The IT department is the heartbeat of your organization. Any disruptions of the heartbeat can be detrimental to the business success achieved by every other department. Disruptions materialize in the form of cyber-attacks that your organization faces on a daily basis, and the most effective way to thwart the cyber risks faced by your organization is to maintain compliance with the laws and regulations that protect proprietary data and information security.

IT governance and compliance should be one of the most important goals established by IT professionals and businesses of all sizes, as well as operating in every type of industry. Without a GRC strategy, your organization can quickly fall behind the competition because of the difficulty associated with addressing cyber risks.

What is GRC?

GRC is the acronym for Governance, Risk, and Compliance. It represents a strategy developed for managing your organization’s IT risk management, as well as compliance with federal laws and regulations. Implementing a strong GRC program involves the participation of different departments, such as the legal, finance, and human resources departments. However, the bulk of managing a GRC program is the responsibility of the IT department.

A comprehensive GRC program covers three areas. The first area covered is governance, which consists of verifying that all activities conducted by your company support its business goals. Risk involves the identification and tracking of any digital threats associated with participating in business activities. Compliance represents the policies that ensure your organization meets the standards established by federal laws and regulations.

Your IT department’s involvement in developing a GRC strategy keeps IT issues an integral part of the strategies that define business success. Centralization is the key to improving how your company addresses cyber threats and thus, makes GRC a central component for making sound decisions when it comes to protecting sensitive proprietary data.

6 Tips to Promote IT Governance and Compliance

Establishing goals and meeting the expectations created by those goals can be a difficult challenge for every type of business. However, by following a few tips, your organization can meet the goals established by implementing an effective GRC policy.

Document Policies

Creating a paper and digital trail of your organization’s GRC policies and procedures gives the GRC program more credibility. It also gives employees quick access to the information they need to maintain a tight anti-cyber threat agenda. Request input from members of each department before establishing your organization’s IT governance and compliance policies for documentation.

Consistently Follow GRC Policies

The consistent application of GRC policies is mandatory for achieving business success. IT leaders should set an example for every employee, especially when it comes to digital security protocols. Keep IT governance and compliance issues relevant by holding team meetings to keep the conversations ongoing concerning the prevention of cyberattacks.

Remove Barriers

Establishing an effective GRC program is one thing. It is quite another thing to implement a GRC program without any hitches. Make sure every employee has access to the guidelines created for your organization’s GRC program, which should come in the form of daily checklists, as well as certain goals to meet on a longer-term schedule.

Use Training as a Reinforcement Tool

We have established communication as a vital part of implementing a successful GRC program. Ongoing training sessions with every employee’s participation improve the level of communication required to comply with government IT security laws and regulations. Keep your team members updated on the latest changes in IT governance and compliance statutes.

Conduct Audits

After implementing a comprehensive GRC program, test the effectiveness of it by conducting audits at times that are not announced to the rest of the organization. Governance and compliance audits help your organization’s IT security team discover which policies need to be updated, as well as reveal any security gaps that make your company vulnerable to outside digital intrusions.

Use Software to Ensure IT Governance and Compliance

Staying on top of IT governance and compliance issues manually can be time-consuming, and in many cases, not practical. IT governance and compliance programs can be customized to ensure your organization avoids missing any IT security issues, while eliminating for the most part manually-created errors.

Bonus Tip: Consider Outsourcing IT Governance and Compliance

IT governance and compliance standards can be difficult to achieve for most organizations because of the volume of issues, as well as the rapidly changing laws and regulations. Small and mid-size businesses are especially vulnerable to missing obvious security threats. By outsourcing IT governance and compliance tasks to an IRS-certified Professional Employer Organization (PEO), your organization should do a much better job of meeting IT governance and compliance standards.