Today’s risk and compliance demands are rapidly expanding. At the same time, new technologies such as AI, geopolitical and environmental shifts, supply chain instability, and reliance on vast third-party networks are increasing risk exposure. The sheer volume and velocity of risk and compliance obligations are exceeding organizations’ ability to effectively manage them — hindering them from pursuing opportunities and achieving strategic objectives.
However, traditional methods and tools are insufficient to address this gap, leading teams to operate in silos with fragmented data and manual processes. This results in lost productivity, biased or inaccurate work, disconnected views and/or definitions of risks, disengaged stakeholders, and leadership that is in the dark about the true risk and compliance picture at their companies.
A new strategy that brings a cross-functional perspective to risk management across the enterprise is needed. We call this approach connected risk. Read on for some key benefits of this approach, then download a copy of A New Approach to Reduce Risks and Accelerate Mitigation, an IDC Spotlight paper sponsored by AuditBoard, to learn more.
Benefits of Connected Risk
- Continuous controls and compliance monitoring and remediation can significantly increase the scope of assessment coverage or visibility throughout the IT estate, and they enhance business resiliency to cyberattacks, breaches, data loss, regulatory fines, audit failures, and failure to fulfill strategic objectives.
- AI, automation, and orchestration naturally surface to help the organization manage more risk and compliance issues and drive greater value from its data. This further alleviates resource-constrained risk management teams by increasing accuracy, productivity, efficiency, and understanding of the relationships and impacts within more complex risk environments.
- Stakeholders are more collaborative and engaged in managing risks proactively and taking ownership of issues, which transitions to stakeholders from risk management teams. This collaboration and engagement increases the understanding of the organization’s risk and compliance posture, eliminates duplicative work being performed by multiple parties, and demonstrates how it impacts the overall business, business strategy, and IT estates.
- Aligning risk management functions will result in a single definition of risk that evaluates and scores all risk and compliance issues consistently. Instead of multiple sets of risk and compliance posture scores, executives see one set of scores that crosses the entire business.
- Increasing risk awareness and ownership across the organization arms management with improved and focused risk insights that drive accelerated results and confidence in risk-related decision-making.
- Processes and technologies are consolidated in ways that reduce costs, gain efficiency, and minimize losses from major risk events (reducing the amount of associated loss).
- Insights and reporting from second- and third-line teams are aligned, eliminating conflicting viewpoints and supporting these teams in making more effective risk-based decisions.
Using Technology to Do the Heavy Lifting
The heart of connected risk is a technology platform that serves as a single source of truth across the organization. Additionally, AI, automation, and analytics can further lift the burden of risk and compliance. Get your free copy of A New Approach to Reduce Risks and Accelerate Mitigation to uncover 10 key areas where technology can free your teams from repetitive tasks and save valuable time.
