Implementing an effective governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) framework has become essential for businesses seeking to manage risk and assure regulatory compliance.
That’s easier said than done, unfortunately. Given today’s challenging regulatory and security environments, organizations need robust GRC capabilities to align governance, risk, and compliance activities. The key is finding the right GRC platform to meet your specific GRC needs. This allows for streamlined decision-making, a risk-aware culture, and an active approach to governance and compliance.
By taking a holistic approach to integrating governance, risk management, and compliance processes, GRC solutions provide actionable insights for risk mitigation and maintaining compliance. So how, exactly, can compliance officers do that?
What Does GRC Software Do?
GRC software provides the tools to implement a GRC framework. The software takes a risk-based approach to aligning your company’s governance, risk management, and compliance activities, by using configurable workflows and automation.
The right GRC tool allows an organization to manage enterprise risks efficiently and assures real-time compliance with various regulatory compliance obligations, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation or the PCI DSS standard to protect payment card data. All of this happens thanks to integrated risk management software, audit management, and compliance management apps and modules.
Integrating governance, risk assessment, incident management, policy management, and other capabilities into a cohesive system allows for streamlined decision-making, a risk-aware culture, and an active approach to regulatory compliance.
Important features such as customizable dashboards, predictive metrics, reporting tools, and easy onboarding all provide transparency for stakeholders and simplify GRC processes across the business.
Which Industries Benefit Most From GRC Solutions?
While configurable, cloud-based GRC solutions are valuable across sectors, they are especially beneficial for highly regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, IT, and manufacturing.
These industries face stringent rules to protect healthcare data (HIPAA), credit card data (PCI DSS), financial data (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act), and other compliance obligations. Such sectors are also often at high risk for data breaches, cyber incidents, and third-party vulnerabilities.
GRC tools help these industries to manage enterprise risks, maintain business continuity, enhance cybersecurity, and uphold information security. The automation and integration capabilities break down silos to give stakeholders visibility across risk management processes.
With user-friendly interfaces and pre-built templates aligned to standard regulations, GRC software solutions centralize control management, IT governance, and sustainability initiatives onto a single, cloud-based management platform. This helps regulated industries comply cost-effectively with escalating state, federal, and international compliance requirements while managing operational, IT, and other organizational risks.
Key Features to Look for in a GRC Platform
When evaluating GRC solutions, pay close attention to features such as risk assessment capabilities, compliance management, audit trail, policy management, and customizable dashboards. Leading cloud-based platforms offer out-of-the-box integration with standard business systems and flexible workflows to map GRC processes.
An ideal cloud-based GRC tool should provide a holistic, real-time view of the organization’s risk landscape across IT, operations, finance, legal, third parties, and more. Configurable risk models and automated assessments enable data-driven insights to prioritize enterprise risks, cyber security vulnerabilities, vendor issues, and compliance gaps.
Robust but intuitive dashboards centralize reporting for stakeholders to demonstrate operational resilience, cyber readiness, and compliance across security, privacy, and enterprise risk management (ERM) programs. This provides actionable visibility, so that users can meet the requirements of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), SOC2, ISO, and other obligations, so you can manage risk and reduce project costs.
Top 5 GRC Tools of 2024
ZenGRC by RiskOptics
ZenGRC is an industry-leading integrated risk management platform. It stands out for its robust functionality, ease of use, and powerful reporting. ZenGRC offers unmatched capabilities for connecting GRC processes enterprise-wide.
ServiceNow Risk Management
ServiceNow provides flexible workflows and control management solutions for operational risk and resiliency. It integrates risk assessment, compliance tasks, audits, and incident response in a single platform.
RSA Archer Suite
RSA Archer helps organizations manage multiple GRC programs with out-of-the-box solutions for risk management, policy management, audits, continuity planning, and more. It provides strong business process mapping and automation.
LogicGate Platform
LogicGate centralizes GRC processes using configurable workflow automation. It offers user-friendly risk assessment and scoring tools for better visibility into vendors, projects, and ERM.
SAI360
SAI360 takes an audit-centric approach to connecting GRC activities. Strong audit management and issue tracking provides actionable insights across risk, compliance, and policy management.
ZenGRC Helps Businesses Maintain Compliance All Year Round
ZenGRC’s compliance automation module, ROAR, and leading-edge functionality help organizations maintain compliance all year round. Now offered as part of the ZenGRC platform, ROAR makes integrating compliance processes into a unified GRC framework easy.
With advanced workflows and control testing, the ROAR module automates evidence collection, compliance task scheduling, and exception management. Real-time dashboards provide stakeholders visibility into compliance coverage, while email reminders keep activities on track with regulatory requirements.
Schedule a demo today to learn how ZenGRC’s ROAR module can optimize your compliance program efforts through automation.