FAR obtains assurance report on internal controls over secure data gathering and management processes

The Foundation for Auditing Research (FAR), jointly with its trusted data management service provider CentERdata, has reached another milestone and received a clean auditor’s assurance report on the design and implementation of FAR data gathering and security controls as per 26 April 2019 (the so called ISAE 3000 “type I” third-party-assurance report). In the auditor’s opinion, BDO states that “the description fairly presents the system as designed and implemented [and] the controls related to the control objectives stated in the description were suitably designed as at 26 April 2019. This confirms that the FAR affiliated audit firms can share (anonymized / transformed) confidential data with FAR researchers and can rely on the existing FAR-CentERdata processes for the confidentiality of their data. This is a world-wide unique structure where the Dutch auditing profession is actively sharing data in collaboration with academic researchers. With these data the researchers unlock academic insights relating to audit quality. This helps to inform the public and academic debate relating to the audit profession and help to improve audit quality. The report is available at the FAR Liaison of the affiliated audit firm.

FAR and CentERdata also have their first ISAE 3000 type II (design, existence and operating effectiveness) assurance report for the period May to December 2019, which is available at the FAR Liaison of the affiliated audit firm. We plan to have an audited yearly assurance report in which we hold ourselves accountable for the internal controls we have in place and provide all data providing audit firms with the assurance they need over our processes.