Bridging the Silos – How DVMS Connects the Languages of Governance, Cyber, and Business – Assurance Mandate Series – Part 3
David Nichols – Co-Founder and Executive Director of the DVMS Institute
Lost in Translation
Your CISO discusses vulnerabilities, controls, and threat actors. Your board emphasizes trust, accountability, and value. Risk officers focus on registers and frameworks. Business operators prioritize uptime, revenue, and customer confidence.
Each of them is telling the truth from their perspective. Yet when those truths are not connected, they don’t add up to reassurance — they create noise. And when the signal gets lost in that noise, resilience slips away.
This is the core issue: in today’s enterprises, governance, cybersecurity, and business operations each use different languages. Without a system to bridge these gaps, leaders are left making decisions in the spaces between these perspectives. It is in those gaps that crises develop.
The Silo Problem
Digital trust doesn’t reside in a single department; it exists at the crossroads of governance, cybersecurity, risk, and operations. However, most organizations fail to recognize this. Instead, each domain reports independently, leading to confusion. Boards seek confidence in ongoing operations but often receive meaningless dashboards filled with out-of-context risk heatmaps and compliance scores. Security teams focus on fixing vulnerabilities, strengthening systems, and incident response, but the jargon of patches and controls often fails to resonate in the boardroom. Risk and compliance officers diligently track controls against ISO standards or NIST CSF categories, creating neat logs that seem authoritative but quickly become outdated. Business leaders, who are most responsible for customer satisfaction, view digital trust primarily through system uptime, transaction success, and customer satisfaction.
All of these perspectives are important. None of them is incorrect. However, when taken alone, they are incomplete. Even worse, they often clash, with each group vying for attention. A board that hears “we’re compliant” might assume the company is resilient, while the CISO knows that a single unpatched system could undermine that confidence overnight. A risk officer might show a heatmap of potential threats, but the operations lead is dealing with a real outage that the heatmap never identified. Each voice is speaking, but without translation, no one is truly understood.
To butcher a line from the Buffalo Springfield, “Nobody’s wrong if everybody’s right.”
Consequences of Misalignment
When these silos remain disconnected, leaders make decisions with incomplete information. History provides many examples of how risky this can be.
Take Equifax in 2017. On paper, the company appeared well-governed. Compliance programs were implemented, audits were conducted, and regulators felt reassured. However, in reality, a critical patch was missed, and the vulnerability was exploited by attackers. The board heard “we are compliant,” but compliance does not equal resilience. The breach ultimately cost over $1.4 billion in settlements and remediation, along with immense damage to public trust.
Consider Colonial Pipeline in 2021 as an example. When ransomware paralyzed operations, each silo responded differently. Security teams worked to contain the attack. Business leaders hurried to manage supply disruptions. Governance faced regulators, lawmakers, and the public, trying to explain why the nation’s largest fuel pipeline had shut down. Each group held part of the truth, but without coordination, the response was slow, costs increased, and the company’s name became a symbol of vulnerability.
The point isn’t that compliance, security, or business operations failed on their own. The real issue is that without integration, their truths never formed a clear, unified picture. When leaders make decisions based on fragmented information, resilience is always at risk.
DVMS: The Rosetta Stone
This is the problem the Digital Value Management System® (DVMS) was built to solve. DVMS serves as the Rosetta Stone for governance, translating between the languages of cyber, risk, and business to ensure that intent, performance, and assurance align.
Think of it as the operating system of digital governance. Frameworks and tools, ISO, NIST, ITIL, and COBIT, are like apps. Each holds value, but only within its own domain. Alone, they don’t coordinate. DVMS operates at the top, ensuring that frameworks are not only adopted but also aligned, not only documented but also practiced, and not only isolated but integrated into a continuous system of assurance.
With DVMS in place, governance intent can be clearly expressed and effectively translated into cyber controls that genuinely matter. These controls can then be measured in terms of resilience, not just configuration. Additionally, these resilience metrics can be fed back to the board as assurance evidence, closing the loop between strategy and operations.
What Bridging Looks Like in Practice
Imagine a board clearly states its goal: “Our customers must have uninterrupted access to digital services, even during disruption.” Under the old model, that goal might be interpreted into a compliance framework or a set of technical controls, each isolated from the others. The board would eventually review the certification report and assume that the mission had been achieved.
Under DVMS, the process is different. Managers transform that intent into structures, including policies, workflows, and metrics, designed for adaptability and flexibility. Cybersecurity leaders implement controls that are directly linked to these structures, including zero-trust access, automated monitoring, and incident playbooks, to ensure continuity. DVMS then gathers evidence, not just to determine whether a control exists, but also to assess whether it performs effectively under pressure. The board gets assurance not from checklists, but from resilience dashboards that show recovery time, continuity, and adaptability in action.
The difference is significant. Instead of four separate parallel conversations, leaders now deliver a cohesive story. Assurance is no longer taken for granted; it is proven.
The Executive Question
This raises a set of uncomfortable but necessary questions for executives and boards. Do you receive fragmented reports, each in a different language, with no system to connect them? Do you understand how a single control failure in cybersecurity translates into operational disruption and governance accountability? And most critically, can you prove, with evidence, that your resilience story is coherent across governance, cyber, and business operations?
If the answer is no, then you are not governing by assurance. You are governing by appearances. And appearances never survive disruption.
Closing the Gap
Silos are where resilience goes to die. Integration is where trust is built.
Frameworks always matter, but they aren’t enough. Tools and certifications offer comfort. Only systems instill confidence. The Digital Value Management System is that system, the operating system that aligns governance intent, cyber activity, and business outcomes.
That is how partial truths become a unified narrative of assurance. That is how leaders move beyond complexity and noise to confidence. And that is how resilience becomes real.
👉 Next in the Assurance Mandate Series: Culture Eats Controls for Breakfast — why true resilience depends on behavior as much as technology.
About the Author
Dave is the Executive Director of the DVMS Institute.
Dave spent his “formative years” on US Navy submarines. There, he learned complex systems, functioning in high-performance teams, and what it takes to be an exceptional leader. He took those skills into civilian life and built a successful career leading high-performance teams in software development and information service delivery.
Digital Value Management System® (DVMS)
The DVMS is an adaptive, culture-enabled governance overlay designed to help organizations of any size, scale, or complexity transition from static, paper-based governance models to a living, evidence-based system of Governance, Resilience, Assurance, and Accountability (GRAA).
At its core, the DVMS is a simple but powerful integration of:
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Governance Intent – shared expectations and accountabilities.
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Operational Capability – how the business actually performs
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Assurance Evidence – proof that intended outcomes are being achieved
Rather than adding more complexity, a DVMS integrates fragmented frameworks and practices such as NIST CSF, GRC, ITSM, DevOps, and AI into a unified overlay system that enables leaders and regulators to see, in real time, whether the digital business is working as intended—and whether the risks that matter most are being managed proactively.
Through its MVC, CPD, 3D Knowledge, and FastTrack Models, a DVMS turns this integration into three distinctive capabilities:
A Governance Overlay that replaces fragmentation with unity. The DVMS provides organizations with a structured way to connect strategy with day-to-day execution. Leaders gain a consistent mechanism to direct, measure, and validate performance—across every system responsible for digital value.
A Behavioral Engine that drives high-trust, high-velocity decision-making. The DVMS embeds decision models and behavioral patterns that help teams think clearly and act confidently, even in uncertain situations. It is engineered to reduce friction, prevent blame-based cultures, and strengthen organizational reliability.
A Learning System that makes culture measurable, adaptable, and scalable. Culture becomes a managed asset—not an abstract concept. The DVMS provides a repeatable way to observe behavior, collect evidence, learn from outcomes, and evolve faster than threats, disruptions, or market shifts.
DVMS Organizational Benefits
Instead of replacing existing operational frameworks, the DVMS elevates them—connecting and contextualizing their data into actionable intelligence that validates performance and exposes the reasons behind unmet outcomes.
By adopting a DVMS, organizations are positioned to:
- Maintain Operational Stability Amidst Constant Digital Disruption
- Deliver Digital Value and Trust Across A Digital Ecosystem
- Satisfy Critical Regulatory and Certification Requirements
- Leverage Cyber Resilience as a Competitive Advantage
DVMS Leadership Benefits
The Digital Value Management System (DVMS) provides leaders with a unified, evidence-based approach to governing and enhancing their digital enterprise, aligning with regulatory requirements and stakeholder expectations.
For the CEO, the DVMS provides a clear line of sight between digital operations, business performance, and strategic outcomes—turning governance and resilience into enablers of growth and innovation rather than cost centers.
For the Board of Directors, the DVMS provides ongoing assurance that the organization’s digital assets, operations, and ecosystem are governed, protected, and resilient—supported by evidence-based reporting that directly links operational integrity to enterprise value and stakeholder trust.
For the CIO, CRO, CISO, and Auditors: an integrated, adaptive, and culture-driven governance and assurance management system that enhances digital business performance, resilience, trust, and accountability
DVMS White Papers
The three whitepapers below present a coherent progression that shifts organizations from compliance-driven thinking to a modern system of Governance, Resilience, Assurance, and Accountability (GRAA). Collectively, the three papers define a comprehensive system for building and governing resilient digital enterprises, grounded in evidence rather than assumptions.
The Assurance Mandate Paper sets the stage by showing why traditional GRC artifacts provide only reassurance—not evidence—and calls boards to demand forward-looking proof that their organizations can continue to create, protect, and deliver value under stress.
The Assurance in Action Paper elevates the conversation from leadership intent to managerial execution, demonstrating how the DVMS operationalizes resilience by translating outcomes into Minimum Viable Capabilities, connecting frameworks through the Create–Protect–Deliver model, and generating measurable assurance evidence that managers can use to demonstrate real performance rather than activity.
The Governing by Assurance Paper elevates the approach to the policy and regulatory level, showing how DVMS functions as a learning overlay system that links governance intent, operational capability, and verifiable evidence into a continuous loop—enabling regulators, agencies, and enterprises to govern by outcomes rather than checklists and to prove capability with measurable, auditable performance data.
DVMS Cyber Resilience Certified Training Programs
DVMS Cyber Resilience Awareness Training
The DVMS Cyber Resilience Awareness course and its accompanying body of knowledge publication educate all employees on the fundamentals of digital business, its associated risks, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, and their role within a shared model of governance, resilience, assurance, and accountability for creating, protecting, and delivering digital value.
This investment fosters a culture that is prepared to operate within a system capable of transforming systemic cyber risks into operational resilience.
DVMS NISTCSF Foundation Certification Training
The DVMS NISTCSF Foundation certification training course and its accompanying body of knowledge publications provide ITSM, GRC, Cybersecurity, and Business professionals with a detailed understanding of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and its role in a shared model of governance, resilience, assurance, and accountability for creating, protecting, and delivering digital value.
This investment fosters IT, GRC, Cybersecurity, and Business professionals with the skills to operate within a system capable of transforming systemic cyber risks into operational resilience.
DVMS Cyber Resilience Practitioner Certification Training
The DVMS Practitioner certification training course and its accompanying body of knowledge publications teach ITSM, GRC, Cybersecurity, and Business practitioners how to elevate investments in ITSM, GRC, Cybersecurity, and AI business systems by integrating them into a unified governance, resilience, assurance, and accountability system designed to proactively identify and mitigate the cyber risks that could disrupt operations, erode resilience, or diminish client trust.
This investment fosters IT, GRC, Cybersecurity, and Business practitioners with the skills to assess, design, implement, operationalize, and continually innovate a Digital Value Management System® program that operationalizes a shared model of governance, resilience, assurance, and accountability for creating, protecting, and delivering digital value.
Company Brochures and Presentation
Explainer Videos
- DVMS Architecture Video: David Moskowitz explains the DVMS System
- DVMS Case Study Video: Dr. Joseph Baugh Shares His DVMS Story.
- DVMS Overlay Model – What is an Overlay Model
- DVMS MVC ZX Model – Powers the CPD
- DVMS CPD Model – Powers DVMS Operations
- DVMS 3D Knowledge Model – Powers the DVMS Culture
- DVMS FastTrack Model – Enables A Phased DVMS Adoption
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