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Focal Point Academy expands its Columbia, Md., campus with additional space, state-of-the-art technologies, and improved hospitality options.

Today’s businesses must be constantly evolving to meet changing business models, new regulatory requirements, technology innovations, and an increase in cyberattacks. To help businesses meet these new challenges, internal audit (IA) functions must evolve as well. While internal audit is not the sole owner of risk within an organization, it provides unbiased insight into an organization’s internal controls, corporate governance, and business processes. IA educates board members and executives on the business risks and their impact, helping detect and address issues before they are identified by external audit. As data and technology permeate every aspect of the modern organization, IA departments can no longer work alone. IA teams must expand their skillsets and work alongside other departments to more effectively reduce risk, improve controls, and identify inefficiencies within the organization. While 2019 has already brought significant changes to the audit industry, 2020 provides the opportunity for even more. Here are the top 10 trends we expect to see for the internal audit world in 2020:

It’s prediction season! In 2019, we discussed cyber workforce development with hundreds of security leaders, including many CISOs from Fortune 500 companies in the technology, retail, financial services, and healthcare space, as well as top cybersecurity workforce experts in the U.S. government and military. As a result, we have the opportunity to place our fingers directly on the pulse of the top trends shaping the cybersecurity workforce. Some of these are a steady incline of 2019 trends, while others – like skills assessments and federal government hiring increases – are unique to 2020. Let’s dive in.

Focal Point today announced the addition of Gary McIntyre as a Managing Director of Cyber Defense services. McIntyre is one of the industry's foremost experts in the development of Security Operations Centers (SOC).

Focal Point continues the expansion of its consulting services, today announcing the addition of Chris Jurs as Vice President of Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Services.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) may have pushed data privacy into the spotlight in 2017 and 2018, but in 2019, privacy became a global superstar. Privacy has become a major debate in the U.S. as companies rushed to comply with the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), and more states introduce their own data privacy-focused laws. Privacy has also been significant concern for those anticipating Brexit in the U.K. Significant penalties for GDPR compliance violations were issued to some of the biggest tech companies in the world, prompting many organizations to boost their compliance efforts. New data privacy frameworks were introduced from widely respected industry groups like NIST and ISO. So, what can we expect for the world of privacy in 2020? More change, but also more standardization. As state and national governments recognize the need for data protection, more regulations will be issued, but in order to keep up, organizations will seek out ways to unify these various laws and standards. Over the past year, our data privacy team has helped global organizations build cutting-edge, compliant privacy programs. Through these opportunities, we have identified nine key trends we believe will define the world of privacy in 2020.

When the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) officially delayed the effective date for the ASC 842 lease accounting standard until January 2021, many private companies breathed a sigh of relief. After having to adopt the new revenue standard ASC 606 last year, implementing another major accounting standard immediately after would have been incredibly demanding for accounting teams. However, despite the one-year extension, private companies should not wait until the end of 2020 to start implementation work for ASC 842. If any lesson can be learned from public entities, who were required to implement ASC 842 by 2019, it’s that implementation often takes longer than expected. Below are five hurdles that may slow down your implementation timeline.

Updated: December 10, 2019 In 2019, businesses invested even more in technology, new privacy regulations were passed, and cyber threats became more sophisticated. To meet the growing demands of today’s businesses, (ISC)2 estimates that the U.S. cybersecurity workforce would need to increase by 62%. With cybersecurity jobs in such high demand and skilled professionals in low supply, many companies have whittled their cyber talent wishlist down to a few key positions. Which positions will top the list in 2020? Based on data from the CyberSeek.org project backed by NICE, we have a pretty good idea. The top five positions, described below, can help students understand the opportunities that are available to them, experienced professionals find opportunities for career transitions (like IT to cyber), and cybersecurity and business leaders understand the hiring landscape as they build their cyber workforce development programs. We’ve mapped these high-level job categories to specific job roles within the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework, for those interested in detailed readouts of the KSAs (knowledge, skills, abilities) required of each position.

Does your technology know you better than some of your closest friends? Much of the technology you rely on tracks your search history, analyzes your social media posts and comments, monitors your purchases, and studies every aspect of your digital life without you even knowing. It feels like an episode of Black Mirror, but really this is just modern, digital, targeted advertising - a technique used to present targeted ads to consumers by collecting information about their browsing behavior. But the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) now significantly restricts how businesses can use this technology to collect and manage personal information.