There is no doubt that maintaining robust cyber security is challenging, particularly if the organisation you are aiming to protect is misaligned in terms of maturity with the evolving threats and compliance demands we now face.
Cyber Security professionals know too well the need for a mature cyber security model, however, this rigid adherence to seek perfection and total maturity often impedes the agility we need to protect organisations.
Theodore Roosevelt once said “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
This could not be more apt for cyber security right now, particularly as we speak with many cyber security professionals who believe that they need heightened cyber security maturity to even consider implementing Continuous Controls Monitoring (CCM). The fact is, it’s not about waiting to gain complete visibility into your organisational ecosystem for when you are ready – CCM helps you start that maturity journey so that you are ready for what you will have to face.
The Reality of Cyber Maturity for Professionals
Cyber maturity has long been seen as a key indicator for organisations looking to secure their operations. While maturity models provide a structured approach for assessing readiness, they often struggle to keep pace with the rapidly evolving threat landscape. Their rigid framework can lock organisations into meeting predefined checkpoints which may overlook the agility required to respond to new risks.
For professionals, Continuous Controls Monitoring offers a dynamic solution that enhances existing maturity frameworks without replacing them. Rather than being bound to static checkpoints, CCM adds real-time visibility and responsiveness, allowing organisations to continuously evaluate and adapt to emerging threats. It empowers security teams to focus on “what you need now” by providing continuous feedback, helping ensure security measures remain agile, aligned with current threats and scalable as the organisation grows.
How Continuous Controls Monitoring Fits into Any Maturity Level
- At foundational levels:
- Establishes visibility and automation, reducing manual overhead.
- Quickly identifies critical gaps without overwhelming limited resources.
- At intermediate levels:
- Provides real-time monitoring to keep pace with emerging risks.
- Reduces silos by unifying data across tools and frameworks.
- At advanced levels:
- Enables continuous optimisation and benchmarking of controls.
- Simplifies reporting for complex, multi-framework environments (e.g., ISO 27001, NIST, DORA).
Key takeaway: Start by connecting to your most important cyber security tooling to monitor and gradually evolve and grow as your maturity evolves.
Challenges Professionals Face—and How CCM Addresses Them
Resource prioritisation: Continuous Controls Monitoring really allows cyber security teams to focus on the high-risk areas for monitoring. This immediately allows teams to start to strategically allocate resources where they need to be deployed.
Siloed data and tools: Teams are managing multiple data points, however in our latest research, 95% of businesses were not able to easily access a specific digital asset in the last year. Pulling together these disparate tools, Continuous Controls Monitoring provides a continuous holistic view of an organisations risk and compliance.
Regulatory pressure: CCM ensures controls are always audit-ready, reducing last-minute compliance scrambles and point in time information. Compliance status can be viewed in near-real time, continuously identifying controls failures and reporting for immediate remediation.
Managing complexity: It does not matter how complex an environment is because once Continuous Controls Monitoring is connected to the tooling it has to monitor, it pulls the information to be presented and visualised with cohesive analytics that simplify the oversight of sprawling environments.
Automation speeds process and eliminates risk: By automating the monitoring and management of controls, you not only free up so much resource time in collecting and analysing the data from multiple data sets, but it provides accuracy and assurance in the information on the state of your ecosystem.
So many myths already about Continuous Controls Monitoring
“CCM is for cyber security teams only” – This simply isn’t true. However, with so many acronyms about such as ‘Continuous Compliance Automation’, it’s no wonder there is! CCM can align to any control and monitor any framework.
“It’s time-consuming and resource-intensive to implement.” – Platforms like our CCM, can be deployed incrementally. As discussed earlier in this blog, you can start by monitoring a set number of controls and incrementally increase to align with operational goals.
“It doesn’t address advanced threats.” – CCM makes organisations proactive rather than reactive in addressing and identifying threats because real time control monitoring and integration with tools such as SIEM and SOAR mean teams are alerted in the moment for immediate action.
Continuous Controls Monitoring is a Tool for Leadership and Strategy
CCM facilitates alignment between technical and executive teams through the actionable insights it delivers in its tailored dashboards. It conveys real time risk within an organisation and thus builds trust with stakeholders by demonstrating real-time control effectiveness. (Read more about communicating risk to the board here.)
It all leads back to the proactivity that is now needed in today’s threat and risk landscape, so that cyber security leaders can focus on innovation rather than firefighting or on compliance status.
What are Actionable Takeaways for Cybersecurity Professionals about maturity and CCM?
- Start with a gap analysis: OK so you’ve probably done enough of those! However, using CCM to identify key and high priority areas will allow you to not only address immediate gaps but realise the true value of this tooling.
- Scale as you need: Integrate the high priority tools and seamlessly integrate more as you scale so that it is in line with your maturity progression.
- Leverage automation: Reduce time spent on repetitive tasks to focus on strategic initiatives.
- Use CCM insights to drive organisational buy-in: Translate technical findings into business language and demonstrate proactivity and complete visibility into your organisation
Why CCM Is an Ally, Not an Add-On
Continuous Controls monitoring needs to stop being viewed as only applicable to organisations that are already mature, but a tool that is designed to meet and align to where your organisation is now, capable of accompanying an organisation on the road to wherever it needs to be.
Growth in cyber security really doesn’t have to be linear. Continuous Controls Monitoring propels your visibility into your gaps and your threats in one giant leap, but allows your teams the space and time to be the innovators in your organisation, continuing to build the resilience foundation that is now needed.