As Indian enterprises are confronted by an increasingly complex risk management landscape, new governance risks related to cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies have been deemed as most critical by a majority of internal audit professionals, according to the latest Institute of Internal Auditors–Protiviti India Survey 2025.
Around 66% of chief audit executives across large and mid-sized enterprises surveyed consider emerging technologies including AI, machine learning (ML), and bots, and cybersecurity as the top risks confronting their organisations.
Digitisation Still Short
Despite the growing recognition of digital tools as both risks and enablers, digitisation of the internal audit function is still not widespread. A majority of CAEs (60%) admitted that their department currently is partially digitised, while 23% stated they are yet to start on this journey.
Lack Of Skills And Subject Matter Experts
The survey further revealed that a majority of Indian enterprises lack adequate skills to deal with these emerging risks, with only 16% of CAEs affirming they believe they are “highly prepared” to proactively identify and address emerging risks as part of internal audits.
Further, CAEs are increasingly looking to engage domain experts who can identify risks in areas where high degree of technical competencies are needed. As many as 56% of respondents cite the lack of subject matter experts for auditing technical or emerging risk areas as the biggest gap in their current and future needs for internal audit.
AI/ML To Shape Future Of Audit
The survey showed that the majority of Indian enterprises are equally convinced that AI and ML will shape the future of internal audit, with 69% of the respondents saying so. However, these respondents also admit that there is a lack of available use cases that show how AI/ML can be used in internal audits.
While data analytics and AI-driven tools have significantly improved audit quality, many organisations have yet to fully integrate advanced analytics into their audit processes. Only 18% of the respondents claim to be using data analytics extensively, while a vast majority of 82% are using it moderately or next-to-none.
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