The landscape of compliance automation platforms is saturated with promises of lightning-fast audits, sprinting through security reviews in record time.

“Automate compliance and streamline security reviews…”

“… automates your compliance journey…”

“…sprint through security audits…”

“…all your favorite information security frameworks now worry free”

WORRY FREE.

These are all word-for-word snippets taken from the Home Page of popular automation compliance platforms. Notice any similarities? Every one of them emphasizes their ability to provide a fast and easy audit. If you’re even remotely connected to the industry, you’ve heard the marketing “get your SOC 2 in 2 weeks, guaranteed!”

The Need for Speed

Now I’m not against speed. In fact, I’m for it, and I love the technology that has developed. I’m excited for the next generation of compliance technology as well, where perhaps we’ll become less reliant on a static audit done by humans and get better assurance at lower cost.

Overlooking Quality

Yet, amidst this race for rapid results, we’ve overlooked a crucial aspect: quality. While speed is undeniably valuable, it shouldn’t overshadow the importance of building customer trust through robust and reliable compliance processes.

‘Fast’ should be taken for granted now – now that we have a roadmap for it, it’s not that difficult to build a database and interface for a control framework and map it to relevant fields and combine it with a few other monitoring software functions.

Shifting the Focus

It’s time to shift the narrative. Instead of solely focusing on how quickly a platform can deliver results, let’s turn our attention to the quality of those outcomes. When it comes to evaluating compliance platforms, we should be evaluating the factors driving quality where true differentiation lies:

Credibility: Does your platform partner with experienced auditors who enhance your brand’s credibility through a robust audit, not tear it down by rubber stamping?

Flexibility: Does the platform’s onboarding process empower clients to customize templates and control frameworks to align with their unique business controls, fostering a culture of ownership and adaptation? Or does it start to break down if you don’t use the proprietary templates?

Transparency: Can your platform provide clear and transparent evidence, allowing auditors to trace the origin of data and understand the rationale behind compliance decisions?

Customization: Does your platform encourage flexibility in tailoring control frameworks, rather than imposing rigid, one-size-fits-all templates?

A platform that embraced and implemented these principles would redefine the industry standard and quickly gain a reputation of quality that would earn the trust and engagement of the most well-known companies. We need to take the long hard road out and redefine metrics – beyond checking the box, beyond completing an assessment quickly, beyond the least number of headaches, we need to analyze our ability to make compliance actually better, measuring increase in customer trust and the factors that get us there.