Today's robust defences can swiftly become tomorrow's vulnerabilities as cyber threats advance. With 95% of businesses reporting a cyber attack in the last year, it’s not about if an attack will happen but when.

We sponsored ISG’s latest research paper to explore an organisation’s best defences in this scenario. The paper uncovers fascinating insights into modern enterprise security and why it’s critical to shift from prevention to dynamic detection and response. 

Traditional enterprise cyber security relies on well-defined security perimeters around internal networks. However, developments such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT) and remote working challenge this approach, exposing organisations to new threats. Today, they face a delicate balancing act: protecting their workforce, sensitive data and critical endpoints while embracing digital transformation.

Achieving this involves switching focus to resilience— detecting, responding to and recovering from attacks. It’s not about reducing successful attacks to zero or preventing incremental threats but minimising damage.

Organisations need to focus on three core areas: 

1. Implementing a proactive risk management approach

Limited organisational knowledge can result in many companies struggling to manage their cyber security risk effectively. This lack of clarity often leads to poor resource allocation, with too much focus on less critical areas and not enough on significant threats.

When facing the inevitability of cyber attacks, it’s easy to fall into the trap of reactive spending, patching issues only as they arise. But ongoing spending isn’t the answer. Organisations must plan cyber security through a risk management lens. This will enable them to tackle incidents more strategically and comprehensively understand their level of vulnerability and exposure across their assets, processes and people.

Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ) is designed to help with this. Its detailed quantitative analysis of the likelihood and potential impact of cyber incidents allows organisations to get a clearer picture of their risk exposure to prioritise their risks and make more informed investments. This means they can respond proactively to threats while protecting their bottom line.

2. Minimising damage with Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Modern threat actors harness generative AI, machine learning, and large language models to execute large-scale, highly personalised phishing attacks in today's interconnected world. And while conventional security measures can thwart some of these attacks, they can’t guarantee complete protection.

MDR services offer a holistic approach, combining advanced endpoint detection with human security analysts to tackle threats that have already infiltrated the network. Shifting to MDR allows organisations to spend less on outdated protection software.

Instead, they can pivot the focus of security team resources to active threat hunting and other issues that are less easy to automate. Proactive detection and response can significantly reduce time-to-detection, leading to faster incident resolution and reduced impact.

3. Increasing resilience with effective incident recovery

Cyber incident recovery forms the bedrock of organisational resilience, and yet it’s often overlooked. When executive leadership, directors, IT teams and technical specialists come together to deliver a robust recovery strategy, organisations can:

• minimise business disruption by restoring normal operations swiftly, safeguarding revenue and reputation
• reduce the impact of security incidents by preventing data loss, financial losses and customer dissatisfaction
• enhance compliance by meeting regulatory requirements for incident response and recovery.

It takes the right people, the right recovery roles, and a proactive mindset. However, with determination, diligent practice and training, organisations can strengthen their 'corporate muscle memory' to build greater resilience and bounce back after an attack.