TL;DR: The Gartner Hype Cycle for Cyber Risk Management

The rise of Continuous Controls Monitoring

The cybersecurity landscape is more complex and unforgiving than ever.

Security leaders face a perfect storm of challenges: expanding attack surfaces, resource constraints, and escalating regulatory demands. Against this backdrop, CCM’s growing prominence and inclusion in Gartner’s latest Hype Cycle for Cyber Risk Management is no surprise. It’s a signal for what the future of resilient, business-aligned cybersecurity will look like.

Gartner first recognized CCM as an emerging product category in 2020, highlighting its ability to automate manual control testing and evidence collection. At the time, it was a rare move - Gartner hadn’t added a new category to the Risk Management Hype Cycle in four years.

What started as a technical solution to support overloaded cybersecurity teams has since evolved into a strategic capability underpinning modern cyber risk management.

Analysts have argued that the expansion of attack surfaces and the growing inadequacy of traditional, point-in-time security audits against dynamic threat environments means CCM is of great benefit to cyber teams, rating its business benefits as “high” and projecting it would reach peak adoption within the next five to ten years

A timeline of CCM (and Panaseer) in the Gartner hype cycle

• 2020: First-inclusion. CCM added as a new category to Gartner’s Risk Management Hype Cycle with Panaseer listed as an inaugural vendor having championed the technology since 2014.
• 2022: Continuous Controls Monitoring included in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Cyber-Risk Management
• 2023: Continuous Controls Monitoring included again in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Cyber Risk Management. Panaseer’s technology also recognized in additional Hype Cycle reports for Security Operations and Workload and Network Security
• 2024: Continuous Controls Monitoring included in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Cyber Risk Management, Panaseer listed as a sample vendor.
• 2025: CCM included for the fourth time in the Cyber Risk Management. Panaseer consistently recognized as a sample vendor for the technology.

CCM’s evolving role in cybersecurity strategies

The role of CCM has shifted.

CCM is no longer just a tool for controls monitoring automation, it’s become a strategic pillar of mature cybersecurity operations. No longer only supporting resource-strapped cybersecurity teams, Gartner analysts also recognize that CCM also brings several business-critical advantages.

4 ways CCM is evolving from operational to strategic:

1. From point-in-time to continuous assurance: moving past periodic checks, to real-time, ongoing controls monitoring and validation, essential for responding to fast-moving threats
2. From detection to proactive defence: Automated monitoring and intelligent alerts allow teams to respond before risk escalates, strengthening both resilience and response time to reduce regulatory and operational risk.
3. From technical dashboards to executive-level insights: CCM translates security control performance into business-relevant, evidence-based metrics - giving senior leaders trusted visibility and insights that fuel smarter, faster decision-making.
4. From operational cost to enterprise resilience: Automated assurance contributes directly to business continuity, identifying weaknesses before attackers do.

Why CCM remains core to the Gartner Hyper Cycle for Cyber Risk Management

In the 2025 Hype Cycle for Cyber Risk Management, Gartner underscores CCM’s high business value, citing its ability to:

• Reduce costs
• Prevent financial and reputational brand damage from non-compliance
• Building a more secure, successful business

CCM strengthens both security operations and enterprise resilience by reducing the manual effort of controls assurance, alleviating the data burden, and enabling cybersecurity and IT teams to focus on higher-value tasks

In essence, CCM brings several business-critical advantages, including:

• Resource efficiency by shifting cyber and IT teams from repetitive assurance work to more strategic, high-value initiatives
• Improved risk visibility and response by having armed teams with real-time, actionable insights that detect misconfiguration almost immediately
• Reducing the time and cost of audits by up to 50% by fast-tracking evidence gathering