Governance, Risk & Compliance - these three terms, in short "GRC" are pretty widely used in these days. Unfortunately, there is great confusion in how this term is used. The reason for this confusion is with high probability the fact that it allows to sell pretty easily all kind of technology under the umbrella of "Risk" and "Compliance" solutions. But there are very precise areas that GRC should cover, and other that it shouldn't, for example "IT-GRC", the area of tools and methodologies to assure internal control within IT operations, should be part of it, but "Financial Risk" - a core activity of the financial department - shouldn't.
This report aims to clarify the term GRC by defining a reference architecture, what exactly should be part of a GRC framework and how the different parts interact. It looks at GRC from a company-wide point of view, assembling all activities that have a certain internal control nature, yet focused on cost effectiveness and overall capability building...
