Scrut Automation on governance, risk and compliance

This post was sponsored by Scrut Automation, a platform for governance, risk, and compliance for businesses.

Teja Edara, an executive from automated smart compliance platform Scrut Automation. Speaking to UKTN, Edara discussed the importance of compliance and the rapidly changing regulatory landscape.

What is the importance of effective governance, risk and compliance (GRC) programmes?

Teja Edara: Effective GRC is crucial in driving initiatives that deliver business objectives. Often, companies often conflate security and compliance, but it’s important to consider how they work together.

In today’s digital age, there are always new threats to security programs and can result in teams consumed by a constant state of reaction.

However, an effective GRC program allows you to define and prioritise your company objectives and then consider which risks and threats carry the biggest impact to your organisation.

A good example is fixing a UI-based cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in a public website, even though it has minimal impact on customer transactions, instead ignoring a weak encryption algorithm in internal systems which could have a significant financial loss; this lack of prioritization can be avoided by having a robust risk and compliance program.

How has automation affected the compliance industry?

TE: It has rapidly enabled businesses to visualise and prioritise initiatives like never before. Less than a decade ago, compliance was still a manual task, reliant on consultants entering organisations with large spreadsheets, detailing various requirements and working through them one at a time.

Accordingly, many of the legacy tools in the compliance management space were built with these consultants in mind, with emphasis on a project management feature set.

But modern tools like Scrut Automation package compliance expertise right into the product, allowing business to quickly understand their baseline capabilities and the gaps they need to prioritise.

The automation capabilities eliminate numerous manual and repetitive tasks, so businesses can focus on high-complexity initiatives, while saving time and resources.

The long-tail effect has elevated the role of compliance professionals, requiring a greater focus on continuous improvement and a shift from reactive to proactive compliance strategies.

How does Scrut’s automated compliance solution adapt to regulatory changes?

TE: We tackle the rapidly changing regulatory landscape in two ways. First, we maintain a mapping repository of current compliance requirements and have built it with flexibility in mind.

Therefore any new requirements can be easily added and mapped to existing compliance standards, preventing duplication of efforts if there is overlap between a new requirement and an older requirement.

Secondly, we manage a strong internal compliance team to provide nuance on how new regulation might be implemented, interpreted and incorporated.

This nuance is currently best suited for human experts to organise, and once done, fed into the mapping technology, giving businesses a baseline understanding of where they are today and what they need to do to be in compliance with upcoming regulations.

How does Scrut ensure the privacy and protection of sensitive information?

TE: We practice what we preach! Using our own platform, Scrut Automation upholds the highest standards in compliance and security.

We follow enterprise grade security practices in all aspects, such as architecture, design, review and have undergone extensive third-party audits to comply and certify against standards such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, ISO 27701, GDPR, and CCPA.

What trends or regulatory challenges do you foresee becoming critical in the next few years?

TE: As the landscape evolves rapidly, several key trends are emerging, including advancements in AI and blockchain-based technologies, increasing globalisation across industries, and the growing sophistication of threat actors.

To address these challenges, our internal compliance and infosec team is expanding rapidly. They conduct regular training sessions, podcasts, and workshops to stay abreast of emerging threats and best practices for securing new technologies and navigating globalisation.

Additionally, we established our customer council early in our journey to gain valuable insights into real-world challenges and evolving needs.

Over time, this council has evolved into a group of thought leaders, consistently staying ahead of new regulations and industry standards.

Their expertise has been instrumental in ensuring that our solutions remain relevant and effective.

Scrut Automation can be contacted at teja@scrut.io.

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.}