// INDUSTRY INSIGHT //

More audits for enterprises and large organisations are now trickling down to smalland medium-sized organisations, who now have to prove not only their own compliance, but that they won’ t endanger their partners compliance status either.

Continuous assurance

The price of business for many is now constant audit readiness and continuous assurance. To achieve that, automation and centralisation of audit and compliance processes needs to be a key focus.

Compliance monitoring, governance and crucially, evidence collection all need to be automated to the greatest extent possible. To do that any platform or tool used to achieve this must be able to integrate into an organisations’ full tech stack and monitor them centrally. From that central point of management, all audits – whether they be external, internal or for compliance purposes – can be strategically managed and monitored from the same place.

BUSINESSES NOW NEED TO BE CONTINUOUSLY READY FOR AUDITS AND PROVIDE CONSTANT ASSURANCE THAT THEY’ RE REMAINING COMPLIANT AND SAFE TO DO BUSINESS WITH.

As a result, regular audits to ensure compliance are now increasingly a condition of engagement with businesses.

For fear of endangering their own compliance, many businesses – especially large enterprises – will require their partners to undergo regular audits and provide continuous assurance that they won’ t endanger their clients or compliance status.

Cyber-insurance also plays a key role in this rise of continuous auditing. Insurance firms now often require client organisations to undergo regular audits in order to justify their policies and premiums.

Centralising will also allow an organisation to unify these efforts and map them across different audits, certifications and compliance obligations. That will deduplicate work between different efforts and shift audit and compliance work from a periodic task to an integrated, continuous business operation.

Businesses now need to be continuously ready for audits and provide constant assurance that they’ re remaining compliant and safe to do business with. Security and compliance audits are no longer a checkbox task, but a strategic imperative which will permit or deny a business access to regulated clients and markets.

European business’ next step needs to use automation and centralisation to transform their ad-hoc auditing and compliance activities from a matter of periodic preparation to a continuous business process. �

Intelligent SME. tech

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