Title: Navigating GRC in 2025: Steering the Course of Governance, Risk, and Compliance
In the realm of security and compliance, Matt Hillary, serving as VP of Security and CISO at Drata, leads the charge. With a decade and a half of experience under his belt, Hillary is guiding organizations through the transformative GRC landscape.
The landscape is witnessing a metamorphosis, driven by factors such as the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) for process augmentation, an lifting of automation barriers, and the ever-evolving regulatory landscape demanding more from organizations. These factors pose challenges but also present opportunities for companies to seize and thrive.
Let's delve deeper into what the future may hold for GRC:
AI and GRC in 2025
The ultimate goal for all AI applications is agentic AI, an autonomous AI that can perform tasks without constant human input. This evolution holds potential to drastically speed up GRC processes, including:
Risk Assessments
Over the next few years, AI models could enable more precise and dynamic risk assessments. These models, trained on years of event impacts and risk likelihood, could provide more objective (quantitative) risk assessments, aiding organizations in proactively addressing their greatest concerns.
Evidence Collection & Audit Processes
AI can streamline evidence collection, analysis, and reporting, significantly increasing efficiency in preparing for audits and real-time compliance reporting. With well-trained AI models, organizations could replace some statically configured automated control tests for full-on internal and external audits run by agentic AI to ensure ongoing compliance.
The use of AI, however, raises ethical and privacy concerns, with human oversight still being required to ensure unbiased, transparent, and accountable AI systems.
The Future of Risk Management
Technologies like AI will transform risk management, leading to transformative changes. Some predictions include:
Quantitative Risk Analysis
More companies will adopt quantitative risk assessment methods, allowing for more precise risks quantification and prioritization.
Integration of External Data Sources
Risk assessments will incorporate a variety of external data sources, including past incident data, threat intelligence, and geopolitical events, offering a more holistic view of potential risks.
Dynamic Risk Adjustment
Real-time data will enable continuous risk assessment, allowing for swift adjustments when necessary.
Balancing Innovation and Risk
Organizations will have to make tough decisions between utilizing resources for risk mitigation and pushing forward with new opportunities.
Uniting Security, Compliance, and Privacy
These disciplines will merge, driven by shared objectives, increasing threats, more rigid regulations, intensified demands from customers, and growing public awareness of privacy concerns. Organizations will have to dissolve silos and adopt a united approach to risk management.
Transformation of Third-Party Risk Management
AI will enable quicker risk assessments of third-party relationships, enabling organizations to adjust their risk profiles more swiftly.
In conclusion, the future of GRC holds increased automation, agentic AI, and a more holistic approach to risk and compliance, requiring organizations to prepare and adapt to meet these future challenges.
Matt Hillary, as VP of Security and CISO at Drata, will continue to navigate this automated and agentic AI-driven GRC landscape, leveraging its potential for more precise risk assessments and streamlined audit processes. In the future, Hillary and other leaders in the field will need to address ethical and privacy concerns arising from AI use in GRC.
Given Matt Hillary's leadership in the GRC field, his expertise in utilizing AI for risk assessments and streamlined audit processes will become even more vital as companies adopt quantitative risk analysis, integrate external data sources, and utilize dynamic risk adjustment techniques.
