What is CISA?
The Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) is a certification issued by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA).
Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) is a globally recognized certification in the field of audit, control and security of information systems. CISA gained worldwide acceptance having uniform certification criteria, the certification has a high degree of visibility and recognition in the fields of IT security, IT audit, IT risk management and governance. Vacancies in the areas of IT security management, IT audit or IT risk management often ask for a CISA certification. Unfortunately, like Chartered Accountancy, this exam also tends to be associated with a high failure rate.
Why CISA?
-Is globally recognized as the mark of excellence for the IS audit professional.
-Gives you a competitive advantage over peers when seeking job growth.
-Demonstrates that you have gained and maintained the level of knowledge required to meet the dynamic challenges of a modern enterprise.
-Due to limited availability of experts in this field, CISA qualified can expect high pay scale.
Requirements for CISA qualified Experts:
I personally feel that CISA qualification will be must down the line may be 2 to 3 years for Internal Audit profile. Reason is simple, most of the organisations will be system driven where all the processing and controls will be integrated through computers. There will be minimum manual intervention. In such scenario, our traditional audit approach will not work. In system driven scenario, auditor need to know about system integration/system processing /data security/encryption techniques/ network security/system availability/BCP and backup processing. A CISA holder you will have edge over traditional auditors.