Introduction
Drawing from discussions with customers, industry thought leaders, and our own analysis of economic conditions, regulations, and various news events, we bring you the top GRC trends on the horizon with actionable strategies to help you prepare for 2024 confidently.
In 2023, we witnessed a consistent rise in both the frequency and severity of risks on a global scale. Global economic growth, while stabilizing, has remained slow, leading to a continued cost-of-living crisis. The International Monetary Fund’s baseline forecast for global growth in October 2023 remains at 3%, well below the historical (2000–19) average of 3.8 %.
Geopolitical risk continues to take center stage with the Russia-Ukraine conflict persisting and an unforeseen war erupting in the Middle East. And while the World Health Organization chief officially declared an end to COVID-19 as a global health emergency on May 5, 2023, the pandemic's social and economic repercussions continue to reverberate, from disrupted supply chains and worker shortages to increased trade barriers and exposed weaknesses in global health governance systems.
In addition, the heightened frequency of severe climate events, combined with ongoing human rights violations, remains a paramount concern for businesses. Finally, the fast-evolving landscape of regulations and laws, spanning areas such as digital resilience and cyber risk, is further placing a substantial burden on business executives and boards.
Most importantly, none of these risks exist in isolation – they’re deeply interconnected, with cascading impacts for organizations. Navigating governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) activities in this interconnected risk landscape can be challenging.
MetricStream is dedicated to helping you thrive on risk amidst uncertainty. Here are the top GRC trends we have identified for 2024 to help you manage risk with confidence while making better, faster decisions.
Cognitive AI and Hyper-Automation: The GRC Gamechanger
2023 was the year when artificial intelligence (AI) went mainstream, largely due to the mass adoption of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM). AI for GRC holds tremendous promise in 2024 and beyond. Currently, use cases based on technologies like AI, Automation, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, LLM, and Generative AI are being used to prioritize efficiency and accuracy in handling the scale and complexity of various GRC requirements. By providing preventive, predictive, and diagnostic approaches, AI-powered GRC processes provide guidance for business users in everyday decision-making. The power of cognitive AI to turn data into real-time decisions is immense. AI-powered threat intelligence, automated planning and scoping of risk assessments, continuous monitoring of regulations, and AI-powered fraud detection capabilities are just a few of the many applications of AI in risk, audit, and compliance management.
Another powerful use case in GRC is to rationalize controls and automate control tests with cognitive AI. Cognitive AI can be used to identify missing controls and related details and control testing discrepancies, leading to improving control test planning and remediating patterns of under or over-testing of controls. The result can be significant cost reduction along with the increased efficiency of the operational risk program.
As organizations increasingly adopt AI for GRC, it is also important to think about GRC for AI. It is vital that organizations monitor risks related to AI models and set up effective policies based on fairness, transparency, and accountability. This can help ensure that the technology is utilized safely, ethically, and within the boundaries of relevant laws.
Connected GRC Strategy: A Catalyst to Thrive on Risks
As the world grows more interconnected, so do the risks to an organization. Events in the past year have underscored the growing volatility of interconnected risks.
Take climate risk, for example. 70% of all economic sectors worldwide are directly impacted by extreme weather events such as drought, heat waves, flooding, and hurricanes. A rapidly warming planet translates to organizations having to prepare for a wide range of risks—from operational risks and regulatory uncertainty to changing consumer behaviors and even increasing climate risk insurance. To manage this wide range of complex and interconnected risks, organizations need to move from a traditional and siloed method to a connected strategy for GRC, centrally governing and aligning their risk and compliance functions around what matters most to the business. However, according to PwC’s Global Crisis and Resilience Survey, only 1 in 5 organizations have fully integrated functions.
As the web of interconnected risks grows tighter, organizations will need to connect the dots with a sense of urgency. This is where a connected GRC strategy can make a difference. By extending across the enterprise and facilitating seamless visibility, communication, and information sharing across different departments and functions, a connected GRC strategy can not only identify, assess, manage, and mitigate risks proactively but can help your organization detect the right opportunities and thrive on risks. A GRC tool that can connect risk, compliance, audit, cyber, and ESG functions on a single platform would be fundamental to implementing a connected strategy.
Continuous Risk and Control Monitoring: The New Competitive Advantage
Businesses worldwide are facing a constant onslaught of risk events. A Forrester study of 500 risk leaders found that over 40% experienced at least three critical risk events in the past year. 70% further believed that if they had access to real-time, optimized alerts, it would have significantly reduced the harm brought on by the most serious risk events. Concurrently, as organizations become more complex, traditional approaches for control testing and monitoring cannot provide the coverage or agility required in today’s dynamic business environment. More importantly, as companies race to innovate and be leaders in their markets, they must make bold and significant decisions while carefully considering the risks attached to them. These decisions inevitably come with associated risks—making a real-time view of risks an urgent priority.
By automating risk and control monitoring, organizations can proactively identify vulnerabilities and enhance the risk and control oversight capability. With continuous control monitoring, the effectiveness of security controls is continually tested and monitored, and data gathered from multiple sources are analyzed to identify issues, risks, and potential threats—all autonomously, giving you the big picture view of your risk posture in real-time.
Proactive Compliance: A Business Imperative
Across industries, the pace of regulatory change and the cost of compliance is adding to the volume overload and complexity in compliance. The 2023 Cost of Compliance Report published by Thomson Reuters identified the volume of regulatory change and the balancing of cost pressures as the top compliance challenges, both for compliance professionals and the board. 73% of respondents reported an average time of 1 and 7 hours per week in tracking and analyzing regulatory developments.
In this landscape, organizations will increasingly make it a business priority to shift from a reactive to a proactive compliance function. Organizations will need to build compliance agility with a unified view of compliance powered by a centralized platform that continuously scans the horizon with regulatory change tracking technologies and automated feeds from trusted content sources, integrates compliance management systems with other enterprise systems, and applies AI and automation for automated recommendations. Furthermore, given the multitude of regulatory requirements, organizations will need to move to continuous compliance by implementing tools that help them automate control testing and evidence collection for all their enterprise controls. This will help them proactively assess the operational effectiveness of controls, address any identified issues, and gain a consolidated view of their compliance posture, leading to reduced risk and accelerated decision-making.
Cyber Risk Optimization: An Urgent Cybersecurity Priority
The global annual cost of cybercrime is predicted to reach $9.5 trillion USD in 2024, according to a recent report by Cybersecurity Ventures. If we break it down, this equates to roughly $793 billion a month, $199 billion a week, $28 billion a day, or $19.5 million a minute! And if measured as a country it would be the third largest economy after the US and China. Aided by AI and quantum computing, cyber threats are evolving every day, making it the number one threat to business operations. 58 percent of CEOs surveyed named cyber attacks a bigger threat when compared to climate change and health risks. Furthermore, industries like energy, healthcare, and banking, financial services and insurance due to their critical nature, are more susceptible to cyber threats and data breaches.
To move beyond reactive defense, enterprises in 2024 will increasingly employ automation, analytics, AI, and continuous control monitoring to strengthen their cyber risk management strategy. Harmonizing controls across multiple standards and frameworks, enabling continuous control monitoring for improved compliance and security, and quantifying cyber risk exposure are key steps for faster insights into cyber risks, reduced security incidents, quicker issue remediation, and improved control testing accuracy.
Addressing Risk Oversight in the Extended Enterprise: A Critical Mandate
The focus on third-party risk management (TPRM) will get stronger in 2024, due to the increasing complexity and multi-tiered structure of today’s extended enterprise.
98% of global organizations have integrations with at least one third-party vendor that has been breached in the last two years, while 50% of organizations have indirect links to at least 200 fourth-party vendors that have suffered prior breaches. While managing third-party risks is already a strategic priority for 85% of businesses, up from 77% before the pandemic, the high volume of fourth and fifth-party risks and the ‘unknowns’ resulting from the complexity of nested supply chain systems have made it an urgent requirement.
To protect their extended enterprise, organizations need to own risk in their extended enterprise. It is critical to take a connected approach for risk identification and monitoring across functions such as sourcing, procurement, risk management, IT and cyber, legal, and business continuity management. This will facilitate efficient collaboration, risk mitigation and a single source of truth across the entire third-party lifecycle. Automated end-to-end processes for information gathering, onboarding, real-time monitoring, risk assessments, compliance, and control assessments, will further empower organizations to construct a more resilient third-party ecosystem.
Resilience: The Cornerstone of Risk Management
Interconnected risks due to geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty, supply disruptions, and cyber threats are likely to continue - if not increase. To thrive, organizations will need to continue to strengthen resilience and business continuity programs– the ability to predict, anticipate, and manage risks before they manifest and bounce back quickly if impacted. The global regulatory discussion around operational resilience is evolving as well. In March 2021, the Basel Committee issued Principles for Operational Resilience. In the UK, new rules and guidance on operational resilience issued by PRA and the Bank of England came into force on March 31, 2022. In the EU, Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which aims to strengthen the digital operational resiliency of the financial sector came into force this year and will apply from 17 January 2025. In the US, the most recent Exam Priorities issued by the SEC Division of Examinations and the US Federal Reserve’s Sound Practices to Strengthen Operational Resilience, continue to prioritize operational resilience.
Integral to robust risk management and resilience is establishing risk appetite and tolerance levels. However, only 33% of organizations have ‘mostly’ or ‘extensively’ articulated their risk appetite and tolerance levels as part of their strategic planning activities. Risk appetite and tolerance levels play a critical role as they help organizations inform business strategy by defining the risk thresholds for the organization and required capital to revive if impacted. The better articulated your risk appetite and tolerances, the better your ability to optimize risk-reward outcomes and take strategic advantage of risks.
Risk Quantification for Non-Financial Risks: A Growing Necessity
Non-financial risks (NFRs) continue to pose a significant threat as they can be as destructive as financial risks. Ranging from misconduct and compliance lapses to cybersecurity breaches and operational disruptions, NFRs can result in not only direct financial losses but also reputational damage, system downtime, regulatory fines and more. According to the ORX Annual Loss Report 2023, the total gross loss from the banking loss data of 83 contributing banking members in 2022 was 17.8 billion euros.
Peter Drucker was right when he wrote that only what gets measured can be effectively managed. However, conventional methods of measuring NFRs often rely on vague qualitative terms like ‘probably likely to occur’ or ‘somewhat likely to impact the business.’ While these terms offer some insight, they often fall short of providing precise answers to critical questions. Even a risk ranking of high, medium, or low may not always offer accurate guidance on which NFR to address first and why. To truly understand the impact of NFRs, organizations will increasingly employ risk quantification in the coming year to interpret these risks in financial terms when possible. By calculating the expected monetary value of a risk, organizations are empowered to better understand their company's loss exposure, communicate it clearly, and make better-informed risk decisions. Quantitative methods, including the statistical analysis of historical data collection, econometric models, back-testing, Monte Carlo simulations, stress-testing, are important risk modeling methods that can be used to calculate investments and capital allocations.
Flexible, Easy-to-Use, and Integrated Platforms: Vital for GRC Excellence
85% of GRC professionals reported significant changes in their GRC universe in the past two years, with 48% reporting economic pressure to improve performance, according to the MetricStream-OCEG GRC Readiness survey. Businesses today function in an extremely dynamic environment with continuously changing risks and compliance requirements which, in turn, impact organizational structures, processes, functions, and people. To stay agile, scalable, and maintain cost-efficiency, enterprises will need flexible, easy-to-use, and integrated platforms to power their future-ready GRC programs.
Today, modern cloud architecture has simplified cloud platforms with easy-to-use navigation and intuitive and user-friendly interfaces providing GRC teams with the elasticity and scalability they require. GRC cloud platforms bring together risk and compliance pieces into a single source of truth allowing tracking and monitoring of risk assessments from a single platform. This enables teams to meet regulatory prerequisites and incorporate risk mitigation strategies faster. It can also speed up data-driven decision making and build stakeholder trust. Low code/no code platforms enable GRC teams with little or no coding knowledge to change and update processes. There is no need to rewrite code to add fields, reports, or tables and columns, enabling a quicker adaptation change rate. By providing a close fit to business requirements, low code/no code platforms not only make it incredibly simple to use but also increase agility, maximize productivity, and foster innovation. Integration of APIs into cloud platforms simplifies integration with external systems allowing for secure and authenticated exchange of data. Teams can streamline data collection, standardize processes, and automate routine tasks.
The Frontline: A Key Partner in Risk Management
The three lines of defense (3LOD) model has been one of the mainstays of operational and enterprise risk management strategies where three distinct functions within an organization play unique but interlinked roles in managing risk. The focus has now shifted to the first line of defense – the frontline as a powerful force in risk management. With the volume and frequency of risks demanding a high level of agility from organizations, the frontline as the ‘eyes and ears of the business’ is best equipped to identify and address risks as they emerge.
Organizations are increasingly entrusting the frontline with more risk management responsibilities, while also empowering them with proper training and tools. Newer GRC technologies can improve frontline engagement by simplifying risk assessment and reporting. Intuitive features like conversational interfaces, chatbots, and intuitive user interfaces make it easy for the frontline to capture risks and anomalies – be it in the field or on-the-go. AI/ML can then be used to automatically triage frontline observations, correlate them to other issues, and recommend action plans. Not only do these technologies strengthen risk awareness in the frontline – they also save the second- and third-lines significant time and effort in risk monitoring and enable powerful collaboration across the enterprise.
Conclusion
As we step into 2024, and prepare for the uncertainties and challenges ahead, the strategic shift from a conventional and fragmented GRC approach a more comprehensive, unified, and connected GRC strategy will underline the success of the future-ready enterprise. GRC programs will need to be driven by cognitive GRC technologies and automation, transformed by simplified cloud platforms, and remain agile with an always-on approach. Developed over time, this approach provides a panoramic view of risks, enabling you to make well-informed decisions that enhance business resilience and performance—enabling your organization to not just prepare for the risks that lie ahead, but also turn those risks into opportunities and thrive on risk.
Thrive on Risk with MetricStream
MetricStream’s ConnectedGRC solutions enable you to break down enterprise silos and establish a single source of truth with all the risk insights you need to navigate the future. ConnectedGRC is packed with best practices, deep domain capabilities, AI-powered intelligence, and risk quantification tools that are designed to tackle today’s most pressing GRC challenges. The suite comes in three distinct product lines with multiple benefits:
Interested in learning how you can power your GRC program with a connected strategy? Request a demo now!
Drawing from discussions with customers, industry thought leaders, and our own analysis of economic conditions, regulations, and various news events, we bring you the top GRC trends on the horizon with actionable strategies to help you prepare for 2024 confidently.
In 2023, we witnessed a consistent rise in both the frequency and severity of risks on a global scale. Global economic growth, while stabilizing, has remained slow, leading to a continued cost-of-living crisis. The International Monetary Fund’s baseline forecast for global growth in October 2023 remains at 3%, well below the historical (2000–19) average of 3.8 %.
Geopolitical risk continues to take center stage with the Russia-Ukraine conflict persisting and an unforeseen war erupting in the Middle East. And while the World Health Organization chief officially declared an end to COVID-19 as a global health emergency on May 5, 2023, the pandemic's social and economic repercussions continue to reverberate, from disrupted supply chains and worker shortages to increased trade barriers and exposed weaknesses in global health governance systems.
In addition, the heightened frequency of severe climate events, combined with ongoing human rights violations, remains a paramount concern for businesses. Finally, the fast-evolving landscape of regulations and laws, spanning areas such as digital resilience and cyber risk, is further placing a substantial burden on business executives and boards.
Most importantly, none of these risks exist in isolation – they’re deeply interconnected, with cascading impacts for organizations. Navigating governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) activities in this interconnected risk landscape can be challenging.
MetricStream is dedicated to helping you thrive on risk amidst uncertainty. Here are the top GRC trends we have identified for 2024 to help you manage risk with confidence while making better, faster decisions.
2023 was the year when artificial intelligence (AI) went mainstream, largely due to the mass adoption of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM). AI for GRC holds tremendous promise in 2024 and beyond. Currently, use cases based on technologies like AI, Automation, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, LLM, and Generative AI are being used to prioritize efficiency and accuracy in handling the scale and complexity of various GRC requirements. By providing preventive, predictive, and diagnostic approaches, AI-powered GRC processes provide guidance for business users in everyday decision-making. The power of cognitive AI to turn data into real-time decisions is immense. AI-powered threat intelligence, automated planning and scoping of risk assessments, continuous monitoring of regulations, and AI-powered fraud detection capabilities are just a few of the many applications of AI in risk, audit, and compliance management.
Another powerful use case in GRC is to rationalize controls and automate control tests with cognitive AI. Cognitive AI can be used to identify missing controls and related details and control testing discrepancies, leading to improving control test planning and remediating patterns of under or over-testing of controls. The result can be significant cost reduction along with the increased efficiency of the operational risk program.
As organizations increasingly adopt AI for GRC, it is also important to think about GRC for AI. It is vital that organizations monitor risks related to AI models and set up effective policies based on fairness, transparency, and accountability. This can help ensure that the technology is utilized safely, ethically, and within the boundaries of relevant laws.
As the world grows more interconnected, so do the risks to an organization. Events in the past year have underscored the growing volatility of interconnected risks.
Take climate risk, for example. 70% of all economic sectors worldwide are directly impacted by extreme weather events such as drought, heat waves, flooding, and hurricanes. A rapidly warming planet translates to organizations having to prepare for a wide range of risks—from operational risks and regulatory uncertainty to changing consumer behaviors and even increasing climate risk insurance. To manage this wide range of complex and interconnected risks, organizations need to move from a traditional and siloed method to a connected strategy for GRC, centrally governing and aligning their risk and compliance functions around what matters most to the business. However, according to PwC’s Global Crisis and Resilience Survey, only 1 in 5 organizations have fully integrated functions.
As the web of interconnected risks grows tighter, organizations will need to connect the dots with a sense of urgency. This is where a connected GRC strategy can make a difference. By extending across the enterprise and facilitating seamless visibility, communication, and information sharing across different departments and functions, a connected GRC strategy can not only identify, assess, manage, and mitigate risks proactively but can help your organization detect the right opportunities and thrive on risks. A GRC tool that can connect risk, compliance, audit, cyber, and ESG functions on a single platform would be fundamental to implementing a connected strategy.
Businesses worldwide are facing a constant onslaught of risk events. A Forrester study of 500 risk leaders found that over 40% experienced at least three critical risk events in the past year. 70% further believed that if they had access to real-time, optimized alerts, it would have significantly reduced the harm brought on by the most serious risk events. Concurrently, as organizations become more complex, traditional approaches for control testing and monitoring cannot provide the coverage or agility required in today’s dynamic business environment. More importantly, as companies race to innovate and be leaders in their markets, they must make bold and significant decisions while carefully considering the risks attached to them. These decisions inevitably come with associated risks—making a real-time view of risks an urgent priority.
By automating risk and control monitoring, organizations can proactively identify vulnerabilities and enhance the risk and control oversight capability. With continuous control monitoring, the effectiveness of security controls is continually tested and monitored, and data gathered from multiple sources are analyzed to identify issues, risks, and potential threats—all autonomously, giving you the big picture view of your risk posture in real-time.
Across industries, the pace of regulatory change and the cost of compliance is adding to the volume overload and complexity in compliance. The 2023 Cost of Compliance Report published by Thomson Reuters identified the volume of regulatory change and the balancing of cost pressures as the top compliance challenges, both for compliance professionals and the board. 73% of respondents reported an average time of 1 and 7 hours per week in tracking and analyzing regulatory developments.
In this landscape, organizations will increasingly make it a business priority to shift from a reactive to a proactive compliance function. Organizations will need to build compliance agility with a unified view of compliance powered by a centralized platform that continuously scans the horizon with regulatory change tracking technologies and automated feeds from trusted content sources, integrates compliance management systems with other enterprise systems, and applies AI and automation for automated recommendations. Furthermore, given the multitude of regulatory requirements, organizations will need to move to continuous compliance by implementing tools that help them automate control testing and evidence collection for all their enterprise controls. This will help them proactively assess the operational effectiveness of controls, address any identified issues, and gain a consolidated view of their compliance posture, leading to reduced risk and accelerated decision-making.
The global annual cost of cybercrime is predicted to reach $9.5 trillion USD in 2024, according to a recent report by Cybersecurity Ventures. If we break it down, this equates to roughly $793 billion a month, $199 billion a week, $28 billion a day, or $19.5 million a minute! And if measured as a country it would be the third largest economy after the US and China. Aided by AI and quantum computing, cyber threats are evolving every day, making it the number one threat to business operations. 58 percent of CEOs surveyed named cyber attacks a bigger threat when compared to climate change and health risks. Furthermore, industries like energy, healthcare, and banking, financial services and insurance due to their critical nature, are more susceptible to cyber threats and data breaches.
To move beyond reactive defense, enterprises in 2024 will increasingly employ automation, analytics, AI, and continuous control monitoring to strengthen their cyber risk management strategy. Harmonizing controls across multiple standards and frameworks, enabling continuous control monitoring for improved compliance and security, and quantifying cyber risk exposure are key steps for faster insights into cyber risks, reduced security incidents, quicker issue remediation, and improved control testing accuracy.
The focus on third-party risk management (TPRM) will get stronger in 2024, due to the increasing complexity and multi-tiered structure of today’s extended enterprise.
98% of global organizations have integrations with at least one third-party vendor that has been breached in the last two years, while 50% of organizations have indirect links to at least 200 fourth-party vendors that have suffered prior breaches. While managing third-party risks is already a strategic priority for 85% of businesses, up from 77% before the pandemic, the high volume of fourth and fifth-party risks and the ‘unknowns’ resulting from the complexity of nested supply chain systems have made it an urgent requirement.
To protect their extended enterprise, organizations need to own risk in their extended enterprise. It is critical to take a connected approach for risk identification and monitoring across functions such as sourcing, procurement, risk management, IT and cyber, legal, and business continuity management. This will facilitate efficient collaboration, risk mitigation and a single source of truth across the entire third-party lifecycle. Automated end-to-end processes for information gathering, onboarding, real-time monitoring, risk assessments, compliance, and control assessments, will further empower organizations to construct a more resilient third-party ecosystem.
Interconnected risks due to geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty, supply disruptions, and cyber threats are likely to continue - if not increase. To thrive, organizations will need to continue to strengthen resilience and business continuity programs– the ability to predict, anticipate, and manage risks before they manifest and bounce back quickly if impacted. The global regulatory discussion around operational resilience is evolving as well. In March 2021, the Basel Committee issued Principles for Operational Resilience. In the UK, new rules and guidance on operational resilience issued by PRA and the Bank of England came into force on March 31, 2022. In the EU, Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which aims to strengthen the digital operational resiliency of the financial sector came into force this year and will apply from 17 January 2025. In the US, the most recent Exam Priorities issued by the SEC Division of Examinations and the US Federal Reserve’s Sound Practices to Strengthen Operational Resilience, continue to prioritize operational resilience.
Integral to robust risk management and resilience is establishing risk appetite and tolerance levels. However, only 33% of organizations have ‘mostly’ or ‘extensively’ articulated their risk appetite and tolerance levels as part of their strategic planning activities. Risk appetite and tolerance levels play a critical role as they help organizations inform business strategy by defining the risk thresholds for the organization and required capital to revive if impacted. The better articulated your risk appetite and tolerances, the better your ability to optimize risk-reward outcomes and take strategic advantage of risks.
Non-financial risks (NFRs) continue to pose a significant threat as they can be as destructive as financial risks. Ranging from misconduct and compliance lapses to cybersecurity breaches and operational disruptions, NFRs can result in not only direct financial losses but also reputational damage, system downtime, regulatory fines and more. According to the ORX Annual Loss Report 2023, the total gross loss from the banking loss data of 83 contributing banking members in 2022 was 17.8 billion euros.
Peter Drucker was right when he wrote that only what gets measured can be effectively managed. However, conventional methods of measuring NFRs often rely on vague qualitative terms like ‘probably likely to occur’ or ‘somewhat likely to impact the business.’ While these terms offer some insight, they often fall short of providing precise answers to critical questions. Even a risk ranking of high, medium, or low may not always offer accurate guidance on which NFR to address first and why. To truly understand the impact of NFRs, organizations will increasingly employ risk quantification in the coming year to interpret these risks in financial terms when possible. By calculating the expected monetary value of a risk, organizations are empowered to better understand their company's loss exposure, communicate it clearly, and make better-informed risk decisions. Quantitative methods, including the statistical analysis of historical data collection, econometric models, back-testing, Monte Carlo simulations, stress-testing, are important risk modeling methods that can be used to calculate investments and capital allocations.
85% of GRC professionals reported significant changes in their GRC universe in the past two years, with 48% reporting economic pressure to improve performance, according to the MetricStream-OCEG GRC Readiness survey. Businesses today function in an extremely dynamic environment with continuously changing risks and compliance requirements which, in turn, impact organizational structures, processes, functions, and people. To stay agile, scalable, and maintain cost-efficiency, enterprises will need flexible, easy-to-use, and integrated platforms to power their future-ready GRC programs.
Today, modern cloud architecture has simplified cloud platforms with easy-to-use navigation and intuitive and user-friendly interfaces providing GRC teams with the elasticity and scalability they require. GRC cloud platforms bring together risk and compliance pieces into a single source of truth allowing tracking and monitoring of risk assessments from a single platform. This enables teams to meet regulatory prerequisites and incorporate risk mitigation strategies faster. It can also speed up data-driven decision making and build stakeholder trust. Low code/no code platforms enable GRC teams with little or no coding knowledge to change and update processes. There is no need to rewrite code to add fields, reports, or tables and columns, enabling a quicker adaptation change rate. By providing a close fit to business requirements, low code/no code platforms not only make it incredibly simple to use but also increase agility, maximize productivity, and foster innovation. Integration of APIs into cloud platforms simplifies integration with external systems allowing for secure and authenticated exchange of data. Teams can streamline data collection, standardize processes, and automate routine tasks.
The three lines of defense (3LOD) model has been one of the mainstays of operational and enterprise risk management strategies where three distinct functions within an organization play unique but interlinked roles in managing risk. The focus has now shifted to the first line of defense – the frontline as a powerful force in risk management. With the volume and frequency of risks demanding a high level of agility from organizations, the frontline as the ‘eyes and ears of the business’ is best equipped to identify and address risks as they emerge.
Organizations are increasingly entrusting the frontline with more risk management responsibilities, while also empowering them with proper training and tools. Newer GRC technologies can improve frontline engagement by simplifying risk assessment and reporting. Intuitive features like conversational interfaces, chatbots, and intuitive user interfaces make it easy for the frontline to capture risks and anomalies – be it in the field or on-the-go. AI/ML can then be used to automatically triage frontline observations, correlate them to other issues, and recommend action plans. Not only do these technologies strengthen risk awareness in the frontline – they also save the second- and third-lines significant time and effort in risk monitoring and enable powerful collaboration across the enterprise.
As we step into 2024, and prepare for the uncertainties and challenges ahead, the strategic shift from a conventional and fragmented GRC approach a more comprehensive, unified, and connected GRC strategy will underline the success of the future-ready enterprise. GRC programs will need to be driven by cognitive GRC technologies and automation, transformed by simplified cloud platforms, and remain agile with an always-on approach. Developed over time, this approach provides a panoramic view of risks, enabling you to make well-informed decisions that enhance business resilience and performance—enabling your organization to not just prepare for the risks that lie ahead, but also turn those risks into opportunities and thrive on risk.
MetricStream’s ConnectedGRC solutions enable you to break down enterprise silos and establish a single source of truth with all the risk insights you need to navigate the future. ConnectedGRC is packed with best practices, deep domain capabilities, AI-powered intelligence, and risk quantification tools that are designed to tackle today’s most pressing GRC challenges. The suite comes in three distinct product lines with multiple benefits:
Interested in learning how you can power your GRC program with a connected strategy? Request a demo now!
