Joe Wasserman was born in New Haven, Connecticut on May 21, 1932; a depression-born Connecticut Yankee. Upon completion of US Navy active duty in 1956, Joe was employed as an internal auditor with the Southern New England Bell Telephone Company in New Haven. There, he established the company’s first IS Audit function and developed such concepts as the integrated test facility, the tagging of data and the use of audit software.

By 1965, Joe had advanced to Audit Manager at AT&T’s New York Headquarters, having responsibility for the audit of Bell Systems in the US and Canada. In 1967, Joe moved to AT&T’s Bell labs as manager of Audit R&D.

In 1969, together with Dick Hirschfield, he founded Computer Audit Systems, Inc. (CAS). They developed the Computer Audit Retrieval System (CARS) and produced seminars in computer auditing including applications of the CARS software. At that time, the only publicized computer audit software was Auditape available from Haskins and Sells. Both systems generated COBOL programs on IBM mainframes using punched card control parameters. Joe had placed CARS in over 400 computer centers and his marketing had reached the boardrooms of the Fortune 1000 and the partners of the largest public accounting firms. His professional competence and energy earned him the respect and friendship of many. Joe continued in a consulting capacity, including serving as an expert in the Equity Funding case, until his death in 1978.

In general, the Wasserman Award is granted based on Chapter Recognition, Technology Audit and Security contributions, contributions to our Profession, Leadership, and major accomplishments in the Audit, Security, and Technology fields.

If you have anyone you would like to recommend for the Joseph J. Wasserman Award, please send all your information to Bob May at Robert.May@isacany.org or contact Bob at 212-484-8240 for more information.