Landscape
What it is
Landscape (Overview → Landscape) is a static, embedded reference atlas of the cybersecurity and GRC tooling market — 72 capability areas across 14 domains, from Network Security and Cloud Security through Governance, Risk & Compliance and Human Risk Management. It is ungated and read-only: any member on any tier can open it, and nothing you do here writes back to your CMDash data. Each area gets a short description, a long-form explainer, a typical cost range and what drives it, a priority label, the NIST CSF function it maps to, and a curated list of vendors — commercial and open-source — with a one-line note, pros, cons, and a link to each.
Seventeen of the 72 areas sit in the Governance, Risk & Compliance domain, where
CMDash itself appears as one listed option among several, disclosed with a self
flag that carries zero weight in scoring or ordering — it exists only so a reader can
see the conflict of interest and judge it for themselves.
When to use it
Open Landscape when you're researching what category of tool would close a specific gap, or positioning your own stack against the wider market for a board or budget conversation. Use Landscape Readiness when you want a coverage picture scoped to the areas that are actually relevant to your organization, rather than browsing all 72 generically. Use the budget estimator inside the atlas when you need a rough, planning-stage cost figure — see "Will this generate a quote?" below for what those numbers are and are not.
Before you start
| Page | Nav location | Tier | Role notes |
|---|---|---|---|
Landscape (/landscape) | Overview | No tier gate | Any authenticated tenant member; read-only, no data write-back. |
Landscape Readiness (/readiness) | Overview | No tier gate | Any authenticated tenant member; selections are your own, not shared across the tenant. |
The atlas is a self-contained document rendered in an iframe (not a live CMDash view), so it opens instantly and tracks your light/dark theme setting, but it is not personalized to your connected integrations or your enabled frameworks — it shows the same 72 areas to every tenant.
How to
Browse the atlas
- Open Overview → Landscape.
- Use Search to jump straight to an area, vendor, or tool by name instead of browsing all 14 domains, or use Jump to a domain to go straight to one section.
- Open the Budget estimator to model a security stack by headcount and tier and see the atlas's own cost ranges rolled up into a rough total.
Use Landscape Readiness
- Open Overview → Readiness.
- Select the areas relevant to your organization to see a readiness picture scoped to what actually applies to you, rather than a generic industry checklist.
- Use Reset all selections to clear your choices and start over.
Common questions
Does the Landscape atlas favor CMDash? No — the self flag on CMDash's own GRC
entry carries zero weight in scoring or ordering. It exists only so a reader
evaluating the GRC space can see the conflict of interest and judge it for
themselves, not to hide it or to boost CMDash's position.
Will this generate a quote? No. Every cost figure in the atlas — including the Budget & ROI Planner's landscape-atlas cost reference (see Planning, Budget, and Initiatives) and a Maturity roadmap item's cost-source citation — is a reference range for a planning conversation, sourced from the atlas's own research, not a vendor quote, not a negotiated price, and not specific to your deployment size or region. Treat every number here as a starting point for a real conversation with a vendor, not as a figure to cite in a budget request as-is.
Is the atlas personalized to what I already run? No. It shows the same 72 areas to every tenant regardless of your connected integrations or enabled frameworks — Landscape Readiness (above) is what scopes it to what's relevant to you.