Why Should You Augment Your GRC Program?
Organisations originally created governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) programs in response to strict regulations and operational risks. However, this led to GRC operating in silos, with legal, finance and IT all operating independently. This approach often leads to a disconnect between organisational objectives and risk appetite and ultimately failed to deliver business value.
Through our experience dealing with a variety of customers, we have found that organisations that are able to manage GRC as an integrated program are more secure and have improved business performance. This starts by breaking down the silos between governance, strategy, risk management and compliance. Then, by building an integrated program, people from diverse backgrounds and professions can start to have a unified view of risk management. This enables them to be more effective, more efficient, and more prepared to address modern challenges. By augmenting their GRC programs, they have been able to uplift their security posture, increase ROI, and gain a competitive advantage.
How Augmenting Your GRC Program Drives Business Objectives
Today’s business environment requires GRC to do more than protect the business. It should also drive measurable outcomes and be a direct enabler of business performance. A well-defined, integrated GRC program can deliver positive results across a range of business functions and achieve three important business objectives:
1. Risk Reduction
By analysing organisational risk in the context of governance and compliance and maintaining a comprehensive overview of how new risks interact, your business can achieve greater efficiencies. With greater awareness, you will be able to quickly prioritise and address impactful risks so they can be within risk appetite. Not only will this result in improved compliance, but it will reduce operational costs, the cost of funding and insurance, and costs associated with regulatory breaches.
2. Improve Efficiencies
A clear benefit of an integrated strategy is the joined-up approach to risk management. It removes potential duplication of work and effort that occurs with siloed teams and reduces the overall time spent for internal control tasks and risk management. From an operational perspective, a combined GRC strategy lends itself to process automation and increases accuracy. Audits can be completed in a very small amount of time, and future improvements can be quickly evaluated and prioritised against strategic objectives. Additionally, by using data from GRC, companies can facilitate continuous improvement.
3. Strengthen Strategic Decision-Making
By breaking down existing silos, managers can uncover previously hidden relationships between departments and coordinate their efforts to achieve business objectives. On the board-level, an augmented GRC program can enable more informed, data-driven decisions and ensure that business strategy is aligned with the best interests of the organisation. An example of this is having the ability to perform root cause analysis. By quickly identifying an issue through accurate modelling, a business can implement controls to improve security and mitigate future incidents. Overall, this leads to a change in company culture and sense of ownership when it comes to risk management. Every employee has the power to drive greater efficiencies while understanding the overall business context of any decision.
How to Augment Your GRC Program
GRC has evolved to be much more than risk management in isolation. Today, GRC must link organisational objectives and risk appetite by supporting decision making throughout the organisation. This involves delivering critical insights to management to strengthen strategic decision making and reduce risks.
By working with a security partner to develop an integrated approach to GRC, you can improve operational efficiency, reduce costs and drive better business outcomes.
At InfoTrust, we have augmented GRC programs for many organisations across multiple industries. If you’d like to find out how your business can benefit from our services, contact us today.
This ends our 3-part series on GRC. We hope you have a better understanding of GRC, the benefits of selecting a good security partner, and augmenting your GRC program.
see our
Related resources
Mimecast recently released its State of Email Security Report for 2021. The fifth edition of its annual report used interviews with over twelve hundred of information technology and cybersecurity professionals across the globe to gather vital cybersecurity insights. The report offers an insight into the latest email threats along with advice on how to build cyber resilience and mitigate the risks of email-borne attacks.
Cyber attacks and data breaches have been commonplace in the news headlines for some time now. Although a warning from the media is certainly helpful, there is so much more that can be done when it comes to threat intelligence sharing. Threat intelligence sharing is an important part of the global cybersecurity community effort to tackle cybercrime and should form a part of every organisation’s cybersecurity strategy. Sharing cyber threat intelligence enables organisations to make informed decisions about their cybersecurity, building more effective and robust cyber defences.
One of my favourite annual reports to read is the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. It’s packed full of insights about the threat landscape and security leaders, in my opinion, should read this report to get a pulse on what’s happening in cyber-scape.
After all, as cyber leaders, we are here to stop breaches – so the insights gained from real cyber incidents and breaches is gold in learning how to tighten up our defences.
All businesses, large and small, are under increasing pressure to demonstrate that they are managing the risk of cyberattacks. This means having the right processes and controls in place to identify risks and vulnerabilities, protect information, as well as detect, respond, and recover in the event of cybersecurity incidents. As such, many businesses are turning to certification authorities and security frameworks to demonstrate privacy and security best practice and achieve compliance with regulatory bodies. System and Organisation Controls (SOC 2) is one such compliance framework that can help organisations to create a structured approach to cybersecurity.
Frost & Sullivan has recently released its 2021 Frost Radar: Email Security report, where its findings provide a benchmarking framework to help businesses protect their email from cyber threats.
As we operate in an increasingly digital world, every business collect, store, and share more and more data. And, amongst that data is personal information. With the OAIC marking this year’s Privacy Awareness Week (PAW) from Monday 3 May to Sunday 9 May 2021, it’s time for us all to review how we protect our customers’ personal information.
We're Here To Help