Compliance Is Not Security!
We have seen a continual pattern of this fact almost weekly. At IP Services, we’ve worked with countless organizations that proudly hold up their SOC 2 report, HIPPA, ISO 27001 certificate, or PCI DSS attestation…while companies are quietly running unpatched systems, weak privileged access, and incident response plans that haven’t been tested in years.
Both realities can be true at the same time. Why? Because compliance is documentation. Security is protection!
One of the lines from my VisibleOps Cybersecurity book sums it up well: “Compliance may make you look safe, but operations determine whether you actually are.”
The compliance dance looks like this:
- Password policy? Written.
- Followed? Not often.
- Security training? Required.
- Effective? Check the phishing metrics.
- IR plan? Documented.
- Tested? “Define tested…”
Leadership often says: “We passed our audit, why do we need more investment?” But so did many un-named small and medium companies many of which have had non-reported breaches. But even enterprise companies like Equifax, Target, and SolarWinds have been out right negligent in their cybersecurity practices, passing audits while having a weak cybersecurity posture, right before their breaches.
The trap for IT & Cybersecurity leaders, managers, and security teams is real: We must maintain compliance to satisfy customers and regulators, but compliance work consumes huge amounts of time, in reality this time that should be spent on actual security. The truth is simple: Compliance is the minimum. Security is the mission. And every organization must choose whether they want to look safe or be safe.
If you’ve ever passed an audit while knowing things were still broken under the hood, you know exactly what I mean. The reality is the executive suite and board level stake holders need to start asking the right questions. These same company leaders need to also recognize they are in the business of “X”, not a cyber-ops expert company. In other words, you are a candy company – make world-class candy and stop trying to be a cybersecurity company living under a false sense of security that your company is properly protected from threat actors, just because you passed an audit. Engage with expert companies that know how to protect companies 24 x7 from the vast and ever-increasing threats that are growing, especially now with self-learning Agentic A.I.