Governance, risk, and compliance work has a way of expanding to fill every hour you give it. Evidence gets gathered by hand, controls get checked whenever someone remembers, and the whole program leans on spreadsheets that are only ever as current as the last person to touch them. That works when the company is small. It starts to break the moment you add a second framework, a few more engineers, or a customer who wants proof before they sign, and it only compounds as you move toward enterprise GRC.
The cost of keeping it manual is easy to underestimate. Hours that could go to building product go to screenshots instead. Small errors slip through and turn into audit findings, or worse. Deals stall while a security review sits in someone's inbox. None of this shows up as a single dramatic failure, which is exactly why it goes unaddressed for so long, and why more teams are handing the routine work to software.
The timing matters too. Automation in this space has grown up over the past few years, and AI is now pushing it past collection and monitoring toward tools that can take action on their own, with a person still approving the calls that count. Most teams sit somewhere in the middle of that shift, further along in some areas than others and unsure what their next move should be. This article lays out what's worth automating and what to keep in human hands, a simple way to gauge how far along your program is, how to roll automation out without the common missteps, and how to judge a platform when you go looking for one.
What is GRC automation?
GRC automation is the use of software to handle governance, risk, and compliance tasks that would otherwise eat hours of manual GRC work. It reaches into all three GRC components, not just one. Automating governance means your policies, approvals, and ownership live in one place and update as things change. Automating risk means the software helps you identify, score, and track risks without rebuilding a spreadsheet every quarter. Automating compliance means evidence, controls, and audit documentation get collected and checked for you, on a schedule, rather than gathered in a scramble before each audit.
It helps to be clear about the boundary. Automation is good at the work that repeats and the work you can verify against a rule. It is not a replacement for a security leader, and it cannot decide which risks your business is willing to accept. That judgment stays with a person.
One more distinction is worth drawing. GRC automation is broader than compliance automation. Compliance automation focuses on meeting the requirements of a given framework. GRC automation covers that, and it also spans the risk and governance work that sits around your frameworks.
Which GRC processes can be automated?
The simplest way to decide what to automate is this. Automate the work that repeats often and can be checked against a rule. Keep a person on the work that calls for interpretation or carries real consequences. Get that line right and automation saves you time without quietly making decisions it should not make.
A capable GRC platform can automate much of the routine. The strongest candidates are tasks that repeat and follow clear rules.
- Compliance monitoring and screening for control gaps
- Identifying, scoring, and tracking risks
- Reporting on GRC performance for leadership
- Managing policy documents and versions
- Maintaining audit documentation and evidence
- Collecting vendor and third-party risk information
- Drafting first answers to security questionnaires
- Tracking risk mitigation and compliance tasks
Evidence collection is the clearest win. Instead of logging into your cloud console to screenshot encryption settings, exporting access logs, and pulling merged code reviews by hand, the software connects to your stack with read-only access and gathers it for you. User access reviews, audit trail maintenance, vendor document collection, and first drafts of security questionnaire answers all belong in the same bucket. They are frequent, they follow rules, and a machine does them faster and more consistently than you can.
The other column matters just as much, and almost no one talks about it. Deciding which risks to accept, scoping which controls apply to you, setting policy intent, and signing off on what goes to a customer or an auditor are judgment calls. Automation can tee them up. It should not own them.
{{cta_withimage8="/cta-blocks"}}
The GRC automation maturity model
Most teams treat GRC automation as a single decision, buy a tool or do not. It is more useful to see it as a progression. Programs move through four stages, and most sit somewhere between two of them. Knowing your stage tells you what your next move should be.
Stage 1: Manual
Everything runs on spreadsheets, screenshots, shared drives, and memory. Evidence gets gathered by hand, usually in a rush before an audit, and the picture of your program is only ever as current as the last person to touch the file. It works on a small scale. It stops working the moment you add a second framework or a few more engineers.
Stage 2: Automated tasks
You have brought in tools that handle specific jobs. One collects evidence, another sends reminders, a third tracks risks. Each saves time on its own, but they do not talk to each other, so you still stitch the full view together by hand. This is where many growing teams land, and it is a real improvement over Stage 1. It is also where the seams start to show.
Stage 3: Continuous
Your tools connect to your actual stack and monitor controls without waiting for you to ask. When a control drifts out of place, you get an alert instead of discovering it during next year's audit. Compliance stops being a once a year event and becomes something you can see at any moment. This is the jump that returns the most time, and it is the one most teams underrate.
Stage 4: Agentic
The software does not just surface problems. It takes guided action on them. It drafts the questionnaire answer, opens the remediation ticket, keeps the policy current, and routes anything consequential to a person for approval. This is the current frontier, and it is closer than it sounds. Vanta and others are building toward GRC tools that act, not just observe, with human checkpoints along the way.
The benefits of GRC automation
The benefits of GRC automation come down to time returned, fewer mistakes, and a faster path to revenue. Here is what each one means in practice.
Time returned to the team
The work automation removes, like screenshotting settings and chasing logs, is exactly the work that drains senior people. Handing it to software frees them for the parts of the job that need a brain. Once it's set up, that collection runs on a schedule whether or not anyone remembers to trigger it.
Fewer errors that turn into findings
Human error tends to be behind a large share of breaches. Software that collects and checks evidence consistently closes the gaps that manual GRC work leaves open.
A live view of your program
Instead of an annual snapshot, you get a current view of your controls and risk, with alerts when something slips. Problems surface while they are still small and cheap to fix. You also walk into an audit already knowing where you stand, rather than scrambling to find out the week before.
Faster deal cycles
Security reviews stall sales. When your team can return a security questionnaire in hours instead of weeks, deals stop waiting on compliance. A security posture you can show on demand keeps buyers moving instead of parked in a review queue.
Room to scale without more headcount
GRC gets harder as you add frameworks, tools, and people. Automation absorbs that growth so your program does not buckle under it. One control mapped across several frameworks means your second and third standards cost far less work than the first.
Where the hours get spent in manual GRC
It helps to see the manual version up close, because the cost hides in how ordinary it is. Say it is time to prove your controls for a GRC audit. Someone logs into your cloud console and screenshots the encryption and backup settings, exports access logs from your identity provider, pulls the record of merged code reviews to show changes got reviewed, then drops all of it into folders, labels it, and hopes the auditor agrees it is enough.
None of those steps is hard, and that is the trap. Each is a small, dull task, and together they eat a real slice of someone's month, every month. When that someone is a senior engineer you are paying to build product, the cost is not the hour. It is the context switch and the product work that did not happen.
The bill grows as you do. Add a second framework and much of the evidence overlaps, but the manual process does not know that, so you collect it twice. Manual GRC does not fail loudly. It quietly taxes your best people until something gives. The answer is to optimize the program so the routine collection runs itself.
How to automate GRC in 5 steps
Implementing GRC automation goes smoothly when you treat it as a sequence and name the mistakes that sink most attempts. It also helps to bring leadership and the affected teams in early, since the change only sticks if the people doing the work understand why it exists. Here is the path, with the trap to avoid at each step.
1. Assess your of current GRC processes
Many organizations begin by focusing on one particular GRC framework and then add or change elements as their organization grows. Take inventory of your current GRC processes and how they’re performed by your GRC team and contributing departments.
Talk directly to staff about their GRC work and ask them how they perform these processes and identify any inefficiencies and redundancies. This provides you with the information you need to best automate your GRC practices and improve the efficiency of these workflows.
2. Define automation objectives
What are your objectives for your GRC automation? How do you want your GRC program to operate? What business initiatives does the GRC program align with? What types of data does your leadership need visibility into? Consider these questions in collaboration with your team. Ask the teams what they would like to see from the automation and how it can help work better.
3. Plan and execute
Now that you have your objectives in place, it’s time to put them into action. The foundation of your GRC automation will be the GRC software you choose.
Weigh the options available and consider factors, such as:
- How each tool helps you achieve your objectives.
- Tool-specific features.
- The compliance frameworks each tool offers.
- The potential for this tool to scale with your organization.
- Support availability for each tool.
- Customizable features that can adapt to your GRC program and workflows.
- The breadth and depth of integrations into your tech stack offered by each tool.
After choosing your platform, proceed with planning and implementing your automation rollout. This will involve setting up the automation solution, integrating it with your other tools, customizing the processes and reports you need, implementing controls, and testing the systems and processes.
4. Train staff and manage change
Set the software to flag only what matters. If it pings your team fifty times a day over minor drift, people mute the channel, and you are back to flying blind. Route the alerts that do fire to a named owner. The mistake is alert fatigue, and it quietly undoes the whole point of monitoring.
5. Monitoring and continuous improvement
Automation is not a tool you set and forget. Review its accuracy and coverage on a regular cadence, test it with tricky inputs to see whether it overshares or invents an answer, and tighten it as your program grows.
Key features of GRC automation tools
The GRC platform you choose makes a powerful difference in the scope of automation you can put in place. Consider your business needs and look for a tool with the following features.
- Customizable risk assessment templates you can adapt to your needs.
- Compliance management modules that monitor your compliance status.
- Integrated reporting functions that update in real time.
- The capacity to manage the specific frameworks you follow, with one control mapped across several of them so you avoid duplicate work.
- An accessible interface that every stakeholder can use.
- Integration with your existing tools and platforms, connected through read-only access.
- AI features that draft answers and suggest fixes, with guardrails you set over what they can reach and approve.
No single feature carries a program on its own. What matters is how they work together and how deep each one actually goes, because plenty of tools will claim all of the above without delivering much behind it. Press on the specifics. Ask how many of your real tools a platform connects to, how many frameworks its control mapping covers, and what its AI does when it is unsure. The right mix depends on where your program is today and where you expect it to be in a year, which is one more reason to know your stage before you start shopping.
How to evaluate a GRC automation platform
If you are scoping a tool, the criterion that separates the contenders from the pretenders is depth. Plenty of products automate a screenshot and call it automation. The ones worth paying for monitor continuously, map your controls across frameworks, integrate widely, and increasingly act on what they find. Judge a platform on these points.
- Integration breadth and depth. Does it actually pull from the tools you run, or only the popular few? Shallow integrations send you back to manual collection for everything else.
- Framework coverage and mapping. Can it map one control to many frameworks, so adding your second or third standard does not double your work?
- Continuous monitoring. Does it watch your controls all the time, or only when you run a check? The first keeps you ready. The second lets drift hide.
- AI capabilities and their guardrails. Can it draft answers and act on issues, and can you control what it reaches and approves? Power without guardrails is a liability.
- Support and time to value. How fast can you get running, and who helps when you are stuck?
No single feature carries a program on its own. What matters is how they work together and how deep each one actually goes, because plenty of tools will claim all of the above without delivering much behind it. Press on the specifics. Ask how many of your real tools a platform connects to, how many frameworks its control mapping covers, and what its AI does when it is unsure. The right mix depends on where your program is today and where you expect it to be in a year, which is one more reason to know your stage before you start shopping.
Overcoming challenges in GRC automation
There are a few common challenges you may run into when putting GRC automation in place. Here is how to handle each one.
Getting leadership on board
Leadership may not see the limits of your current GRC program and may hesitate to change it. Present those limits, the cost of the inefficiencies, and how they could be holding back growth and profitability.
Making time for the switch
You may be too buried in manual processes to make time for automation. Consider temporary measures to bridge the transition, like bringing in temporary staff to help manage the workload. Choosing a platform that's quick to set up also makes the switch shorter and less painful.
Resistance to change
Some leaders may believe your current processes are fine as they are. Spell out where those processes fall short and what the business risks by leaning on manual work.
Integration difficulties
Making a new platform work with your existing tools can be slow and frustrating. Choose an automation platform with prebuilt integrations for the tools you already run.
Simplifying GRC automation with Vanta
GRC automation is not a box you check once. It is a progression from manual work to continuous monitoring to software that acts on your behalf, and your job is to figure out where you are and make the next move. For most teams, the move that returns the most time is the jump from a once a year scramble to continuous monitoring, where problems surface while they are still small and your program is always ready to show.
Wherever you land on that curve, the principle holds. Let software carry the repetitive work, keep your people on the decisions that matter, and compliance shifts from a drag on the business into something that quietly moves it forward. The teams that get there are the ones that stop treating automation as a nice extra and start treating it as how the program runs.
Vanta was built for exactly that. It automates the collection, monitoring, and questionnaire work across 35+ frameworks, connects to more than 400 of the tools you already use, and puts AI to work drafting answers and flagging issues while your team keeps the final say. It's how more than 16,000 companies have moved from manual GRC to a program they can stand behind at any moment, and it can do the same for yours. See what that looks like for your own program and book a demo.
{{cta_simple7="/cta-blocks"}}
Optimizing a GRC program
Getting started with GRC automation
Looking to upgrade to continuous, automated GRC and get visibility across your entire program?
Governance, risk, and compliance work has a way of expanding to fill every hour you give it. Evidence gets gathered by hand, controls get checked whenever someone remembers, and the whole program leans on spreadsheets that are only ever as current as the last person to touch them. That works when the company is small. It starts to break the moment you add a second framework, a few more engineers, or a customer who wants proof before they sign, and it only compounds as you move toward enterprise GRC.
The cost of keeping it manual is easy to underestimate. Hours that could go to building product go to screenshots instead. Small errors slip through and turn into audit findings, or worse. Deals stall while a security review sits in someone's inbox. None of this shows up as a single dramatic failure, which is exactly why it goes unaddressed for so long, and why more teams are handing the routine work to software.
The timing matters too. Automation in this space has grown up over the past few years, and AI is now pushing it past collection and monitoring toward tools that can take action on their own, with a person still approving the calls that count. Most teams sit somewhere in the middle of that shift, further along in some areas than others and unsure what their next move should be. This article lays out what's worth automating and what to keep in human hands, a simple way to gauge how far along your program is, how to roll automation out without the common missteps, and how to judge a platform when you go looking for one.
What is GRC automation?
GRC automation is the use of software to handle governance, risk, and compliance tasks that would otherwise eat hours of manual GRC work. It reaches into all three GRC components, not just one. Automating governance means your policies, approvals, and ownership live in one place and update as things change. Automating risk means the software helps you identify, score, and track risks without rebuilding a spreadsheet every quarter. Automating compliance means evidence, controls, and audit documentation get collected and checked for you, on a schedule, rather than gathered in a scramble before each audit.
It helps to be clear about the boundary. Automation is good at the work that repeats and the work you can verify against a rule. It is not a replacement for a security leader, and it cannot decide which risks your business is willing to accept. That judgment stays with a person.
One more distinction is worth drawing. GRC automation is broader than compliance automation. Compliance automation focuses on meeting the requirements of a given framework. GRC automation covers that, and it also spans the risk and governance work that sits around your frameworks.
Which GRC processes can be automated?
The simplest way to decide what to automate is this. Automate the work that repeats often and can be checked against a rule. Keep a person on the work that calls for interpretation or carries real consequences. Get that line right and automation saves you time without quietly making decisions it should not make.
A capable GRC platform can automate much of the routine. The strongest candidates are tasks that repeat and follow clear rules.
- Compliance monitoring and screening for control gaps
- Identifying, scoring, and tracking risks
- Reporting on GRC performance for leadership
- Managing policy documents and versions
- Maintaining audit documentation and evidence
- Collecting vendor and third-party risk information
- Drafting first answers to security questionnaires
- Tracking risk mitigation and compliance tasks
Evidence collection is the clearest win. Instead of logging into your cloud console to screenshot encryption settings, exporting access logs, and pulling merged code reviews by hand, the software connects to your stack with read-only access and gathers it for you. User access reviews, audit trail maintenance, vendor document collection, and first drafts of security questionnaire answers all belong in the same bucket. They are frequent, they follow rules, and a machine does them faster and more consistently than you can.
The other column matters just as much, and almost no one talks about it. Deciding which risks to accept, scoping which controls apply to you, setting policy intent, and signing off on what goes to a customer or an auditor are judgment calls. Automation can tee them up. It should not own them.
{{cta_withimage8="/cta-blocks"}}
The GRC automation maturity model
Most teams treat GRC automation as a single decision, buy a tool or do not. It is more useful to see it as a progression. Programs move through four stages, and most sit somewhere between two of them. Knowing your stage tells you what your next move should be.
Stage 1: Manual
Everything runs on spreadsheets, screenshots, shared drives, and memory. Evidence gets gathered by hand, usually in a rush before an audit, and the picture of your program is only ever as current as the last person to touch the file. It works on a small scale. It stops working the moment you add a second framework or a few more engineers.
Stage 2: Automated tasks
You have brought in tools that handle specific jobs. One collects evidence, another sends reminders, a third tracks risks. Each saves time on its own, but they do not talk to each other, so you still stitch the full view together by hand. This is where many growing teams land, and it is a real improvement over Stage 1. It is also where the seams start to show.
Stage 3: Continuous
Your tools connect to your actual stack and monitor controls without waiting for you to ask. When a control drifts out of place, you get an alert instead of discovering it during next year's audit. Compliance stops being a once a year event and becomes something you can see at any moment. This is the jump that returns the most time, and it is the one most teams underrate.
Stage 4: Agentic
The software does not just surface problems. It takes guided action on them. It drafts the questionnaire answer, opens the remediation ticket, keeps the policy current, and routes anything consequential to a person for approval. This is the current frontier, and it is closer than it sounds. Vanta and others are building toward GRC tools that act, not just observe, with human checkpoints along the way.
The benefits of GRC automation
The benefits of GRC automation come down to time returned, fewer mistakes, and a faster path to revenue. Here is what each one means in practice.
Time returned to the team
The work automation removes, like screenshotting settings and chasing logs, is exactly the work that drains senior people. Handing it to software frees them for the parts of the job that need a brain. Once it's set up, that collection runs on a schedule whether or not anyone remembers to trigger it.
Fewer errors that turn into findings
Human error tends to be behind a large share of breaches. Software that collects and checks evidence consistently closes the gaps that manual GRC work leaves open.
A live view of your program
Instead of an annual snapshot, you get a current view of your controls and risk, with alerts when something slips. Problems surface while they are still small and cheap to fix. You also walk into an audit already knowing where you stand, rather than scrambling to find out the week before.
Faster deal cycles
Security reviews stall sales. When your team can return a security questionnaire in hours instead of weeks, deals stop waiting on compliance. A security posture you can show on demand keeps buyers moving instead of parked in a review queue.
Room to scale without more headcount
GRC gets harder as you add frameworks, tools, and people. Automation absorbs that growth so your program does not buckle under it. One control mapped across several frameworks means your second and third standards cost far less work than the first.
Where the hours get spent in manual GRC
It helps to see the manual version up close, because the cost hides in how ordinary it is. Say it is time to prove your controls for a GRC audit. Someone logs into your cloud console and screenshots the encryption and backup settings, exports access logs from your identity provider, pulls the record of merged code reviews to show changes got reviewed, then drops all of it into folders, labels it, and hopes the auditor agrees it is enough.
None of those steps is hard, and that is the trap. Each is a small, dull task, and together they eat a real slice of someone's month, every month. When that someone is a senior engineer you are paying to build product, the cost is not the hour. It is the context switch and the product work that did not happen.
The bill grows as you do. Add a second framework and much of the evidence overlaps, but the manual process does not know that, so you collect it twice. Manual GRC does not fail loudly. It quietly taxes your best people until something gives. The answer is to optimize the program so the routine collection runs itself.
How to automate GRC in 5 steps
Implementing GRC automation goes smoothly when you treat it as a sequence and name the mistakes that sink most attempts. It also helps to bring leadership and the affected teams in early, since the change only sticks if the people doing the work understand why it exists. Here is the path, with the trap to avoid at each step.
1. Assess your of current GRC processes
Many organizations begin by focusing on one particular GRC framework and then add or change elements as their organization grows. Take inventory of your current GRC processes and how they’re performed by your GRC team and contributing departments.
Talk directly to staff about their GRC work and ask them how they perform these processes and identify any inefficiencies and redundancies. This provides you with the information you need to best automate your GRC practices and improve the efficiency of these workflows.
2. Define automation objectives
What are your objectives for your GRC automation? How do you want your GRC program to operate? What business initiatives does the GRC program align with? What types of data does your leadership need visibility into? Consider these questions in collaboration with your team. Ask the teams what they would like to see from the automation and how it can help work better.
3. Plan and execute
Now that you have your objectives in place, it’s time to put them into action. The foundation of your GRC automation will be the GRC software you choose.
Weigh the options available and consider factors, such as:
- How each tool helps you achieve your objectives.
- Tool-specific features.
- The compliance frameworks each tool offers.
- The potential for this tool to scale with your organization.
- Support availability for each tool.
- Customizable features that can adapt to your GRC program and workflows.
- The breadth and depth of integrations into your tech stack offered by each tool.
After choosing your platform, proceed with planning and implementing your automation rollout. This will involve setting up the automation solution, integrating it with your other tools, customizing the processes and reports you need, implementing controls, and testing the systems and processes.
4. Train staff and manage change
Set the software to flag only what matters. If it pings your team fifty times a day over minor drift, people mute the channel, and you are back to flying blind. Route the alerts that do fire to a named owner. The mistake is alert fatigue, and it quietly undoes the whole point of monitoring.
5. Monitoring and continuous improvement
Automation is not a tool you set and forget. Review its accuracy and coverage on a regular cadence, test it with tricky inputs to see whether it overshares or invents an answer, and tighten it as your program grows.
Key features of GRC automation tools
The GRC platform you choose makes a powerful difference in the scope of automation you can put in place. Consider your business needs and look for a tool with the following features.
- Customizable risk assessment templates you can adapt to your needs.
- Compliance management modules that monitor your compliance status.
- Integrated reporting functions that update in real time.
- The capacity to manage the specific frameworks you follow, with one control mapped across several of them so you avoid duplicate work.
- An accessible interface that every stakeholder can use.
- Integration with your existing tools and platforms, connected through read-only access.
- AI features that draft answers and suggest fixes, with guardrails you set over what they can reach and approve.
No single feature carries a program on its own. What matters is how they work together and how deep each one actually goes, because plenty of tools will claim all of the above without delivering much behind it. Press on the specifics. Ask how many of your real tools a platform connects to, how many frameworks its control mapping covers, and what its AI does when it is unsure. The right mix depends on where your program is today and where you expect it to be in a year, which is one more reason to know your stage before you start shopping.
How to evaluate a GRC automation platform
If you are scoping a tool, the criterion that separates the contenders from the pretenders is depth. Plenty of products automate a screenshot and call it automation. The ones worth paying for monitor continuously, map your controls across frameworks, integrate widely, and increasingly act on what they find. Judge a platform on these points.
- Integration breadth and depth. Does it actually pull from the tools you run, or only the popular few? Shallow integrations send you back to manual collection for everything else.
- Framework coverage and mapping. Can it map one control to many frameworks, so adding your second or third standard does not double your work?
- Continuous monitoring. Does it watch your controls all the time, or only when you run a check? The first keeps you ready. The second lets drift hide.
- AI capabilities and their guardrails. Can it draft answers and act on issues, and can you control what it reaches and approves? Power without guardrails is a liability.
- Support and time to value. How fast can you get running, and who helps when you are stuck?
No single feature carries a program on its own. What matters is how they work together and how deep each one actually goes, because plenty of tools will claim all of the above without delivering much behind it. Press on the specifics. Ask how many of your real tools a platform connects to, how many frameworks its control mapping covers, and what its AI does when it is unsure. The right mix depends on where your program is today and where you expect it to be in a year, which is one more reason to know your stage before you start shopping.
Overcoming challenges in GRC automation
There are a few common challenges you may run into when putting GRC automation in place. Here is how to handle each one.
Getting leadership on board
Leadership may not see the limits of your current GRC program and may hesitate to change it. Present those limits, the cost of the inefficiencies, and how they could be holding back growth and profitability.
Making time for the switch
You may be too buried in manual processes to make time for automation. Consider temporary measures to bridge the transition, like bringing in temporary staff to help manage the workload. Choosing a platform that's quick to set up also makes the switch shorter and less painful.
Resistance to change
Some leaders may believe your current processes are fine as they are. Spell out where those processes fall short and what the business risks by leaning on manual work.
Integration difficulties
Making a new platform work with your existing tools can be slow and frustrating. Choose an automation platform with prebuilt integrations for the tools you already run.
Simplifying GRC automation with Vanta
GRC automation is not a box you check once. It is a progression from manual work to continuous monitoring to software that acts on your behalf, and your job is to figure out where you are and make the next move. For most teams, the move that returns the most time is the jump from a once a year scramble to continuous monitoring, where problems surface while they are still small and your program is always ready to show.
Wherever you land on that curve, the principle holds. Let software carry the repetitive work, keep your people on the decisions that matter, and compliance shifts from a drag on the business into something that quietly moves it forward. The teams that get there are the ones that stop treating automation as a nice extra and start treating it as how the program runs.
Vanta was built for exactly that. It automates the collection, monitoring, and questionnaire work across 35+ frameworks, connects to more than 400 of the tools you already use, and puts AI to work drafting answers and flagging issues while your team keeps the final say. It's how more than 16,000 companies have moved from manual GRC to a program they can stand behind at any moment, and it can do the same for yours. See what that looks like for your own program and book a demo.
{{cta_simple7="/cta-blocks"}}
| Role: | GRC responsibilities: |
|---|---|
| Board of directors | Central to the overarching GRC strategy, this group sets the direction for the compliance strategy. They determine which standards and regulations are necessary for compliance and align the GRC strategy with business objectives. |
| Chief financial officer | Primary responsibility for the success of the GRC program and for reporting results to the board. |
| Operations managers from relevant departments | This group owns processes. They are responsible for the success and direction of risk management and compliance within their departments. |
| Representatives from relevant departments | These are the activity owners. These team members are responsible for carrying out specific compliance and risk management tasks within their departments and for integrating these tasks into their workflows. |
| Contract managers from relevant department | These team members are responsible for managing interactions with vendors and other third parties in their department to ensure all risk management and compliance measures are being taken. |
| Chief information security officer (CISO) | Defines the organization’s information security policy, designs risk and vulnerability assessments, and develops information security policies. |
| Data protection officer (DPO) or legal counsel | Develops goals for data privacy based on legal regulations and other compliance needs, designs and implements privacy policies and practices, and assesses these practices for effectiveness. |
| GRC lead | Responsible for overseeing the execution of the GRC program in collaboration with the executive team as well as maintaining the organization’s library of security controls. |
| Cybersecurity analyst(s) | Implements and monitors cybersecurity measures that are in line with the GRC program and business objectives. |
| Compliance analyst(s) | Monitors the organization’s compliance with all regulations and standards necessary, identifies any compliance gaps, and works to mitigate them. |
| Risk analyst(s) | Carries out the risk management program for the organization and serves as a resource for risk management across various departments, including identifying, mitigating, and monitoring risks. |
| IT security specialist(s) | Implements security controls within the IT system in coordination with the cybersecurity analyst(s). |
Explore more GRC articles
Introduction to GRC
Implementing a GRC program
Optimizing a GRC program
Governance
Risk
Compliance
Continuous control monitoring
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