In May 2020, the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) granted Akarion funding for an innovative software project in the GRC area.

In recent years, there has been a lot of movement on the topic of GRC (governance, risk management and compliance). Not only digitization of society has rapidly increased. Rather, both the number and complexity of the corresponding legal requirements have risen sharply. In addition, transparent compliance has become an essential differentiation criterion in competition, especially for private companies.

These market needs are mostly diametrically opposed by the technical and organizational status quo in SMEs and large companies: Excel-based inventories and audits, uncontrolled changes or deletions of documentations, data silos due to disconnected systems, and compartmentalized legacy systems within a company, to name just a few examples. And all this with a simultaneous trend toward digitization under increasing cost pressure.

Numerous current compliance solutions do not meet the market requirements mentioned above. They replace existing manual processes with new systems that are not seamlessly integrated into existing system landscapes but only complement them. For different compliance topics, such as data protection or information security management, it is not uncommon that several systems are purchased which do not communicate with each other and cannot be supplemented as needed. This leads to redundancies and contradictions between overlapping and logically connected topics. In addition, it is usually not possible to prove that the verifiable documentation is free of manipulation, which makes testing and proof of regulatory requirements virtually impossible.

Akarion has stepped up to address these open issues and follows Michael Rasmussen's agile manifesto - GRC 4.0, involving the entire organization in the GRC process, at a much lower cost of ownership and using modern, so-called cutting-edge technologies. In many GRC solutions available on the market, the underlying data architectures and the UI/UX design are often decades old and accordingly complex, cumbersome and overloaded. As a result, these solutions are often time-consuming and costly to implement, operate, and maintain. Even the smallest changes require long lead times and the involvement of cost-intensive experts.

With its modular platform Akarion Compliance Cloud (ACC), Akarion is therefore developing a solution for companies and public institutions of various sizes and industries. This platform enables compliance with industry-specific compliance requirements to be checked, controlled and notarized in a tamper-proof manner. Therefore, a key component of ACC is the tamper-proof database called Chroniql. In Chroniql, all data is stored in an audit-proof manner with full change history. Blockchain technology is used to ensure tamper-proofness. However, according to DSGVO, customers have the right to delete data - but from a technological point of view, tamper-proofness and deletion are a contradiction in terms. Resolving this contradiction is a central, patent-pending process in Chroniql. This means that requests for deletion on the ACC can also be fulfilled in a legally secure and verifiable manner using blockchain technology.

Akarion's vision is to position itself as a technology expert and innovative employer and to establish Austria as a technology location in Europe. Therefore, Akarion will set the benchmark for compliance documentation and tamper-proof data storage.

In order to reach this vision, Akarion relies not only on companies from the business world, such as PwC, Hitachi or Bechtle, but also increasingly on universities and research institutions. Most of the value creation and service provision takes place in Austria. It is important to Akarion to make a contribution so that the Linz area continues to be one of the IT hot spots in Austria. Therefore, the implementation of the project should also create additional highly qualified jobs for the location. The funding from the FFG is a strong signal and at the same time an important cooperation to implement this vision.

In addition to data protection, information security and auditing, Akarion's ACC also addresses whistleblowing, business continuity management (BCM) and e-learning. Other topics such as money laundering or the use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are being evaluated.

About Akarion
Akarion, a high-tech company based in Germany and Austria, develops solutions for professional compliance management and verifiably tamper-proof data storage. Akarion's vision is to innovate trust within the digital world.
Its current flagship product is the Akarion Compliance Cloud, which includes modules for data privacy management, information security management, business continuity management, audit, whistleblowing and eLearning. The Compliance Cloud enables companies and public institutions of different sizes and industries to audit, monitor and authenticate compliance requirements in a tamper-proof manner.
Akarion's mission is to enable customers to reach new levels of compliance and meet regulatory requirements with a solution that combines best practices, innovative design and state-of-the-art software development. Numerous industry leaders already rely on the Compliance Cloud.
With the Chroniql Trust Platform, Akarion is leveraging blockchain technology to prove the integrity of any data. In addition, Akarion is conducting further research into how blockchain technology can be used in the future to innovate trust within the digital world.
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