Why a GRC Software Solution Is Vital For Your Business

#Article
#Machine Learning
#Software Development
#FinTech
#HealthTech
March 26, 2020 12 min read

The recent data breach report shows, that over 500 organizations around the globe experienced a cyber attack during 2019. That’s why businesses now demand an urgent and effective solution to mitigate such costly risks like data breaches.

cost of data breach

The key takeaways from the Cost of a Data Breach survey include:

  • For the last decade, the medical sector paid the highest price for data breach—near US$6.5 million, which is 60% more than other industries.
  • Cybercriminals steal more than 50% of data, and such breach costs US$1 million more than random data violations.
  • The price of a one million data violation may charge organizations of around US$42 million, while for loss of 50 million data records, they would pay US$388 million.
  • Businesses with incident management experts were able to lower these enormous expenses to US$1.23 million.
  • The current price of cybercrime associated with data in the United States is US$8.19 million, twice more of the global rate.

GRC software can help organizations to dramatically minimize the impact of the above mentioned cyber crimes.

 

The Definition of GRC Software

A term GRC stands for governance, risk, and compliance procedures that are normally taken by a specific organization in order to predict various risks, identify the possible issues and avert them before they could disrupt the company’s well-being.

Companies realize the effectiveness of GRC solutions and started a massive integration. That’s why the use of GRC platforms is on the rise with global spendings US$ 28.2 billion in 2019. The figure is projected to hit over US$ 47 billion in the next four years.

Although many explanations exist, we picked the one proposed by Deloitte experts who define GRC software as

 

"an all-in-one approach for handling company-wide governance, risk and compliance activities enabling an organization to act accordingly with its risk exposure, in-house procedures and external regulations by arranging strategy, processes, technology and employees, which leads to improved efficiency"

How GRC Software Works

The users of the GRC software are usually specifically assigned people, such as compliance officers, in-house and third-party auditors, risk supervisors, and other responsible employees.

The standard functions of a GRC solution include the following:

  • Audit administration refers to the automation of internal auditing, optimizing resources and efficiency, and getting rid of repetitive audit findings.
  • Risk supervision means anticipating possible risks, examining, and taking precautionary measures to their minimization.
  • Internal policy management seeks vulnerable spots inside the company, such as data breaches or money thefts by personnel.
  • Information security control aims to keep the organization’s hypersensitive data safe, reduce risk, and warrant business well-being by suppressing the adverse effects of a security disruption.
  • Compliance management is a set of actions aimed to ensure the organization stays in compliance with state regulations.

Ideally, a GRC solution is a blend of all these procedures, ensuring the effective cooperation of accountable people. But you can start from the smallest by integrating these functionalities one by one.

risk activities

It is tough to keep GRC policies in balance. That’s why many companies face challenges while striving to handle all the associated issues. The image above depicts that more than 90% of executives worldwide are not satisfied with their local risk management and seek to upgrade their risk mitigation techniques.

Current Challenges in GRC Software

The farther, the more regulations appear. For example, when the breaking through GDPR appeared, it didn’t replace the Data Protection Directive. Now organizations have to comply with both. While businesses endeavor to establish a seamless functioning of their GRC policies, we picked the most common challenges of GRC software adopters.

prevalent pitfalls in building robust GRC software

Challenge #1: Keeping up with cumulative regulations

The compliance officers report that never-ending compliance rules were their biggest hurdle to overcome in 2018.

Due to the lack of resources and impending compliance deadlines, companies are often stuck in meeting new regulations. An adequate GRC strategy requires a robust and consistent system to keep an eye on regulatory evolution and respond immediately to any emerging compliance issues.

Solution: Getting automated notifications to stay updated

A GRC solution typically has automatic notifications for the appearance of a new law, compliance deadlines, regulatory updates, and more. This way, a company can always be up to date with the latest regulatory requirements.

Challenge #2: Decentralized structure causes data inconsistency and breaches

Nowadays, many organizations have decentralized management, meaning that multiple departments stick to their own compliance requirements, have specific rules and workflows, work with different vendors. In such a way, it becomes impossible to keep confidential information in a single place, avoid data duplications and inconsistency.

This affects management and hinders the distribution of information between departments and may even hide possible hazards. Data breaches show that poor forecasting of risks associated with sensitive data can be costly and disastrous.

Solution: Managing data in a single place

Keeping track of crucial data throughout the company’s entire documentation, devices, and storage takes time and effort.

With a centralized electronic database, you can keep all the documentation and different types of internal data safe. Also, you have access to data anytime and from any device with internet available.

Challenge #3: Limited transparency and reporting lead to risk exposures

Transparency and responsiveness are key factors in running a business successfully. Companies with fine-tuned visibility across their processes, such as communication with partners, risk management, or supply chain management, have a tremendous competitive advantage.

Solution: Combining analytics and reporting solutions

A consistent reporting process leads to transparency and communication with stakeholders and allows your business to make well-informed, strategic decisions.

The risk identification isn’t as easy as one-two-three, because company’s departments have their own workflow and leverage specific tools. Integrating analytics and reporting tools into a single system enables compliance officers to create data-driven emergency plans to combat any GRC hurdles.

GRC Software Market Trends

The GRC software sector puts the end-user first in the list of the current trends. Let’s find out what the customer of this specific software looks like.

grc market size

The Portrait of GRC Software User

Today’s businesses focus on their reputation and stable relationship with the customers. The latter are keeping their position firmly in the market and playing a crucial role in the development of global business.

That’s why the very first trend revolves around the customer. GRC professionals have to assure obligatory compliance while also growing and fortifying people’s loyalty. When picking the CRG software, end-users are likely to choose a straightforward solution with a user-oriented design.

The key trends of the industry

Integration of rising technologies. Chatbots and NLP methods provide safer engagement activities seamlessly integrated with data protection systems. Thanks to predictive analysis algorithms in machine learning tools, compliance managers, or other accountable persons can detect risks accurately.

Setting an organizational culture inside a company. As the number of cybercrimes multiplies, the urgent need appears to develop the employee’s awareness of the importance of being responsible for every task and action. People should know the price of a potential breach and support company leaders in their security efforts.

Fortifying and integrating risk management. Risk programs and metrics are now the subjects of strategic objectives. Many c-board managers think that the most far-reaching adverse consequences of non-financial security incidents are undermining consumer loyalty and shareholder value.

Adaptive and dynamic GRC management. Living in a time of ever-changing technologies, companies need agile and dynamic risk management to stay afloat in the GRC market landscape. That’s why there’s a demand for instant risk prediction, increased cooperation integrity, and quick action programs.

Demand for security by design. Security by design is a new method in software architecture where the risk anticipation is built-in from the start, enabling a confident global innovation. The best security measures are picked and enforced by the architecture design and used as essential guides for developers.

Summary: Innovecs Addresses Risk Management Issues

The overwhelming pace of change appears to be the main difficulty of GRC software adopters. The regulations evolve along with the maturity of cybercriminals. Therefore, organizations have to adapt to disruptions immediately with the help of emerged technologies like ML or AI, making the GRC opportunities practically endless.

Although there are various vendors of GRC solutions, it may be challenging to choose the right one. As an expert in developing edge products for a variety of sectors including fintech solutions, BI, machine learning, or data science, the Innovecs team can build an innovative GRC platform tailored to specific business requirements.

One client, a SaaS company with a wide range of B2B and B2C financial solutions, came to Innovecs with a live financial risk management system that could process and analyze financial data, but only with human intervention.

The client wanted to improve this system by making it autonomous, more secure, and performance-driven. The Innovecs’ team made the client’s system a cloud solution with a responsive user interface (can work on both PC and mobile devices).

The system is trained to analyze financial transaction data. It inspects the money sender, checks their payment history, and the origin of the money. Based on this information, it determines possible risks.

Now, the Innovecs’ team is continuing to maintain the client’s tech system, providing it with the best code quality and system performance.

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