The digital era is complex, rapidly evolving and brings opportunities to increase efficiencies, quality, and potentially new business models that unlock growth. On the flip side, it also introduces a whole new array of risks and adds complexity to the existing risks. Given the diverse yet interconnected nature of these technologies in an organization’s environment, the traditional approach towards risk mitigation may not be enough.

As your organization embarks on your digital journey, we want to share some insights to help you understand and protect against risks that might prevent you from realizing the full potential of your investments. Here are some recommended ways to minimize risks in your digital journey: 

Modernize internal processes along with the technology

1. Establish a centralized governance structure to identify and manage risks consistently across the digital initiatives
2. Revise existing enterprise-level policies & standards to help drive consistent implementation of emerging technologies
3. Reassess the controls framework to identify impacts to existing controls, redesigning existing controls, and utilizing technologies to test/audit automated processes across your first, second, and third line of defenses
4. Look for opportunities to engage with the regulators and industry working groups to drive regulatory clarity
5. Reassess your Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery program – consider adding increased redundancy & real-time recovery capabilities
6. Leverage technologies to safeguard against risks. e.g.: AI, RPA & Quantum Computing techniques can be utilized to protect against cyber threats, cloud computing to address data security & resiliency

Get (and keep) IT and the business aligned

1. Include cross-functional representation from all aspects of the business & IT organizations including internal/external auditors
2. Assign clear accountability and ownership of data – from storage to usage
3. Embed Change Management into your initiatives to understand the people considerations for a successful transformation

Stay vigilant

1. Establish digital proficiency within the organization to enable people to detect, mitigate and manage risks effectively
2. Monitor review and update your risk framework on a periodic basis
3. Include security as an integral part of the entire development life cycle – DevSecOps. Embedding security, privacy, policies and controls into the lifecycle allows companies to move from compliance-based to a mindset shift
4. Assess impacts to existing cyber risk programs to account for risks introduced by the emerging technologies.

In Conclusion

Risks need to be managed across the lifecycle of your digital transformation journey, from selecting the technology, how you choose to implement the new technology and the post-implementation sustenance. Elevating the risk department from a compliance-based activity to an embedded, strategic role where the only constant is change requires thorough planning and strong collaboration. It is imperative that organizations plan, design, and manage in a bottom-up manner and that the risk mindset is embedded in both business & IT with strong collaboration encompassing business risks as well as the technology risks. This requires considering the organization’s risk tolerance, identifying the most vulnerable gaps as well as the most valuable data and systems, then devising the risk mitigation strategy. It’s no longer sufficient to simply undertake a traditional risk assessment at the end of a project – taking time to develop a risk mitigation strategy can help organizations tremendously with realizing the full potential.

At Veritas Total Solutions, we have deep experience in digital transformation across a range of technology solutions. If you are interested in learning more about our specific capabilities, contact us to learn more or subscribe to our blog to stay connected!