Nearly half of U.S. survey respondents believe they are taking the right steps to secure the IT environment, with 47 per cent somewhat confident to highly confident about meeting that task, down slightly from the previous survey. In terms of their view of some key issues, 58 percent of U.S. CPAs say they have a good understanding of the regulatory and compliance requirements on confidentiality of personal information, and 60 percent say they have appropriate privacy-related safeguards in place.

The prior results were released in 2013. Last year, no survey information was published because of concerns about the way the survey was conducted.

There was no difference in the issues selected in either country, although the order was the same only for the first, second and eighth issues. No. 2 on both lists was Managing and Retaining Data and accountants in both countries ranked Governing and Managing Our IT Investment as No. 8.

Ensuring Privacy was the No. 3 issue in the United States. The other top issues were as follows: No., 4, Managing IT Risks and Compliance; No. 5, Preventing and Responding to Computer Fraud; No. 6, Enabling Decision Support and Analytics; No. 7, Managing System Implementation; No. 9, Managing Vendors and Service Providers; and No. 10, Leveraging Emerging Technologies.