Verterim: Simple and Cost-effective GRC Solutions

Peter Ridgley, Founder & President

Verterim is a Massachusetts-based company offering advanced GRC solutions to leading organizations across the globe. Verterim provides professional services, integrations, GRC hosting and managed services, and is also a reseller of GRC software.

In an interview with CIO Applications, Peter Ridgley, Founder and President of Verterim, gives some valuable insights about the company’s solutions to help readers understand how Verterim is revamping the face of GRC by simplifying business processes and practices.

Please throw some light on what Verterim is and what differentiates it.

Verterim is a group of GRC practitioners that is essentially capitalizing on a market dominated by big consulting firms which offer GRC services with questionable value. We understand GRC is more than a tool and deliver better value regarding practice-based experience to a market that is thirsting for true practitioner experience, mentoring our clients while offering better rates. The company has evolved with the changing market trends to capture some niche areas that are not well addressed by the competition. These areas represent the four pillars of our solutions: GRC professional consulting services, GRC integrations, GRC hosting and managed services, and value-added GRC software.

We offer a hosting and managed service environment in the cloud via a partnership with Microsoft Azure. We have also performed integrations that have allowed us to launch a quick to deploy data-driven platform providing information that drives action. This approach is true, Integrated GRC and it is the solution clients are seeking.

One interesting fact about Verterim is that because we have been the customer, we don’t resell every product in the GRC space. We are selective and only resell products that Verterim can seamlessly integrate with and add value for our clients.

Can you please elaborate on the company’s partnership with Azure?

Azure’s superior flexibility in payment option, its infrastructure’s resiliency, strong security and compliance posture are the reasons we have partnered with Microsoft. We also have extensive knowledge about the platform, which translates into tangible value for our clients.

We recognize that there are many providers offering hosting services, but Microsoft offers a very compelling argument to choose Azure.

We understand GRC is more than a tool and deliver better value in terms of practice-based experience to a market that is thirsting for true practitioner experience, mentoring our clients and offering competitive value

Most of our clients have pre-existing agreements with Microsoft for licensing of other products, or even a pre-existing contract for Azure services. This makes the cost of ownership and management very simple to calculate. Combine this with the security and compliance offerings available through the Microsoft Security Center and you have a complete solution, well minus one very important component. Verterim offers management of the full suite, from Operating System to Application using our expertise and partnership with vendors we support in Azure. This now becomes a complete turn-key hosting option for clients in a single tenant environment, offering the command and control of all data and integrations.

Please explain how Verterim drives value into its clients’ business.

The areas in which we have driven the most success are those taking advantage of our hosting and managed services, along with our integration practice. We follow a consistent approach in our delivery methodology to manage an engagement end to end. We establish proofs-of-concept through iterative review with our clients and deploy the integration package in a fraction of our competitors’ time. Our approach provides value and offers cost savings for our clients.

Verterim’s products and solutions are 100-percent customer driven. Before implementing a GRC program, one of our initial actions is to understand the client’s environment, including their existing tools and solutions, as well as how they envision their future. Only after having a complete picture do we move ahead with tailoring the solutions that address their unique needs.

Everybody that I hire at Verterim is a former practitioner or has been a GRC program customer at some point. This expertise makes it easy for them to understand the challenges and requirements that companies face concerning GRC. It allows my team to extend solutions and integration services that perfectly align with customers’ requirements. That is essentially the magic to accomplishing the ultimate goal of establishing a GRC program.

Can you share a case study underlining your company’s value proposition in assisting clients to overcome their challenges and attain desired outcomes?

Rather than giving a specific case study, I’ll draw an overall picture of the challenges that our customers face and how Verterim helps them. Upon strategic evaluation of the toolsets that our customers use, we notice that a significant number of them leverage various vendor-provided risk grading systems. Therefore, we have developed a solution using GRC platforms, which collects quantitative security assessment valuations and integrates them with some qualitative assessment capabilities inside a GRC vendor risk solution. This integration allows for a side-by-side comparison of quantitative ratings, similar to a credit score, along with vendor risks calculated from qualitative assessments. This provides clients a detailed perspective of their vendor, allowing a deeper and more action oriented conversation about the difference from what was said versus what was evaluated. We are increasing the value of vendor assessments this way.

What is Verterim’s next big step to move forward?

We are developing a portfolio of products that offer turn-key GRC solutions as well as tools for data manipulation and management. We also plan on delivering an extensive educational series including GRC webinars, podcasts, and blogs. These will help to transfer our knowledge to clients enabling them to mature and grow the practice of GRC.