Session 1 (Panel Discussion)

• If you are an internal auditor, you may be feeling the glare of the spotlight-now or in the near future. In many organizations a growing audience of stakeholders especially CEOs and ACs, are looking for greater insights and knowledge from internal audits. The pandemic has accelerated additional change, and internal auditor’s responsibilities have become more proactive, more advisory, and central to the companies’ resilience and continued wellbeing. The internal auditor must evolve in its function by aligning internal audit with business strategies, chart a course forward, and launch efforts, including automating critical processes and encouraging an innovative mindset. These forward-looking changes enabled internal auditors to play integral roles in aiding their organization to cope with unprecedented disruptions.

• Internal auditors had to pivot in their roles as they responded to the dynamic changes brought upon during the pandemic, often many times, to provide independent assurance that their organization’s governance, risk management, and internal control processes were operating effectively under fast- changing circumstances. In some instances, the survival of the company depended on their contributions.

Session 2 (Individual Session)

PLC Transformation Program & How IA Plays a Role in Driving Change

Culture Audit and Its Significance

Energizing Your Relevance: Aligning the Internal Audit with Organizational Strategy!

• For Internal Audit to remain relevant, it must adapt to changing expectations and maintain alignment with organizational strategies and objectives. The internal audit strategy is fundamental to remaining relevant – playing an important role in achieving a balance between cost and value, while making meaningful contributions to the organization’s overall governance, risk management, and internal controls. A systematic and structured process can be used to develop the internal audit strategic plan, helping to enable the internal audit activity to achieve its vision and mission. Seven critical steps necessary to develop a comprehensive internal audit strategic plan, including:

1. Understand your organization’s strategies and the objectives.

2. Consider the IPPF Standards and Guidance.

3. Understand stakeholder expectations.

4. Update the internal audit vision and mission.

5. Define the critical success factors.

6. Perform a SWOT analysis.

7. Identify key initiatives.

Speaker:

Internal Audit and ESG: What Should We Actually Do?

Internal audit can and should play a significant role in an organzation’s ESG journey in the following:

• Adding value in an advisory capacity by helping to identify and establish a functional ESG control environment.

• Offering critical assurance support by providing an independent and objective review of the effectiveness of ESG risk assessments, responses, and controls.

• Additionally, internal audit functions that operate in conformance with The IIA’s globally recognized standards are well positioned to help their organizations apply established, credible internal control frameworks to their ESG efforts.

• Internal audit should provide assurance and advice over all aspects of ESG risk management.

• Establishment of Board Members’ KPI and ESG Framework for effective operationalization and measurement of success.

Collaborative Cybersecurity Audit: Towards Zero Data Breaches

In cybersecurity, our goal is simple: Get to zero breaches, zero compliance issues and zero critical vulnerabilities. To get there, first we need to bring the vulnerabilities that cause breaches to zero. Technology cannot get us there alone. In our experience, a cybersecurity program defined and driven by the purpose of reaching zero vulnerabilities that remains sensitive to evolving risks, depends on two tenets:

• Shared responsibility for collaborative action in pursuit of zero, between internal business, IT and security stakeholders, and external partners where necessary, working together within a holistic framework.

• Measurement of progress toward that goal, including a clear and agreed upon definition of success and the metrics or KPIs to assess performance against it.

• How can internal audit play a bigger role in privacy and data protection compliance activities? In this session, you’ll gain insight into tools that can help assess, advise, and audit your organization’s privacy.