Risk, Governance & Compliance (GRC)

Aligning technology investments with strategic corporate goals, systematically mitigating operational risks, and achieving seamless compliance with Nigerian and global regulatory frameworks.

Executive Briefing

Translating Digital Vulnerabilities into Confident Business Decisions

Technology cannot operate in a silo. Without structured governance and systematic risk management, digital innovations increase an organization's legal exposure, inflate IT costs, and create dangerous compliance blind spots.

ACE ICT Consult partners with executive leadership, Chief Risk Officers (CROs), and corporate legal teams to establish robust GRC operating models. We turn regulatory compliance from a burdensome tick-box exercise into a competitive differentiator that accelerates customer confidence, institutional investment, and regulatory standing.

COBIT 2019ISO/IEC 27001:2022NDPA 2023 / NDPRISO 22301 (BCM)PCI-DSS v4.0

Core Practice Areas

Comprehensive GRC Services

Our solutions bridge corporate boardrooms with technical infrastructure, delivering clear accountability and measurable control effectiveness.

Pillar 01

Enterprise IT Risk Management (ITRM)

Systematically identifying, assessing, and mitigating operational and cyber risks across all digital touchpoints:

Risk Appetite & Tolerance Frameworks: Working with Boards to define quantitative and qualitative thresholds for acceptable technology risk.
Enterprise Risk Registers: Constructing dynamic, weighted risk registers mapping inherent risk, control effectiveness, and residual exposure across assets.
Key Risk Indicators (KRIs): Designing operational metric dashboards tracking patch lag, failed logins, turnover in critical IT roles, and vendor SLA breaches.
Business Impact Analysis (BIA): Quantifying the direct financial and operational cost of downtime across core business applications.

Pillar 02

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Certification Readiness

End-to-end guidance to achieve and sustain accredited Information Security Management System (ISMS) certification:

Diagnostic Gap Assessment: Benchmarking existing security policies, procedures, and technical controls against the 93 revised ISO 27001:2022 Annex A controls.
Statement of Applicability (SoA): Documenting which controls are applicable, justified, and implemented based on comprehensive risk assessment.
Policy Architecture Development: Authoring tailored, enforceable information security policies, access control guidelines, and physical security standards.
Pre-Audit Internal Reviews: Conducting formal pre-assessment audits and guiding management reviews prior to Stage 1 and Stage 2 certification audits.

Pillar 03

NDPA 2023 Compliance & Data Governance

Navigating the rigorous legal requirements of the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023:

Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs): Evaluating high-risk data processing activities, biometric implementations, and customer digital onboarding flows.
Record of Processing Activities (RoPA): Documenting lawful bases, data flows, retention schedules, and cross-border transfer mechanisms.
DPO-as-a-Service: Providing outsourced certified Data Protection Officers to supervise compliance and liaise with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC).
Annual Statutory Audits: Conducting formal DPCO compliance audits and filing statutory returns with the Commission to prevent severe statutory penalties.

Pillar 04

Third-Party Vendor Risk Management (TPRM)

Protecting the enterprise from vulnerabilities introduced by supply chains, software vendors, and contractors:

Vendor Risk Profiling & Due Diligence: Standardized security questionnaires evaluating third-party encryption standards, DR capability, and financial stability.
Contractual Right-to-Audit Clauses: Drafting mandatory data protection, breach notification, and security audit provisions into procurement contracts.
Continuous Vendor Oversight: Periodic re-assessments and monitoring of external vendor security ratings and public data leak intelligence.
Vendor Offboarding & Data Sanitization: Ensuring complete revocation of remote VPN access and verified destruction of shared corporate data upon contract termination.

Structured Methodology

The GRC Transformation Roadmap

Diagnostic Assessment

We baseline existing policies, interview key process owners, and evaluate compliance against regulatory mandates.

Framework & Policy Design

We draft actionable policies, clear role accountability (RACI), and prioritized control remediation roadmaps.

Control Implementation

We work alongside internal IT and operational teams to embed controls into daily enterprise workflows.

Assurance & Continuous Oversight

We perform internal audits, train staff, monitor KRIs, and facilitate independent third-party certifications.

Strategic Insight

The 4 Hallmarks of an Actionable Enterprise IT Risk Register

Many organizations maintain risk registers that are static spreadsheets gathering dust. An effective IT risk register must be an active decision-making instrument with four distinct characteristics:

1. Precise Risk Articulation (Cause, Event, and Impact)

Vague entries like "Cyberattack" or "Cloud Failure" are unmanageable. An effective risk statement clearly identifies the root cause, the specific event, and the business consequence: e.g., "Failure to enforce MFA on remote access portals (Cause) leads to credential compromise (Event), resulting in unauthorized wire transfers and financial loss (Impact)."

2. Distinction Between Inherent Risk and Residual Risk

Inherent risk represents the exposure before any controls are applied. Residual risk measures the remaining exposure after accounting for the design and operating effectiveness of active controls. This distinction ensures leadership understands which controls are doing the heavy lifting.

3. Single Named Risk Ownership

A risk owned by "the IT Department" is owned by no one. Every entry in the enterprise risk register must be assigned to a specific named individual (e.g., Head of Infrastructure or Chief Financial Officer) with direct accountability for monitoring KRIs and implementing treatments.

4. Concrete Remediation Action Plans with Firm Milestones

Every risk exceeding the organization's approved risk appetite must have an approved treatment decision: Mitigate, Transfer (via insurance), Avoid, or Formally Accept. Mitigation decisions must be linked to budgeted projects with measurable delivery dates.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between IT GRC and day-to-day IT Operations?

IT Operations focuses on uptime, system deployments, helpdesk tickets, and hardware performance. IT GRC establishes the governance policies, risk boundaries, and compliance guardrails within which operations must function, ensuring technical activities align with business objectives and legal mandates.

How long does an ISO 27001 implementation project take?

For mid-sized to large organizations, a complete ISO/IEC 27001:2022 implementation typically takes between 4 to 8 months. This timeline includes the initial gap analysis, risk assessment, policy drafting, control deployment, staff training, and internal audit before the formal Stage 1 certification assessment.

Which Nigerian organizations are required to conduct an NDPA compliance audit?

Under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, Data Controllers and Data Processors of Major Importance (including financial institutions, telecommunications firms, healthcare providers, educational institutions, and digital platforms processing significant volumes of personal data) are required to register with the NDPC and file annual compliance audit returns conducted by a licensed Data Protection Compliance Organization (DPCO).

Your technology should enable the business, not expose it.

Speak to ACE ICT Consult about Risk, Governance & Compliance.

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