Governance, risk and compliance (GRC) refers to a strategy for managing an organization's overall governance, enterprise risk management and compliance with regulations. Think of GRC as a structured approach to aligning IT with business objectives, while effectively managing risk and meeting compliance requirements.

 

An effective GRC implementation helps an organization to reduce risk and improve control effectiveness, security, and compliance through an integrated and unified approach that reduces the ill effects of organizational silos and redundancies.

 

A well-planned GRC strategy comes with lots of benefits, including:

• Improved decision-making

• Optimal IT investments

• Continued monitoring and compliance

• Elimination of silos

• Reduced fragmentation among divisions and departments

 

At The Mako Group, we have senior-level experts who will examine the business, IT and support functions to help you implement your GRC strategy. Some of these areas include:

• Assurance—independent assurance is required to ensure that controls are designed and operating effectively, and compliance requirements are met consistently. It is the responsibility of governance to monitor and obtain assurance. Assurance will be primarily through audits. There are several types of audits. Internal and external audits, certification audits, financial audits, IT audits, compliance audits, process audits and security audits, etc.

• Resources—required to conduct business, including strategies, policies, standards, procedures, organizational structure, roles and responsibilities, people, processes, technology, information, physical, financial and intellectual assets, and third parties (suppliers, vendors and contract employees).

• Business attributes—the key attributes of a business include: goals, targets, SLAs and metrics.

• Risk, including financial risk, operational risk, reputational risk, information security risk, and compliance risk.

• Compliance, including regulatory compliance (SOX, PCI/DSS, GDPR, HIPAA, GLBA), organizational compliance (policies and standards), and security (human, physical and information security).

• Controls—in order to realize value from the business, resources should be utilized efficiently and effectively, and business attributes should optimized. This is only possible when appropriate controls are implemented and executed. The controls can be classified as management controls, process controls, technical controls and physical controls. Controls are applied to the resources as well as the attributes.