Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Policies Evolve Over Time
Governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) is a long-standing, yet rapidly evolving, set of frameworks that help businesses align teams, manage risks, and meet regulatory requirements. The right GRC system can help businesses prepare for periods of economic uncertainty, change to the legal landscape, and shorter-term challenges like data breaches or cyberattacks.
Despite the fact that GRC policies span different domains like information security, business strategy, and finance, they all share key characteristics. The best GRC systems aren’t siloed and focus on managing the interdependencies between governance, risk, and compliance programs. This approach can reduce miscommunications and interdepartmental tensions, which can result in ineffective processes or even a lack of coordination between departments.
Effective grc governance risk compliance programs also require strong leadership and accountability. These elements are key to ensuring that policies are clear and transparent, and that employees have the tools they need to work in line with them. Moreover, governance structures should balance the needs of various stakeholders, including shareholders, customers, and employees. This can be accomplished by clearly defining job roles, and by creating a culture that values transparency and accountability.
How Do Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Policies Evolve Over Time?
A good GRC program also includes a process for regularly identifying and assessing potential risks, such as cybersecurity threats or supply chain vulnerabilities. The organization should then develop strategies to mitigate these risks. This could include implementing additional firewalls or improving employee awareness of cybersecurity policies, or it might involve diversifying the company’s supplier base to mitigate the risk of losing access to critical supplies. In addition, good governance programs will ensure that risk mitigation efforts are effective and well-documented.
The final element of a good grc governance risk compliance policy is compliance, which means that the organization and all employees must follow internal and external regulations. This may involve setting up processes to track and report on compliance with privacy regulations, or it might include training staff on how to handle sensitive personal information. Regardless, the goal of compliance is to ensure that all activities are conducted according to legally mandated standards.
In order to remain compliant, organizations need to proactively monitor their internal controls to detect any violations or failures in real-time. This can be a huge undertaking, especially when there are hundreds of critical internal controls to test and report on, and when the regulatory landscape is constantly changing. In fact, 90 percent of compliance leaders expect changing customer and regulatory demands to push the cost of achieving and maintaining compliance up by 30 percent or more over the next five years.
The good news is that there are ways to streamline and automate your GRC practices to minimize costs. For example, Pathlock provides a continuous compliance monitoring solution that automatically tests and reports on your internal controls in real-time. This helps you to avoid the costly, error-prone manual testing and reporting that can often be required by traditional, siloed approaches. Find out how you can make the switch to Pathlock today.
