2026 GRC Report Highlights Rising Framework Demands, Automation and Vendor-Risk Gaps

Summary

Episki’s qualitative 2026 GRC report describes rising regulatory and framework demands, expanding automation, and vendor-risk gaps, with directional budget benchmarks and predictions for 2027.

Key points

• The report says organizations it works with increasingly manage three or more frameworks, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, CMMC, and PCI DSS; it describes ISO/IEC 42001 as an emerging framework.
• It says PCI DSS v4.0.1 requirements previously treated as best practices became enforceable after March 31, 2025, and describes CMMC assessments and subcontractor requirements as expanding.
• The report identifies evidence collection, cross-framework control mapping, and questionnaire responses as automation use cases, while saying risk assessment and evidence interpretation still need human judgment.
• It characterizes many third-party risk programs as broad but shallow and highlights continuous vendor monitoring, concentration risk, and fourth-party risk as concerns.
• Its directional benchmarks put annual GRC spend for a Series A company at $75,000–$250,000; the report cautions that costs vary by scope and maturity.
• The methodology is a qualitative synthesis of customer conversations, practitioner interviews, public guidance, and industry benchmarks—not a formal quantitative survey; numeric ranges are described as directional.

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