The future of GRC is federated + AI: Here's why

Today, governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) has never been more complex, especially for global enterprises and managed service providers juggling diverse requirements across entities or clients. Traditional approaches—fragmented systems, siloed ownership, and manual processes—are no longer suitable. To meet the demands of modern GRC, organizations need a future-ready approach. Let's explore how federated GRC provides the solution, why it matters for enterprises, advisors, and regulators, and how AI accelerates federated GRC deployment.

What is federated GRC? The hub-and-spoke model explained

Federated GRC operates like a hub-and-spoke model where a central governance hub maintains oversight while individual business units (spokes) manage their own risks and compliance locally. Think of it as a modern airport system—the main terminal coordinates overall operations, but each gate manages its own boarding processes independently. This structure enables organizations to balance centralized control with local agility, ensuring consistent standards while respecting the unique needs of different divisions or client environments.

In practice, federated GRC means your Singapore office can address MAS requirements while your EU division handles GDPR, all while maintaining unified reporting and risk visibility at the corporate level. This approach transforms traditional siloed compliance into an interconnected ecosystem where data flows seamlessly between entities.

Why federated models matter for enterprises, advisors, and regulators

Global enterprises face an unprecedented challenge: managing risk across dozens of subsidiaries, each operating under different regulatory regimes. Many GRC leaders cite fragmented ownership structures as a key barrier to moving initiatives from pilot to production. Federated GRC solves this by enabling local teams to maintain operational control while providing executives with consolidated risk intelligence.

For advisors and MSPs, federated models are transformative. Managing 50 clients means dealing with 50 different risk profiles, compliance frameworks, and reporting requirements. A federated approach allows MSPs to standardize their service delivery while customizing compliance workflows for each client, reducing operational overhead by up to 60% according to industry benchmarks.

Regulators increasingly recognize federated models as best practice. The approach aligns with principles-based regulation, enabling organizations to demonstrate effective governance without imposing rigid, one-size-fits-all controls that stifle innovation.

Where AI fits: Automating across spokes and surfacing insights to the hub

AI transforms federated GRC from a theoretical framework into an operational reality. Machine learning algorithms continuously monitor risk indicators across all spokes, identifying patterns that human analysts might miss. For instance, AI can detect when similar compliance issues emerge across multiple divisions, suggesting systemic problems that require enterprise-wide attention.

The real power lies in AI's ability to synthesize massive amounts of data from disparate sources. An AI-powered federated system can process thousands of control assessments, audit findings, and risk events daily, automatically escalating critical issues to the hub while handling routine matters at the spoke level. This intelligent routing ensures senior leadership focuses on strategic decisions rather than operational noise.

With a federated, AI-powered approach to GRC, organizations can leverage:

• Real-time risk correlation across entities
• Automated compliance mapping
• Predictive analytics that identify emerging threats before they materialize

Centralized governance combined with AI-driven insights empowers organizations to enable proactive risk management, streamline compliance, and build a scalable foundation for enterprise-wide resilience.

6clicks innovation: First to market with federated, AI-powered GRC

6clicks pioneered the integration of federated architecture with purpose-built AI, creating Hailey—the industry's first AI engine designed specifically for GRC. Unlike competitors that bolt AI onto legacy systems, Hailey is built into the platform's foundation. Key capabilities of Hailey include:

• Automated cross-framework mapping: Quickly align multiple standards, regulations, and frameworks at the requirement level
• Automated control gap analysis: Map controls to specific compliance requirements and identify gaps within seconds
• Risk and issue creation: Extract risks and issues directly from assessments and automatically create corresponding records
• Task generation: Create a complete set of remediation tasks for risks, issues, incidents, and more, automatically ordered by priority
• Assessment response generation: Accelerate audits and assessments by repurposing previous responses or uploaded documentation
• On-demand AI support: Readily retrieve key program data and insights, navigate the platform with ease, and get instant answers to GRC queries through Hailey Assist, your conversational AI assistant in 6clicks

Meanwhile, the platform's federated structure, called the Hub & Spoke, allows enterprises to deploy multi-entity configurations in days, not months. Each Spoke operates independently with full GRC functionality, while the Hub maintains real-time visibility through AI-powered dashboards that surface only the most critical insights. Through the Hub & Spoke model, organizations can:

• Centralize oversight and manage multiple entities, business units, regions, subsidiaries, or clients under one Hub
• Enable local execution and grant entities autonomy to conduct their own activities within separate environments called Spokes
• Standardize content and best practices, including frameworks, controls, and workflows at the Hub, and easily distribute across Spokes
• Deploy GRC programs rapidly through Spoke templates, ready-to-use content, and turnkey configurations
• Consolidate reports across Spokes at the Hub and gain clarity through one-click report generation and powerful dashboards

This approach has helped organizations reduce compliance costs by 40% while improving risk detection rates by 3x.

Competitive differentiation: The only platform that combines federated + AI at scale

While vendors like LogicGate, Resolver, and ServiceNow offer modular governance and AI features, none bring these together with the same seamless integration and enterprise-scale performance as 6clicks. Legacy GRC tools require complex integrations to achieve basic multi-entity management, often resulting in data silos and reporting delays. Newer entrants focus on single-entity automation, lacking the architectural sophistication needed for true federation.

6clicks stands alone in offering native federated architecture with embedded AI that scales from 10 to 10,000 entities without performance degradation. The platform processes over 1 million risk data points daily across customer deployments, demonstrating the scalability that enterprises and MSPs demand. This combination of federation and AI isn't just an incremental improvement but a fundamental reimagining of how GRC should work in complex, distributed organizations.

Learn more: 6clicks vs. ServiceNow GRC

Closing vision: Federated + AI is the standard for modern GRC

The convergence of federated architecture and AI represents the future of GRC. As organizations become more distributed and regulations become more complex, the ability to maintain centralized governance while enabling local autonomy becomes critical. AI makes this vision achievable by automating the mundane, surfacing the critical, and predicting the unexpected.

Forward-thinking organizations are already making this transition, recognizing that federated, AI-powered GRC isn't just about compliance—it's about competitive advantage. Those who embrace this model today will set the standard for risk management tomorrow, turning governance from a cost center into a strategic enabler that drives business value at every level.