When a third-party risk team receives a clean SOC 2 report, the reaction is often relief—proof, it seems, that a vendor’s controls are sound and privacy is protected. Yet in today’s threat landscape, where adversaries innovate daily, that sense of assurance can be misleading. SOC 2 remains a respected compliance benchmark, but it provides only a static snapshot of control design and periodic review. It does not reveal how those controls perform under active attack.