In early 2015, Abdullah S. Alanizi, group chief audit executive at Saudi Telecom Company (stc), began implementing a new business resilience initiative to employ continuous control and risk monitoring. The approach utilized the automated extraction of data and the application of business rules against the collected data to detect exceptions. “The implementation of continuous audit freed up internal audit to spend more time focused on strategic and high-risk audits rather than traditional audits,” says Alanizi.

In this profile, Alanizi shares how his team has enhanced stc's value by providing risk-based and objective assurance, advice and insight.