Technologies implemented to meet operational needs bring tangible benefits to an organization with focused, tactical functions. These tools bring value to organizations due to the focus on the specific business challenge at hand and most often help achieve goals at the operations level. However, certain processes need to lead to greater enterprise value.

The mismanagement of policies has grown exponentially within organizations with the proliferation of collaboration and document sharing software such as Microsoft SharePoint. These solutions to their credit as well as downfall enable anyone to post a policy. Organizations end up with policies scattered on dozens of different internal Web sites and file shares, with no defined audit trails or accountability for them.

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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduces sweeping changes to how enterprises around the world collect, process, store, and protect the personal data of EU citizens. As the first compliance deadline draws near, Data Protection Officers (DPOs) will need to ensure that their organizations are prepared by establishing compliance and audit teams, processes, policies, and controls.

Success in today's dynamic business environment requires organizations to manage and comply with policies, standards, and controls. This is true across the business, but is particularly true in the context of IT governance, risk management, and compliance (IT GRC).

Effective governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) delivers the ability to meet requirements, achieve human and financial efficiency, and meet the demands of a dynamic business environment that requires agility. It eliminates silos of risk and compliance that emerge from parts of the organization that have historically worked independently of each other.

Active governance goes beyond general oversight to ensure alignment and interlock strategy, through policy, procedures and roles in the operational fabric of the organization and carries through to suppliers, customers and third parties. By starting with these core aspects of active governance, you are in your way to creating a competency of proactive risk intelligence in your organization.

GRC, by definition, involves bringing together governance, risk and compliance disciplines from across an increasingly complex, extended enterprise with deep interlocks to customer and supplier eco-systems. While it's not realistic to expect organizations to converge on a common set of GRC processes across this complex landscape, there is huge value in taking a federated approach to GRC that leverages the common risk elements from each business unit, IT and security teams, and management of third parties.