A new open letter has been sent to Rt Hon Jonathan Reynolds MP, secretary of state for business and trade, stressing the urgent need for audit reform legislation to boost digital resilience in the UK.

The letter underlines stakeholder support for the Audit Reform and Corporate Governance Bill promised in the King’s Speech last year, which has yet to be published.

ISACA, the leading global professional association helping individuals and organisations in their pursuit of digital trust, and the Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors (Chartered IIA) have led the campaign.

Other signatories include CEOs from Airmic; CREST; Sheffield University’s Audit Reform Lab; the Chartered Governance Institute, UK & Ireland; IASME Consortium; CompTIA; The National Preparedness Commission; Dr Vladlena Benson MBE, professor and director of the Aston Centre for Cyber Security Innovation, and more.

ISACA, the Chartered IIA, and signatories are calling for recommendations made by Sir John Kingman in 2018, and Sir Donald Brydon in 2019, to be rapidly implemented—including legislating to give the UK’s audit regulator, the Financial Reporting Council, enhanced powers.

The letter also calls for the government to enact wider reforms, ensuring that the UK’s largest companies are reporting on their resilience against digital as well as financial risks.

The letter stresses that the government is already taking positive steps in the right direction with improving digital resilience. However, it argues that the UK must go further and faster.

The US, EU, and Asia are already advancing similar audit reforms, and unless the UK government acts, “we risk falling behind on investment and digital governance, which has wide ranging economic ramifications.”

The letter comes as bad actors increasingly use emerging tech to identify vulnerabilities in systems and orchestrate effective attacks.

Upcoming research due to be released later this month from ISACA finds that over two-thirds of European IT professionals are worried that quantum computing could break today’s internet encryption before browsers and websites can fully implement new post-quantum cryptography algorithms approved by NIST.

Chris Dimitriadis, chief global strategy officer at ISACA, said: “Our letter to government stresses that legislation and reform is long overdue.

“Failure to prioritise audit reforms will have a catastrophic impact on digital resilience leaving our vital infrastructure and businesses vulnerable to regular technological disruptions, including by malicious attacks and threats.

“This will have major implications for the economy, as well as on privacy and data protection.

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“But alongside legislation, we must prioritise skills. The digital sectors including cyber, audit and privacy are plagued by skills gaps and understaffing.

“In fact, ISACA’s latest State of Cyber study finds that 40% of cyber and IT professionals feel that their job has become more stressful today than it was 5 years ago due to their teams being understaffed.

“This is having a real impact on businesses’ ability to protect themselves.”