In the digital age, internal audit must innovate and transform itself into an agile, multiskilled and technology-enabled function — a ‘‘next-generation’’ function. It must be able to recognize emerging risks and changes to the organization’s risk profile quickly and efficiently enough to incorporate them into the audit plan so they can be addressed in the assurance the function delivers. The traditional methodologies, point solutions and conventional thinking cannot accomplish these tasks at the current speed of change.

This issue of Board Perspectives: Risk Oversight focuses on two questions: Is internal audit adjusting quickly enough to innovate and embrace underlying technologies, and should the board care?