Compliance audits are no one’s idea of a fun time. They can be tedious and slow-moving at the best of times, drowning even the most dedicated compliance manager under a mountain of documentation. Yet they are essential for making sure a company does not end up in regulatory problems down the road. The advent of Generative AI (GenAI), however, has the potential to transform compliance audits from slow-moving programs into a fast-moving sprint. In this article, I want to review GenAI and how it is a game-changer for compliance managers. I will not pretend that GenAI is a silver bullet that will replace everything, but how it can drastically improve and streamline processes. I will also touch upon GenAI’s unique challenges and how to balance them with its immense potential.
Let us examine GenAI as a compliance enabler in all its glory—its good and bad points!
The Problems with Compliance Audits
Before we discuss GenAI, let’s examine the problems that plague most compliance audits.
- Drowning in Data: The average compliance audit involves sifting through a lot of documentation, including policies, procedures, emails, transaction logs, etc. Sorting through this data and identifying meaningful patterns and trends can test the patience of even the most hardened auditors.
- Deadlines and Resource Crunches: Auditors are no strangers to looming deadlines that threaten to derail the quality and accuracy of the reporting they are required to do. This is compounded by compliance teams being often underfunded and stretched thin, with insufficient resources to cover every aspect of an audit.
- Errors: The more manual a process is, the higher the chance of an auditor missing crucial information. This is understandable, given the sheer volume of data that needs to be assessed, but errors can lead to regulatory fines and penalties.
The result? Compliance Audits become a box-checking exercise rather than a risk-driven, proactive measure.
Why GenAI Can Be a Game-Changer
Now that we have seen the issues plaguing most compliance audits, let’s look at GenAI and how it can help us. GenAI, with its ability to analyze massive amounts of data and generate meaningful data, can be a massive ally in compliance.
Let us take a look at just a few of the compliance use cases that GenAI can assist with:
- Analysis: GenAI’s powerful ability to sift through structured or unstructured data makes it a valuable tool during compliance audits. It can find trends or anomalies that standard compliance tools will not detect. For example, GenAI can analyze email logs to detect signs of potential insider training.
- Reporting: Reporting is one of the major pain points of compliance reporting. GenAI can generate customized reports for various compliance use cases if provided with the proper prompts and context. It can also check existing documents to detect errors and red flags that might be missed via manual review. Regulations constantly evolve, so GenAI can effectively “gap” your existing documentation against any recent changes or new mandates.
- Knowledgebase: In addition to the above, GenAI can be customized to a company’s internal database of policies and guidelines, making it powerful for providing knowledge to compliance staff. GenAI’s ability to “train” itself on new information can make it a practical training companion, helping answer common queries and accelerate the onboarding of new compliance staff.
How To Practically Implement GenAI as a Compliance Enabler
If you are serious about implementing GenAI as a compliance tool, then I would suggest the following steps:
- Identify challenges. Do not implement GenAI for the sake of implementing GenAI. Pinpoint what compliance challenges you are trying to solve and how GenAI can help solve them.
- Identify the GenAI Tool: Review your corporate policies on GenAI adoption—some companies prohibit it, while others allow it with safeguards like encryption and access controls. Consider data anonymization, masking or on-rem GenAI tools, as compliance audits often involve sensitive data. Be transparent with regulators by documenting usage and data handing.
- Upskill the team: To get the most effective outputs, teams must be trained in prompt engineering and how to provide the tools in the right context. GenAI is not just a plug-and-play solution; it must be tweaked to your environment.
- Improve and Iterate: GenAI is far from perfect, and you can expect to run into issues like hallucinations, where the tool provides wrong information, or data bias, where GenAI can inherit biases in its training data.
The Way Forward for Compliance
If used correctly, GenAI can be a transformational tool for compliance. Do not fall for the hype; understand its strengths and limitations for effective use. Always remember that GenAI is not infallible, and human oversight is always needed to double-check and catch any issues or nuances that AI might have missed.
With the proper checks and balances in place, GenAI can help compliance managers transform audits from a historically slow process to one that thrives on automation. So don’t wait—take the step to embrace GenAI as a compliance tool in the coming weeks and months.
Colton Murray is the Security & Compliance Manager at Allegiant a Crexendo Company, an industry leading managed service provider of comprehensive cybersecurity compliance solutions. With a career spanning over 5 years in the cybersecurity space, Colton leads a dedicated team focused on implementing robust security protocols and compliance frameworks to safeguard sensitive data and mitigate risks for clients. Colton enjoys contributing to cybersecurity publications in his free time, and enjoys an active outdoor lifestyle playing golf and working out.