Headline figure
54%
cite insufficient time as the main barrier
Source: SOC Maturity Report 2026, SOC-CMM® (CC BY-SA 4.0), soc-cmm.com. Maturity assessment challenges and Maturity improvement challenges charts.
SOC-CMM assessment challenges: 2026 statistics
SOC-CMM assessment barriers in 2026: insufficient time 54%, missing evidence 39%, expertise 34% and management commitment 32%, up 21%.
Executive reading
Insufficient time remains the main barrier to running a maturity assessment (54%, essentially stable). It is followed by missing documentation or evidence (39%, +6%), unavailable expertise (34%, -10%) and insufficient management commitment, the figure that moves the most: 32%, up 21% versus 2025. The lack of a formal mandate to run assessments holds at 28%. The report notes that understanding assessment benefits at the level where budgets are decided is key to obtaining commitment and support.
What does this mean for your SOC? The first two barriers, time and evidence, are solved with preparation; the next two, expertise and management commitment, are solved with sponsorship and external support. A per-domain assessment checklist keeps interviews bounded and avoids mid-process documentation hunts. And when internal expertise falls short, leaning on an external SOC-CMM assessor addresses time and accuracy at once: the report itself states that a support partner improves both process efficiency and result objectivity.
Report data
| Metric | Value | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Insufficient time | 54% | Main barrier; -2% YoY. |
| Lack of documentation/evidence | 39% | +6% YoY; weak scoring risk. |
| Necessary expertise not available | 34% | -10% YoY; needs external calibration. |
| Insufficient management commitment | 32% | +21% YoY; the strongest movement in the chart. |
| Lack of mandate | 28% | +2% YoY; governance problem. |
Analysis and context
Methodology: the percentages come from the 2026 SOC Maturity Report survey (fieldwork from late January to mid-March 2026; 290 responses, roughly 200 retained after cleaning). Since 65% of respondents had already used SOC-CMM, these barriers are reported by teams that know the real effort involved, not organizations imagining it.
The 21% rise in insufficient management commitment deserves its own attention. It is consistent with another figure in the same report: insufficient management support appears as the third cause of SOC stress (25%). When leadership does not sponsor the measurement, it rarely sponsors the follow-up improvement either, and the assessment loses its management purpose.
By contrast, follow-up challenges improve: when acting on findings, SOCs report fewer prioritization issues (-47%), fewer improvement methodology issues (-39%) and fewer resource issues (-29%) than in 2025. Only two grow: lack of best practices (+17%) and the complexity of raising maturity levels (+11%), which the report partly links to AI adoption, a field where best practices are still scarce.
What to do with this data
- Close scope before interviews.
- Prepare evidence by domain.
- Agree sponsor and executive decision before starting.
- Document evidence gaps instead of turning them into positive answers.
- Consider external support when time and expertise are the dominant barriers.