Shift Left: Turning Checkbox GRC into Embedded Risk Management

Many large organizations still treat compliance as an afterthought. It becomes a late-stage checkbox exercise designed to pass audits, rather than a system built to meaningfully strengthen risk posture. Reviews happen at the end of a cycle, engineers are pulled away from product development, and security gaps are discovered only after they become expensive and complex to remediate.

To close Women’s History Month, we are excited to spotlight expert insights from Akshita Gangrade, GRC Product Manager at Adobe, in our workshop titled “Moving GRC Strategy From Checkbox Compliance to Embedded Risk Management.” Moderated by Kaila Mathis, Director of Growth at Dune Security, this session will explore how compliance can follow the same shift-left principles as modern security practices by embedding risk assessments into earlier stages of the SDLC instead of layering them on after release.

We will also examine how AI and automation can transform GRC from a manual, review-heavy process into a continuous, data-driven system. Rather than consuming engineering time with repetitive audit tasks, organizations can automate evidence collection, surface meaningful risk signals earlier, and allow teams to focus on building secure, resilient products from the start.