[Anonymous]

*Edit – sorry, first time contributor. I didn’t mean to post to this section of the forum.

Don’t feel bad if you’re not getting the IT section, I can’t even pass it! I have several years of IT audit and information security experience and am a CISSP (closest equivalent to the CPA in the security world). I’m studying for BEC right now, and I have to say that, based on the Becker materials, most of the IT section is absurd, outdated, and (at times) technically incorrect. No one, especially a CPA, needs to be concerned with the minutiae it covers. It’s difficult for me to read the questions because they are so embarrassingly awful – it’s like watching Michael Scott make an idiot out of himself on The Office. Modern issues such as web security, social networking, and cloud computing are nowhere in the material, yet CPAs need to know that Linux is written mostly in C? Or that the Internet is not, in fact, a large server run by Interpol? It is the same problem as introductory “computing for business students” undergrad classes – they think they have to teach something, they just don’t know what to teach, so they spew out a bunch of definitions committed to a textbook that was written in the 80s.

My first time through the practice questions, I got 70% correct. I’ve seen a lot of client computing environments, (ethically) hacked websites, compromised thousands of user IDs, exploited firewall vulnerabilities, and sat in on IT controls implementation committees. As an IT/security professional, my advice for this section is to commit the answers to memory and then forget them as soon as you finish the exam – do not worry about learning it. Knowing this material will not aid you in speaking to the IT folks within your organizations or at your clients. It probably supports their argument that the auditors “don’t get it.” There will never be another time in your life that you need to know most of this stuff (and the stuff you need to know is pretty much common sense or common knowledge).

If you are interested in learning about relevant IT and security topics, I suggest finding blogs and following people on Twitter. Never go near a textbook.

[SusanStudies]

Interesting…as I round out the last 20 minutes of lecture for the IT section bored out of my mind. What I'm picking up is that we merely need to memorize what we've been given and have a good understanding of related controls.

AUD: 07/11/11 - Passed
BEC: 08/27/11 - Passed
FAR: 01/17/12 - Passed
REG: 04/30/12; Re-take 7/16/12 - Passed

FINISHED!!!!!!!!

[khachik2003]

I agree. They need to rework this section or throw it out altogether.

[Anonymous]

elevatedms, thanks for the post. Anything helps us non-IT people feel relieved. Well written, too!

Thanks!

[tulip]

Agreed. I am not an IT professional, but I do work closely with IT and have managed an accounting system implementation.

The IT material on the exam is very outdated and does not have useful for practical application.

BEC - 10/18/2010 - 79
FAR - 10/28/2010 - 82
AUD - 11/04/2010 - 73; 02/18/2011 - 86 - IT'S OVER!!!!!!
REG - 11/21/2010 - 83

[Author]

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