely examine risks and controls associated with information technology. In this light, this book incorporates all the new rules and regulations and provides insight and guidance to students as to how auditors are affected by these sweeping changes in the profession.