In 2016, Wells Fargo was fined $185 million for opening unauthorized bank accounts for its customers. The bank failed to track and resolve issues related to its sales practices, leading to a significant financial and reputational loss.

In 2014 General Motors was caught in the grip of a strategic failure that materialized from a seemingly “low probability” event, where it was forced to recall 3.1 million vehicles.

A study by Ponemon Institute (a pre-eminent research center dedicated to privacy, data protection, and information security policy) revealed that the average cost of a data breach was $3.86 million

Identify. Track. Resolve.
The need to constantly identify track and mitigate potential issues to avoid significant financial and reputational costs is extremely critical for an effective Governance, Risk and Compliance Program.

Issues are a common occurrence across a business life cycle and mainly fall under four categories:

A Problem that could prevent progress or completion.
An Opportunity that needs to be explored for possible gains.
A Situation that can be an issue of concern.
A Cause for Concern wherein an issue may develop into a problem.

A centralized view of issues and their tracking till resolution helps organizations avoid losses, reputational damage and regulatory fines. A good example here would be The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), or the Sarbanes –Oxley (SOX) Act, that demand a clear audit trail showing various transactions and records.

Issue tracking-best practices
Tracking issues or findings to resolution is a critical component of an effective Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Program and businesses follow several benchmark practices which include the following steps:

• Identifying the issue.
• Tracking issues across their lifecycle to assess their impact.
• Prioritizing them based on criticality.
• Analyzing the root cause and initiating the course of action.
• Assigning ownership and responsibilities by routing them to appropriate teams.
• Monitoring the progress on GRC- related issues. For example-tracking metrics like issue closure rates, time to resolution, and resource utilization.
• Making contextual decisions to drive timely resolution.
• Gaining greater operational visibility.
• Identifying patterns that may be indicative of deeper issues to take proactive action and audit them.
• Deriving actionable insights.
• Assigning actions aimed at resolving issues and tracking their progress.
• Conducting regular assessments of the GRC processes to identify areas for improvement- like reviewing issue data to identify trends, soliciting stakeholders’ feedback, and assessing the effectiveness of the tracking and resolution system.

Issue-tracking to resolution provides organizations and businesses with a solid compliance posture by ensuring effective and timely remediation to comply with regulatory requirements and industry standards.
Advantage –Issue Tracking

• Clear definitions of compliance expectations and policy statements for easier compliance with regulations.
• Greater control over organizational security to prevent data leaks.
• Effective protection of data assets-like intellectual property and personally identifiable information (PII).
• Minimal vendor and third –party risks.

Organizations that are committed to Issue management and resolution are viewed as more responsible and reliable by customers, investors, and stakeholders and go a long way in improving productivity, strengthening business stability and continuity, and giving them a definite competitive advantage.

EnGRC – Facing the future with certainty

EnGRC is built by experts with firsthand experience of day-to-day GRC operations. Therefore, we know how important it is to have a solution which is quick to implement, easy to use and delivers the smart dashboards and reports that stakeholders want. EnGRC delivers all of these features in a modular, scalable, configurable platform.

Know more. https://www.3i-infotech.com/engrc/