2026 IT Risk and Compliance Benchmark Report
For the past seven years, we’ve surveyed GRC experts to uncover valuable insights, debunk myths, and spotlight successful strategies for growth. This year’s report draws on 1,002 responses from GRC professionals across industries and regions. The consistent thread? Organizations are centralizing GRC and increasingly adopting monitoring software, yet many still lose substantial time to manual work and fragmented processes.
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Here are some of our top findings…
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1/6
97% of respondents are using AI to streamline their workflows
Why this matters
AI adoption is now mainstream in GRC. The biggest advantage comes when it’s embedded into a SaaS platform that can apply AI directly to controls, evidence, and assessments, not as a disconnected tool.
2/6
50% of respondents who manage risk ad-hoc or when a negative event happens experienced a breach in 2025
Why this matters
Integrated, automated approaches to risk management have better results for respondents. Those who took an integrated, automated approach to risk management were less likely to experience a breach in 2025 at only 27%.
What’s inside the report?
Chapter 1
Insights on how GRC leaders are scaling and operating their compliance programs
Chapter 2
Framework adoption trends, framework usage, and risk management practices across respondents
Chapter 3
GRC budget direction, the drivers behind budget changes, budget allocation, and impact on ROI
Chapter 4
The scope of the third-party risk landscape and how it’s affecting GRC leaders
Chapter 5
Decision-making in GRC, who holds oversight, and how teams are staffed
3/6
58% of respondents anticipate that their organization will spend more money on GRC in 2026
Why this matters
The majority of respondents expect GRC budgets to increase for the second consecutive year, despite a challenging economic climate. Organizations may still feel pressure to invest in GRC, even as they face constraints on how that investment shows up in headcount, tooling, and external services.
4/6
34% of respondents are still using spreadsheets to identify and manage third-party risks
Why this matters
A large share of respondents still use manual processes for third-party risk management, leading to scalability challenges as vendor ecosystems expand. This can create friction in vendor onboarding, delay remediation follow-through, and make it harder to demonstrate consistency to auditors and leadership.
How can you use this report?
Use the 2026 IT Risk and Compliance Benchmark Report to address questions like:
1 How do I justify and defend my budget to stakeholders?
2 What are my peers doing to manage their GRC programs, and how can I improve?
3 What priorities should I focus on in 2026?
4 How do I connect the GRC work my team does to business outcomes?
5/6
56% of respondents said they use a common controls framework to streamline their GRC processes
Why this matters
Using a common controls framework has become a standard best practice, aligning with our findings in 2025. Organizations are shifting toward a repeatable method for handling differences across their businesses without turning compliance into a series of one-off interpretations and exceptions.
6/6
58% of companies that experienced a breach anticipate spending more time on IT risk management and compliance in 2026
Why this matters
Breaches can lead to an expanded workload on already-taxed teams. After an incident, GRC professionals anticipate that their workloads will increase beyond immediate response.
If you’re feeling tired of manual processes and under-resourced, you’re not alone.
To create this report, we surveyed 1,002 GRC leaders, including CISOs, IT Directors, CSOs, Compliance Managers, and many more, to find out how their programs are growing, and more importantly, what feels like a constant challenge.
If you’re battling for budget, trying to operationalize your processes, maturing your GRC program, or just trying to stay afloat, the 2026 IT Risk and Compliance Benchmark Report will arm you with the right data to make clear decisions.
