80% of risk programs are failing

Last month, a Fortune 500 financial services company got a call from their cloud storage vendor. "We experienced a security incident. Your customer data may have been exposed."

The CISO had four days to report to the SEC. Four days to figure out what data was affected, how many customers were impacted, what the business consequences would be.

Here's what made it impossible: they didn't actually know what data the vendor had access to. Their vendor assessment from 18 months ago said the vendor was "SOC 2 compliant." That was supposed to mean they were secure.

It didn't. The vendor was breached. Customer financial data was exposed. And the company spent the next six months in regulatory proceedings trying to explain why their vendor risk management program failed to catch this.

They're not alone. This exact scenario is playing out across organizations everywhere.

Here's what's actually happening:

Organizations now manage 400+ vendor relationships on average. Annual questionnaires can't keep up. "Are you SOC 2 compliant?" doesn't tell you if a vendor is actually secure—just that they passed an audit at some point in the past.

Meanwhile, AI deployments are accelerating without governance frameworks. Only 29% of organizations have comprehensive AI policies. The rest are integrating LLMs into critical workflows without understanding AI-specific risks like prompt injection or model poisoning.

And the financial consequences keep escalating. The average US data breach now costs $10.22 million. Ransomware is projected to cost $265 billion annually by 2031, up from $42 billion today.

Traditional risk management wasn't built for this landscape. Most organizations have IT security managing technical controls, compliance managing regulations, procurement managing vendors, and nobody connecting the dots across enterprise-wide risk.

That's why 48% of CISOs say third-party compliance is their main challenge. That's why only 20% of enterprise risk owners are meeting expectations. Traditional approaches don't scale to 400+ vendors, rapid AI adoption, and constantly evolving threats.

What actually works:

That Fortune 500 company rebuilt their entire risk program. Not more vendor questionnaires—a complete enterprise risk management framework.

They mapped every vendor's data access. They implemented risk-weighted assessments instead of compliance checkboxes. They built continuous monitoring instead of annual reviews. They connected vendor risk, AI governance, and regulatory requirements into one integrated system.

It took six months. But when their next vendor had a security incident, they knew exactly what data was affected, had contractual protections in place, and reported to the SEC within 48 hours with full documentation.

That's what CRISC (Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control) teaches—integrated enterprise risk management that actually works in modern environments.

CRISC covers four domains:

• IT Risk Identification - mapping dependencies across your entire ecosystem
• IT Risk Assessment - risk-weighted evaluation beyond compliance theater
• Risk Response and Mitigation - controls that scale to your actual risk landscape
• Risk and Control Monitoring - continuous oversight that catches problems early

This isn't siloed security. It's enterprise-wide risk management that addresses vendor risk, AI governance, and regulatory compliance in one framework.

Our CRISC bootcamp starts February 23-26, 2026.

Four days covering the frameworks organizations actually need to manage risk at scale. Real-world scenarios. Practical methodologies. Strategies that work when you have 400 vendors, not 40.

This is our first public CRISC bootcamp, and we're taking $300 off the regular price. Kelly Handerhan, who holds CRISC certification and has trained thousands of security professionals, will be teaching.

The organizations thriving in this environment aren't the ones with the most compliance checkboxes. They're the ones with systematic, scalable risk management.

Stay secure,
The DestCert Team