8 common tech risk challenges and how to prevent them
From automating risk detection to meeting regulatory requirements to monitoring controls, here’s how forward-looking companies are proactively staying ahead of technology risks.
In today’s rapidly evolving business world, risks are on the rise. Chief Risk Officers and other risk function leaders face volatile markets, financial uncertainty, and geopolitical disruption. Rapid innovation and technological change—including advances in artificial intelligence that are significantly impacting many aspects of business—create additional pressures and concerns across multiple industries.
At the same time, risk and compliance requirements are steadily growing in the face of increased scrutiny by stakeholders regarding environmental and social issues. Many organizations already have initiatives underway to improve risk and regulatory compliance, support new expectations from oversight bodies, and reduce risk exposure. However, these transformation efforts are not mutually exclusive, often intersect, and must be effectively balanced to avoid unintended outcomes.
To address these challenges and more, risk function leaders must become more agile, efficient, and effective in mitigating risks. They need to leverage the right technology in the right way to maintain stakeholder trust, improve board visibility, and enhance decision making. They also know that new technology needs to work with people, processes, and legacy technology environments to fully deliver on their technology investments.
Addressing risk challenges with agile, modern technology solutions
KPMG helps organizations leverage modern technology solutions to become more technology driven and data rich, while delivering sound, cost-effective risk and compliance programs. See the difference in potential risk management outcomes after embracing our risk transformation solutions, approaches, frameworks to create a modern, future-fit risk function.
CHALLENGE #1
Navigating complex, evolving risks
Before
Risk leaders and managers were forced to act on hindsight, and without the full picture, because they could only see a subset of internal and external signals and scenarios that may impact the organization’s risks.
Solution
After
With KRI, a digital solution that delivers robust data, analytics and automation capabilities, risk teams can quickly spot current and emerging risks and threats. This enables resources to focus on the most critical risk areas and drives more proactive, confident, and informed risk-related decision-making.
CHALLENGE #2
Efficiently monitoring controls
Before
Monitoring controls was a manual, time-consuming process, resulting in delayed risk identification—especially as internal and external changes in the business environment caused risks to emerge and risk management priorities to evolve.
Solution
After
The KPMG Controls Observability solution combines people, methodologies, and accelerators so an organization can monitor its key controls across the entire change lifecycle in real time. The solution can be deployed at scale to drive control compliance and visibility, thereby supporting accelerated risk mitigation and control validation.
CHALLENGE #3
Keeping up with ongoing change for IT risk and compliance teams
Before
IT was under constant pressure to cut costs, keep up with technology, integrate systems during mergers and acquisitions, and support the talent needed to run the department.
Solution
KPMG IT Risk and Compliance as a Service
After
This service helps organizations address IT risk and compliance needs for implementation, transition, and ongoing operations. Organizations receive ready access to risk professionals, support for implementation accelerators, and assistance to help run IT risk and compliance operations.
CHALLENGE #4
Meeting changing regulatory requirements
Before
Service providers were faced with the growing complexity of certifying contractual commitments, meeting more regulatory requirements, and managing an evolving threat landscape.
Solution
KPMG IT Risk and Compliance for Service Providers
After
KPMG offers services designed for portfolio and program enhancements; readiness and remediation; and support for assessing risk from third-party vendors.
CHALLENGE #5
Managing a fast-changing threat landscape
Before
The threat landscape was full of shifting attack vectors, variable risks, and digital transformations accelerating at a record pace.
Solution
KPMG Modern Technology Risk COE
After
KPMG Technology Risk Modernization COE provides organizations with insights and help as they evolve their risk management capabilities.
CHALLENGE #6
Anticipating new technology risks
Before
Organizations were under pressure to incorporate a more proactive stance on managing the risks that came with new technology investments and changes to the business environment.
Solution
KPMG Technology Risk Intelligence solution
After
The KPMG Technology Risk Intelligence solution provides organizations with a clear and in-depth picture of how technology risks can adversely affect an organization. This includes key dependencies, potential single points of failure, and other factors that can disrupt business operations.
CHALLENGE #7
Outdated GRC platforms
Before
Organizations with legacy tools for GRC capabilities often struggled with high operating costs, technology debt, manual processes, and performance issues.
Solution
After
Our holistic risk and security solutions help realize value quicky while optimizing risk and compliance activities across the organization to drive a cohesive, coordinated and efficient approach to risk management. Digitized, automated GRC processes are powerful, intuitive, forward-leaning and cost-efficient, helping businesses ease the burden of GRC processes and build responsible growth, confident decision-making and increased performance.
CHALLENGE #8
Building an agile risk operating model
Before
Risk was treated as a four-letter word. Processes focused solely on business protection today, at the expense of innovation and growth tomorrow.
Solution
After
KPMG Powered Enterprise Risk is a transformation solution built to help companies reduce time spent on worry, and increase time thinking about the business. With leading practices and customizable pre-configured tools and processes, risk functions can build an agile operating model and technology stack that provides a big-picture view and turns data into actionable business insights—enabling risk functions to go beyond just protecting the business.
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Why KPMG?
KPMG has been repeatedly ranked number one globally in Source’s “Perceptions of Risk Firms” survey for multiple risk management categories, including Financial Risk, Third Party Assurance, and Client Advocacy in Risk. With more than 6,000 global practitioners, KPMG empowers risk and compliance teams to shift from being reactive advisors to proactive business partners, able to share quick, efficient, and reliable insight into the interconnected risks lying ahead.
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