Combining the power of the Eficode GRC solution package and Appfire Hedge

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) are fundamental to navigating today's complex regulatory environment. They ensure regulatory compliance, mitigate risks, and strengthen business continuity. Yet many organizations struggle with fragmented GRC solutions that lack real-time insights and seamless integration with existing workflows, which often leads to reactive risk management and missed opportunities for proactive mitigation.

At Eficode, we’ve developed a GRC solution package designed to address these challenges. By integrating with Jira Service Management, we provide a structured workflow to enhance governance, risk assessment, compliance tracking, and audit management. Additionally, by incorporating Appfire's Hedge and Dashboard Hub Pro, we add powerful risk visualization and dashboarding capabilities, enabling a shift from reactive tracking to proactive risk mitigation.

Understanding the core of effective GRC

Effective GRC isn't just about ticking boxes; it's about creating a resilient and Agile organization. Here are some key elements:

• Risk assessment and compliance tracking: Automating risk evaluation and monitoring compliance status across regulatory frameworks is crucial as it ensures organizations stay ahead of potential issues and maintain adherence to standards.
• Audit management: Streamlining audit processes, ensuring seamless execution, and maintaining thorough documentation are vital for accountability and transparency.
• Integration with service management: Integrating GRC with existing service management tools like Jira Service Management provides a native experience, reducing fragmentation and improving workflow efficiency.
• Customization and scalability: GRC solutions should be adaptable to various industry needs, ensuring flexibility and comprehensive risk coverage.

Capabilities and functionality

My team, consisting of Christian Nordström and Leif Ericson, has successfully configured Jira Service Management with Asset and Confluence to meet the GRC requirements of numerous customers. By implementing best practices, we’ve developed a structured and effective GRC toolset that seamlessly integrates with existing workflows like incident management.

The Eficode GRC package offers a variety of functionalities:

• Risk matrices: Enabling categorization of risks based on severity, likelihood, and business impact provides a clear overview of potential threats.
• Incident and policy management: Establishing a centralized repository for managing security incidents and internal policies ensures consistency and accessibility.
• Automated compliance alerts: Keeping teams informed about compliance deadlines and non-conformance issues promotes proactive management.
• Custom dashboards and reports: Information about ongoing risks and compliance levels facilitates informed decision-making.

Enhancing GRC with Appfire

Appfire’s Hedge and Dashboard Hub

Hedge is a powerful risk management app with advanced visualization, real-time reporting, and data-driven risk assessment. At the same time, Dashboard Hub Pro allows teams to create a holistic picture by connecting multiple data sources into one, allowing them to make decisions based on the full picture, not just Jira. Together, they complement the GRC package by enhancing visualization, improving cross-team communication and collaboration, and providing data-driven insights with an automated risk backlog.

Creating management dashboards and risk matrices

Creating Dashboards with Dashboard Hub Pro is easy. With its multi-product, multi-data source, and Bring Your Own Data (BYOD) functionality, Dashboard Hub enables you to connect information from all of the Atlassian products and beyond, enabling risk teams and beyond to gain true insights into their world.

With an extensive library of out-of-the-box gadgets, Dashboard Hub enables teams to visualize data quickly. Anyone can get business insights, as each gadget has a simple walk-through wizard. With many different charting types, including bar, pie, multi-pie, and more, you can represent the data however you need to provide understanding to your stakeholders.

Practical implementation

Our Firefly Risk team at acme.inc wanted to visualize upcoming risk events from their Google Calendar, see a breakdown of risks by category and department, understand financial risks, and monitor compliance standards. Using Dashboard Hub Pro, we created dashboards to represent the calendar, visualize risk percentages, track financial data, and display an overall risk matrix.

This approach allowed the team to:

• Gain up-to-date information: Dashboards connected to original data sources provided real-time updates, enabling quicker reactions to trends.
• Understand critical risks: Identifying the most critical and costly risks and compliance gaps allowed for better planning and mitigation.
  
  

As all of these gadgets are connected to the original data source, every time you load the dashboard, you gain the most up-to-date information, enabling your teams to react quicker to trends and make decisions based on the here and now. By understanding the most critical risks, the most costly risks, or where you are failing compliance standards, you can better plan, mitigate, or accept the risks posed to the business.

Streamlining risk backlog management

Managing risk is an ongoing process that requires seamless collaboration and visibility. With Hedge, organizations can prioritize risks by utilizing risk-scoring mechanisms to identify the most critical threats. The tool enhances communication by allowing teams to share real-time updates with stakeholders and management, ensuring risks are addressed proactively.

Hedge’s list view lets teams instantly sort and filter risks, providing a quick snapshot of the bigger picture. Additionally, Hedge is highly customizable, allowing organizations to tailor it to their specific risk policies and scoring methodologies.

Within Hedge, the list view enables any team to instantly sort and filter for the risks they are involved in while gaining full visibility of the bigger picture with quick snapshot reports. 

Not every company's risk policies are the same, though. Hedge is completely customizable to be able to fit your needs. Be able to select what you score against, how the scoring weighting is done, and even how the matrix is made up.

The collaborative approach

Eficode and Appfire’s partnership

The partnership between Eficode and Appfire unites industry-leading expertise to provide a robust GRC solution, ensuring seamless integration and delivering end-to-end risk management within Jira. With dedicated support teams available, organizations receive expert guidance to assist with implementation and optimization.

Customer success stories

For organizations looking to enhance their GRC capabilities, the synergy between the GRC package and Appfire’s Hedge and Dashboard Hub Pro products offers tangible benefits. While client success stories are still being collected, here are some potential use cases:

• Financial institutions: Improved regulatory compliance tracking for frameworks such as DORA and NIS2.
• IT service providers: Enhanced risk visualization and proactive incident response.
• Manufacturing and supply chain: Streamlined audit management and compliance reporting.

Future developments

Looking ahead, the collaboration between Eficode and Appfire aims to introduce:

• AI-powered risk analysis: Automating risk identification and mitigation strategies.
• Expanded compliance frameworks: Support for additional regulatory standards beyond DORA and NIS2.
• Enhanced reporting features: More customizable dashboard options and predictive analytics.

Key takeaways

• Integrating GRC solutions with existing service management tools streamlines workflows and reduces fragmentation.
• Visualization tools like Hedge and Dashboard Hub Pro enhance risk management by providing real-time insights and holistic dashboards.
• Proactive risk management strategies, enabled by these integrations, are crucial for navigating today’s complex regulatory landscape.

By combining robust GRC solutions with advanced visualization tools, organizations can move from reactive risk tracking to real-time insights and proactive mitigation. This approach improves overall resilience, regulatory adherence, and decision-making. The goal is to empower teams with the information they need to make informed decisions and effectively manage risks in a dynamic environment.

For more information on implementing integrated GRC solutions, contact our team. We’re happy to share insights and discuss how these strategies can be tailored to your organization’s needs.