(Field notes from actual gap assessments across Europe, not from textbooks.)
Everyone says they’re “maturing their GRC.”
Reality check: most organizations are still improvising security and calling it governance.
Here’s what we actually find with Cresco Cybersecurity and what you can do before the next audit exposes it.
# | What We Find | What It Means | How to Fix It (For Real) |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | No actual policies, or they’re fossilized | Teams think policies exist because they once had a consultant write them. Nobody can find the latest version. | Start with 5 essential ones: Information Security, Access Control, Incident Response, Acceptable Use, Third-Party Management. Keep them under 5 pages and review annually. |
2 | No clear ownership | “IT handles it.” “Legal owns it.” Translation: nobody does. | Assign names, not departments. Accountability isn’t collective, it’s individual. |
3 | Security = IT problem | Business units think cyber risk starts and ends with the firewall. | Move the conversation to impact: downtime, fines, reputation. Risk is business language, use it. |
4 | Business wants security but can’t prove ROI | They want better tools, but can’t justify budgets because they’ve never translated risk into money. | Quantify exposure: “This risk = €300K if it happens.” Suddenly, security has ROI. |
5 | Governance is a buzzword | “We have a committee.” No agendas. No minutes. No decisions. | Make governance visible: one meeting per month, one decision log, one reporting line to management. Done. |
6 | Third-party management = blind trust | “Our providers are certified.” Great. Which ones? Nobody knows. | Keep a supplier risk list. Start with your top 10 vendors. Ask them one question: “Who audits you?” |
7 | Training = PowerPoint from HR | Awareness is treated like compliance theater. No one remembers a thing. | Replace static slides with 10-minute story-based refreshers. Make people feel the risk. |
8 | Assets are ‘managed’ (on paper) | Inventories exist only for the audit report. In reality, no one knows what’s running in production. | Automate discovery. Tag critical assets. Review quarterly. If you can’t name it, you can’t protect it. |
9 | Detection systems are a lie | SIEM dashboards blink, but no one investigates alerts. “Monitoring” = existence, not action. | Measure response, not visibility. Track time from alert → triage → closure. |
10 | No holistic view of risk | Each “low” risk is treated in isolation, until three lows combine into a business crisis. | Correlate risks by domain. Show accumulative exposure. Teach management that “low + low + low = critical.” |
Policies, ownership, and alignment fail long before firewalls do.
Fix the governance first, and compliance becomes proof, not pain.
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