Cybersecurity has emerged as the top challenge facing IT audit leaders and professionals, according to the Protiviti and ISACA IT audit survey.
Protiviti in partnership with ISACA, a global association helping individuals and enterprises in the IT audit/assurance, governance, risk and information security space, conducted the 8th Annual IT Audit Benchmarking survey.
This had participation from 2,252 CAEs, IT audit executives and professionals worldwide, including more than 220 professionals from the Middle East region.
Sanjay Rajagopalan, Managing Director, Protiviti Member Firm, responsible for Internal Audit and Financial Advisory Services for the MENA region, said: “Cybersecurity remains the number one challenge to tackle with 80% of survey participants from the Middle East indicating that they are including cybersecurity and privacy audits in their audit plan this year.
“This is very much in line with the global trend, as IT Audit cannot let its guard down by merely conducting high-level ‘check-the-box’ audits. Detailed security assessments are also required along with meaningful recommendations for these audits to remain relevant to the ever-changing environment”.
As per the survey, 62% of Middle East respondents foresee a significant role for IT audits in major technology projects and 70% of the respondents from the region said that their organisations assess technology risk for audit planning purposes as part of the overall internal audit risk assessment process.
