GRC Governance, Risk and Compliance Tools: here’s what you need to know

By Nick Graham, Chief Technology Officer at Hicomply

As a CTO with nearly two decades of experience leading technology businesses, I’m no stranger to the challenges that organisations face when embedding Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) strategies.

There’s no getting around the fact that building a robust, resilient and productive business on solid foundations takes time and effort. But we are fortunate to live in a time when there are a raft of intelligent tools and technologies on the market to take on some of the heavy lifting.

When I founded my first business many years ago, compliance and productivity tools were in their relative infancy. There was certainly nothing advanced enough to make a significant difference to our governance, risk and compliance.

My frustration with traditional GRC processes and procedures remained long after Ed Bartlett (Hicomply CEO) and I sold our first tech start-up. So, it is perhaps not surprising that our next business idea stemmed from the belief that there had to be a better way to do things. That’s what we have achieved with Hicomply.

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To understand why Hicomply stands out in the market, it's first necessary to explore the four main categories of governance, risk and compliance tools available today:

·????? Business as Usual (BAU)

·????? Static repositories

·????? Cloud-only solutions

·????? Whole-business ISMS platforms

Each category offers a different approach to managing GRC, and understanding their differences is key to making an informed decision.

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An assessment of GRC Governance, risk and compliance tools

1. Business as usual (BAU): the traditional approach

A large percentage of organisations today continue to rely on traditional, manual, and non-specialised methods of managing their GRC processes. These companies typically use tools like SharePoint, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and email to handle their compliance requirements which comes with a significant cost.

Manual processes: BAU relies heavily on manual workflows, leading to significant inefficiencies and a higher likelihood of errors.

Data silos: Information is often fragmented across multiple systems, making it difficult to access, share and analyse data.

Scalability challenges: As businesses grow, BAU methods struggle to scale, resulting in bottlenecks and increased operational costs.

Security risks: Using non-specialised tools for sensitive information poses security risks and increases the likelihood of compliance violations.

The lack of automation in BAU leads to slow operations and increased error rates. These inefficiencies can lead to reduced competitiveness and, ultimately, an inability to adapt when new regulations come into the market or market trends change.

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?2. Static repositories: outdated and inflexible systems

These tools attempt to unify GRC processes into a single platform, but tend to simply replicate the tools they claim to replace and maintain the inefficiencies of manual methods and fail to harness the full potential of automated and integrated solutions.

Outdated systems: These platforms often rely on ageing technology that lacks modern capabilities.

Limited automation: Static repositories typically offer minimal automation, resulting in continued reliance on manual, labour-intensive processes that are open to human error.

Poor integration: Integration with other business tools is often limited, making it difficult to streamline workflows and data management.

User licensing restrictions: Many static repositories limit the number of users who can access the system. This hinders widespread adoption within an organisation.

Organisations that rely on static repositories often struggle to adapt to changing business environments and experience limitations when it comes to productivity. They may also lack the robust security features needed to protect sensitive data.

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?3. Cloud-only solutions: specialised but narrow in scope

Cloud-only solutions are designed primarily for businesses with a strong focus on cloud infrastructure and networking. These tools were developed mainly to ?monitor SOC2 controls related to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy within cloud environments.

Specialised focus: Cloud-only solutions are typically tailored for businesses that rely heavily on cloud infrastructure – particularly for SOC2 compliance.

High automation: These platforms offer extensive automation capabilities, reducing the need for manual intervention in cloud security and compliance tasks.

Limited scope: Cloud-only solutions are narrowly focused on cloud-related controls, which do little to support the needs of businesses operating across logistics, manufacturing, legal and finance sectors. In these industries the compliance needs should be focused on a far wider control criteria than simply monitoring the compliance of their AWS or Azure services – which do not represent the full spectrum of compliance requirements.

Hidden costs: While effective in their niche, these solutions can be expensive, with additional costs often arising from the use of cloud provider monitoring software.

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Although cloud-only solutions represent a big step forward in comparison to BAU or static repository approaches, they can’t be considered comprehensive. Cloud-only solutions were designed to specialise in Cloud Configuration testing and often claim to support broader compliance standards like ISO 27001 or PCI DSS. In reality many of the inefficiencies of BAU are still present in these cloud-only solutions when attempting to fully manage these frameworks.

It’s also worth noting that cloud providers often sneak hidden costs into such solutions, making them more expensive than they may appear. And while they possess much of the functionality required by tech-centric businesses, they can be harder to implement for organisations in more traditional industries with diverse and complex compliance needs.

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4. Whole-business ISMS platforms: the comprehensive solution

A whole-business ISMS platform represents the most advanced and comprehensive solution any organisation’s GRC governance, risk and compliance challenges. These platforms are designed to streamline and simplify compliance across multiple standards, including ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, SOC2 and NIST. While security compliance platforms may differ in functionality, they typically share a number of key features:

Integrated frameworks: Whole-business solutions integrate multiple compliance frameworks, allowing for efficient mapping and seamless transitions between standards.

Automation across the business: These platforms automate not only compliance-related tasks but also automatically collect evidence across operational processes, HR onboarding and offboarding, Support tickets, incident management, IT ops, system backups, resource scaling, availability and finance procedures to name a few, ?improving productivity and reducing manual workloads.

Scalability and flexibility: With features like parent–child setups and unlimited policy readers, whole-business platforms can scale with the organisation and adapt to changing requirements.

Comprehensive coverage: Unlike cloud-only solutions, whole-business platforms cover a wide range of compliance standards, making them suitable for businesses across various industries.

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Whole-business solutions seamlessly integrate with other software products, automating evidence collection and compliance across an entire organisation. They are designed to grow with your business, providing the flexibility needed to manage compliance across multiple locations or product lines.

In the case of ISMS platforms like Hicomply they also avoid many of the hidden costs often associated with GRC solutions and represent a cost-effective and manageable solution.

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Tackling the pain of governance, risk and compliance challenges

In a crowded market of GRC governance, risk, and compliance tools, it’s crucial to choose a solution that not only meets the immediate needs of an organisation but also supports its long-term business goals.

As I’ve already mentioned, Hicomply is a whole-business GRC and ISMS platform that was born out of the frustrations and challenges I encountered over years of implementing and managing GRC processes. Unlike the limited and outdated solutions found in other segments, we were committed to create a comprehensive, automated and scalable approach to GRC that addresses the entire spectrum of compliance needs.

We understand that organisations may want to quickly and seamlessly pursue certification with multiple frameworks, and so we’ve focused on making it easy to manage and maintain compliance across various standards without duplicating efforts.

Rather than add cost at every turn, we’ve also ensured that we offer unlimited policy readers – so every employee can access the policies and procedures relevant to their job functions. After all, this is essential to ensuring that information security is embedded across the entire organisation.

Our suite of automation tools also ensures that tasks such as evidence collection are made quick and accurate, freeing up valuable time and resources for your team – time that could be better spent focusing on fee earning work and driving business growth.

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There’s no need to settle for outdated or narrowly focused tools any more. Instead, organisations have the freedom to choose a platform designed to handle the complexities of modern information security and compliance. If you’re ready to find out more about Hicomply, why not book a demo today.