Making Continuous Compliance Possible: From Vision to Reality

When I migrated my first application to the cloud more than a decade ago, the mission was clear but narrow: build resilient, scalable environments that enabled business innovation. Security, while always present, was often treated as a bolt-on. Not long after, when I transitioned into information security leadership, the focus shifted – compliance and risk management became just as important as uptime. I learned that technology alone doesn’t secure enterprises, it must align with frameworks, policies, and accountability. And yet, compliance work was static – assessments were snapshots in time, already outdated by the time the reports landed on the desk of a CISO or a board committee.

In recent years, as a consultant for global enterprises and government agencies, I’ve seen that challenge magnified. The attack surface has exploded with multi-cloud adoption, SaaS sprawl, and supply chain interdependencies. NIST CSF 2.0 remains the gold standard for structuring a cybersecurity program, but most organizations still struggle to live inside the framework every day. Instead, they treat it as a checklist they dust off once a year.

That’s not good enough anymore.

The Goal of Continuous Compliance

For years I’ve had a vision of what great governance could be: Continuous Compliance. The idea is simple, but ambitious – compliance should not be a once-a-year audit event. It should be the ongoing state of the enterprise. Every change, every deployment, every identity access decision should be measured against the framework in real time.

Imagine this:

• Govern: Policies, roles, and risk strategy are continuously aligned with enterprise objectives and updated as the environment evolves.

• Identify: Your asset inventory updates dynamically as new cloud services are spun up, shadow IT detected, and SaaS adoption grows.

• Protect: Encryption, MFA, and least privilege access aren’t just policy requirements; they’re continuously validated by automated controls.

• Detect: Logs, telemetry, and behavioral analytics feed into monitoring tools that alert you when drift occurs – when yesterday’s compliant state becomes today’s

• Respond: Automated playbooks trigger corrective actions and generate evidence to demonstrate alignment with controls.

• Recover: Backup, disaster recovery, and continuity tests are run regularly and documented without manual overhead.

That is Continuous Compliance: a living, breathing alignment with the NIST CSF functions.

Why Now?

The truth is technology has finally caught up to the vision. Cloud security posture management (CSPM), security information and event management (SIEM), GRC platforms, and DevSecOps pipelines have matured. What was once aspirational – linking these tools to continuously prove compliance – is now achievable.

And with the acquisition of my business unit by UltraViolet Cyber (formerly Black Duck Software’s Application Security Testing Team, which itself was formerly part of Synopsys’ Software Integrity Group), I see this vision accelerating. UltraViolet Cyber’s Lens platform provides the unified visibility into cloud and SaaS environments that I’ve been missing. It doesn’t just detect unapproved APIs or shadow IT; it contextualizes those findings against business policy. That’s the missing ingredient for operationalizing compliance.

Lens, combined with the broader security ecosystem, creates the conditions for a compliance program that is never out of date.

The Business Case

Continuous Compliance is not just a security ideal – it’s a business enabler:

• Audit readiness without the evidence is always current, making regulatory reporting faster and less costly.
• Risk alignment in real CISOs and boards can make decisions based on today’s reality, not last quarter’s report.
• Operational Automating evidence collection and control validation frees teams to focus on higher-value work.
• Trust and Clients, regulators, and partners gain confidence that compliance isn’t a checkbox but a continuous posture.

The Road Ahead

After a dozen years working across cloud, cybersecurity, and compliance – from architect to InfoSec director to global consultant – I believe we’re at an inflection point. NIST CSF 2.0 gives us the map, Continuous Compliance is the destination, and platforms like UltraViolet Cyber’s Lens provide the vehicle to get us there. What once was aspirational now seems within reach.