Internal audit is grappling with the whirlwind of technological change—everything from blockchain to artificial intelligence to digital transformation. What use is internal audit in an age of such revolution? It turns out, a lot.

Equifax became the poster child for cybersecurity disasters when hackers breached its systems in 2017, exposing the Social Security numbers of 146 million people, about half the U.S. population. Not only did its CEO and senior executives lose their jobs, the company paid a settlement with multiple agencies as high as $700 million.

If history is any guide, new audit and accounting requirements such as critical audit matters (CAMs), which went into effect last year, could translate to an increase in fees.

Call it the age of the mega merger. Across industries, some of the biggest companies are joining hands and creating even bigger companies.

Kison Patel, the CEO of software company DealRoom, remembers working for a private equity firm trying to do a deal not long ago. His firm bombarded the target company with requests for information — including repetitive requests for the same information, often in Excel spreadsheets. Eventually, the seller got fed up and walked away.

Is the United States ready for “private techquity”? That’s the name a consulting company gave to the adoption of technology in private equity, including machine learning and data-heavy databases.

Artificial intelligence and big data offer some of the most exciting prospects for medicine. But making good use of the data is another story.

It might seem odd that California passed the nation’s most sweeping data privacy legislation—the state is home to many companies in the tech industry, including heavyweights Facebook and Alphabet’s Google. But it turns out, Facebook and Google aren’t complaining.

In this new episode of Looking Ahead, Jonathan Kanter, partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss in Washington, D.C., explores the notion that data is the new oil.

The potential uses of data are exploding. But so are the regulations to keep that in check.