IT Auditor career path

synchronise

Hi all,
I'm interested in pursuing a postgraduate degree to enhance my career that can widen my exposure and give me a boost in climbing the corporate ladder.

Educational background:
I graduate with Computer engineering degree, passed CISA, CISM, CHFI, CISSP.

Working experience:
Currently, I am an Assistant Vice President with a bank, conducting IT audit over both application and infrastructure controls. I've a total of 6-7 years of IT audit experience.

Problem:
I am lost in which disciplines of master degree should I take up to benefit my career. I've interest in all the following:

- Master of Computing (InfoSec) - NUS
Is it useful to study indepth InfoSec theories for IT auditor? Since I have CISM, CISSP, are these cert enough for me to perform Cyber security audit competently?

- Master of Science in Accountancy - NTU
Accountancy allows me to better appreciate the business language and give me more chances to conduct business audits for the bank.

- Master of Applied Finance - Uni of Adelaide
As I worked in a bank, the finance theory will give me more understanding about the banking processes which I lacked of.
Moreover the knowledge gained could also benefit myself for self investing.

- MBA - Uni of strathclyde
MBA gives me a general overview on the business fields

Any It auditor who has been in my current position b4, could u advise me what u would have done if u were me?

OctalDump

I am not working in Info Sec, and never have been in your particular position. However, I have similar dilemma facing me in how to augment my technical skills to move into more strategic focus roles. So, I have been looking at many Master degree programs in IT Info Sec and Management.

I think the 'soft' business skills are most useful for the more senior roles. But if you see a few more steps between you and C (or nearly) C level roles, then the more technical - either IT or finance or management - might be more useful. For example, the Accountancy and InfoSec, or a Master of Management (a bit more "operationally" focussed than MBAs might be). I'm not sure what assistant VP means in your part of the world. My experience with auditors seems to be that they can be anything from very junior "grunt workers" to high/mid level management.

It can be time consuming, but looking at job descriptions for the jobs you want to get (or the sequence of jobs you want), and their requirements and then working towards those requirements. If your next job is all governance and strategic, then a good MBA program might be more useful. If it is leading technical teams, then something that brings those skills, etc.

Something also to consider: audit has a legal component that differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, so a course in Australia or US or UK might not cover material wholly relevant to a position in Singapore. But there are international programs that deal specifically with this problem.