As we usher in the New Year, the Seminars Committee looks forward to offering practical training opportunities in response to members’ input.

We lined up for 2005 a broad range of seminar topics to enhance the audit professional’s tools and techniques:

“Risk Assessment: Real Tools and Techniques to Identify, Audit and Manage Risk” - February 25, 2005

"Risk" is a topic high on the list of most businesses and government agencies -- how should we best manage risk? How can we audit risk? And, most importantly, how can we assess the risks our organizations face -- in advance of them becoming real problems? In this exciting one-day training session, you'll learn all about the components of risk assessment, including up-to-date analysis of new risk management frameworks.

You will learn how to use straightforward tools to assess risk in your organization and take steps to reduce it. As a manager, auditor, or risk professional, you will gain real-world training that you can put to work on the job immediately!

The seminar will cover the following major topics:

• Up-to-date risk assessment tools, including the latest from the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) and it's new Enterprise Risk Management framework, and the views of the IIA, AGA, AICPA.
• Details of risk assessment under the COSO ERM framework.
• Learn how to identify an organization's business objectives, which become absolutely key to deciding which risks an organization is taking, and how significant those risks could be, including assessing risk at the company/organization and unit level.
• You'll learn how to match up your organization's limited audit resources against the risks the organization faces.
• We'll discuss the notion of "audit risk", (the odds that a particular risky issue is not discovered in an audit) and how to take steps to control for it.
• We'll develop tools to segment the organization along different risk model bases (time, employees, specific risks).
• By the end of this session, you'll be equipped with skills and tools, including take-away tools for conducting and using risk assessments in the audit process.

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“Proactive Procurement Fraud Prevention Model” - April 8, 2005

This seminar has been well received by IIA and other organizational chapters. Among the core business functions, the vast majority of fraud encountered by internal auditors is in the procurement area. Procurement fraud is a serious risk for all organizations. The seminar will discuss the following:

• Introduction to the Procurement Fraud Prevention Model – including the four methods for significantly reducing procurement fraud.
• Common Internal and External Procurement Fraud Methods – explanation of the methods, as well as suggested techniques for investigation. (Corruption schemes include kickbacks, extortion and conflict of interest.)
• Data Mining Techniques – proactive searching of fraud through computer applications.
• Vendor Audit – audit methodology for finding fraud through the use of the Right to Audit clause.

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“Fundamental IT Controls for Internal Auditors”

May 2005

Here is an opportunity to broaden your audit skills in understanding controls that affect organization-wide computer operations as well controls for business applications. We invite you to attend an interactive-training session on auditing general IT and application controls. General computer controls are designed to ensure that financial information generated from an organization’s application systems can be relied upon.