How to Scale Your GRC Program with Automation

Originally published by Vanta.

According to Vanta’s 2023 State of Trust Report, respondents spend an average of nine working weeks per year on security compliance.

Some security teams have accepted that governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) will inevitably take tons of time and effort. And many continue to work towards small-scale efficiencies because they don’t believe anything better is possible.

‍But there’s a better option for today’s businesses: GRC automation.

‍Manual GRC processes aren’t sustainable for growing businesses, and turning to automation can help your organization successfully deploy, scale, and improve your risk and compliance programs over time. Here’s how.

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Manual GRC is an uphill battle

If you’re a security lead at a growing organization, GRC work likely takes countless hours of logging data into dozens of tools and grabbing hundreds of static screenshots to prove compliance. It also means tracking down the right system owners to remediate issues that have fallen out of compliance and keeping up with a dozen communication channels to manage projects across multiple teams. And even if you manage to get on top of your existing compliance requirements, you have to do it all over again every time a particular framework or regulation changes—or a new tool enters your tech stack.

‍This cycle is a drain on time and resources, slowing down business velocity and creating frustration for team members who have to submit reports repeatedly. Reporting becomes especially challenging, as manual activities aren’t conducive to creating a complete view of your security and compliance posture.

‍Alongside growing customer expectations around security, budgets and headcounts remain tight or are even decreasing. Vanta’s State of Trust Report found that 60% of businesses have reduced their IT budget or plan to do so.

‍These challenges will only continue to compound as customer expectations grow and the pace of business increases. With all these changes in mind, security teams need solutions that will not only enable them to overcome these hurdles today—but also prepare them for future growth and demands.

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Setting a scalable foundation with GRC automation

When you think about “GRC automation,” the first thing that comes to mind might be automatic integration with your tools or support for aligning with a particular framework like SOC 2.

‍However, GRC automation has progressed significantly in the past few years, extending from framework-specific solutions to holistic, scalable platforms that encompass several frameworks at once. This technology has the potential to help you in new and unexpected ways to address both current and future challenges.

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Overcoming today’s challenges: Manual compliance tasks

GRC automation minimizes the resources and time required to complete key compliance tasks, like collecting evidence, compiling reports, and implementing controls. It also frees up your team to focus on more strategic work by automating tasks such as:

• Generating customized templates for streamlined risk assessments.
• Monitoring the status of your controls in real time and alerting your team of any status changes.
• Managing compliance based on your organization’s unique combination of frameworks.
• Automatically collecting evidence by ingesting data from security and risk management tooling such as cloud providers, HRIS systems, version control tools, and ticketing systems.
• Maintaining and continuously updating audit documentation and evidence.

‍Ultimately, GRC automation gives your team greater visibility into your GRC program for better collaboration, faster decision-making, fewer human errors, and a significantly stronger security posture.

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Preparing for tomorrow’s changes: New requirements and regulations

GRC is an evolving field, and new risk scenarios, security control technologies, and frameworks are constantly emerging. Security and GRC teams need a way to adjust to these changes rapidly and prove that they’ve met new requirements as soon as possible.

‍Automation can also help you here. With GRC automation, you can adapt to new or updated requirements by:

• Compiling your ongoing activities into reports formatted for the right stakeholders, audits, and/or frameworks.
• Centralizing all GRC activities in a single location, enabling you to reuse past work for meeting future needs.
• Increasing visibility across your security and compliance program, giving you and your team clear direction on areas of success and improvement.

‍Ultimately, automation is key to building a GRC program that allows your business to demonstrate trust continuously. This holistic approach helps ensure that your business meets external expectations, regardless of future changes.