How a Diversified Bank Unified Cyber Risk Assessment and Simplified Compliance

^Problem

Lack of centralized visibility hindering risk and compliance efforts

A leading financial institution serving North America and the UK faced challenges ensuring precision and alignment in risk management across its enterprise-scale operations. Within its cyber risk governance function, however, operational fragmentation was creating serious inefficiencies.

Risk assessments, exception reviews, and compliance tracking were dispersed across spreadsheets, email threads, and siloed platforms—forcing teams to constantly coordinate without a shared view. Each line of business operated with limited context, making it difficult to assess risk holistically or respond quickly during audits and regulatory reviews.

Aligning controls with frameworks like NIST CSF 2.0 required time-consuming manual reconciliation. Cross-functional teams—spanning PCI compliance, cyber engineering, and governance—lacked centralized access and role-based controls, turning compliance management into a bottleneck at scale.

Q1

^Solution

Centralized, automated cyber risk assessments with SmartSuite

The institution partnered with SmartSuite to implement a centralized, automated assessment engine capable of supporting the full lifecycle of cyber risk evaluations. The solution integrated key governance workflows into a single platform—designed to adapt to complex policy mappings, granular access permissions, and dynamic reporting requirements.

Using SmartSuite’s no-code toolkit, the organization built linked assessments tied to business processes, applications, and regulatory frameworks. Automation flows ensured that scoring, reviewer assignments, and status updates were managed in real time. Custom dashboards provided live visibility into risk posture and exception volume, enhancing both governance oversight and operational efficiency.

SmartSuite’s permission model enabled cross-functional teams to interact with assessments securely, ensuring sensitive data was only accessible within appropriate scopes. Features like field-level access, conditional logic, and structured approval flows standardized execution while maintaining necessary flexibility. API integrations with tools such as ServiceNow and Netskope allowed SmartSuite to embed into the institution’s broader GRC ecosystem.

Q2

^Results

Scaling cyber governance with speed and precision

With assessments, exception reviews, and compliance tracking in one system, the cyber risk governance function cut manual assessment tracking by 70% and brought more than 20 teams across risk and compliance onto a shared workflow.

Dashboards give leadership real-time visibility into compliance exceptions and risk posture, and audits and regulatory reviews now draw on one system of record instead of spreadsheets and email threads.

Role-based permissions let the PCI compliance, cyber engineering, and governance teams work in the same assessments while sensitive data stays within its approved scope.