Artificial intelligence is closing the book on manual auditing. But among the hype, what indicates substance in the emergent field of AI-powered assurance?

At Audit & Beyond 2025, the answer started with “execution.” Recent moves from AuditBoard Inc. itself underline that stance – including agreeing to acquire AI governance startup FairNow. In short, the company is pushing AI in the places where it best removes toil and tightens controls. Their push spans governance, risk and compliance, or GRC, turning fragmented workflows into a connected control layer while keeping humans in the loop.

TheCUBE’s Rebecca Knight and Rob Strechay discuss AI governance and audit transformation.

“The thing that stood out to me with them this morning was three pillars,” he said. “AI-powered assurance, AI-powered GRC ecosystem — or governance, regulation and compliance — and then AI-powered insights,” Rob Strechay, managing director and principal analyst of theCUBE Research, said while reflecting on the keynote. “They were very big on not AI, not replacing people, but ‘How do you get all of the toil out of doing that?’”

Strechay and theCUBE host Rebecca Knight delivered a keynote analysis at Audit & Beyond, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed AuditBoard’s recent announcements, the state of the GRC ecosystem how AI-powered assurance is rewriting the manual audit. (* Disclosure below.)

Here’s the complete video of the keynote analysis from Rob Strechay and Rebecca Knight:

Insight #1: For successful AI-powered assurance, keep the human in the loop.

AuditBoard consistently frames connected risk as a way to speed work without losing discipline. The point is simple: augmentation, not replacement, of human actors, according to Raul Villar Jr. (pictured), chief executive officer of AuditBoard.

AuditBoard’s Raul Villar Jr. talks with theCUBE about humans in the loop remaining crucial for the future of the audit.

“AI really helps in a couple different areas. It helps improve efficiency and reduce mundane tasks across our internal workforce. Just like we’re trying to do for our auditors and our [chief information security officers] and our chief risk officers, we’re trying to get rid of the mundane tasks no one wants to do through automation and through AI,” Villar told theCUBE. “We look at it as, ‘Hey, we’re not looking to replace people with AI. We’re looking to enhance people with AI.’”

Villar’s throughline is consistency: AI only matters when it sharpens outcomes customers can feel and trust. Tying “connected risk” to delivery discipline means urging teams to resist novelty for novelty’s sake and double down on what differentiates their service. In other words, stay focused on the customer promise and use AI to make it better, according to Villar.

“I’d say stay committed, focus on the things that matter, which are really tied to your value proposition to your customers,” he said. “If you’re leveraging AI to make that better, you’re going to see the value; you’re going to see the rewards.”

Here’s the complete video interview with Raul Villar Jr.:

Insight #2: Make AI enterprise-grade with proper alignment and oversight.

The CISO seat has moved up a weight class. AuditBoard’s security push shows how risk leaders win only when they run in lockstep with the business. Alignment between CISOs and the top brass will always give the enterprise a competitive edge, according to Rich Marcus, chief information security officer of AuditBoard.

AuditBoard’s Rich Marcus talks with theCUBE about AI threats and the new CISO remit.

“More and more, they’re being called upon to be strategic business partners and to advise and consult the leadership on where do we go as a company to navigate around some of these tricky risks and threats,” he said while speaking with theCUBE. “To be an effective CISO today, you have to be really aligned with your leadership team; understand where the business is going.”

As the CISO remit stretches from control owner to business strategist, the defense model has to scale with it. Manual checks can’t keep pace with machine-speed phishing, credential theft and deepfake-driven fraud. The counterweight is AI-powered assurance paired with forward-thinking solutions.

“Anecdotally, we’ve seen a 400% increase in social engineering threats at AuditBoard. Part of that is because it’s just becoming more prolific in the world. AI is making it easier to launch these types of attacks,” he said. “I think 70-to-80% of the attacks that we see appear to be some form of credential-compromise attack. Knowing that that’s what they’re after, we finally decided: Let’s just get rid of them. Let’s just not have the credentials and we don’t have to worry about it.”

CISOs needing to play smart and in tandem with the board comes as audit veterans say AI-powered assurance dies without clear risk framing and real oversight. Momentum only sustains itself when boards set clear expectations, fund the work and hold leaders accountable to risk appetite. AuditBoard may be an early leader, but success hinges on full, all-in board commitment and oversight, according to Richard Chambers, senior internal audit advisor at AuditBoard.

“[AuditBoard is] going to be a pioneer in this,” he told theCUBE. “But then you have to understand, what are its capabilities and what are the risks? Because for all the opportunities that AI promises, I think right now, it’s the risks that are the dark clouds that keep a lot of companies from jumping in with both feet … There has to be a commitment to it. There has to be board oversight. The board has to be all in.”

Here’s the complete video interview with Richard Chambers:

Insight #3: Teams must automate the mundane to elevate the strategic.

Enterprises must understand that AI’s growth won’t wait around for hiring plans. At Snowflake Inc., the audit team leans on automation to keep pace and shift resources toward higher-value assurance. The move is pragmatic: use data to do more with the same hands, according to Amrita Kapoor, head of internal audit at Snowflake.

Snowflake’s Amrita Kapoor talks with theCUBE about scaling the audit strategically.

“We obviously cannot keep pace with this growth by simply adding headcount,” Kapoor said during the event. “We have to look for more automated and data-driven techniques to drive efficiencies in our world.”

AuditBoard’s product story matches that perspective. By giving hires “smart tasks” it clears the drudge work and pushes expertise upstream, according to Happy Wang, chief product and technology officer of AuditBoard. The idea is to reclaim time for analysis and judgment rather than clicks and checklists. It also keeps people in the loop, with AI handling toil while humans make the calls.

“Our goal is really to use AI technology to help to get rid of the work no one wants to do and really level them up,” Wang explained to theCUBE. “That’s called empowerment. Everyone wants to see themselves as strategic … The way you elevate them is to give them a smart task and automate all the manual work.”

But the guardrails matter more than ever when AI-powered assurance speeds workflows up. AuditBoard itself keeps approvals in line so changes don’t hit systems without a human check, according to Anton Dam, vice president of engineering for data, AI and machine learning at AuditBoard. That means explicit human-in-the-loop approvals, documented audit trails and segregation of duties so recommendations, records and actions remain governed — not just accelerated — safely.

“Every single thing that happens — every action, every record, every recommendation — before it gets entered into the system of record either gets approved by a human or through a process,” Dam said. “Nothing happens without the user.”

Here’s the complete video interview with Happy Wang and Anton Dam:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of Audit & Beyond, here’s our complete video playlist:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Audit & Beyond event. Neither AuditBoard, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE