Building a risk management program? Start with compliance – and Reciprocity ZenComply.

Businesses are constantly adapting to changing circumstances. Yet, many are strapped for resources and view compliance as nothing more than a checklist of requirements to satisfy regulators or auditors which could short-change their business. At the same time, the pandemic has highlighted the necessity of risk management for every organization, and exposed the gaps that exist in many governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) programs today.

Every business activity involves risk, so prioritizing risk mitigation is critical. Compliance controls provide a good first step, but they aren’t sufficient on their own. InfoSec teams need to understand which compliance controls have the greatest impact on reducing inherent risk and prioritize resources accordingly. Unfortunately, information silos between compliance and risk can make it difficult, as the teams traditionally operate separately, using applications designed around compliance frameworks or risk registers – not both. This forces them to switch back and forth between applications, creating control duplication, repetitive manual work, communication gaps, and potential risk blind spots (e.g., control failures that could impact an organization’s risk posture). It also makes it nearly impossible for them to understand what specific actions will mitigate risk the most and how it will impact business activities, as well as the business overall.

At Reciprocity, we’re taking a different approach, providing a unified view of both compliance and risk in business context to help guide decision making and make it easier to build a better, more secure risk management program.

Compliance is the Foundation

As your compliance demands expand and become more complex, it’s hard to prioritize where to invest resources to respond to growing requirements. InfoSec leaders need to move on from “check-the-box compliance” to thinking more about risk and business context. This includes how compliance activities impact the broader organization and its strategic direction and goals.

In a compliance program, controls are simply pass-fail. When your organization is “in compliance,” it has met the minimum requirements under its obligations. But being able to say “we’re compliant” is not the same as understanding to what extent implemented controls have effectively reduced the underlying risks. Compliance programs can be the foundation for establishing effective risk management with just a little more effort.

Go Beyond Checking the Box

The Reciprocity ZenComply compliance and audit management solution strengthens the role of compliance in security. It delivers a faster, easier, and smarter path to compliance, eliminating tedious manual processes, accelerating onboarding and keeping you up-to-date on the progress and effectiveness of your programs. In addition, it offers a guided, content rich approach that gets you audit-ready in 30 minutes.

Based on the Reciprocity ROAR platform, the application leverages an AI-powered engine that maps 10,000+ content objects across frameworks, threats, and risk registers, automating calculations and building key relationships. The result: real-time insight into how your current compliance activities are impacting your risk posture to help you accelerate your organization’s compliance while reducing IT and cyber risks.

To learn more, check out this short video.