This is 3 of 6 in this article series: The Future of GRC
Over the past 3 years, we have seen a huge increase in the need for our current clients and prospective customers to make their GRC platforms part of a much larger network of applications. GRC platforms can benefit significantly, in regards to their efficiency and effectiveness, from integrating with existing applications. Integration can take many forms and include either pulling or pushing data, or a combination, from both internal and external applications. Some examples of the benefits include:
- Enhanced substantive risk assessments utilizing KPI / KRI data;
- Fact-based auditing (or control effectiveness assessments) by means of data analytics or collecting evidence in an automated fashion;
- Automatically performing vendor verification against Dun & Bradstreet;
- Collecting threat intelligence to substantiate claims on current cyber risks;
- Access to current financial ledger details to scope SOX material classes of transactions and key financial controls;
- Automatic alerting in case of new or changes to current legislation/regulations; among much more.
During our regular interactions with clients we noticed that there is a high level of resistance towards implementing technical integrations, as they are perceived to be technical projects resulting in high risks and high costs. Although this is the case for projects initiated a couple of years back, it is important to point out that the technological standards, as well as the technological possibilities to integrate applications, have drastically improved.
The Datafeed Manager
To take away the burden of system integrations and choosing associated tooling, we integrated the creation, maintenance and execution of data integrations completely in the BWise Web Application. The Data Feed Manager allows you to quickly connect through all kinds of file types or protocols to external systems. The flow of data is modeled in a visual tool and is easily digestible.
The BWise Data Feed Manager is delivered with standard templates and optional pre-configured connectors that allow clients to hit the ground running. Examples of some key inclusions are as follows:
- File-based integrations (CSV, XSLX);
- REST API based integrations;
- Web-services integrations;
- Staging database integrations.
All of the above examples use a variety of sources such as Qualys vulnerability scanning, Servicenow.com incidents, ERP applications, the UCF Common controls hub and plenty more. So, get in there and start modelling your own integrations today! For more information visit www.bwise.com or contact us.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
