During a master’s game of chess, players must react to the unanticipated — for instance, an opponent dramatically sacrificing a queen to advance a brilliant strategy. To the novice player, it may seem as though chess is a game of reactivity; but for top-notch competitors, there is always an evolving core strategy at play, even when subtle moves may not immediately reveal it. Similarly, in cybersecurity, while organizations must be nimble enough to react to the unanticipated and unexpected — such as a ransomware attack, evolving threat tactics, or even a global pandemic shifting business operations — they must also have a robust and comprehensive proactive security strategy moving their metaphorical chess pieces across the board. Threat actors are strategic in their approaches; as such, organizations must have an expert-level, proactive security strategy in play to ensure they come out on top.
When organizations choose to address cybersecurity deficiencies and incidents as they occur, the results can be detrimental. Those companies that favor reactive cybersecurity are constantly scrambling to triage the most pressing risk of the moment, and often, sophisticated threat actors have strategically masked their attack strategy, making it extremely difficult to detect early threat indicators. This can lead to organizations battling an end game: responding to a more significant incident, such as a ransomware attack, rather than having thwarted an initial phishing attempt or discovering alerts indicating that threat actors are moving into their IT environment.