"Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) are three pillars that work together for the purpose of assuring that an organization meets its objectives. ... Governance is the combination of processes established and executed by the board of directors that are reflected in the organization's structure and how it is managed and led toward achieving goals. Risk management is predicting and managing risks that could hinder the organization to achieve its objectives. Compliance with the company's policies and procedures, laws and regulations, strong and efficient governance is considered key to an organization's success."

 

Organizations reach a size where coordinated control over GRC activities is required to operate effectively. Each of these three disciplines creates information of value to the other two, and all three impact the same technologies, people, processes and information.

 

• Governance describes the overall management approach through which senior executives direct and control the entire organization, using a combination of management information and hierarchical management control structures. Governance activities ensure that critical management information reaching the executive team is sufficiently complete, accurate and timely to enable appropriate management decision making, and provide the control mechanisms to ensure that strategies, directions and instructions from management are carried out systematically and effectively.

 

• Governance of risk management is the attention given to preventing excessive risk management by keeping in mind the organization’s appetite for risk. Sufficient countermeasures are required rather than excessive, unnecessary and pointless measures. The risk of risk management is that the good intentions become wasteful expenditure or impediments to growth, innovation and opportunity.

 

• Risk management is the set of processes through which management identifies, analyzes, and, where necessary, responds appropriately to risks that might adversely affect realization of the organization's business objectives. The response to risks typically depends on their perceived gravity, and involves controlling, avoiding, accepting or transferring them to a third party. Whereas organizations routinely manage a wide range of risks (e.g. technological risks, commercial/financial risks, information security risks etc.), external legal and regulatory compliance risks are arguably the key issue in GRC.

 

• Compliance means conforming with stated requirements. At an organizational level, it is achieved through management processes which identify the applicable requirements (defined for example in laws, regulations, contracts, strategies and policies), assess the state of compliance, assess the risks and potential costs of non-compliance against the projected expenses to achieve compliance, and hence prioritize, fund and initiate any corrective actions deemed necessary.