Founder TLDR: Understanding Governance, Risk, and Compliance

gs9074
Oct 12
2 min read

Updated: 14 hours ago

What: GRC means steer, assess, prove.
Why: Fewer incidents, faster audits, buyer confidence.
Cost: Less drift, less wasted spend.
Compliance: Map to SOC 2 and ISO 27001.

Introduction to Governance, Risk, and Compliance

Founders do not need jargon. Governance sets clear guardrails. Risk tells you what to fix first. Compliance proves it with evidence to customers and auditors. This guide explains the differences, shows where Azure Policy fits, and how platforms like Drata and Vanta reduce manual work and audit friction. If you're new to the topic, see our pillar page: Azure Policy for Founders.

Plain Definitions of Key Concepts

Governance: Who can do what, where, and when. Tools include Azure Policy, RBAC, and PIM.
Risk: What could go wrong and how to reduce it. Tools include risk registers and threat models.
Compliance: Evidence that controls run. Tools include logs, attestations, and audit trails.

Where Azure Policy Fits

Enforce Governance

Azure Policy encodes your rules. It can deny risky configurations, require diagnostic settings, and make networks private by default. Apply at the management group scope so every subscription inherits guardrails.

Reduce Risk

Use DeployIfNotExists to fix common drift automatically. Require private endpoints, disable shared keys on storage, and enforce least privilege with role definitions and PIM.

Prove Compliance

Show control assignments, policy attestation, and compliant resource counts over time. Feed logs and evidence to Drata or Vanta so control status and tickets stay audit-ready.

CTA for Founders: Want this working in your estate? Book a 45-minute policy-as-code review.

Mini Map: 8 Steps to Effective Implementation

Scope one product, one data class, one region, and target framework.
Stand up management groups, RBAC model, and PIM for privileged roles.
Turn on central diagnostics and send to a secure workspace.
Start a lightweight risk register with owners and due dates.
Write a baseline policy set: private endpoints, deny shared key, required tags.
Add DeployIfNotExists to remediate drift and create tickets for exceptions.
Automate a weekly drift report and exception review with expiry.
Integrate evidence with Drata or Vanta for continuous control monitoring.

Business Impact of Governance, Risk, and Compliance

Using policy-as-code, diagnostics, and private-by-default networking at scale, a regulated client cut cloud risk and avoided waste, saving about £400k per month. Results vary, but the pattern is consistent: fewer incidents, cleaner audits, and faster enterprise sales.

Call to Action

For Founders: Book a 45-minute policy-as-code review.
For Engineers: Grab the checklist to implement the baseline: Azure Policy checklist.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we still need Drata or Vanta? Not required, but helpful. They automate evidence collection, reminders, and auditor mapping. You still need sound guardrails and secure architecture. Many teams recoup the license in saved hours and faster customer diligence.

Will deny break delivery? It can if you push it everywhere at once. Start in audit or disabled mode, fix drift, then enable deny on high-risk controls. Use exceptions with owners and expiry dates.

How many policies are enough? Start small. Ten to twenty well-targeted policies cover most early risks. Expand in layers as your products, data classes, and regions grow.