Cybersecurity and Audit Resilience in Digital Finance: Global Insights and the Pakistani Context

The rapid digitalization of finance has intensified cyber threats, making cybersecurity indispensable to audit resilience. This paper aims to synthesize global insights on cybersecurity and audit resilience in digital finance, analyse specific challenges in Pakistan, and identify actionable strategies for fostering a robust digital financial ecosystem. A comprehensive literature review was conducted across multiple databases (Semantic Scholar, Google Scholar, Dimension, Lens, PubMed). An initial 995 papers were identified, 655 screened, 486 deemed eligible, and 35 most relevant papers were included for in-depth analysis. Eight unique search groups covered foundational concepts, global and local contexts, regulatory frameworks, and critiques of these areas. Global literature affirms cybersecurity frameworks (NIST CSF, ISO/IEC 27001) and AI driven analytics as crucial for enhancing audit resilience. Human factors (digital literacy, training) remain critical vulnerabilities. However, in Pakistan, challenges include partial implementation of regulatory guidelines, pervasive digital literacy gaps, weak governance, and significant third-party dependencies. These factors collectively impede effective cyber-audit resilience, creating a gap between global best practices and local realities. This review uniquely bridges global perspectives on cyber-audit resilience with the specific institutional and socio economic context of Pakistan. It contributes theoretically by using Institutional and Organizational Resilience Theories to explain implementation disparities. This systematic review offers policy-relevant solutions to Pakistani policymakers, regulators, auditors, and financial institutions for enhancing audit integrity and fostering a secure digital financial landscape.