Complex regulations and sophisticated cyber risks worry compliance professionals
New research from governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) specialist MetricStream, in collaboration with GRC Report, looks at risk practitioners' priorities for 2025.
Navigating the complex regulatory landscape is among their top challenges this year, named by 51 percent, with new guidelines, evolving requirements, and unexpected policy shifts occurring almost weekly.
About 48 percent of professionals say they struggle to keep up with increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats, making cyber risk a major concern. Making need to ramp up investments in proactive cyber risk management solutions is more critical than ever.
Around 47 percent of respondents recognize the value of AI, yet only 14 percent have integrated it into their GRC frameworks.
In addition 46 percent of respondents emphasize the importance of building resilient enterprises to navigate an unpredictable risk landscape.
Overall, GRC professionals maintain a positive outlook for the future, however. 92 percent of respondents expressed optimism about their risk and compliance strategies, and 77 percent expect their risk and compliance budgets to either stay the same or increase in 2025.
"The GRC landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace. By leveraging AI and an integrated approach to risk, compliance, and audit, organizations are successfully managing increasing regulatory pressures and emerging operational resilience requirements while balancing resource constraints," says Manu Gopeendran, SVP of strategy and marketing at MetricStream. "As we look ahead to 2025 and beyond, GRC professionals have a unique opportunity to build stronger programs, foster a culture of risk awareness and compliance, and turn emerging challenges into catalysts for growth and innovation."
You can get the full report from the MetricStream site and there's an infographic summary of the findings below.
Image credit: BiancoBlue/depositphotos.com