INFOGRAPHIC
Half century of disruption in half a decade: Are auditor’ s ready?
AuditBoard, the cloud-based platform transforming audit, risk, compliance, and ESG management, announced results of a new research report, 2025 Focus on the Future: Inflection Point for Transformation at Mid-Decade. The report reveals a fundamental lack of alignment between top risks businesses face and the level of resources internal auditors are able to put towards those vulnerabilities.
Organisations have experienced a half-century’ s worth of disruption in half a decade. These are not ordinary times; extraordinary action is required. The internal audit profession is facing an inflection point and must better equip ourselves to understand and face tomorrow’ s risks while deriving more benefits from limited resources.
AuditBoard’ s 2025 Focus on the Future report offers hard lessons and points to vital opportunities on the path to transformation. AuditBoard developed a custom online questionnaire to survey 376 internal audit professionals.
The first half of the 2020s has been an era of perpetual risk-induced disruption spanning cybersecurity, AI, supply chain, inflation, third party, sustainability, and beyond. Despite largely static resource levels, internal audit leaders face a critical imperative to help their organisations tackle the rising volume and velocity of risks.
The 2025 Focus on the Future survey found many internal audit leaders are missing key opportunities to leverage technology, strategize, prioritise, and collaborate across their organisations, making it challenging to narrow the gap between rising risk demands and stagnant risk management capabilities. The data reveals:
Risks may be growing, but resources are not: Roughly three-quarters of those surveyed expect headcount to decrease or stay the same in 2025. AuditBoard survey data from the past three years collectively reveal a clear pattern of optimistic staffing forecasts followed by less rosy realities.
There has been a lack of progress in implementing Generative AI in internal audit: Only 4 % of those surveyed reported substantial progress in implementing AI in any area of internal audit, potentially jeopardising audit teams’ chances of leveraging this capacity multiplier to achieve better results with less effort and increasing their risk of falling behind with AI.
Lack of readiness to conform with The Institute of Internal Auditors’ Global Internal Audit Standards: The survey found that at least one in three organisations won’ t be ready for the upcoming January 2025 deadline, indicating the lack of priority some internal auditors may be placing on guidance on the worldwide professional practice of internal auditing.
Cybersecurity retains its place as the top-ranked risk and top area of audit effort: 82 % of internal
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