Intro
The business demands from governance, risk, and compliance teams aren’t just increasing — they’re evolving faster than many organizations can adapt.
While some challenges, like stakeholder dependencies, manual evidence collection, and limited resources, are common to all GRC teams, each industry presents unique GRC challenges.
In this guide, we will explore 5 industries, their unique GRC challenges, and how GRC automation tools can help overcome them. From taking the pain out of M&A to balancing AI risk with innovation, learn how proactive GRC tools and strategies help companies thrive in an era of rapid change.
GRC in Financial Services
The challenge: Rapid adoption of new regulations
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The financial industry has always operated under intense scrutiny. Since the days of analog banking, governments and other regulatory bodies have created a complex and constantly changing regulatory landscape to ensure fairness, security, and privacy.
As ongoing digitization and technological innovation reshape the financial industry, regulators increasingly emphasize security-related controls. Many newer regulations, such as DORA, NYDFS, NIS2, and others, specifically aim to strengthen the financial sector against growing cyber threats. Complex and overlapping new requirements put even more pressure on overburdened GRC teams. If you’re feeling the squeeze, you’re not alone.
The solution: cross-mapping
There’s a way to take the pain out of the process: leveraging a tool that cross-maps your data to all relevant places in your GRC program. This means that the same piece of evidence (which the tools should automatically be collecting) is automatically mapped to all places in your program where it is relevant, and when an action is taken in one place, it automatically applies everywhere that evidence appears.
Automation tools use differing approaches to cross-mapping, namely control-based and requirement based mapping. Either way, automatic cross-mapping reduces repetitive manual tasks, saving your team valuable time so you can meet regulations and grow your program without additional resources.
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GRC in Gaming Organizations
The challenge: Managing multiple iterations of a framework for different subsidiaries
The pandemic created a boom time for the gaming industry and set off a wave of merger mania. In 2023, Microsoft’s jaw-dropping US$68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard overshadowed other major video game industry acquisitions. China’s Tencent closed five public deals of at least US$1.58 billion, and Saudi company Savvy Games Group spent US$4.9 billion to acquire Scopely.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) add layers of complexity to compliance. Meeting M&A compliance requirements is no small feat—they’re intricate, unforgiving, and vary by jurisdiction. But the challenges don’t end once the deal is signed. Since gaming brands carry valuable name recognition, acquired companies generally continue to operate as subsidiaries. This leaves security leaders juggling multiple GRC programs with separate technology stacks and varying regulatory requirements.
The solution: Granular scoping
When you find yourself managing GRC programs across different subsidiaries, you need to leverage your automation tool to scope your evidence on a granular level so that only relevant items appear for each framework of each subsidiary. You should be able to create multiple iterations of frameworks, one for each subsidiary or business line, and then define what evidence will be automatically collected and applied to it.
What does “granular scoping” look like? Your tools should allow you to scope your evidence on three levels:
- Scoping on the framework level: define which of the tools in your tech stack (or accounts within those tools) that your GRC automation tool is collecting evidence from are in scope for each iteration of a framework.
- Scoping on the requirement level: define what evidence is in scope for each control within every framework and should be automatically mapped to it.
- Scoping at the evidence level: determine which of the records that were collected are in scope for the evidence.
With an automation tool that gives you granular scoping, you won’t even break a sweat the next time your company makes an acquisition because you’ll have flexibility built into the system.
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GRC for Healthcare Providers
The challenge: Building trust with customers in a highly regulated industry
While several industries qualify as highly regulated, few depend on trust as much as the healthcare industry. Nothing could be more private or personal than the vast repositories of sensitive patient data that healthcare organizations manage and protect. The necessity to comply with a wide range of industry standards and regulations and avoid substantial fines adds complexity and significant costs to their operations, but risk reduction is only the beginning. To foster trust, you also need to manage the public perception of your GRC work.
In a 2022 survey by the American Medical Association, almost 3 in 4 patients reported worrying about the privacy of their health data. More than 9 in 10 patients want developers to publicly disclose whether and how their health apps comply with industry standards for health data.
The solution: Trust center
Nothing reduces risk like a mature GRC program, and automation can play a key role in reaching GRC maturity. But you won’t establish credibility and confidence by keeping all that work behind the scenes. To gain the trust of patients, customers, and prospects, healthcare organizations need to be transparent about ongoing efforts to maintain security and compliance.
The best way to showcase your commitment to compliance and privacy is with a trust center. If connected to your GRC automation platform, a trust center provides a real-time window into your GRC work, including continuous monitoring of controls.
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GRC in the Crypto Space
The challenge: Prime target for malicious attacks
The crypto industry is inherently interdependent, with all companies relying on trusted partners and vendors in their day-to-day operations. With so many entities involved in a company’s supply chain, hackers have learned to go after the chain’s weakest link to gain access to their targeted network.
Case in point: in June 2023, attackers compromised a single service provider, JumpCloud, to gain access to multiple downstream organizations. The breach was attributed to North Korean state-sponsored hackers known for targeting cryptocurrencies. Attacks like this not only expose vulnerabilities in supply chain networks but also undermine blockchain’s promise of trust, immutability, and decentralized security.
GRC in crypto faces an uphill battle when it comes to VRM. Traditional vendor risk management (VRM) relies heavily on manual questionnaires and resource-intensive processes, leading to inefficiencies and scalability issues.
The solution: Aligning your GRC posture with your VRM efforts
It’s past time for GRC in crypto to mature beyond reactive, manual approaches to VRM and compliance. With the right tools, crypto companies can automate real-time security checks, speeding up vetting and onboarding while lowering risk exposure.
A complete GRC platform with an integrated trust center automates evidence collection, centralizes compliance data, and proactively demonstrates compliance postures. Adopting these solutions will help crypto companies reduce risk, strengthen customer and vendor relationships, and build confidence in blockchain ecosystems. Crypto organizations that can transparently demonstrate their trustworthiness will be particularly well-positioned to foster stronger relationships with customers and stakeholders.
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GRC for AI Users
The challenge: Understanding what controls to put in place
AI is a whole new ball game for GRC. Every day, novel use cases are emerging, being tested, and going viral. But, GRC teams can’t always predict what could pose a problem or even identify risks as quickly as they emerge.
With things changing so fast, it’s not always clear what controls to implement—especially if those controls threaten to stifle innovation. Even when they do figure out the right controls, ensuring those controls are consistently monitored adds another layer of complexity.
GRC teams need to walk a fine line to support the organization’s drive for AI experimentation without letting new processes exceed the organization’s defined risk appetite. It’s a delicate balancing act — one that requires tools and strategies for real-time monitoring around the clock.
The solution: Continuous monitoring of pre-mapped frameworks
This is where GRC automation tools come in handy. Good GRC automation tools include pre-mapped frameworks as a starting point for managing risk. Anecdotes includes a fully mapped framework specifically for AI risk. No framework is one-size-fits-all, but it’s helpful to have a head start with a functional framework you can adjust to suit your organization.
Even better, a comprehensive GRC automation platform makes it easier to keep tabs on everything. With continuous monitoring, you’re never left guessing whether controls are being followed — you can see it in real-time. Visibility is a big step toward managing AI risks. Plus, with automation to take so many manual tasks off your team’s plate, they’ll have time to follow up on anything that pops up in continuous monitoring.
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GRC Across Industries: Embracing Data-Driven Compliance
Despite their differences, all the industries we’ve looked at share a common truth: manual GRC processes can no longer keep up with the complexity and change of today’s risk landscape. And these industries aren’t the only ones. At one time or another, most organizations will run up against overlapping regulations, the layered compliance demands of M&A, high-stakes trust and privacy pressures, supply chain vulnerabilities, and the fast-evolving risks of AI.
To maximize GRC efficiency and reduce risk, GRC teams across industries are turning to data-driven solutions like Anecdotes. By automating manual tasks, centralizing data, and enabling continuous monitoring, Anecdotes’ platform empowers teams to monitor, strengthen and grow their programs so they can continue to be an important driver for the business.
Now is the time to embrace the tools and strategies that will move your GRC program — and your organization — forward. Reach out for help transforming compliance from a reactive burden into a proactive advantage.
See How Anecdotes Can Transform Your GRC Strategy
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