Rsam

Founded in 2003 by Vivek Shivananda and Kevin Day, Rsam, legally known as Relational Security Corporation, established itself as a significant player in the Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) software market. The company was bootstrapped and operated profitably for 12 years before securing a major strategic growth investment of $32.1 million from JMI Equity in April 2015 to accelerate market adoption and product innovation. Co-founder Vivek Shivananda, who served as CEO, brought a background that included an MBA from Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business and prior experience as COO of eB Networks and in management at Cap Gemini. This foundation in both business and technology informed the company's direction.

Rsam's core business was providing an enterprise software platform designed to help organizations manage GRC objectives. The company operated on a subscription-based model, offering its platform as both a cloud-based solution and on-premise software. It catered to mid-sized and large enterprises across diverse sectors including financial services, healthcare, government, energy, and retail. The business focused on automating and integrating risk and compliance data from disparate sources into a unified framework.

The Rsam platform was built on a flexible, object-based data model, which allowed clients to configure the system without coding and adapt it to changing requirements. This architecture enabled the platform to ingest data in various formats, both structured and unstructured, from different enterprise systems. Its modules addressed a wide spectrum of use cases, including IT and vendor risk management, audit management, business continuity planning, compliance management, policy management, and security incident response. A key selling point was the platform's ability to centralize risk data, providing a holistic view for tracking, assessing, and mitigating risks enterprise-wide. The platform also featured integrated business intelligence tools for creating reports and dynamic dashboards.

Rsam's journey as an independent entity concluded on February 4, 2019, when it was acquired by ACL, a fellow GRC software leader. Following the acquisition, Shivananda and Day joined the ACL leadership team. Shortly after, ACL rebranded the combined entity to Galvanize, aiming to unify their offerings into a single integrated risk management platform called HighBond, which leveraged technologies from both companies. The consolidation continued when Diligent Corporation acquired Galvanize for $1 billion, a deal completed in April 2021, creating the world's largest GRC SaaS company at the time.

Keywords: Governance Risk Compliance, GRC platform, integrated risk management, IT risk management, vendor risk management, enterprise risk management, compliance automation, audit management software, security risk management, policy management, incident management, business continuity management, regulatory compliance, risk analytics, Rsam HighBond, Vivek Shivananda, Kevin Day, ACL, Galvanize, Diligent Corporation