Artificial intelligence is reshaping how businesses operate. But when it comes to governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), the demands are very different from consumer tools or generic enterprise models. Risk managers can’t afford to rely on outputs that are opaque, biased, or detached from the frameworks that keep organisations safe and compliant.
That’s why Protecht took a different path with Cognita. Instead of bolting a generic model onto our platform, we developed a purpose-built AI designed for GRC. Our guiding principle was simple: AI should be trusted, embedded in workflows, and designed to guide people rather than to replace them.
This approach shaped every decision, from the first use cases we prioritised to the guardrails we placed around generative AI. The result is Cognita, an AI capability that is not only safe and explainable, but also makes risk management easier, more accessible, and more consistent across the enterprise.
Why we built Cognita differently: purpose-built versus generic models
In the past two years, the market has seen a rush of AI-enabled features. Many vendors have layered generic large language models onto their products, often as chatbots or experimental pilots. While these can deliver surface-level utility, they are not designed for the rigour of GRC.
Protecht’s vision was different. We wanted AI that could operate with the same principles that underpin risk management itself: transparency, accountability, and governance. That meant training on trusted Protecht content, integrating with enterprise risk management workflows, and building features that reflect real risk expertise.
This is more than a technical choice. It is a philosophical one. Governance and compliance demand evidence, audit trails, and alignment to established frameworks. Generic AI tools don’t provide that. Protecht’s AI is designed to work with the structures our customers already use and to strengthen them.
Prioritising engagement and risk culture
When we asked our customers about the toughest challenge in risk management, one theme came up repeatedly: frontline engagement. Many Line 1 staff see risk management as someone else’s job. Tasks are complex, systems feel cumbersome, and the value of contributing risk data isn’t always clear.
We saw this as the opportunity for Cognita to make the biggest impact. Protecht’s design focus was not on automating the risk team’s analytical work, but on empowering everyday users to participate more effectively. By embedding AI guidance directly into forms and tasks, we could make it easier for staff to capture incidents, review and respond, and analyse trends.
This engagement-first approach directly supports stronger risk culture. When more staff contribute accurate, timely data, Line 2 and Line 3 teams gain better visibility and can act faster. And because the AI explains its reasoning in plain language, it also helps raise risk literacy across the organisation.
In other words, AI is not just making processes faster, it’s making people better risk managers.
Starting with the right use cases
With this focus on engagement and culture, we deliberately chose guided incident logging, real-time task support, and embedded risk guidance as our first Cognita features.
These were not the most technically ambitious features we could have built. But they were the ones that solved the most immediate, widespread pain points for our users:
- Guided incident logging: Ensures frontline staff can complete reports quickly, accurately, and consistently, with AI prompts guiding them through each field
- Real-time task support: Answers practical questions like “What’s due first?” or “How do I classify this risk?”, reducing confusion and delays
- Embedded risk guidance: Delivers definitions, methodology tips, and context from Protecht Academy content inside the workflow, rather than requiring users to leave the platform
These use cases provide clear value from day one. For frontline staff, they remove friction and make risk participation easier. For risk and compliance teams, they generate richer, more reliable data for analysis and reporting.
By solving these everyday problems first, we set the stage for more advanced AI capabilities to follow, building trust through practical results.
Addressing the risks of generative AI
We also knew that generative AI comes with its own risks. From hallucinations to bias, from privacy concerns to explainability gaps, the potential pitfalls are well-documented. In a GRC context, these risks aren’t academic. They can undermine trust, damage compliance, and create new vulnerabilities.
Protecht’s approach was to build guardrails into the design from the outset:
- No customer data is used to train models: Cognita leverages Anthropic Claude Sonnet for language capability but never retrains on customer information without consent
- Role-based permissions: Access to AI features is controlled so that only the right people can use sensitive functionality
- Labelled outputs: Users always know what content is AI-generated, preserving transparency
- Bias mitigation: Protecht applies diverse data sets, regular evaluation, and ethical AI principles to reduce skew and ensure fairness
- Privacy and security: All data is encrypted in transit and at rest, processed in isolated sessions, and protected under SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and CCPA compliance
These safeguards are not optional add-ons. They are central to our principle of making Cognita safe, ethical, and explainable in every use case.
Conclusions and next steps for your organisation
AI in GRC is too important to be left to generic tools or experimental add-ons. At Protecht, we built Cognita differently because the stakes are higher: compliance demands transparency, risk culture requires engagement, and governance relies on trust.
By focusing on frontline adoption, starting with practical use cases, and embedding guardrails to manage generative AI risks, we ensured that Cognita’s AI strengthens organisations rather than weakening them.
The principle remains simple: build for trust, embed in workflows, and guide people rather than replace them.
That is what makes Cognita not just another feature, but a trusted enabler of safer, smarter, and more effective risk management.