Governance, Risk, and Compliance Maturity Checklist

Is your compliance program driving security – or just checking boxes?

Use this quick self-assessment to evaluate whether your Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) approach supports real-time risk management, strategic oversight, and long-term business resilience.

Section 1: Governance, Risk and Compliance Foundation & Ownership

These questions evaluate how effectively your team manages policies and controls.

• Do all key policies have clear, documented owners?
• Are your controls mapped to a known framework (e.g. NIST, ISO, CIS)?
• Does your team review control status more than once per year?
• Can your team produce evidence for any given control within a day?
• Do you track policy review and versioning in a central system?

If you checked fewer than 3 boxes:

Your compliance foundation may be too reactive to support consistent, audit-ready performance.

Section 2: Governance, Risk and Compliance Integration & Visibility

These questions assess how well compliance efforts align with real-world activity.

• Are your Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) and managed detection and response (MDR) systems integrated and/or able to share data?
• Do alerts or incidents automatically update your risk register or control status?
• Can your leadership team view compliance and risk metrics in real time?
• Do you automate evidence collection or integrate it into everyday workflows?
• Can you easily connect technical events (e.g. failed patch) to business risk?

If you checked fewer than 3 boxes:

You may be missing key signals – and spending too much time collecting data instead of acting on it.

Section 3: Governance, Risk and Compliance Strategy & Oversight

These questions highlight whether your program is truly evolving with your business.

• Do you conduct regular gap analyses or control effectiveness reviews?
• Do you align compliance efforts with broader business or board priorities?
• Do you have access to strategic guidance (e.g. vCISO) to interpret risk?
• Have you tied compliance metrics to outcomes like insurance, audit success, or vendor trust?
• Does your GRC model reflect new risks?

If you checked fewer than 3 boxes:

You may have the tools – but your company lacks the strategic oversight to make them work together effectively.

Scoring:

• 12–15: Strategic and resilient. You’re operating at a mature level. From here, focus on fine-tuning and scaling.
• 8–11: Solid foundation. Some key areas need improvement. Look for opportunities to tighten up your integration and oversight.
• 4–7: At risk. Your program may be too static or siloed to support real-time threats.
• 0–3: Time to re-evaluate. Box-checking may be exposing your organization to unnecessary risk.

Want to explore what a modern, integrated Governance, Risk, and Compliance approach could look like?