The Hidden Costs of GRC Silos — And Why It’s Time to Break Them Down

In today’s ever growing technology and compliance-driven world, organizations face a unique challenge: their governance risk and compliance (GRC) functions though vital for operations operate in silos. The compliances and governance requirements across legal, audit, risk, information security, and operations define their individual framework and objectives with its own tools, assessment formats, and reporting mechanisms. These silos are not only inefficient; they do not provide the integrated view for the management for business decision making.

Overall, the GRC structures in banks or IT services organizations may appear organized with a well-defined charter and internal trackers. Though the real challenges lie in redundancies across the functions, miscommunication, and an incomplete understanding of organizational risk. For Example: The privacy compliance function maps GDPR and ISO 27701 requirements in spreadsheets, while the information security team handles ISO 27001 audits through another GRC platform. This results in duplicated efforts in evidence collection, with different control interpretations for the same systems. Each team manages their control framework and presents their fragmented observations impacting the overall decision making for the organization.

The cost of the GRC silos though aren’t always visible on balance sheets exist in every delayed audit, duplicated control, and missed insight:

• Audit Fatigue:Teams face repetitive audits and artefact collection requests across internal audit, client audits, and certification reviews.
• Inconsistent Risk Assessment and Treatment: Due to multiple fragmented frameworks within the teams, there are inconsistent assessment and reporting of the risks identified. For example: Vendor Due Diligence team may flag a vendor as low risk due to SLA metrics reported, while another escalates the same vendor for poor encryption controls.
• Fragmented Reporting: Risk reports to the board lack cohesion as each function presents its own dashboards, with no cross-functional correlation.

Organizations have now realized the risk and impact of the GRC Silos and are working towards building unified GRC ecosystems which is integrated and designed for strategic decision-making.

The unified GRC ecosystem provides:

• A single control and risk taxonomy across audit, cyber, risk, and compliance.
• AI and automation powering control validation, risk scoring, and document mapping in real time.
• Adaptive framework to swiftly align to changing regulations, evolving threats, or new business geographies.

COMPASS – Supporting the adoption of the unified GRC ecosystem:

The progressive GRC ecosystem not only requires awareness, it also needs an intelligent, purpose-built platform that centralizes efforts and promotes collaboration across governance functions. COMPASS by CyRAACS is specifically designed to address the requirement.

Take an example of audit fatigue. Instead of repetitive documentation across compliance functions, COMPASS offers centralized control libraries and snapshots of control changes, which significantly reduces redundancy and enables smoother responses to client, internal, or regulatory audits. When organizations face inconsistent risk ratings across departments, COMPASS provides an integrated risk and control framework, so risk ownership, treatment, and assessments remain aligned—regardless of who is initiating the assessment.

COMPASS enables cross-functional teams to view linked risks, issues, and controls to empower real-time risk awareness and timely resolution of the issues identified. This eliminates the delays that often stem from siloed visibility.

Perhaps most critically, COMPASS renovates fragmented reporting into a holistic views. Instead of isolated dashboards per function, the platform consolidates data into a single view to be consumed by the CISO of the organization, mapping risks to business functions, tracking control performance over time, and identifying overlaps in obligations across frameworks like ISO 27001, SOC 2, RBI, and GDPR.

From continuous control sustenance to issue tracking, third-party assessments, and snapshot-driven governance, the platform eliminates silos and enables organizations to operate with clarity, precision, and foresight.

In a world where regulatory complexity, cyber threats, and reputational risks intersect daily, breaking down GRC silos and adopting the GRC ecosystem strategically.

Cyber Resilience doesn’t come from adding more frameworks or tools. It comes from clarity, connection, and context. The future of GRC is not about managing frameworks in isolation. It’s about building connected compliance ecosystems and leading organizations are already making that shift.

Break the silos. Unify the vision. Power resilient growth.