For years, global compliance ran on a simple assumption: meet the toughest standard and you’ll be covered everywhere. But that only works when regulations move in the same direction, and right now, they aren’t.

Across the UK and EU, expectations are tightening. In the US, the emphasis is different – faster, more commercial, more market-led. Not less compliance, just a different way of deciding what “good” looks like.

If you’re responsible for compliance across borders, that difference is no longer theoretical.

Two markets. Two philosophies. Two sets of acronyms.

The UK and EU are tightening

In the UK and Europe, the direction of travel involves more structure, more documentation and more scrutiny.

You can see it in the frameworks that organisations are now expected to align with:

CAF and Cyber Essentials are defining baseline expectations for cyber resilience.
ISO 27001 remains the cornerstone for information security programmes.
There is a growing focus on AI governance, with ISO 42001 starting to appear in assurance and procurement conversations.

The outcome is predictable, with more emphasis on documented controls, more scrutiny and more pressure to show evidence that holds up under audit.

The US is leaning toward speed

For the US, the regulatory burden is lighter in some areas. In others, expectations around assurance are just as demanding, they’re just shaped by different buyers, regulators and frameworks.

In practice, that usually means:

SOC 2 is the dominant trust signal, particularly in SaaS and technology.
NIST frameworks are setting the security baseline.
Sector-specific layers such as HIPAA and FedRAMP are adding complexity.

For AI, the approach tends to be more risk-led and flexible, with NIST AI RMF taking a voluntary governance route rather than a certifiable management system model.

Neither model is wrong, they’re just optimising for different outcomes.

But if you operate across both, you’re left trying to reconcile frameworks that were never designed to align.

ISO 27001 and SOC 2
CAF and NIST CSF
ISO 42001 and NIST AI RMF

That’s a lot to hold together.

Why this matters now

The old assumption involved picking one gold-standard framework and therefore being safe everywhere, but that no longer holds.

What we’re seeing instead is:

Certifications that satisfy one market and raise questions in another.
Cross-border deals that require dual compliance.
Requirements shifting faster than audit cycles can realistically track.

And the consequences are very real. It’s the deal that stalls because the right evidence isn’t available quickly enough. The procurement conversation that quietly goes cold. The quarter spent retrofitting controls that should have been built in from the start.

If compliance only becomes visible in the run-up to an audit, global expansion will expose the cracks very quickly.

The fundamentals overlap – the proof is what changes

Here’s the part that often gets missed.

These frameworks may differ in structure and language, but the underlying controls are largely the same:

Risk management
Access control
Supplier assurance
Incident response
Governance and oversight

ISO 27001 and SOC 2 overlap far more than they diverge. The same is true of CAF and NIST CSF, and increasingly, of ISO 42001 and NIST AI RMF.

The challenge isn’t building entirely new control environments, it’s being able to prove the same controls in different ways, to different audiences, at different speeds.

Compliance as you work

When markets diverge and rules keep shifting, the only approach that holds is one where compliance isn’t a project, it’s how the organisation operates.

At Hicomply, we describe this as compliance as you work, with controls embedded into day-to-day operations, not bolted on when an audit is approaching.

In practice, this means:

Evidence captured as work happens.
Clear ownership and accountability.
Controls monitored continuously, not periodically.
Reporting that’s routine, not reactive.

When compliance lives inside operations, scaling into new markets becomes far less painful.

Build once, evidence everywhere

For organisations operating across the UK, EU and US, the goal isn’t to run three separate compliance programmes. It’s to build one strong control environment and map it intelligently across multiple standards.

That usually means:

Anchoring to a core baseline that fits your market and maturity.
Mapping controls once, rather than rewriting them for every framework
Treating AI governance as a management discipline, not an afterthought
Making reporting a capability, not an event.

This means that when a US buyer asks for SOC 2 evidence, you’re not starting from scratch. You’re responding in minutes, because the controls are already there and already mapped.

That’s one set of controls, multiple frameworks and far less duplication.

What this means for global compliance leaders

If you’re selling into the US, or planning to, now is the moment to test whether your compliance programme is built to scale or just built to pass the next audit.

The gap between markets is widening and the organisations that cope best won’t be the ones with the longest list of certifications – they’ll be the ones with compliance built into the way they work.