Compliance often feels less like a capability and more like a drag.
Audits disrupt normal work. Evidence requests pile up. Security teams feel pulled away from real risk reducing tasks to satisfy framework testingrequirements. By the time the audit is over, everyone is exhausted—and quietly wondering why this still feels so hard.
This frustration is especially common during the first few years of a compliance program. And contrary to popular belief, it isn’t a sign of failure.
It’s a sign of early-stage compliance maturity colliding with operational reality.
FRICTION IS THE DEFAULT STATE OF EARLY COMPLIANCE
In the early stages, compliance is almost always layered onto an existing environment, not designed into it. Controls are documented after systems are built. Processes are defined after incidents happen. Ownership is assigned reactively, often based on who’s available rather than who’saccountable in the long term.
As a result, compliance work tends to surface at the worst possible moments, like during audits, customer reviews, or security incidents, when the pressure is already high.
This friction is amplified by the latest shifts in the threat landscape. According to the IBM X-Force 2025 Threat Intelligence Index, nearly 30% of intrusions now involve the use of valid credentials, and attackers increasingly “log in” rather than break in. That kind of risk doesn’t show up neatly in static documentation, but often in how identity, access, and monitoring actually operate day-to-day.
Early compliance programs struggle here because controls may exist on paper, but they haven’t yet been operationalized in a way that keeps pace with real risk.
WHY EARLY-STAGE COMPLIANCE FEELS MISALIGNED WITH RISK
BAnother source of friction is that immature compliance programs are often audit-informed, not risk-informed.
Framework requirements are treated as equal, regardless of context. Controls are implemented because they’re required, not because they mitigate the most likely or impactful risks facing the organization. This creates a mismatch between where teams spend time and where exposure actually exists.
Industry data reinforces this gap. The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report continues to show that breaches overwhelmingly stem from a small set of root causes:
- Credential misuse
- Phishing
- Exploitation of known vulnerabilities
Despite the small cohort, many organizations still spend disproportionate effort on lower-impact controls simply because they’re easier to document or audit.
When compliance effort isn’t aligned to risk, teams feel the disconnect immediately. Security leaders know where the real problems are, but compliance activity distracts. That tension shows up as friction, frustration, and audit fatigue.
THE HUMAN COST OF COMPLIANCE FRICTION
Optimized organizations stop treating audits as events and start managing compliance as an ongoing function. Operationally, this looks like:
- Controls mapped across multiple frameworks
- Evidence collected and controls monitored continuously, not seasonally
- Clear ownership between security, IT, and compliance teams
A common example: A company supporting multiple customer audits can respond confidently because control intent is understood instead of just documented. When an auditor asks for clarification, teams know why a control exists and how it mitigates risk, not just where the policy lives.
At this stage, compliance becomes risk-informed. Decisions are based on material risk, not just framework language. That’s when reuse becomes reliable and audits become predictable.
STAGE 4 – STRATEGIC: COMPLIANCE SUPPORTS GROWTH, TRUST, AND SPEED
Let’s just put it out there – operational friction is exhausting, but never more so than in early-stage programs where:
- Knowledge lives with individuals instead of systems
- Evidence depends on memory, screenshots, and last-minute coordination
- A small group of people becomes the default answer to every audit question
Over time, this creates burnout and fragility. When key people leave or shift roles, compliance posture weakens, seemingly overnight. The organization is compliant, but only as long as the same people keep holding it together.
This is one reason audits often feel harder in year two or three than they did the first time. Expectations increase, but the underlying operating model hasn’t yet matured to support them.
WHY THIS PAIN PEAKS AROUND THE SECOND OR THIRD AUDIT
The second or third audit is usually where the gap becomes impossible to ignore.
Scope expands. Auditors ask not just what controls exist, but how consistently they operate. Customers and regulators expect faster, clearer answers. Meanwhile, the environment itself is growing more complex, with more systems, more identities, more integrations.
Threat actors take advantage of this complexity. As the IBM X-Force report notes, attackers increasingly exploit unpatched public-facing applications and identity gaps, often remaining undetected long enough to move laterally and escalate privileges.
Early-stage compliance programs just aren’t built for that level of operational scrutiny.
The result is very predictable: more work, more stress, and the feeling that compliance is slowing everything down.
FRICTION IS A SIGNAL, NOT A VERDICT
Here’s the way to reframe it: friction is not proof that compliance is broken.
It’s proof that the organization has outgrown a reactive approach.
Friction is the signal that compliance needs to evolve, whether it’s from documentation to execution, from audit response to risk management, or from individual effort to institutional capability.
Compliance starts creating value only after that shift begins. When controls are designed with intent, aligned to risk, and embedded into how teams actually work, friction decreases. Audits become more predictable. Evidence becomes reusable. Security and compliance stop competing for attention.
You can’t fix all of that at once right at the start of the year. But you can recognize the friction and lean into what it’s telling you about where your program really is today.
THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS
Ironically, the first and second audits are often where compliance feels harder, not easier.
The first audit is usually about proving something exists at all. Controls are defined, documentation is assembled, and processes are created just in time. It’s intense, but there’s momentum and a clear finish line.
By the second or third audit, expectations change. Scope expands. Auditors ask deeper questions. Evidence needs to demonstrate not just that controls exist, but that they operate consistently over time. What once felt like a one-time push starts to feel like a recurring tax on the organization.
That’s where the illusion of progress sets in.
From the outside, the organization looks successful since it’s passing audits. But under the surface, the same manual work is being repeated, the same risks are being rediscovered, and the same fire drills are playing out year after year. Point-in-time success masks systemic gaps in how compliance is actually managed.
This is often the moment leaders start asking, Why does this still feel so painful if we’re doing everything right?
WHAT COMPLIANCE MATURITY ACTUALLY MEANS
Compliance maturity isn’t about how many frameworks you’ve passed or how thick your evidence repository is. It’s about how compliance functions inside the business.
At a high level, most organizations move through four stages:
- Reactive – Compliance is audit-driven. Work spikes around deadlines. Knowledge lives in people, not systems.
- Repeatable – Core controls exist and can be re-used, but execution still depends heavily on manual effort.
- Optimized – Controls operate within established and mature processes resulting in consistent artifacts to support audits. Compliance is planned year-round. Security, IT, and compliance operate as a coordinated function.
- Strategic – Compliance supports growth, speed, and trust. Audits are predictable. Risk decisions are informed, not reactive.
What separates these stages isn’t documentation volume but experience, behavior and operating model. Mature programs are designed around how risk is managed day-to-day, not just how controls are presented to an auditor once a year.
This is where risk-informed compliance starts to matter. Instead of treating every control equally because a framework says so, mature organizations understand why controls exist, which risks they mitigate, and where flexibility is appropriate. Compliance stops being a rigid checklist and becomes a structured way to make better decisions.
As AJ Yawn once put it in his guest piece on compliance maturity: Start with Risk: The Smarter Path to Compliance That Pays | 360 Advanced, the goal isn’t to implement controls for the sake of an audit—it’s to design controls that actually reduce risk to a reasonable level producing accountability in the system and still stand up to scrutiny. That shift in mindset is subtle, but it’s foundational.
EARLY WARNING SIGNS YOU’RE STUCK
Many organizations assume they’re further along the maturity curve than they actually are. A few common signals tend to show up when that gap exists:
- The same evidence is not available or provided within every audit. Even when nothing significant has changed, teams start from scratchbecause evidence isn’t truly reusable or defined as the output of controls.
- Controls only exist during “audit season.” Policies are updated, access reviews happen, and monitoring improves—temporarily.
- Security and compliance run in parallel lanes. Security teams manage risk. Compliance teams manage audits. The two meet only when they have to.
None of these are moral failures or signs of incompetence. They’re indicators that compliance has been bolted onto the organization rather than integrated into how it operates. And they tend to surface most clearly around the second or third audit, when expectations rise, but the underlying model hasn’t evolved.
MATURITY IS ABOUT DOING IT DIFFERENTLY
Compliance maturity doesn’t come from doing more. More tools. More templates. More controls layered on top of existing ones.
It comes from doing things differently; designing compliance around how the business actually works, aligning controls to real risks, and building systems that support consistency instead of heroics.
The journey to maturity isn’t about fixing everything. It’s about recognizing where you truly are today, without judgment, without spin, and without assuming that audit success alone tells the full story.
