Cybersecurity often gets a bad rap. It’s widely perceived as an endless parade of threats, incidents and breaches. Most organizations consider it a game of defense, a constant struggle to keep the wolves at bay. But that mindset is limiting. Cybersecurity is more than a defensive shield—it’s an essential part of your business strategy, and when done right, it fuels growth, innovation and trust.
Nowhere is this more evident than in how we think about cyber governance and the role of internal audit and assurance. Too often, these functions are seen as another cost center, another layer of bureaucracy that inhibits business growth and innovation. But here’s the truth: a robust governance framework and effective audit functions are your best allies in protecting your business, controlling costs and sustaining resilience. They are not obstacles; they are enablers of business success.
I’ve spent more than 20 years working with businesses to uncover their most critical cyber risks and develop cost-efficient strategies that deliver high-impact results. In this article, I’ll share what I’ve learned about the vital role of audit and governance in cybersecurity. You’ll leave with practical tips you can apply today to improve audit readiness, build a resilient governance structure and create a security culture.
Set the Right Tone at the Top
Governance is the foundation of any effective cybersecurity program; it’s about leadership, accountability and alignment. A strong tone at the top ensures that cybersecurity is woven deep into your business strategy, not bolted on as an afterthought.
A strong governance framework enables your organization to make risk-informed decisions. It ensures that everyone, from the boardroom to the front lines, understands their role in protecting the organization. It also fosters continuous improvement, ensuring that you’re not just reacting to today's threats but anticipating tomorrow’s. To get this right, you must focus on three essentials:
- Lead with example: Cybersecurity must be championed at the top. When senior leaders take cybersecurity seriously, it sends a powerful message that cybersecurity is a board-level priority designed to promote market trust, secure new product lines and sustain operational resilience
- Align to strategic goals: Your cybersecurity strategy must be aligned with your business goals. Many organizations mistakenly treat cybersecurity as a standalone function, disconnected from the broader strategy. Cybersecurity should be integrated into every aspect of the business, from product development to customer relationships.
Proactively building relationships with key stakeholders removes potential cultural resistance, lowers the cost of security and promotes ongoing senior stakeholder engagement. In the words of — John Kotter, Author of "Leading Change": "Effective stakeholder management is the key to successful change management because it ensures that the right people are involved and engaged throughout the change process, reducing resistance and building support from those who can make or break the initiative." - Foster accountability: Clearly articulate and communicate the pivotal role everyone plays (from the board to frontline staff) in building a cyber-resilient enterprise. More importantly, each key risk sitting outside of appetite must have a clearly designated C-level owner who is held accountable for bringing the risk within appetite.
The Role of Audit in Strengthening Cyber Governance
Leading audit functions play a pivotal role in cyber resilience by ensuring that policies and procedures are detailed and pragmatic, and key controls operate as intended.
Internal audit provides independent assurance about cybersecurity's functioning. To get this right, the cybersecurity team and internal audit must work collaboratively from the start, creating relationships of trust and transparency. When the internal audit team is well-versed in the cyber strategy and its link to the broader mission, it will likely pinpoint improvement opportunities rather than conduct compliance-focused tick-box assurance activities.
Leading audit functions also spend a great deal of time understanding the business value chain and what matters most to the organization. Only in doing so can they focus limited time on reviewing the adequacy of controls around crown jewels – the most critical information assets, which, if compromised, can severely undermine the enterprise’s bottom line, competitive advantage, and reputation, or even threaten its survival.
Additionally, it’s important for the internal audit team to engage widely with other assurance practitioners, including external audit, red teams, penetration testers and other specialists to develop a comprehensive assurance calendar. That way, they can eliminate redundant audits and avoid inundating small IT functions with duplicate requests. This is risk management 101, directing limited resources toward areas of highest risk.
Without proper coordination, “cybersecurity teams get bogged down in endless audits, uncovering too many issues beyond their capacity to address. These costly and duplicate audits often suck up a great deal of time, diverting teams from their primary mission of securing critical systems.”
Carefully Balance Hard and Soft Skills
Your audit function is as strong as the people behind it. A starting point is hiring audit professionals with deep technical expertise and business acumen, which can challenge IT teams and translate cyber risks into business language. Investing in the right skill mix is even more important today, with shrinking cybersecurity budgets against a rising tide of cyber-attacks. This sentiment was shared in the ISACA State of Cybersecurity 2024 report, which revealed a significant drop in cybersecurity funding in 2024, as well as an incremental year-over-year decline, showing signs of a potential multiyear freefall.
But let's face it. Building a complete set of assurance skills internally is beyond the reach of many internal audit teams. To cost-effectively close this gap, organizations should consider outsourcing deep tech assurance work, like red teaming, dark web monitoring, threat hunting, and penetration tests, to suitably qualified external firms that can deliver these services at scale and sometimes lower costs.
Aggressively Automate
It’s become humanly impossible to manually detect and respond to today’s barrage of rapidly morphing cyber security threats. To stay ahead, you must leverage automation and advanced data analytics to continuously monitor your environment, identify anomalies and flag potential issues in real-time. This transforms your audit function from reactive to proactive, enabling business leaders to make informed decisions and mitigate risks more efficiently.
A case in point is financial services and banks, which, according to McKinsey, are leveraging Generative AI to make cyber risk detection smarter by speeding and aggregating security insights and trends from emerging security threats and patterns.
Ensure Audit Readiness
Many organizations mistakenly treat audits as one-off events, scrambling to prepare when the audit team shows up. When you are audit-ready, you can identify issues early, take corrective action, and ensure your cybersecurity program constantly evolves to meet new threats. This means documenting your policies and controls, consistently applying them, and conducting regular internal reviews to identify and address gaps.
Additional Strategies to Strengthen Cyber Risk Assurance
- Adopt a Maturity Model:
Benchmarking your cybersecurity capabilities against a reputable industry framework helps you place a stake in the sand and objectively assess the effectiveness of your cybersecurity investments and demonstrate continuous improvement to stakeholders. - Communicate Clearly:
Assurance is about building confidence, and confidence comes from clarity. Audit reports must, therefore, be written in clear, non-technical language that business leaders can understand. Focus on risks outside of appetite, strategic implications, required mitigations and an executive action owner. - Focus on Continuous Improvement:
By building a culture of continuous improvement, you ensure that your cybersecurity program remains relevant and effective in the face of new and emerging threats. - Incentivize Security:
Create incentives for employees who follow cybersecurity best practices through recognition programs, bonuses or rewards. - Foster Open Communication:
Encourage employees to report potential security issues without fear of punishment. The sooner you know about a problem, the sooner you can fix it.
Cybersecurity is an Investment
By aligning cybersecurity with your business strategy, investing in solid audit and assurance functions, and creating a security culture, you will mitigate risk and enable growth, drive trust and build foundations for sustainable growth. Cybersecurity isn’t a cost—it’s an investment. And when you treat it that way, the returns are incalculable.