Complex technology has been around ever since the start of computers. Maxwell Newman’s first programmable computer Colossus in 1943 cracking World War II cryptography was a truly complex system at that time (Haigh & Ceruzzi, 2021). In 1965 Gordon Moore posited that the number of transistors on microchips doubles every 2 years, implying that the technical developments underlying our increasingly complex systems continue to develop at an impressive pace (Valacich & Schneider, 2022). We may therefore expect that the complexity of information systems will also continue to increase for the years ahead.
Due to the continuous development of the underlying technology, information systems take over increasingly complex tasks. An example of a currently cuttingedge task concerns autonomously driving cars. The computing power required for image processing and interpretation is at the edge of today’s capabilities.
Autonomous-driving systems also affect our business and private lives and could possibly even run you over. Besides this increasing complexity of information systems themselves, there is also their accumulating interaction with people and other information systems.
The complexity of information systems also caused the emergence of the IT audit discipline in the late 1980s. IT auditors initially focused on the quality of financial reporting systems, however, also quickly deployed their knowledge in many other business domains. In this book we will explore the complexity of information systems and how we should develop the IT auditing discipline in order to control this complexity and maintain a trustworthy society.
Views: 0
