Maintaining and measuring the success of your GRC program is just as important as properly implementing it. Following implementation, you’ll need to monitor your GRC maturity and measure how effective your program is.
Why you need to track GRC metrics
No matter how well-implemented your GRC program is, you’ll only know how effective the program is by putting it into practice. Your GRC program should be an ever-evolving strategy that adapts to your organization’s needs as the business grows. This requires extensive monitoring and measuring, as well as some trial and error to identify what aspects of your GRC program are working well and what can be improved.
Measuring your GRC performance results in several benefits:
- Offering ROI metrics to show the value of your GRC to executive leadership.
- Helping the organization get, maintain, or plan for additional compliance frameworks.
- Developing an understanding of your organization's risks and mitigation tactics.
- Understanding how secure your organization is and how well your GRC aligns with industry best practices.
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What GRC metrics should you measure?
When it comes to improving your GRC program, there are metrics you’ll want to track to ensure each component of your GRC is operating effectively.
Governance metrics
Governance is more quantitative than qualitative, so it can be more difficult to measure than risk management or compliance. Still, there are measurable aspects of your governance that you can track, such as:
- Board engagement and oversight metrics, including:
- Attendance rates at board meetings and other governance activities
- Number of senior leaders who are directly involved in the GRC program
- Hours allocated to the GRC program for leaders
- Frequency of security and governance topics included in board meetings
- Policy management effectiveness metrics, including:
- Policy acceptance percentage
- Number of policy violations or exceptions
- Percentage of your processes and procedures that are documented
- Incomplete training percentages
- Training effectiveness
- Cost analysis of the GRC program
Risk management metrics
To understand how well your risk management components are securing your organization, you should track these metrics:
- Overall risk coverage vs. risk exposure
- Ratio of risk assessment reviews to approval
- Number of critical findings identified in risk assessments
- Percentage of reactive vs. proactive risk activities
- Average remediation time for identified risks
- Average cost of risk remediation
- Percentage of risks that have remediation plans in place
Compliance metrics
Assess your compliance practices within your GRC program with these metrics:
- Percentage of controls in place against a compliance framework or law
- Number of critical findings identified during audits
- Audit efficiency
- Number of compliance frameworks your organization has committed to successfully
- Average time it takes to detect a compliance gap
- How many compliance violations are detected
- How long your organization goes without a system failure
How to measure GRC maturity
The purpose of measuring your GRC program is to understand where you can make improvements to mature it. OCEG (Open Compliance and Ethics Group) is a global authority on GRC and coined the term and concept of GRC.
OCEG’s GRC maturity model was developed in 2016 as a way to classify how sophisticated a GRC program is and help organizations make incremental progress. This framework is structured into five levels, starting from the foundational to the most advanced:
- Level 1 - Initial: At this level, there are minimal GRC activities and those that do exist are siloed.
- Level 2 - Managed: At this level, GRC efforts become more strategic yet remain somewhat informal and disjointed.
- Level 3 - Consistent: At this level, there is a unified framework that leads to consistent and formally managed practices across the organization.
- Level 4 - Measured: At this level, there is a harmonized approach to GRC with measurable, data-driven outcomes and process automation.
- Level 5 - Optimizing: At this level, there is a state of continuous improvement and real-time, risk-first decision making across the company. This is the ideal state where your GRC program is scalable and future-proofed to withstand organizational changes.
OCEG’s maturity model not only serves as a roadmap for developing a robust GRC program but also as a benchmark against which organizations can measure their progress. By evaluating your GRC maturity against this model, you can assess where your program stands today, what it may be lacking, and how you can improve it moving forward.
Uplevel your GRC maturity
GRC tools should make tracking your program’s success easy and help you mature your organization through these stages as your business grows. Vanta’s trust management platform allows you to coordinate your GRC controls, manage regulations, track your implementation, and offers continuous monitoring.
Unlike traditional GRC tools, Vanta takes it a step further with automated GRC management, including automated evidence collection and alerts, AI-powered risk questionnaires, and simplified audit preparation. Schedule a demo with our team to see if adding trust management to your GRC program is right for you.
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Implementing a GRC program
How to measure GRC program success and program maturity
Implementing a GRC program
Maintaining and measuring the success of your GRC program is just as important as properly implementing it. Following implementation, you’ll need to monitor your GRC maturity and measure how effective your program is.
Why you need to track GRC metrics
No matter how well-implemented your GRC program is, you’ll only know how effective the program is by putting it into practice. Your GRC program should be an ever-evolving strategy that adapts to your organization’s needs as the business grows. This requires extensive monitoring and measuring, as well as some trial and error to identify what aspects of your GRC program are working well and what can be improved.
Measuring your GRC performance results in several benefits:
- Offering ROI metrics to show the value of your GRC to executive leadership.
- Helping the organization get, maintain, or plan for additional compliance frameworks.
- Developing an understanding of your organization's risks and mitigation tactics.
- Understanding how secure your organization is and how well your GRC aligns with industry best practices.
{{cta_withimage8="/cta-modules"}}
What GRC metrics should you measure?
When it comes to improving your GRC program, there are metrics you’ll want to track to ensure each component of your GRC is operating effectively.
Governance metrics
Governance is more quantitative than qualitative, so it can be more difficult to measure than risk management or compliance. Still, there are measurable aspects of your governance that you can track, such as:
- Board engagement and oversight metrics, including:
- Attendance rates at board meetings and other governance activities
- Number of senior leaders who are directly involved in the GRC program
- Hours allocated to the GRC program for leaders
- Frequency of security and governance topics included in board meetings
- Policy management effectiveness metrics, including:
- Policy acceptance percentage
- Number of policy violations or exceptions
- Percentage of your processes and procedures that are documented
- Incomplete training percentages
- Training effectiveness
- Cost analysis of the GRC program
Risk management metrics
To understand how well your risk management components are securing your organization, you should track these metrics:
- Overall risk coverage vs. risk exposure
- Ratio of risk assessment reviews to approval
- Number of critical findings identified in risk assessments
- Percentage of reactive vs. proactive risk activities
- Average remediation time for identified risks
- Average cost of risk remediation
- Percentage of risks that have remediation plans in place
Compliance metrics
Assess your compliance practices within your GRC program with these metrics:
- Percentage of controls in place against a compliance framework or law
- Number of critical findings identified during audits
- Audit efficiency
- Number of compliance frameworks your organization has committed to successfully
- Average time it takes to detect a compliance gap
- How many compliance violations are detected
- How long your organization goes without a system failure
How to measure GRC maturity
The purpose of measuring your GRC program is to understand where you can make improvements to mature it. OCEG (Open Compliance and Ethics Group) is a global authority on GRC and coined the term and concept of GRC.
OCEG’s GRC maturity model was developed in 2016 as a way to classify how sophisticated a GRC program is and help organizations make incremental progress. This framework is structured into five levels, starting from the foundational to the most advanced:
- Level 1 - Initial: At this level, there are minimal GRC activities and those that do exist are siloed.
- Level 2 - Managed: At this level, GRC efforts become more strategic yet remain somewhat informal and disjointed.
- Level 3 - Consistent: At this level, there is a unified framework that leads to consistent and formally managed practices across the organization.
- Level 4 - Measured: At this level, there is a harmonized approach to GRC with measurable, data-driven outcomes and process automation.
- Level 5 - Optimizing: At this level, there is a state of continuous improvement and real-time, risk-first decision making across the company. This is the ideal state where your GRC program is scalable and future-proofed to withstand organizational changes.
OCEG’s maturity model not only serves as a roadmap for developing a robust GRC program but also as a benchmark against which organizations can measure their progress. By evaluating your GRC maturity against this model, you can assess where your program stands today, what it may be lacking, and how you can improve it moving forward.
Uplevel your GRC maturity
GRC tools should make tracking your program’s success easy and help you mature your organization through these stages as your business grows. Vanta’s trust management platform allows you to coordinate your GRC controls, manage regulations, track your implementation, and offers continuous monitoring.
Unlike traditional GRC tools, Vanta takes it a step further with automated GRC management, including automated evidence collection and alerts, AI-powered risk questionnaires, and simplified audit preparation. Schedule a demo with our team to see if adding trust management to your GRC program is right for you.
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Your guide for implementing GRC
Learn how to implement a GRC framework with this tactical guide.
Upgrade to continuous, automated GRC
Request a demo to see how Vanta automates compliance, streamlines security reviews, and saves you time.
Your guide for implementing GRC
Learn how to implement a GRC framework with this tactical guide.
Upgrade to continuous, automated GRC
Request a demo to see how Vanta automates compliance, streamlines security reviews, and saves you time.
Your guide for implementing GRC
Learn how to implement a GRC framework with this tactical guide.
Upgrade to continuous, automated GRC
Request a demo to see how Vanta automates compliance, streamlines security reviews, and saves you time.
| 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
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