Stakeholder map · Poster

Engineering Assurance

A stakeholder map, from compliance chaos to continuous flow

Trusted Path · 2 November 2026

Late, bolted-on assurance costs every leader something, but not the same thing. The CTO feels it at procurement, the VP of Engineering in delivery, the compliance executive at audit time and the programme manager in a portfolio view that is out of date before it is shared.

The map below puts the four views side by side, with the capability that answers each one. Every figure carries its source.

Download the poster (PNG, 393 KB)
From

Compliance chaos

  • Spreadsheets and manual evidence
  • Security reviewed after the code is written
  • A separate tool for each discipline
To

Continuous flow

  • Evidence recorded as the work happens
  • Risks found at planning and design
  • One view across security, privacy and resilience
The five-level TRUST framework

A measurable path from firefighting to flow.

Every team sits somewhere on the curve. The smallest next move is always named.

  1. Level 1Tribal
  2. Level 2Repeatable
  3. Level 3Uniform
  4. Level 4Steered
  5. Level 5Tuned
Four stakeholders

One problem, seen from four seats.

Each leader feels the cost of late, bolted-on assurance in a different place. Each gets a different capability back.

CTO & CIO

Strategic transformation leaders

Answer for platform-wide engineering health and return on investment, and must show the board that transformation is working.

Critical pain point

Deals stall at procurement

Enterprise deals slow or fail when the team cannot show certifications such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2, or answer a security questionnaire accurately.

Trusted Path capability

The five-level TRUST framework

A measurable roadmap from Level 1 Tribal to Level 5 Tuned across security, privacy and resilience, mapped to the frameworks buyers and auditors ask about.

VP & Head of Engineering

Velocity guardians

Own delivery. Security findings that arrive late turn into project delays and rework on code already written.

Critical pain point

Noise, then workarounds

95%1

of application security alerts are noise. Only 2–5% need immediate action.

81%2

of organisations knowingly ship code with security flaws.

Trusted Path capability

One practice, three disciplines

Security (threat modelling), privacy (data flow mapping) and resilience (failure modes) handled in the developer workflow, at planning and design.

Compliance · CISO / DPO

Risk arbiters

Manage overlapping frameworks such as ISO 27001, SOC 2 and NIS2. Gathering evidence for each audit takes weeks of manual effort.

Critical pain point

The bolt-on penalty

Retrofitting controls after development costs more than designing them in from day one, and the rework lands on the same engineers.

Trusted Path capability

Evidence captured as work happens

Audit-ready evidence recorded from the delivery pipeline and the tools the team already uses, not rebuilt by hand after the fact.

Programme manager · PMO

Portfolio visibility leads

Coordinate many delivery streams, often without a current red, amber, green view of risk across them.

Critical pain point

Information asymmetry

Security, privacy and resilience status sits in separate tools and reports, so the programme view is out of date before it is shared.

Trusted Path capability

One view across the portfolio

Maturity and open risk for every project on one dashboard, in place of the five tools each discipline used to need.

Strategic outcomes

What the board sees.

Outcome 01

Reporting the board can read in one sitting

Maturity across security, privacy and resilience, with the gap to target and the next move, in one written report.

Outcome 02

Map once, report many times

Each piece of work is mapped to every framework it satisfies, such as DORA, NIS2, ISO 27001 and SOC 2, so evidence is gathered once.

Outcome 03

From firefighting to flow

Continuous assurance in place of reactive clean-up. DevSecOps professionals lose 7 hours a week to inefficient processes.3

Why it has to be continuous

EU incident reporting clocks

When something goes wrong, the first regulator notice is due in hours. Evidence gathered after the fact cannot keep up.4

DORA
4 hours from classifying as major, at most 24 h from awareness

Major ICT-related incidents at financial entities. Intermediate report in 72 hours, final in one month.

NIS2
24 hours early warning

Significant incidents at essential and important entities. Full notification in 72 hours.

GDPR
72 hours where feasible

Personal data breaches, notified to the supervisory authority.

Sources

  1. OX Security, 2025 Application Security Benchmark Report: 101 million+ findings across 178 organisations.
  2. Checkmarx, Future of AppSec (2025).
  3. GitLab, Global DevSecOps Report (2025): 3,266 DevSecOps professionals, surveyed by The Harris Poll.
  4. DORA: Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/301, Art. 5. NIS2: Directive (EU) 2022/2555, Art. 23. GDPR: Regulation (EU) 2016/679, Art. 33. Times shown are for the first notification.

Downloads

PNG

Stakeholder poster

The same map as a single image to print or share, 2160 × 5984 pixels, with sources.

Open PNG · 393 KB (opens in a new window)