Audit + Past 2024: AI and the Way forward for Compliance — Three minutes with Anton Dam, AuditBoard’s AI champ – Cyber Tech

LAS VEGAS — The world of audit and compliance has turn out to be a labyrinth, with new rules cropping up sooner than corporations can construct the roadmaps to navigate them.

Maintaining tempo with disclosure necessities from local weather (TCFD, SB-253), digital danger (GDPR, CCPA), healthcare (HIPAA) and synthetic intelligence (ISO/IEC 42001:2023,  EU AI Act,  NIST-AI-600-1) — to call just a few — can really feel like a contact sport.

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What have been as soon as easy checklists have spiraled right into a tangle of acronyms, guidelines and purple tape, leaving even probably the most diligent compliance officers struggling to maintain tempo. AI as a compliance device, has shortly emerged as a robust catalyst to tame the compliance tsunami.

For Anton Dam, vp of engineering and AI/ML at AuditBoard, his mission is to fuse AI into the workday of audit managers, giving them a device to handle their compliance workloads.

SC Media sat down with Dam on the Audit+Past 2024 convention and requested him about AI, AuditBoard’s rollout of latest AI instruments and what’s subsequent.  (SC Media’s full convention protection)

SC Media: What are the most important contributing components and tendencies within the compliance and audit world that AI can assist handle, streamline, or resolve?

Anton Dam: AI addresses key challenges in compliance and audit by streamlining advanced regulatory updates, enhancing cybersecurity danger administration, and lowering knowledge silos. It helps automate duties, bridging the danger publicity hole attributable to growing threats and restricted assets. Moreover, AI’s predictive capabilities allow proactive danger identification, permitting companies to reply shortly to rising compliance points.

SC Media: Are you able to describe the important thing motivations behind the latest platform updates at AuditBoard?

Dam: The important thing driver for these updates was to handle the overload of guide duties that compliance groups face each day. These duties are usually not solely time-consuming but additionally repetitive, leaving little room for groups to concentrate on extra strategic initiatives. Our aim is to eradicate 90% of those rote duties, so compliance professionals can direct their efforts in the direction of danger administration and decision-making that really issues. With the brand new AI-driven instruments, we’re automating processes like vendor assessments and framework updates to streamline workflows throughout the board.”

SC Media: How does AI play a task in these new options?

Dam: The brand new capabilities aren’t nearly effectivity; they basically improve total workflows, from knowledge processing to strategic planning. As an example, as an alternative of spending three to 6 months simply in evaluation, compliance groups can press a button and get all that evaluation in draft type. This compresses the timeframe, enabling groups to work extra successfully with the enterprise aspect. The mixing of AI additionally permits us to automate the drafting of danger language and mapping of controls, that are historically very guide processes.”

SC Media: Are you able to present an instance of how AI integration adjustments the workflow for compliance groups?

Dam: Definitely. Let’s take our Automated Vendor Assessments characteristic. This device makes use of historic knowledge to pre-fill questionnaires, considerably lowering the quantity of guide enter wanted from compliance professionals. What beforehand may have taken weeks is now finished in hours. Fairly than simply including ChatGPT-like functionalities on high, we’re integrating AI into core workflows to deliver actual, tangible advantages.

SC Media: What challenges did you encounter when designing these AI options, and the way did you handle them?

Dam: One of many greatest challenges was guaranteeing that the AI operates inside strict safety parameters. Information privateness is a significant concern, so we made certain that buyer knowledge stays segregated and guarded below strong governance frameworks. One other hurdle was ensuring these instruments have been adaptable sufficient to suit totally different industries and compliance frameworks. The answer was to develop modular AI elements that could possibly be fine-tuned to satisfy particular organizational wants with out compromising knowledge safety.”

SC Media: How do you see AI reworking compliance administration sooner or later?

Dam: AI has the potential to utterly reshape compliance administration by making it extra predictive and fewer reactive. We’re already seeing that corporations with mature AI integration can anticipate compliance points earlier than they come up. As an example, by analyzing patterns in earlier audits and assessments, our platform can recommend areas the place groups may encounter points, permitting them to handle potential vulnerabilities proactively. That is only the start; as AI applied sciences evolve, we anticipate them to play a good larger position in danger prediction and strategic planning.

SC Media: What do you suppose units AuditBoard other than its rivals with regards to these AI-driven options?

Dam: Our strategy is totally different as a result of we’re not simply automating particular person duties — we’re upgrading total workflows. We see the worth of integration, the place compliance, danger, and audit groups can all draw from a shared set of information and insights. This holistic strategy signifies that when a compliance problem arises, the whole group can reply swiftly, utilizing a unified system that pulls collectively the insights they want. That’s the place AuditBoard stands out: it’s not nearly remoted effectivity positive factors however about constructing a cohesive, linked ecosystem.

SC Media: Lastly, what’s subsequent for AuditBoard by way of AI and platform enhancements?

Dam: We’re simply scratching the floor with what’s attainable. We’re specializing in additional automating advanced compliance processes and enhancing our AI capabilities to supply much more detailed predictive insights. The aim is to make compliance not only a crucial operate however a strategic benefit for corporations. We’ll proceed to refine our current instruments and develop new options that assist our purchasers handle compliance and danger in a means that’s seamless, proactive, and clever.

All through this interview, Dam paints a transparent image of how AI is reworking the way in which organizations deal with compliance and danger. With the most recent platform updates, AuditBoard goals to automate and streamline processes, serving to groups transfer past guide duties to concentrate on strategic initiatives. As AI continues to evolve, the chances for innovation in compliance administration are huge, and AuditBoard is set to paved the way.