Leading Cloud Software Company Accelerates Business Performance by Reinforcing IT Compliance and Policy Management

Meeting these demands isn’t easy. How do you create a standard baseline across different compliance frameworks? How do you conduct multi-dimensional risk assessments based on various qualitative and quantitative parameters? How do you manage a growing number of annual certifications and audits? How do you streamline the creation and communication of policies?

The answer, to a large extent, lies in one’s approach to GRC. Over the years, traditional GRC methods and processes at the company had failed to offer stakeholders the risk visibility and efficiency they were looking for. They needed to standardize risk and control frameworks, and to provide assurance to customers that they were conforming to all compliance requirements. To do that, they needed a single and unified GRC platform that would help them rationalize compliance controls, streamline audit activities, improve risk visibility, and simplify policy management.

Why a Manual and Siloed Approach to GRC Didn’t Work

Being a global, cloud-based enterprise, the company manages more than 5,000 compliance requirements across 20 different programs globally. These requirements range from FFIEC regulations to the FedRAMP program, as well as HIPAA, HITRUST, and mandates from the DoD.

The company also has to ensure that their global employees, numbering in the tens of thousands, have attested to IT security policies. These policies, in turn, are aligned to more than 70 IT standards. Added to that are an extensive number of IT certifications and audits that have to be managed throughout the year.

In the past, the company had used homegrown techniques and spreadsheets to manage IT compliance, policies, audits, and risks. Their processes and controls were neither scalable nor integrated and, thus, costly. The lack of a common risk taxonomy as well as a standard compliance framework and control testing process further complicated governance and compliance.

To strengthen digital innovation, the company’s strategy was to acquire new businesses aligned with its own strategic initiatives. This approach, while profitable, increased the number of regulations that the company had to comply with. Change management processes were largely manual and therefore time-consuming, resource-intensive, complex, and costly.

Meanwhile, teams that managed IT compliance, audits, security, engineering, and sales were unable to effectively collaborate and align compliance requirements with the company’s business objectives. Silos were rampant, and that, in turn, delayed the process of collecting and analyzing IT compliance data for executive-level reporting. All of these factors slowed down decision-making.

To overcome these challenges, the company began assessing various governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions in the market. They eventually selected the MetricStream Enterprise GRC Solution to help them manage a wide range of regulatory requirements and risks, while strengthening collaboration and coordination across teams.