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).

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.

As regulations get tougher, and risks get more complex and interconnected, the success - and very survival - of any business will depend largely on how risk-aware, compliant, and well-governed they are.