An ISACA (2019) report on the future of IT-auditing speculates that robots might monitor and even audit complex technology systems in the foreseeable future. The results from a large-scale survey in the report are inconclusive, but the increased reliance on (AI-assisted) monitoring and analytics is more than clear.

DevOps in IT audit

The usage of DevOps goes against conventional IT assurance controls and demonstrates that the traditional approaches are not effective. To guide IT auditors in IT assurance projects where DevOps is used, new guidelines and controls are necessary.

Trends in Audit

1. Privacy compliance will be a key focus for internal audit.

2. New cybersecurity regulations from the SEC and PCAOB will require more internal audit involvement.

3. Boards needs be more involved in cybersecurity. 

4. Cybersecurity and related frameworks such as COBIT etc will be more used by the Internal Audits worldwide.

5. Riak Management will need to be more robust. Third party and cloud risk needs to be adequeately managed. Internal Audit should embrace cloud technologies.

6. Internal audit should be equiped and ready to play a key role in digital business transformation, and ensuring compliance in the digital era (PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOX to name a few).

7. Internal audit need to exploit data analytics and AI / ML to manage the vast availability and mining of data.