Securities and Exchange Commission Chief of Staff Andrew “Buddy” Donahue said Wednesday compliance officers in the future will have tougher and more holistic responsibilities.

In speaking to the National Society of Compliance Professionals annual conference in Washington, D.C., Donahue said a chief compliance officer will have to be a jack-of-all-trades with technology, operations, risk, market watching, auditing and global regulatory skills.

“Understand and monitor technology will become a considerable challenge, occupying a growing share of time and attention for CCOs,” said Donahue.

At the time, the top SEC executive warned that as companies rely more on technology to prevent and detect rule breaking there is a danger businesses could be abdicating compliance to computers.

Technology, too, could become part of the compliance problem as well as a solution as the need to update older computer systems and integrate them with newer ones add to the financial burdens of an area that executives frequently look down upon as a cost center.

He said executives need to view a compliance department as a partner and not a scapegoat.