Running a successful business involves many different factors and processes that must be handled correctly. Therefore, issues like mishandled documentation, mistakes in following policies, and security breaches could wreak havoc on the inner workings of an organization. A big enough problem could even lead to a business’s downfall.
To protect against these issues, business leaders use specialized GRC processes and tools. GRC refers to governance, risk, and compliance, and is a strategic approach that organizations take to manage their essential documentation and processes for optimal performance. Read on to learn more about the importance of GRC, how GRC software systems help businesses, and the best practices for GRC in your business.
The Importance of GRC
Governance, risk, and compliance are essential to upkeep, as they can protect organizations from several critical risk factors. GRC tools simplify business management processes through automated solutions and streamlined workflows. These software systems run different actions that enhance the productivity and protection of businesses by addressing vulnerabilities, managing policy procedures, and ensuring organizational compliance.
GRC strategies and tools can be used by organizations of all sizes, private or public.
GRC strategies and tools can be used by organizations of all sizes, private or public. By managing governance, risk, and compliance factors, any business can be more prepared for challenges that could impede its success and growth.
How GRC Tools Can Help
GRC tools and software solutions are designed to help organizations with three main tasks:
Ensuring that business rules and practices are correctly followed
Protecting the organization from threats and vulnerabilities
Maintaining legal and ethical compliance with organizational policies and procedures
Essentially, GRC tools perform actions to help optimize the business for success. There are many ways that organizations can utilize the GRC strategy in their workplaces, many of which can be achieved with the help of GRC solutions.
GRC Best Practices for Organizations
GRC tools can provide many valuable benefits to organizations through their automation and streamlined capabilities. Here are a few important concepts to consider when deciding on a GRC strategy for your organization.
Security Features
An essential part of any effective governance, risk, and compliance strategy is risk management. GRC tools help with this, as they manage an organization’s safety by evaluating the network for IT risks. This process usually involves capabilities like running tests and scans for potential vulnerabilities within an organization.
Often GRC tools will perform risk scoring, where they assign scores based on the measured level of risk.
Often GRC tools will perform risk scoring, where they provide a report on risk posture and assign scores based on the measured level of risk. These reports can be helpful to management and IT staff, as they can more easily identify weak spots and factors that could cause security issues and can prevent them ahead of time. Software may also contain functions to remedy security risks and follow up on incidents.
Additionally, some GRC software will protect organizations from third-party risk factors by performing evaluations or taking measures to ensure endpoint protection. Although IT security software solutions exist independently, implementing a GRC tool can provide these features to your business as part of a unified software package.
Document Organization Features
GRC tools perform actions that assist with document organization and facilitate easy resource access. To stay on top of essential data and information, your organization could likely benefit from one of these solutions.
Software with preconfigured or custom integration features can allow you to access your organization’s data from different systems and use it in your GRC software. Third-party integration with GRC products can also make it easy to locate and access these important documents, spreadsheets, reports, and pieces of information easily in one place through system tools like dashboards.
These document organization features can be especially helpful for HR and administrative processes, as the ability to access this information from a single dashboard could help them make more informed decisions.
Operational Management Features
Streamlined operational management processes mean your organization is more protected against potential mistakes. Automated management workflows help to simplify the jobs of your staff and save them time by performing repetitive processes for them. Automation can also remove the chance of human error and help to improve consistency when duplicating these actions.
Streamlined operational management processes mean your organization is more protected against potential mistakes.
GRC software also has solutions to ensure correctness in business processes. Policy management is a critical feature of any suitable GRC tool. Managing compliance initiatives with robust policies means your organization is more protected from accidental deviations in procedures. Audit management features are helpful as well, as they support internal auditors by performing tasks that can help companies detect suspicious activity and maintain data accuracy.
When choosing a GRC tool, it is best to pick one that is flexible and scalable. Your software should be able to continue supporting you throughout your business’s growth and appropriately adapt to changes in regulations, policies, and procedures.