If you’re like most of our customers, you would probably agree:
Cybersecurity is too often an overly complex and time-consuming burden, especially with constantly evolving threats and regulations.
Consider this:
70% of business leaders agree that cybersecurity compliance is getting harder and that a simpler, more strategic approach is needed (2023 Thomson Reuters Risk & Compliance Survey Report)
Why Is Cybersecurity So Complicated?
Cybersecurity today often feels like an impossible puzzle. Why is this?
Here are some of the biggest reasons:
- Too Many Tools, Not Enough Integration
Organizations often layer multiple tools on top of each other, each solving a specific problem but rarely working together. The result? A fragmented system that’s difficult to manage and prone to inefficiencies. - Juggling Multiple Compliance Frameworks
SOC 2, ISO 27001, CMMC, HIPAA—the list goes on. Managing separate processes for each standard creates duplication, confusion, and wasted effort. - Constantly Changing Threats
The cyber threat landscape evolves every day. Attackers develop new methods faster than most companies can adapt, leaving teams overwhelmed and reactive. - Overloaded Teams
Many security teams are understaffed, overburdened, or lack the specialized expertise needed to address advanced threats and compliance challenges. - Unclear Priorities
With so many risks to address, it’s hard to know where to start. Teams often spend time on low-priority tasks while critical vulnerabilities remain unaddressed. - Technical Jargon
Cybersecurity communication is often steeped in buzzwords and acronyms, making it hard for decision-makers to fully understand what’s at stake—or what needs to be done. - Lack of Visibility
Hidden vulnerabilities—especially within supply chains or lower-tier suppliers—are some of the hardest to detect and manage. It’s difficult to secure what you can’t see. - Slow Implementation
Security improvements are often slow to implement and drive adoption, leaving gaps exposed for far too long.
These challenges create a cycle of complexity, where more tools, processes, and resources are thrown at the problem without simplifying or solving it.
We see this play out all the time.
A new tool here, another compliance requirement there, and suddenly your security program looks like an overgrown jungle—dense, tangled, and unmanageable.
How to Break the Cycle of Complexity in Cybersecurity
The fact is, cybersecurity doesn’t have to be complicated.
At Seiso, we believe there’s a better approach. Simpler, cleaner, and far more effective.
Here is how we simplify cybersecurity with our Seiso Way and 10 Domains SM approach.
Step 1: Reduction Over Addition
When it comes to cybersecurity, more isn’t always better.
Layering tool after tool might feel like progress, but it often creates unnecessary complexity, overlaps, and inefficiencies. At Seiso, we focus on removing unnecessary components to create a streamlined, effective security program.
By eliminating the clutter, you’re left with a cleaner, leaner system that’s easier to manage and far more effective at reducing risk. Simplicity is strength.
Seiso Case Study
Implementing a Security Strategy Roadmap to Enhance Maturity and Strengthen Business Confidence
Developing a tailored, risk-based strategy that improved security maturity and aligned with business objectives to achieve above-average risk assessment scores.
Read MoreStep 2: Streamlined Processes
Do your security workflows feel like a maze?
Our approach cuts through the noise, focusing on what’s truly essential. We help you build processes that are logical, efficient, and aligned with your business objectives.
The result? Security workflows that actually work—saving time, reducing errors, and helping you meet compliance goals without the headaches.
Step 3: Clear, Actionable Guidance
Cybersecurity jargon is great for cybersecurity professionals. But it can make the objective and impact harder to communicate with business partners. Cybersecurity shouldn’t feel like a foreign language. Instead, make it accessible.
At Seiso, we ditch the jargon and deliver step-by-step guidance that’s easy to understand and even easier to implement. Whether you’re navigating SOC 2 compliance or addressing a critical vulnerability, we give you clear actions that drive real results.
At Seiso, we believe that simplicity is the key to effective cybersecurity.
Step 4: Tailored Solutions
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is treating cybersecurity as a rigid checklist, applying frameworks without considering how they align with their unique business needs and goals.
It may counterintuitive, however, taking the additional time to really dive into to understand the business and aligning security measures to the organizational context will save time in the long run.
That’s exactly what we always do in our work with customers, especially those in highly regulated industries.
We help you tailor your cybersecurity strategy to match your business imperatives, ensuring it doesn’t just meet compliance requirements—it actively supports your growth and operational success.
Whether it’s SOC 2, ISO 27001, CMMC, or another set of requirements, we start by understanding your organization’s specific context. This includes your industry risks, operational scope, and available resources. From there, we design solutions that integrate seamlessly into your workflows and align with your strategic objectives.
Why does this matter?
Because a poorly tailored approach often leads to wasted effort, misaligned priorities, and unnecessary complexity.
- Over-Engineering: Applying controls that are irrelevant to your business, adding unnecessary costs and inefficiencies.
- Under-Scoping: Missing critical risks because the framework wasn’t adapted to your specific industry or operations.
- Compliance Fatigue: Treating compliance as an end goal instead of a tool to improve security and enable business success.
Our process ensures every cybersecurity measure is not only relevant but also impactful. By aligning your frameworks and controls to your unique operations, we make your cybersecurity program a proactive enabler of business value.
We design solutions specific to your needs, ensuring they integrate seamlessly with your operations and address your unique challenges. Whether you’re in healthcare, defense, or another regulated industry, we meet you where you are and deliver exactly what you need.
No cookie-cutter strategies. Just effective, customized solutions.
Cybersecurity Compliance Checklist for Highly Regulated Industries
Simplify and accelerate your compliance journey and avoid the pitfalls along the way.
Get Your Free Compliance Checklist
Step 5: Unified Compliance Across Multiple Security Frameworks
Compliance is complicated even more when you’re juggling multiple frameworks / standards such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and CMMC.
We simplify compliance by harmonizing your efforts across sometimes conflicting standards and market expectations, reducing redundancy and ensuring consistency. Instead of managing separate processes for each standard, we help you build a cohesive approach that covers everything.
We streamline GRC efforts with our Seiso 10 Domains SM, a structured approach that integrates compliance efforts across frameworks. By addressing security holistically, we eliminate redundancies and align your compliance program with your business goals.
Here’s how we do it:
- Harmonizing Overlapping Requirements
The Seiso 10 Domains focus on critical areas like Identity and Access Management, Risk Management, Incident Response, and Asset Management and others. These core domains encompass the shared requirements of most frameworks, allowing you to address them in a unified way. - Focusing on Core Business Objectives
Compliance isn’t just about satisfying auditors—it’s about protecting your business and driving operational success. Our domain-driven approach ensures that every control supports your strategic goals, creating a compliance program that adds value, not complexity. - Leveraging Technology for Efficiency
By using modern tools and automation, we simplify the monitoring, reporting, and management of compliance across all frameworks. Our Seiso 10 Domains ensure these technologies are applied consistently, reducing the burden on your team and improving results. - Simplifying Audit Readiness
Preparing for audits can drain time and resources, especially when juggling multiple frameworks. With the Seiso 10 Domains, your compliance efforts are organized, documented, and ready to meet the demands of any standard. This reduces audit fatigue and ensures smooth certification processes.
Step 6: Risk-Based Focus
Not all cyber risks are created equal. But how do you know which should be your biggest focus?
To manage and reduce enterprise risk, you have to have a clear understanding of your vulnerabilities and a strategy to address them effectively, helping you prioritize and address the highest-risk areas first, ensuring your resources are allocated where they’ll make the biggest impact.
One of the ways we simplify this step is by making the creation of a risk register easier. Having an actionable risk register ensures visibility into potential vulnerabilities and guides your decision-making by:
- Identifying Risks: Mapping out the critical risks that could impact your operations, compliance, and security.
- Prioritizing Impact: Scoring risks based on likelihood and potential impact, so you can focus on the most urgent issues.
- Driving Action: Providing clear, actionable steps to mitigate each risk effectively and efficiently.
This risk-based approach is particularly important in highly regulated industries, where the volume of compliance requirements can feel overwhelming. By focusing on the risks that matter most, we help you achieve:
Business Alignment: Ensure that your risk mitigation efforts support broader business objectives, from protecting critical assets to maintaining operational continuity.
Efficiency: Avoid wasting time on low-priority tasks or controls that don’t align with your biggest risks.
Clarity: Gain a clear understanding of your threat landscape and how it connects to your compliance obligations.
Free Snapshot Assessment
We will assess your cybersecurity program readiness and uncover critical risks in a free 1-hour session. Get an actionable report with a risk-based ranking within 48 hours.
Schedule a Free Assessment
Step 7: Automation and Other Tools to Remove Friction
In your organization, do security tools often feel more like a burden than enablers?
Cybersecurity tool sprawl is a major problem. They demand too much time, require steep learning curves, and bog down already overburdened teams. Instead of empowering your operations, they can hinder productivity and create inefficiencies that slow everything down.
Companies we talk to admit they’re unsure how well these tools are working. Instead of boosting security, an overwhelming number of tools instead lead to team overload, inefficiency, and lower overall impact.
Cybersecurity should enhance productivity—not hinder it. That’s why we focus on modern, low-friction tools and automation that streamline your processes, improve usability, and maximize your team’s effectiveness.
Here’s how we simplify your cybersecurity tooling using the Seiso Way:
- Automation with Purpose: Our approach isn’t about plugging in generic tools—it’s about designing automation workflows tailored to your unique environment. We prioritize automating tasks that directly reduce the highest risks to your organization. We help you focus tool investments on what truly matters to your security posture.
- Seamless Integration: Seiso ensures automation tools like Drata, Vanta, or AWS Security Hub are implemented to work cohesively within your ecosystem. We customize integrations to provide continuous monitoring, automated reporting, and real-time insights across your security domains.
- Tailored Workflows: We don’t just deploy tools—we configure workflows that reflect your operational priorities. For example, we automate alert escalations for critical vulnerabilities or integrate incident response playbooks into your existing systems, ensuring actions are taken without delay.
- Strategic Tool Selection: Seiso guides you in selecting the right technologies that align with your security goals and business imperatives. We evaluate your current stack, identify redundancies, and recommend solutions that integrate seamlessly with your existing operations. This ensures you’re investing in tools that drive impact—not just adding to the clutter.
- Simplified Integration and Visibility: Too many tools operate in silos, creating disconnected systems that increase complexity. Seiso ensures your tools are properly integrated to provide a unified view of your security posture.
Read more:
In our guide to simplifying Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), learn how to leverage automation and smarter tools can help reduce complexity, streamline compliance processes, and enhance overall efficiency.
Moving Faster to Results
In cybersecurity, speed matters, a lot.
We’re not just talking about rapid response to incidents. Speed also means assessing priorities, closing vulnerabilities and expanding capabilities as quickly as possible to meet business imperatives and market expectations. As the saying goes, time is money. It can also add risk over time.
Our “Seiso Way” emphasizes fast delivery of high-value outcomes, helping you achieve your goals with minimal disruption.
We’ve helped several companies accelerate their desired cybersecurity outcomes, including:
- This med-tech SaaS provider achieved audit-readiness for ISO 27001 and SOC 2 in less than 9-months to close a massive new customer deal. Read the case study.
- This electrical testing provider overcame urgent compliance gaps to achieve timely market growth. Read the case study.
The Seiso Way emphasizes delivering high-value outcomes quickly, allowing you to:
- Accelerate Risk Reduction: We prioritize the most critical vulnerabilities and implement solutions rapidly, ensuring your organization is protected sooner rather than later.
- Streamline Compliance Readiness: Preparing for audits like SOC 2 or ISO 27001 can be time-consuming, but our proven processes and automation tools drastically cut preparation time, helping you meet deadlines with confidence.
- Expand Security Capabilities: Whether it’s deploying new tools, implementing risk management frameworks, or training your team, we help you scale your security program to support growth and market demands without unnecessary delays.
Speed also means adaptability. As your business evolves, we ensure your security measures evolve just as quickly to stay ahead of new threats and regulatory requirements. With Seiso, you’re not just moving fast—you’re moving smart, achieving your goals with minimal disruption and maximum impact.
Your Path to Simplicity Starts Here
Cybersecurity doesn’t have to be complex. By focusing on reduction, clarity, and tailored solutions, Seiso transforms your security program from burden into advantage.
Be audit ready and achieve certification. Get quantifiable justification for security investments. Satisfy security questionnaires and close more deals. Avoid common compliance pitfalls that slow you down.