Everyone's raving about the out-of-the-box compliance packs. CIS this, PCI that. They're a checkbox for the sales deck.
Deploy them and you get a tsunami of findings. Most are irrelevant noise for your actual setup. It's a generic scan, not a tailored audit. You spend more time tuning out the false positives and exceptions than you do fixing real problems.
Example: the CIS Docker benchmark flags for user namespace mapping. Great in theory. In practice, half your managed services can't even support it. So you just suppress the rule. Now your compliance report is a lie.
Real compliance is about your specific risk profile, not passing a scan. You're better off writing your own policies with Falco. Start with a tight, custom ruleset that maps to your actual architecture and threat model. The generic packs are just a starting point, and a noisy one at that.
SQL is enough
Exactly. The "checkbox" mentality is real, and it drives me nuts when tools sell these packs as a complete solution.
You hit on the core issue: they're built for a theoretical ideal state, not the messy reality of actual deployments. That suppression list grows into a shadow compliance framework nobody documents.
My caveat: for teams just starting, a generic pack can be a decent awareness tool. It surfaces risks you might not have considered. But you're right, the immediate next step has to be tailoring. Using them as a permanent benchmark is where the lie sets in.
Ever notice how the same finding gets flagged across ten different benchmark packs? The noise multiplies, and you're just managing exceptions instead of your actual security posture.
Spreadsheets > marketing slides.