The Power of Automated Risk Assessment Tools

When was the last time somebody told you how excited they were to kick off an enterprise risk assessment? Not very recently, huh?

That’s because the risk assessment process is a major headache for most organizations. They are complex, resource-intensive, and challenging to organize and execute.

Fortunately, there’s a game-changing solution: automated risk assessment tools. Automated tools help lessen the burden of completing risk assessments. But these systems don’t only make life easier for risk personnel. They also help companies link their risk programs with broader business goals, setting the table for future growth and stability.

Let’s dive deeper into some of the key benefits associated with automated risk assessment tools:

1.) Streamlined Implementation & Management

Are traditional spreadsheets your primary risk assessment tool? If so, it’s time to explore better options.

With spreadsheets, every update to a technology, process, or vendor is made manually. From there, you must identify the effects of that change across your documents. Finding each instance of a vendor within each of your risk assessments takes many hours. This is a waste of your time!

Automated risk assessment tools make the process seamless. Make a change once, and it ripples through every related assessment. These systems also have a central repository of your vendors, technologies, and processes. This functionality makes adding information to each assessment easier and eliminates the need to reconcile separate data sets.

2.) Leveraging Established Methodologies

Unlike generic spreadsheets, automated tools exist to identify threats. By adhering to industry compliance standards, these tools provide a rock-solid foundation for risk management, evolving alongside regulatory requirements.

Instead of researching requirements, following up with updates as they happen, and spending valuable time creating a process from scratch, you can be confident that your methodology is continuously updated to reflect changes and support your institution’s compliance.

3.) Gain a Holistic View of Risk (and Responsibilities)

Leading automated risk assessment tools offer holistic insights into your risk landscape.

The established methodology built into an automated tool also helps build team accountability. Instead of assuming that the risk manager is solely responsible for risk at the organization, each team member gets a clear view of their role. The software also has precise due dates and action items built into it, which can help spur your team into action.

4.) Improved Organizational Security

When it comes to risk management, there’s no room for error. Mistakes or oversights can have catastrophic consequences, putting your organization’s bottom line and reputation on the line. That’s where automated risk assessment tools shine, minimizing the risk of errors inherent in manual processes. With automation on your side, you can rest easy knowing that your organization is in safe hands.

With manual input on large or multiple spreadsheets, mistakes are more likely to occur by simple user error. It doesn’t matter how good the human managing them is; eventually, they will fail. Conversely, tools like WolfPAC integrate with your risk assessments to reduce the potential for missed inputs or forgotten updates.

5.) Centralized Data Management and Reporting

In the age of information overload, centralization is key. Automated risk assessment tools consolidate data into a single repository, eliminating gaps and discrepancies. Whether you’re tracking vendors or monitoring processes, everything is neatly organized and easily accessible.

Having a central repository means you:

Won’t ever forget to add a relevant vendor or technology, and
Can quickly identify gaps amid the controls your institution already has in place.

Automated tools are second to none when it comes to reporting. With robust reporting capabilities, you can easily communicate results to executive stakeholders, facilitating informed decision-making and proactive risk mitigation strategies.

Next-level reporting also empowers you to view changes over time. This way, you can see and manage emerging risks before they become critical. Visibility into the future of your institution’s risk landscape gives you more time to plan and budget for critical control remediation items.

Conclusion:

Risk management will never be a simple task, but automated tools make things much easier. Are you starting to evaluate solutions? WolfPAC provides the best risk management software platform for financial institutions like yours that need to automate and improve their risk assessment, tracking, and reporting processes.

Here’s what some of our customers have to say about it:

“I can finally show my boss what a real risk assessment looks like.”
“I no longer have to manually update and curate constantly changing information in endless amounts of spreadsheets, which gives me an extra one or two weeks per year to prioritize advancing our risk management strategies.”
“WolfPAC reports have been a tremendous help, letting us fully analyze and understand our risk to allow the Board to ask more poignant, significant questions.”