Many organisations' governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) practices have not changed for years. The result is organisations are struggling to keep up with the complex regulatory environment and meet external stakeholders' expectations. Many organisations, no matter what sector they trade in are seeking to become more flexible and profitable while increasing internal controls and reducing risk. These objectives appear to be contradictory, but one way large organisations can unite them is by improving their approach to GRC.

The US healthcare industry is rigorously monitored against stringent regulatory norms. The industry needs to comply with a variety of standards including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), International Conference on Harmonization (ICH), International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC), and Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).

The GCSX Code of Connection is an important step along the journey to provide a secure infrastructure for public sector business. At the time of writing most, if not all, work in local authorities to achieve compliance with the Code of Connection has been completed.

Businesses today are under increased pressure to cut costs, optimize performance, and reduce risk. The need to meet these challenges is particularly apparent in the area of regulatory compliance. Historically, businesses responded to emerging regulatory requirements by assigning a dedicated team to handle every new mandate, each with its own specific team, mission, and project scope. But as regulations continue to proliferate and evolve, this approach is directly at odds with business requirements to improve performance, reduce costs, and more effectively manage risk. But what is the alternative, given the amount of effort required to manage compliance in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex regulatory landscape?

In 2004, Jeffrey Heer at UC Berkeley demonstrated a project that he had undertaken to analyze Enron's corporate email database. Using various visualization techniques and algorithms, Heer dug deep into Enron's communication network and constructed a tremendously intricate map profiling the communication between respondents.

This paper explains SAP's vision for a cross-enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solution and the benefits it can provide, defines key terms, and discusses what to look for when evaluating GRC software options.

Regulatory compliance is dynamic, costly, and checking the box is no longer an option. Compliance mandates are global and require exposure by law when breaches do occur. However, many organizations do not tie risk management and compliance together. In fact, every day organizations make countless business decisions aimed to boost organizational performance. Unfortunately, most of these decisions are made without knowing the real tradeoffs against risk exposure.

The challenge for organizations from top to bottom is to provide harmony between silos of governance, risk, and compliance. Maintaining harmony is vital: Different roles — such as legal, risk mitigation, audit and compliance — have different and unique purposes, but must remain in tune with each other.

This SAP Executive Insight focuses on helping executives determine: What are the consequences of today's typical GRC approaches?

There's a tremendous focus today on complying with regulatory mandates, keeping IT systems secure, and ensuring privacy for confidential enterprise and customer information.

Thanks to the rapid growth of Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter, social computing has entered the enterprise lexicon quickly as business and IT managers seek to leverage the power of social applications to improve communications and collaboration both internally and externally.

Managing IT risk is part of running any business, helping you increase security, reduce management costs and achieve greater compliance. Corporate leaders who fail to identify, assess and mitigate IT risk are setting themselves up for security breaches and financial losses. Read this paper to learn how to effectively assess IT risk and manage compliance.