The resurgence of cyber GRC (governance, risk and compliance) as a term will have those professionals who are slightly longer in the tooth experiencing a sense of deja vu. This is not the first time ‘cyber GRC’ has been coined as a new, cybersecurity-specific, approach to GRC. 

Despite the availability of  GRC solutions over the past couple of decades, cybersecurity professionals are still facing the same core challenge - business leaders asking, “So what?” and not understanding the business value of cyber GRC initiatives. Answering the “So What?” question represents an opportunity for CISOs to transform their traditional cyber GRC programs and go beyond compliance and deliver effective business-aligned cyber GRC.

In this article, we explore how legacy cyber GRC approaches have fallen short and how to unlock the future with business-aligned cyber GRC success.

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What is cyber GRC? 

Cyber GRC is a strategy for organizations to align cybersecurity with business objectives, manage their cyber risk and ensure they are complying with industry and legal regulations. On a more granular level, cyber GRC consists of governance, risk and compliance, which all play a role in protecting the business: 

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Governance

Governance is the business’s approach to oversight and management of cybersecurity. It is a structure for setting, communicating, and monitoring cybersecurity expectations - through policies and frameworks - defining the roles and responsibilities of everyone in the business, including board members and senior leadership, in protecting the business.

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Risk 

Risk management is the process of identifying cyber risks, quantifying their potential financial impact and strategizing the best approach to mitigate, transfer or accept the risk.

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Compliance

Possibly the most straightforward aspect of cyber GRC is compliance. It ensures that businesses are adhering to all its policy, legal, and regulatory requirements. Its success is binary - companies either are compliant, or they aren’t. 

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The legacy approach to cyber GRC 

For most businesses, the cyber GRC focus has primarily been on compliance and is limited in its real or perceived business value. Largely this has resulted in compliance “box checking” that has kicked effective cyber risk management down the road. Organizations have invested heavily in developing compliance-focused framework maturity scores, completing audits or assessments, and gathering ‘exception’ documentation to cover the areas of the business where they knowingly are not able to implement effective risk management controls. This is then all stored for defensive and reactive purposes in their GRC platform, ready for the day they face an audit. 

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Why this approach is insufficient

Firstly, as we previously mentioned, the success of compliance within cyber GRC is binary, defensive and reactive. As a consequence of this, it is often seen by business leaders as a box-ticking exercise to complete as quickly and inexpensively as possible. Beyond compliance paper pushing, there is no expectation of cyber risk management excellence, with the only “success” being compliance documentation completion.

While this approach may have allowed organizations to avoid scrutiny in the past, increasing pressure from organizations like the SEC means that this does not ring true anymore. In the list of complaints following the Solar Winds charges, the SEC highlighted several governance and risk management issues, alongside compliance issues. This incident has brought heightened focus approaches to cyber GRC: Box ticking isn’t protecting CISOs or their businesses anymore. Delivering actual business value from your cyber GRC program is the way forward.

Transforming your legacy cyber GRC efforts into tangible business value is what modern businesses are expecting. A series of documentation and qualitative assessments don’t provide the insights CISOs need to effectively manage and communicate a successful reduction of business exposure to cyber risk. As such, cybersecurity professionals are unable to effectively communicate with business leaders the business value of their GRC efforts. The shift from focussing almost exclusively on compliance and striving for cybersecurity excellence over the bare minimum starts with CISOs. By increasing their focus on governance and risk management in a way that delivers business results, they’re able to start demonstrating the value of cybersecurity to the wider leadership team and board. 

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The future of cyber GRC 

The key to unlocking the business value of cyber GRC is in bringing governance and risk management to the forefront. These are the two areas where businesses detach themselves from cyber risk mediocracy. 

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Effective governance 

Effective cybersecurity governance starts with business-wide alignment. To achieve this, cybersecurity professionals need to be able to effectively communicate with the C-Suite and board of directors in their language - the language of business. 

Key strategies to enable this include: 

• Assigning a dollar amount to risk and presenting cyber risks alongside their potential financial exposure. 
• Leveraging a board reporting approach that gives additional context to cyber risk beyond what maturity and compliance scores can provide. 
• Demonstrate the business value of cybersecurity with ROI reporting so business leaders understand the tangible impact of cyber risk management 

Only by implementing optimized governance practices can businesses achieve successful risk management and an optimized cyber GRC program. 

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Elevated risk management

Effective governance processes provide an excellent foundation for elevated cyber risk management. Once effective communication channels are established between CISOs and the wider senior management team, businesses can align their risk management strategies with business objectives. This is ultimately the way to unlock business value through cyber risk management. 

Key strategies to enable this include: 

• Optimizing cyber risk prioritization strategies. Ensure CISOs are focussing on mitigating or reducing the risks that present the greatest threat to the business and most closely align with the objectives of the wider organization. 
• Adopting a data-driven risk management lifecycle. 55% of executives aren’t confident that their cybersecurity spending is accurately aligned with their most significant cyber risk. Businesses are spending more than ever on cybersecurity, but still facing the same challenges. They need to adopt a data-driven approach to ensure they are investing in the areas that actually move the needle. 

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The X-Analytics Perspective

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The resurgence of cyber GRC presents an opportunity for CISOs to reflect on how they have previously approached their GRC programs and adopt a new modern approach.

By bringing in X-Analytics alongside their GRC programs, they can accelerate the business's ability to align their legacy GRC programs to key business outcomes and connect mitigation activities to demonstrate business risk reduction. Most importantly, they can benchmark and communicate how cyber risk management is delivering success to the business.

X-Analytics unlocks the ability to transform legacy GRC approaches and unlock future cyber risk management success that delivers real value to the business.