The technology auditor for a medium size online retailer who has grown rapidly and has developed all the applications for order processing internally. With the growth it has been very difficult for the Information Technology (IT) group to keep up with the hardware requirements and new software for all the various smartphone applications. Although there would be reduction of most of the IT staff the CIO has done a complete analysis of moving to a Cloud Computing solution with Amazon Webservices. With this change, all IT functions for the primary application of order processing and fulfillment would be handled through Amazon. The reduction in ongoing costs would be almost fifty percent along with major capital expenditures for upgrades if they were to keep processing in-house. Much of the in-house technology is outdated from a web application and regulatory standpoint.

Amazon Web Services is the largest provider of integrated Cloud Computing Services and offers a complete set of infrastructure and application services. Many organizations have lowered costs, including your competitors allowing them to lower costs and gain market share. One of the key benefits of cloud computing is the opportunity to replace up-front capital infrastructure expenses with low variable costs that scale as the business grows.

You have been asked by senior management to assist with the Amazon project and the evaluation of the controls.

A. What are the five most significant areas of controls concern that you would like to express to the senior management in the transition to Amazon?

B. How would you propose the organization get comfortable with the controls at Amazon?

C. The CIO has also asked you to review the staffing as he had plans to get rid of the entire IT staff and wants audit concurrence with that. Do you agree or disagree and why?