As the risk and compliance temperature keeps rising, CEO Nick Rafferty says the GRC capacity gap needs to change
LONDON, Sept. 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- SureCloud, the governance, risk and compliance platform, today launches The Temperature is Rising, a hot campaign with a free AI governance offer debuting at the Gartner Enterprise Risk, Audit & Compliance Conference in London, 28-29th September 2026
In May, SureCloud CEO Nick Rafferty argued that boards had spent two decades asking GRC functions to do more with less, and that the request had quietly become mathematically impossible. In response, SureCloud launched Gracie AI. Since then, that same equation has only gotten worse. Now, Nick has asked again for risk and compliance leaders to keep their composure, to "stay cool" as the temperatures rise.
Nearly half of UK enterprises are managing 5 or more major regulatory frameworks and standards at once, and after a positive year of decline the global average cost of a data breach has now risen to its highest figure yet at $4.9 million, according to IBM's 2026 Cost of a Data Breach Report. There's more work to be done, and even higher consequences. Whilst supply chains grow everyday and sit as the backbone of each business, investment in TPRM programmes is dropping with responsibilities ever stretched between security and procurement. Finally AI tools are spreading through the business faster than any risk register can track with IBM saying that 92% of organisations that reported an AI-related breach also llacked proper AI access controls
Nick says this is all something programme leaders know how to solve, they've built the expertise, they just don't have the capacity to get ahead of it.
"To deal with the rising temperatures, modern GRC capability should scale with the volume of work arriving, rather than with the size of the team processing it." Rafferty wrote.
Since Gracie AI launched in May, SureCloud has extended its capability to meet this need:
- An expanded Skills library. Gracie AI now ships with more than 85 out-of-the-box Skills codifying the most common GRC tasks, from SOC2 review to monte carlo analysis that can be activated within a workflow, or at a click of a button. Whatever a user's specialism or wherever a business sits in their GRC journey, they have more time back to focus on the growing heat.
- Build-your-own Personas. SureCloud launched with 7 specialist Personas designed around common GRC roles but now customers can codify their own roles, job titles and permissions, capturing a specific team member's expertise and keeping it inside the business even as people move on. Personas look across your user context, record context and carry market context to inform your decisions with insight and suggest recommendations.
- Confidence-scored actions. Each action or output following one of Gracie AI's Skills now carries a confidence score, giving teams a clear signal to trust a given result before they act on it, or approve Gracie AI to act for them.
This is just the start of more major innovations being released by SureCloud in their new financial year.
SureCloud is exhibiting at Gartner eRAC at booth 117, showcasing these updates and announcing their new campaign 'The Temperature is Rising' to draw attention to these issues.
Their first step towards helping leaders 'stay cool': announcing a free 12-month AI Governance application for the first 50 attendees who visit and talk to SureCloud about their experience with rising GRC temperatures.
In return, customers will be able to record their AI use cases, and models, conduct screening and assessments aligned to the EU AI Act, track remediation, and use Gracie AI and an AI Governance Persona knowledgeable in the NIST AI RMF, emerging US state laws, and the EU AI Act to interpret their register and identify risk gaps in the context of their wider programme.
From 28th September, visit surecloud.com/stay-cool for practical guidance on today's GRC pressures, plus further campaign content and event appearances to come. When the temperature rises, Stay Cool.
About SureCloud
Founded in 2006, SureCloud Ltd. has two decades of experience as a leading provider of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solutions. Headquartered in the UK, SureCloud supports a global portfolio of organisations with its event-driven platform that connects risk, compliance, audit, third-party risk, and data privacy in one place. Whether addressing cyber risk, regulatory concerns or third-parties, SureCloud has a proven record of using Gracie AI and its virtual GRC team to reason and act across an organisation's whole programme, allowing them to do more with less, and do it better.
Media contact: Daniel Spicer; daniel.spicer@surecloud.com
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