The pressure upon enterprises from regulators, stakeholders and lawmakers to maintain cybersecurity standards has become nearly impossible to keep up with.
One reason it's so difficult to maintain
compliance with a baffling web of cybersecurity rules, laws and frameworks is that many processes associated with governance and risk management — such as auditing, third-party risk management, and threat intelligence — are often manual.
Third-party risk security assessments generally consist of surveys and spreadsheets filled out by hand.
Audits likely involve one-on-one interviews with SOC and IT staffers. Threat intelligence comes in through an automated feed, but analysts may have to sift through the data. This creates a bottleneck that increases rather than decreases risk.
"According to
Gartner, less than 20% of enterprise risk owners are meeting risk-mitigation expectations," says Cyber Sierra in
a recent blog post. "This critical gap in delivering high-quality risk information and intended risk reductions reveals the shortcomings of traditional approaches."
What's the solution? As is often the case, it's automation and AI involvement. Cyber Sierra estimates that a cybersecurity-risk-management platform, such as the one it offers, will accelerate third-party risk management (TPRM), analysis of
threat intelligence, continuous controls monitoring (CCM), and governance, risk and compliance (GRC) to such an extent that organizations will finally be able to achieve full compliance and worry-free auditability without needing to dedicate hundreds of hours of valuable employee time.
"AI is fundamentally transforming ERM [enterprise risk management] from a reactive, periodic exercise into a proactive, continuous, and predictive discipline," says Cyber Sierra. "For risk professionals who adapt, this shift represents an opportunity to add more strategic value than ever before."
When manual compliance just doesn't cut it
Let's take just two examples. Every organization needs to make sure its suppliers and vendors are using the best possible cybersecurity controls, but making sure your partners are complying with your standards is sometimes a tall order.
You can have them fill out surveys and self-assessments, which may be the politest way to do it but doesn't always yield accurate results. You can send over auditors to check their systems or sit down their security personnel for an interview, but that's an awkward situation at best. And the manual methods lag even when the parties being investigated fully cooperate.
"Traditional annual risk assessments can't keep pace," says Cyber Sierra. "According to
EY's Global TPRM Survey, operational risk has become a top priority for 57% of organizations, up from 40% in 2023."
Continuous controls monitoring (CCM) is a newer concept that's generally more automated than third-party risk management, but even there, collecting data by hand and analyzing it manually just slows things down and lets risk fester.
"Manual monitoring [in CCM] is ineffective, with 59% of organizations citing resource constraints as a key barrier," Cyber Sierra says, citing its own study. "Teams can't keep up with the volume, velocity, and variety of data needed to monitor controls effectively."
AI to the rescue
An automated risk-management platform like Cyber Sierra's can mean a night-and-day difference for an organization's ability to meet cybersecurity compliance standards and benefit from the associated risk reductions. The addition of
AI agents that perform assessment and analysis only adds to the process.
For example, an AI agent's ability to comprehend cybersecurity rules and regulations written in natural language saves human analysts and auditors the trouble of ingesting, merging and implementing changes to rules and regulations. And an agent's ability to generate detailed risk reports written in terms that non-technical executives and board members can understand will smooth out one of the most fraught aspects of
risk management.
"AI-powered CCM automates the validation of security and compliance controls in near real-time," Cyber Sierra explains.
As for TPRM, Cyber Sierra says that "AI enables a shift to continuous, data-driven vendor monitoring" by monitoring external information sources, predicting supply chain problems, and automating third-party survey distribution and collection.
AI also boosts threat intelligence with faster data collection and analysis, automated establishment of baseline norms, faster vulnerability discovery and mitigation, and faster incident response.
Cyber Sierra has progressed industry engagements significantly in the past year, most recently announcing a strategic partnership with ST Engineering Cybersecurity, a leading Singapore-based cybersecurity provider, to integrate it with ST Engineering's AI Agent SOC and compliance-as-a-service offerings, among other aspects of the collaboration.
"ST Engineering and we are both keen to ensure AI's powerful capabilities are harnessed in a responsible and accountable manner," said Cyber Sierra Co-Founder and CEO Pramodh Rai. "This partnership brings together our AI-native platform, with its human-in-the-loop oversight model, and ST Engineering's world-class operational capabilities to deliver a comprehensive, sovereign-grade solution that addresses the full spectrum of cyber risk."
Keeping humans in the loop
What does this mean for human GRC and ERM specialists and analysts? Will they be losing their jobs?
Not at all, insists Cyber Sierra. Instead, the integration of AI agents will make them more productive and effective so long as the humans learn to use AI augmentation wisely.
"Here's the reality that's emerging: AI won't replace you, but a risk manager using AI will," says Cyber Sierra. "The key takeaway for professionals is that AI will augment, not replace, their roles; future success depends on leveraging AI to focus on strategic judgment and complex problem-solving."
Tomorrow's successful GRC, ERM and TPRM specialists will be those who learn and adapt to these AI tools to supercharge their outputs — and their careers.
"AI is fundamentally transforming ERM from a reactive, periodic exercise into a proactive, continuous, and predictive discipline," says Cyber Sierra. "For risk professionals who adapt, this shift represents an opportunity to add more strategic value than ever before."
