Governance, Risk & Compliance
Most GRC programs deliver paperwork nobody reads, controls nobody operates, and policies nobody follows. We design and operate GRC programs the way people who have actually run them would — risk-based prioritization, policies people can follow, evidence trails that survive scrutiny, board materials that drive decisions.
Overview
GRC programs that hold up in front of regulators and risk committees.
The Pressure
Examiner expectations have moved up across every regulated sector at the same time.
- FFIEC and NYDFS Part 500 examinations run deeper, and Part 500 amendments raised personal CISO accountability for the accuracy of attestations.
- SEC Cybersecurity Disclosure rules require board-level cyber competency and material-incident reporting on a Form 8-K clock.
- HIPAA Security Rule NPRM and CMMC Level 2 bring new control-level prescriptiveness — and CMMC is now written into DFARS contracts.
- The FTC GLBA Safeguards Rule is in active enforcement, including against higher education, with named-qualified-individual accountability.
- Cyber-insurance carriers and AI governance both demand documented evidence — carriers want proof not attestation, and NIST AI RMF, the EU AI Act, and OMB M-24-10 now land on every framework at once.
The Gap
Most GRC programs are paperwork without operational discipline.
- Controls documented but not operated — so auditors find the same things every year and findings never truly close.
- Risk committees get 47-page decks when they asked for materials they can actually act on.
- Policies written by lawyers without engineering input leave the CISO drowning in interpretation questions nobody can answer.
- Generic GRC tooling produces output that satisfies the tool's questionnaire but fails the actual examiner's question — so the institution buys the tool and still takes findings.
- No risk-based prioritization means every control gets equal effort, so the ones that matter aren't operated to standard.
How We Help
We design and operate GRC the way people who have actually run it would.
- Apply risk-based prioritization so the controls that matter operate at full standard while lower-risk controls are sustained at proportionate effort.
- Write policies people can follow — drafted with engineering input, not just legal language — and build evidence trails that survive scrutiny.
- Run multi-framework programs: NIST CSF 2.0, ISO 27001, SOC 2, CMMC, HIPAA Security Rule, FFIEC, NYDFS, NIST AI RMF, and the EU AI Act.
- Produce board and risk-committee materials built for the audience — short, decision-relevant, and operationally honest.
- Pair with our Technology & Security Audit, Third-Party Risk Management, Training, and Applied AI practices when the program needs depth in specific dimensions.
Examiners are satisfied, the risk committee can act, and the auditors stop finding the same things every year.
Capabilities
What we deliver
GRC Program Design
Charter, structure, governance committees, oversight cadence. Built to fit your organization, not a textbook.
Policy Development
Information security, acceptable use, incident response, data handling. Policies people can actually follow — written for humans.
Risk Register & Assessment
Risk-based prioritization aligned to NIST RMF or ISO 27005. Honest about what matters and what doesn't.
Control Framework Selection
NIST CSF, NIST 800-53, ISO 27001, CIS Controls, sector-specific frameworks — choose the right one and implement it correctly.
Audit Coordination
Internal audit support, external assessor coordination, evidence package preparation, finding remediation.
Board & Risk Committee Reporting
Materials, briefings, and live presentation support for the people who oversee the program.
Make compliance real, not theatrical
Let's talk about your GRC program, policy refresh, or audit readiness.