It’s Time to Get Proactive About Security 1

It’s a new year, which means many of us have made our New Year’s resolutions. And while our intentions are worthy—lose weight, stop smoking, eat less junk food—many times we unintentionally fall back into our familiar patterns, giving up on our resolutions because they’re too difficult, uncomfortable, or otherwise don’t fit into our lifestyle.

Changing cybersecurity habits has always been akin to making and breaking resolutions for many organizations. Everyone recognizes the threats that are out there, yet often, it’s too inconvenient, time-consuming, or just plain difficult to institute—and enforce—tighter security controls.

However, the combined threats from Generative AI, a steady increase in ransomware, identity imposters, and other security dangers could make 2024 the year organizations shift to a proactive security stance.

Current Security Isn’t Enough

According to Gartner, worldwide end-user spending on security and risk management is expected to increase almost 15% from 2023, totaling $215 billion. Cloud security and data privacy will lead the way, with each seeing 25% growth. Both categories are necessary elements to any security strategy; however, they aren’t enough—organizations need to know where, how, and why they are vulnerable so they can fix their security issues before they become real issues.

DarkReading notes that proactive security “creates the opportunity for enterprises to consistently and programmatically address the specific circumstances—unknown IT assets, vulnerable software, misconfigurations, and the like—that create opportunities for threats to exploit the extended enterprise environment.”

Such a task requires more than the standard cybersecurity fare. Research firm Omdia believes emerging or evolving technologies such as risk-based vulnerability management, attack surface management, and attack path management and security control validation techniques such as penetration testing in application development, red teaming, and breach and attack simulation will help create a more comprehensive, defensible, and impenetrable security posture.

Proactive Security: The Way Forward

The increasingly varied and complex ways cyberthreats are evolving should signal to organizations that the set-it-and-forget-it approach to security is no longer viable. And with threats impacting organizations at all levels, from the C-suite to the end user, it’s time for a mature strategy that includes “defining and measuring cybersecurity risk,” DarkReading notes, and enables organizations to “consistently reduce cybersecurity risk in a demonstrable way, while also supporting broader business risk management efforts.”

Today’s cyberthreats more nefarious and dangerous than ever. Proactive security should be one New Year’s resolution worth keeping.