What is GRC?

GRC

When it comes to risk and compliance, the only constant is change. Every organization wants to be successful. To do so, they need to be prepared to manage evolving risks and an increasingly complex regulatory and compliance environment. This is why it is crucial for enterprises to have mechanisms in place that ensure that their legal team can work through new challenges successfully.

Governance, Risk, and Compliance refers to the set of procedures and processes that can help your business achieve its objectives, act with integrity, and address uncertainty. The goal of incorporating GRC is to ensure that your business follows good practices. Even though this isn’t a new concept, it has grown in importance . The reason behind this is the fact that with evolving technology and usage of big data, risks have become more numerous, more damaging, and more complex.

Today, GRC covers a wide range of disciplines, including compliance, internal audit, enterprise risk management, third-party risk management, and more. Even though each one of these disciplines has its own set of priorities, GRC professionals are now focusing on sharing data in order to get better results.

Now, to get a better understanding of GRC, let’s break down each of its elements:

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Governance refers to the way an organization is controlled and directed. It is a crucial aspect of running a business as it sets direction through policy and strategy, evaluates outcomes, and monitors controls and performance.

Governance

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Risk refers to any possible event that might lead to loss or harm and make it difficult for you to achieve your business objectives. Risk management can ensure that you are able to identify, analyze and control the risks capable of derailing your growth.

Risk

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Compliance refers to the set of guidelines that must be followed in your organization. This can include ensuring consistent accounting or following the data privacy standards. Depending on the context, you have to implement controls that can make sure that the compliance requirements are consistently met.

Compliance

What are GRC Drivers?

When it comes to risk and compliance, the only constant is change. Every organization wants to be successful. To do so, they need to be prepared to manage evolving risks and increasingly complex regulatory and compliance environments. This is why it is crucial for enterprises to have mechanisms in place that ensure that their legal team can work through new challenges successfully. Regulation is the biggest GRC driver. When it comes to traditional industries like insurance, banking, telecom, and healthcare, they have always had to follow regulations because of the potential risks their industries face. However, thanks to the digital age, all organizations face potential data management risks. When a company uses data, especially personally identifiable information, it puts the business at risk of being targeted by bad actors. This is why governments and agencies all over the world are paying close attention to data management by businesses. The growing awareness and rise in cyberattacks have put all businesses under the light. If your business collects data as well, you have to be transparent about how you manage information in order to meet respective regulatory requirements.

GRC Responsibilities

Your business will need a GRC Officer responsible for supporting your company’s control environment. To do this, they will have to ensure that all the processes, procedures, and policies have been defined and updated, all controls have been tested, risks have been identified and managed, data has been analyzed to be used for optimization and continuous improvement, and exceptions have been remediated. Apart from this, here are some other responsibilities of a GRC officer:

  • Review the decisions of the governing bodies, performance indicators, and alignment between tactical and strategic plans
  • Oversee the periodic identification of risk exposures and threats, assess and manage risks, monitor the implementation of the mitigating controls, and update the risk records
  • Design, implement and improve compliance programs, manage and improve business operations through external assessments and internal edits, and document quality and compliance review
  • Use acontinuous improvement process to identify processes that require improvement, coordinate implementation and prioritization using different tools and techniques

What is Risk Compliance Management?

Efficient risk compliance management will help ensure that your business procedures are in compliance with the external and internal guidelines, laws, and regulations while reducing operational risks. It ensures that you are able to distance yourself from the devastating risks of noncompliance. You need a process-centered approach that implements and operates a risk and compliance management system in your enterprise. This includes the following:

1. Identify Risk

This includes identifying, analyzing, and documenting the potential risks.

2. Ensure GDPR Compliance

You need a system that can help you comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You can sustain compliance through policy management, impact assessments, and surveys.

3. Manage Incidents

This covers creating comprehensive documents to track incidents right from how they occurred to how they were managed.

4. Establish Internal Controls

It is crucial to map your business processes to regulatory requirements and define all the relevant controls. Make sure that all the results are documented.

5. Conduct Enterprise Audits

This includes planning, managing, and executing your audit. You also have to create a document trail of the same.

6. Confirm New Procedures

You have to make sure that your employees are following the standard operating procedures. You can create a process that confirms that they know the new guidelines, policies, and procedures.

GRC Solutions

Implementing a GRC strategy is easier said than done, which is why businesses are seeking the help of technology solutions. Through these solutions, leadership will be able to monitor GRC across the organization. This includes ensuring that the information technology and business processes are aligned to the organization’s GCR requirements. Any GRC solution offers the following basic capabilities:

Reputational risk and fines associated with data breaches Analytics

Data privacy laws granting new rights to consumers over their personal dataAudit Management

Preserving relevant data for civil or criminal litigationDocument Management

Preserving relevant data for civil or criminal litigationReporting

Preserving relevant data for civil or criminal litigationRisk Management

However, it is important to note that using a tool doesn’t guarantee an effective GRC strategy. Technology doesn’t understand ethics. So, before you consider technology, it is crucial to address governance, risk, and compliance strategy from the perspective of people. What technology can help you with is gathering and managing records that are required for proving that your company is meeting the GRC requirements. This will also ensure that your employees aren’t overburdened and can focus on creating value instead.

When you integrate GRC technology with your business, it unites the roles and processes all across your organization in order to promote seamless collaboration. With it, you will have intelligent insights supporting data-driven decisions. Most importantly, your operations will become more accurate and efficient and will have reduced costs. The GRC solutions will help you with the following:

  • GRC solutions automate your routine workflows, tasks, and follow-ups, which reduce the number of required manual hours. Also, since the data is stored in one place, it eliminates extra work done to gather all the information.
  • Integrated GRC technology has been designed to keep up with the new laws and regulations. Apart from this, it can help you stay ahead of your compliance risk and the impact it has on your organization.
  • When you have all your data in one place, you can use robust tracking capabilities to get an audit trail that documents every modification.
  • With an integrated GRC solution, you will have all your enterprise risks, procedures, and legal and corporate policies in one place that can be easily accessed by the stakeholders. It establishes consistent controls and processes across the enterprise while simultaneously creating a culture that is aware of the risk.
  • GRC solutions help you connect data and initiatives to gain real insights into how your processes affect one another. It will help you understand how these procedures precisely impact your organization. By gaining a better insight into the inner workings of your organization, you will be able to identify and address issues before they turn into major problems.
  • GRC technology will streamline your processes and provide built-in analytics and real-time data. Because of this, it will be easy for you to create reports that help you make data-driven decisions. The GRC dashboard will give you insight into how effective your programs are. The advanced analytics will pull out detailed information from raw data providing you with a whole new level of insight. Through these reports, your risk and compliance teams will be able to provide predictive insights and strategic counsel to leadership.