The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of 2019 led to a tumultuous year that followed for organizations worldwide. Usual business operations came to a halt, with a resulting shift to remote work for many that presented new challenges—and increased risk.
In September 2020, ISACA® and Protiviti surveyed more than 7,000 audit and risk professionals globally to discover what technology risk they believed their organizations would face in 2021. The survey sought to evaluate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and learn more about organizations’ resulting digital transformations.
The following are key survey findings:
- Cybersecurity, privacy and resilient technologies dominate the risk landscape–These areas of concern have been heightened by pandemic-driven shifts to remote work, new business processes, and increased connectivity via the Internet of Things (IoT).
- Digital leaders felt impact differently–Enterprises with more digital maturity consider technology risk to be more significant compared to other organizations and are much more likely to conduct continuous audit risk assessments.
- COVID-19 and digital transformation resulted in more frequent risk assessments–IT auditors are performing technology risk assessments more often due to the impacts of the pandemic and digital transformation efforts.
To provide a more in-depth analysis of survey findings, ISACA has released the white paper, IT Audit’s Perspective on the Top Technology Risks for 2021. The white paper describes issues encountered by organizations related to cybersecurity, privacy, compliance, data and more, and explains how these problem areas will result in increased risk in 2021. Survey results are useful in indicating where IT auditors should focus their efforts to mitigate risk.
Learn more about IT auditors’ top risk predictions for 2021 by downloading IT Audit’s Perspective on the Top Technology Risks for 2021, available on the bookstore page of the ISACA website.