Compliance & GRC reports weighing you down?

If you find yourself constantly drowning in report requests, and consequently kept away from larger and more important tasks, a new approach to reporting is the order of the day TABLE OF CONTENTS 

The persistent need for compliance readiness and progress reports is backbreaking, but these reports are critical. For starters, they keep your C-suite and other top stakeholders in the loop of all the amazing feats you accomplish. Moreover, keeping all the powers that be informed of the time, resource and capital investments in security and compliance does a lot to hammer home a seriousness around security, and make it a hallmark of your company’s culture. In other words, your compliance and GRC reports draw focus (and appreciation) to your critical role. 

But why is reporting such a challenge? Unpacking the reporting challenge Challenge # 1: Gather tomes of data
To begin with, you need to gather all the data that bears witness to your compliance progress and readiness. This, in and of itself, is a herculean exercise. 

Challenge  # 2: Rewind. Create the data in the first place 
But for you to even begin gathering data, it must exist in the first place. This means that compliance programs must be thoroughly documented, reflecting the status of controls and risks (at the time of generating the report). In other words, you need accurate, updated as-it-is-now data, which requires intense effort because you need to pull data from various sources. 

Challenge # 3: Don’t forget about other critical tasks!
Getting hold of this current data not only consumes time (that you really do not have) but also effectively diverts your attention from real security activities that keep your organization and its customers safe.  such as threat detection and response. 

At this point, you’re telling yourself (and possibly the team that’s helping out, if you’re fortunate enough to have one) that reporting is a necessary part of your role, critical to you getting the budgets you need and the bandwidth that compliance action will call for within various departments, on product roadmaps, at decision-maker meetings, and so on. But it does nothing to improve your security posture. Nothing to actually safeguard your org. 

Challenge # 4: Express everything without saying too much
Next, determining the appropriate level of detail to include without overwhelming the reader can often be a tough call. 
Depending on the context, your reports much achieve the fine balance of illuminating gaps and progress without information overload. The last thing you want is for reports to be hard to read because this could dilute their value or, worse, lead to misinterpretations. 

Challenge # 5: Say it with pictures! 
Even when you are able to identify the right depth of data, you can’t just dump a ton of data into the report and expect the recipient to decode it. You need to provide data visualizations that make the data easy to consume and draw insights from.  

Why compliance reporting is so backbreaking?

Is there a way to drive speed to reporting (without sacrificing accuracy)?  A quicker and easier reporting mechanism would ideally come with the following three components: Sprinto can speed up, simplify (and spruce up) your reports! Think of Sprinto as a compliance dashboard with an export button. As your compliance command center, Sprinto already has access to all the compliance data you need to present in your reports—across risk, controls, and actions.