Cybersecurity is the top risk consuming internal auditors’ greatest time and effort, according to The IIA’s Risk In Focus 2024 report series. A significant emerging cybersecurity risk area is artificial intelligence, or AI. Although AI is a sophisticated tool that can help improve efficiency, productivity, and risk management across the organization, it also presents challenges including ethical and security considerations.
The IIA’s Global Knowledge Brief on Cybersecurity, a three-part series produced in collaboration with AuditBoard, discusses the importance of examining the uses and threats of AI in internal audit. Part 2: Artificial Intelligence as Friend and Foe explores ways AI can be utilized as a positive cybersecurity tool as well the negative ramifications of AI’s potential, including:
- Ways AI can enhance internal audit’s cybersecurity efforts, such as real-time threat detection and improving a company’s ability to respond to zero-day attacks.
- Risk considerations that accompany AI usage, including questions of security and ethics, the dangers of blind over-reliance, and algorithmic bias.
- How internal audit can help organizations avoid these AI pitfalls.
