1. Privacy compliance will be a key focus for internal audit

7. Integrated risk management (IRM) will remain a key initiative.
Internal audit functions are traditionally viewed as an organization’s third line of defense, but this siloed perspective sometimes results in limited transparency into other departments' risk management efforts. Integrated risk management (IRM) breaks down these silos and gives audit the opportunity to streamline processes, centralize business assets, and ensure all departments work in unison. IA should be the driving force behind these IRM programs due to their ability to identify risks and controls and recommend actionable solutions. IRM also enforces IA’s opportunity to leverage automation tools and better communicate the standardization and formulation of controls across all risk areas of the business.
To establish a strong IRM program, an effective and well-configured governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) tool can help streamline tasks. Importing existing processes into a centralized GRC repository will allow an organization to easily share the information with the entire business. From there, a baseline of the existing GRC structures can be compared against industry standards to create audit reports that identify risks and vulnerabilities in the organization.
8. Internal audit will leverage data analytics to manage the vast availability of data. 
The amount of data in the world is expected to reach 44 zettabytes by next year, which is more than 40 times the number of stars in the observable universe. But with businesses handling more data than ever before, the potential risks are even higher. Data analytics has significantly changed the field of internal auditing, transforming manual processes into automated ones, improving the accuracy of audit results, providing valuable insights to management, and increasing the ability to identify and address risks across the enterprise. 
Over the next year, more internal audit departments will integrate data analytics as a core capability across all areas of the business, bringing a wide variety of benefits following its adoption:

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