Mr. Bryant

I'd first like to establish what we are talking about in terms of maturity, audit vs assessment, etc. 

The intent of how we understand a client's maturity is NOT what we would call an audit.  That implies there is a checklist, and then you could pass or fail. An audit also implies the behavior you site of "managing to the audit" versus "becoming more secure" (like the grade inflation we have experienced in US schools).  We are suggesting an assessment(s) of current state against a backdrop of maturity and capability (take another look at the table). 

Maturity is loosely tied to CMMI in a sense that it has been an industry-accepted term/framework for some time.  It is intuitive to think about current state of security maturity and capability in terms of "reactive, compliant, proactive, optimizing", but you could really use any version of this to achieve what we are suggesting.  I have seen other maturity models that reference levels of capability versus state (i.e. No capability, Some capability, etc.).  We are NOT suggesting a CMMI "roll out".

I've expanded on some of these concepts in my recent Dark Reading for Intel Security Perspectives blog - please read "What We Mean by Maturity Models for Security" for additional clarity.