A capability maturity review offers a structured evaluation of how well an organisation develops, implements and continuously improves its control frameworks and associated processes.
By measuring against a recognised maturity model, you gain clarity on your current maturity level and receive a risk-based, prioritised road map for improvement.
Unlike a one-off checklist or penetration test, a capability maturity review considers the organisation’s strategy, risk management practices, implemented safeguards, monitoring, detection and response activities. Over time, repeated reviews will enable you to benchmark improvement, demonstrate maturity to executives, auditors and partners, and ensure your security investments align with business priorities and budget constraints.
A capability maturity review is a structured assessment that evaluates how well an organisation has implemented, integrated and continuously improved its security, technology or governance controls. Rather than simply confirming whether a control exists, the review examines:
Consistency: how reliably the control is applied across systems and teams.
Governance: how well the control is owned, monitored, and supported by policies and oversight.
Effectiveness: how well the control actually reduces risk in practice.
The Centre for Internet Security (CIS) Critical Controls illustrate this approach: 18 controls, each containing multiple Safeguards, mapped to three Implementation Groups (a.k.a maturity levels) that help organisations prioritise their cybersecurity uplift. This provides a solid technical maturity model, similar to the ACSC E8MM. However, like the E8 model, it does not fully address broader Governance, Risk and Compliance considerations.
A capability maturity review bridges that gap by combining control effectiveness, governance practices and operational reliability into a single, risk-based view that supports practical, prioritised improvement.
Did you know…
The original Capability Maturity Model (CMM), developed in the late 1980s by the Software Engineering Institute, was intended to improve software engineering process maturity, not secure software development. Its structured progression (from Initial through Repeatable, Defined, Managed and Optimising) helped organisations standardise and refine development practices.
Although later maturity assessments applied to models such as ISO 27001, CIS Controls, NIST CSF and AESCSF were not part of the original CMM’s intent, the same maturity concepts remain valuable. They provide a formal, repeatable way for organisations to determine the maturity level associated with the design and implementation of one or more controls.
Do any of these sound familiar?
A Capability Maturity Review helps your organisations by allowing you to understand and improve the organisation’s maturity level over time and will deliver these benefits:
A capability maturity review isn’t a penetration test or a checklist; it’s a structured assessment of how well your organisation manages cybersecurity risks overall.
Rather than asking whether a control merely exists, the review looks at how you identify risks, how safeguards are selected and maintained, and how effectively you detect, respond to and recover from attacks.
Every organisation has its own priorities, budgets, and operating context, so the first step is to select a sensible, defensible and repeatable method for determining your current maturity.
This gives you a clear, explainable baseline and allows you to articulate your current state to executives, auditors, and partners while also establishing a sound foundation for tracking improvement over time.
Once the assessment has established your current maturity level, the next step is turning insight into action.
A structured improvement plan allows you to prioritise control enhancements based on risk, cost and operational reality, ensuring the most important issues receive attention first.
Practical uplift occurs iteratively rather than through risky big-bang changes, reducing rework and minimising disruption. As improvements are implemented, you can demonstrate clear due diligence to clients, partners and regulators; this shows not just that you identified weaknesses, but that you acted on them in a measured, risk-based and justifiable way.
This step transforms the maturity review from a point-in-time snapshot into a living improvement program aligned with organisational priorities.
Because you selected an appropriate maturity model at the outset, you can now measure your progress in a consistent, repeatable way.
By re-assessing your controls and processes against the same reference model, you gain objective evidence of improvement rather than relying on opinion or intuition.
This benchmarking allows you to show stakeholders how your maturity has increased over time and where further investment will have the greatest impact.
The ability to demonstrate uplift, whether to auditors, insurers, executives or partners, helps build trust and confidence in your cybersecurity posture. It also supports funding decisions by providing a clear link between improvement work, risk reduction and measurable maturity outcomes.
A maturity review is far more than a technical exercise; it also clarifies how cybersecurity governance functions across the organisation.
The review highlights roles, responsibilities, approval pathways, risk ownership and the degree of executive engagement, all of which influence control effectiveness. By mapping operational reality against policy expectations, the review exposes misalignments that commonly undermine security programs.
It also creates a common language for security, technology, risk and leadership teams, ensuring decisions are made on shared facts rather than assumptions.
This strengthens accountability and embeds cybersecurity into everyday operations rather than treating it as an isolated technical function.
dotSec stands out among other capability maturity-review companies in Australia for a couple of important reasons:
Are you ready to take the uncertainty out of your cybersecurity strategy, purchasing plans and risk-management goals? Do you want to be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of your security-improvement efforts with more confidence and certainty?
If so, give us a call. We’ll scope a project that meets your risk-management, time and budget goals. We’ll work with you to understand your current security maturity level now, and to build a risk-based, prioritised roadmap for maturity improvement into the future.
Buying products and services without a clear strategy has the potential to be a risky, painful and expensive experience, but with dotSec by your side, your maturity-improvement journey becomes a lot easier.
