When I was a Chief Audit Executive, I was once asked to meet with our General Counsel and CIO to discuss a recent cybersecurity audit project. And during this meeting, I was asked to summarize the control environment over my company’s intellectual property. 

To do so, we needed to understand our organization’s key data—what it was, who had access to it, where it was located, and what internal controls protected it. But rather than testing the controls immediately, my leadership team wanted our team to identify who in the organization was responsible for ensuring these controls worked as intended. Or, who ensured the controls were working.

Little did I know at the time, but this was my first work at creating an assurance map.

The assurance provided by this project differed from a typical audit. Instead of declaring "everything is great" or "here's what's not working," our goal was to verify that basic control measures were functioning and identify who was responsible for them.

As a Chief Audit Executive, I valued this work because it provided a higher level of assurance across a broader range of organizational activities—all within the same timeframe as a standard audit project.

So today, I'd like to share perspectives on what Assurance Mapping is, why organizations should consider it, and how Internal Audit teams can begin building their own organization's assurance maps.

Unlocking the Power of Assurance Mapping

As organizations grow in size and complexity, they develop an intricate web of assurance activities. These activities—conducted by various departments, external partners, and consultants—all help mitigate the organization's most pressing risks.

Assurance mapping helps Internal Audit ensure their organization's approach to governance, risk management, and control is comprehensive and efficient. It also enables them to expand and increase the assurance they provide by identifying opportunities to coordinate with and rely on other providers' work.

What Is Assurance Mapping?

An assurance map visually represents an organization's risk and control activities, highlighting any gaps or overlaps in risk coverage. 

It displays key processes, risks, controls, and parties involved helping internal auditors assess the level of assurance coverage for major organizational risks. Most organizations begin assurance mapping by simply documenting which groups are responsible for protecting assets or managing specific risks.

Why Assurance Mapping Matters

According to a recent AuditBoard poll, nearly half of internal audit teams lack access to assurance maps, while another 25% work with outdated maps from other departments. This gap in assurance mapping isn't just an administrative issue—it's a strategic vulnerability that leads to wasted resources, duplicated efforts, and unaddressed risks.

By systematically analyzing and documenting assurance activities across an organization, internal auditors create value for both themselves and their stakeholders. Here are the key strategic advantages that assurance mapping provides:

Improved Risk Coverage

To start, by identifying areas where risk coverage is insufficient or redundant, Internal Audit is creating opportunities to improve their organization’s approach to risk management. Assurance maps highlight gaps and redundancies, ensuring no critical risk is overlooked.

Cross-Departmental Collaboration

Understanding other assurance providers' roles enables better coordination between internal and external teams across the organization. This coordination strengthens partnerships between internal audit, risk management, compliance, information security, and external assurance providers.

Enhanced Reporting

Closer collaboration with other assurance providers enables Internal Audit to deliver more comprehensive risk and control reporting to senior management, the audit committee, and other key stakeholders.

Comprehensive assurance maps strengthen communication with the board by presenting a cohesive view of the organization’s risk management efforts.

Resource Optimization

Perhaps the greatest benefit of an assurance map is that it allows Internal Audit to optimize resources through a systematic process of relying on other assurance providers' work. When these providers meet your team's standards, there's simply no need to duplicate their efforts.

When internal auditors leverage the validated work of other assurance providers, they can redirect their efforts toward additional strategic risks.

Building an Effective Assurance Map

Creating an assurance map is straightforward but it does require effort and a strategic approach. The process starts by focusing on your organization's top five to ten enterprise risks, then grows systematically as it matures. Here are the key steps to building a robust assurance map:

1. Identify Top Risks

Begin with the risks that matter most to your organization. These key risks typically come from three main sources: your enterprise risk management framework, audit firm research, or peer network discussions. Common examples include cybersecurity threats, talent retention, regulatory compliance, emerging risks, and GTM initiatives. Keep in mind that each of these broad categories contains more specific underlying risks.

If your organization already has an enterprise risk assessment or team in place, it makes sense to leverage their existing work.

2. Map Known Assurance Activities

For each identified risk, map out the activities performed by various assurance providers. Identify the control activities and assurance work being conducted, along with the parties responsible for reviewing controls and performing assurance activities. This process is similar to the earlier example of mapping my previous company's key data control environment.

3. Validate Assurance Providers

To gain a comprehensive understanding of assurance activities, you can use several approaches:

• During scheduled audit projects, survey your audit clients to identify additional assurance providers they've engaged. This approach is particularly effective for discovering external assurance providers.
• During risk assessment interviews with senior management, discuss with key executives which assurance providers they have engaged.
• Periodically, your team can analyze relevant general ledger accounts to track organizational spending on consultants and other assurance providers.

4. Expand Coverage Over Time

Once you have a validated assurance map for your initial risks, expand the mapping process to cover additional enterprise risks. As your map becomes more comprehensive, internal auditors will have more opportunities to verify assurance activities performed by other groups and reallocate their resources to strategic audits or newer initiatives their companies need.

Conclusion

Given increasing business complexity and Internal Audit's limited resources, assurance mapping should be a key priority for Internal Audit teams in 2025.

By embracing assurance mapping, internal auditors can strengthen their organization's risk management capabilities and establish themselves as strategic partners in achieving organizational goals. And further help enable positive change in their organization.