Every CISO knows this feeling: You’ve invested millions in controls, passed every audit, and still wake up wondering if tonight’s the night everything falls apart.
In December 2023, a luxury retailer held an 89/100 rating on a popular security scorecard platform. Five months later, 31 million emails were leaked.
Proof beats promises. Every time.
The Scorecard Illusion
Public scorecards serve their purpose—they create accountability and drive investment. But they measure intention, not execution. The gap between what we document and what actually runs in production is where breaches happen.
Capability maturity models like Gartner’s IT Score (GSMM) are self-assessments. Multiple choice. Optimistic by design. They help with reflection, but they don’t reveal whether your controls would hold today.
How Control Drift Becomes Risk
Audit day isn’t game day.
Verizon’s 2024 DBIR shows a 180% spike in breaches tied to known, unpatched vulnerabilities—many linked to MOVEit-style zero-days. These flaws weren’t invisible. They were logged, understood, and left open.
Security that looks fine on paper can quietly decay while no one’s watching. That’s how drift becomes exposure.
Case Study: Well-Known Retailer, 2024
Five months after that top 10 rating, attackers walked through an unprotected Snowflake account. No MFA. No detection. The breach wasn’t sophisticated—it was inevitable. The policy existed. The enforcement didn’t.
A Second Reminder: Equifax, 2017
Equifax also believed their program was mature. But one unpatched Apache Struts server exposed 145 million Americans. The critical patch had been available for weeks. A Senate investigation later confirmed what we all suspected: no one followed through.
Controls on paper don’t stop breaches. Controls in motion do.
From Scores to Signals: What Proof Looks Like
Don’t mistake compliance reports for security proof. Don’t assume yesterday’s test validates today’s posture.
Test: Event-driven control validations
Ask: Can we detect and respond to token theft in real time?
Do: Trigger Sentinel playbooks nightly and alert on any failure
Test: Patch probes in non-prod environments
Ask: Are patches closing gaps fast enough to outpace exploits?
Do: Run containerized exploit kits against twin systems as updates roll out
Test: Audit control enforcement logic
Ask: Are your policies actively applied—or just documented?
Do: Simulate bypass scenarios weekly (e.g., unenrolled MFA user, blocked protocol)
When these tests are connected into a feedback loop, your controls self-correct. That’s how modern security maintains readiness—even under stress.
Three Controls That Can’t Wait
- Monitor Impossible Travel and Password Spray detections in Entra ID (or your SIEM). These aren’t optional alerts—they’re early warning systems. Set auto-remediation to block or reset passwords immediately.
- Enforce MFA across every sign-in and block legacy auth (POP/IMAP, SMTP AUTH). Half-measures here create the exact vulnerabilities attackers exploit first.
- Run weekly external scans (or use your CSPM). If any service is exposed to the internet and not mission-critical, disable it or WAF-protect it immediately. Public-facing services without purpose are doors left unlocked.
These aren’t best practices. They’re baselines.
Ready to Replace Assumptions with Evidence?
Every day you operate on assumptions instead of evidence, you’re betting your career on hope. Our Operational Readiness Validation doesn’t just find gaps—it proves your controls work when attackers are already inside. The sprint stress-tests the 15 controls attackers hit first, maps live gaps and delivers a 90-day remediation plan.
Fixed fee. Two weeks. No fluff.
Want to know if your controls would hold tonight?
Let’s run the test.
