That million dollar GRC pricing sheet on your screen might be selling you the digital equivalent of a 1980s filing cabinet. We pull apart why governance, risk, and compliance software suddenly looks like a gold rush in 2026, and why the old buying signals no longer work. The key shift: storing and linking risk data is largely a commodity, and even “enterprise hardening” security features are increasingly just cloud configuration. If a vendor’s big flex is secure storage plus a polished dashboard, we explain why that’s not a premium platform anymore.