As cyber security threats grow more sophisticated, proactive security measures, rather than reactive defence, are the best way to keep your business secure. Our blog explores what it means to adopt a more proactive approach, and how it helps keep cybercriminals out of your environment altogether.
Cyber threats are undoubtedly on the rise, with approximately half of all UK businesses falling victim to a cyber attack between 2023 and 2024. While the growing volume of threats is nothing new, it’s highlighted the need for organisations to adopt a more proactive approach to security, rather than relying on reactive measures.
The underlying logic of reactive security is simple – cybercriminals are playing a numbers game – the more attacks they launch, the greater the chance an attack will succeed. So, rather than developing proactive defences, organisations focus on countering cybercriminals once they’ve gained access to the system. However, with the volume of attacks increasing, proactive measures are increasingly the difference-maker in averting attacks in the first place.
Unfortunately, proactive measures are often undermined by the widespread attitude that ensuring cyber security is a chore, rather than a critical action that should be baked into IT strategy to ensure long-term resilience. The sobering reality, however, is that it's more important than ever to anticipate and prevent potential attacks.
Perhaps the most dramatic shift in the cyber risk landscape in recent years has been the mass adoption of generative AI. While this technology offers genuine value for businesses, it can also be harnessed by bad actors to enable more sophisticated cyber attacks. Phishing emails can be tailored en masse to make them more enticing to their recipients, and AI-enabled code generation can be exploited to write more complex malware at speed.
This enhanced capability means it’s easier than ever for cybercriminals to target businesses of all sizes, rather than just focusing on larger enterprises where the payoff is largest. Successful attacks force smaller businesses to close for an average of four days while they respond and recover – losing potential revenue due to the disruption.
As such, every organisation should reassess their approach to cyber risk management – simply waiting for attacks to occur leaves the business open to prospective breaches, with no guarantee that reactive measures will be successful after the fact.
It’s often said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. A proactive cyber security posture carries this mentality to cyber security, focusing on countering threats before they can do harm. This contrasts with a reactive posture, which assumes breaches are inevitable, and instead prioritises hunting out threats which have already compromised the environment.
Proactive security places a much greater emphasis on cyber awareness. Individual users within an organisation often provide an easy entry point for cybercriminals, who can use phishing and other social engineering attacks to compromise their accounts and leverage them to access the wider environment. By making cyber awareness a frontline concern, especially through cyber education and training, businesses can transform their users from potential liabilities into a “human firewall”, using their judgement to help keep the organisation secure, and enhancing the awareness of all users.
In order to ensure defences are working as intended, a proactive posture also requires more continuous assessment and monitoring, using practices like penetration testing to identify and remediate any vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by bad actors.
This often goes hand-in-hand with cyber awareness assessments, as penetration testers may use mock phishing emails as a potential avenue for a breach, or as part of a wider phish testing initiative. This allows your business to identify users who aren’t following cyber security best practices and train them to increase their cyber awareness accordingly.
It's not just your users who are at risk from social engineering, however. Cybercriminals may use your brand against you, exploiting your relationship to customers as a way to orchestrate phishing attacks, either by setting up spoof websites, or attempting full-scale domain takeovers to trick customers and users alike. Proactive security should hunt out these compromised sites and take them down in order to preserve brand perception, and the risk of further attacks.
A truly proactive strategy should still pay some mind to post-breach defences as well. Preparing incident response procedures is a critical part of any cybersecurity strategy, and automated threat remediation tools can help bolster proactive security by providing an effective layer of additional defence that covers any undiscovered vulnerabilities.
The journey to proactive security begins with a thorough assessment of your current security strategy, identifying gaps, redundancies, and areas for improvement in your existing security operations. Established accreditations like Cyber Essentials or ISO 27001 can help here, providing a checklist of key security measures that should be implemented as a priority.
It’s important to bear in mind that not every vulnerability in your current cyber defences needs a dedicated tool to close the gap. Adding new solutions without careful consideration leads to sprawling security estates which waste business resources and can create new vulnerabilities when technology is not properly managed. It’s often better to focus instead on consolidating your cyber security, identifying a handful of powerful, generalist protections which can be leveraged to defend against different types of cyber risk.
This reduces the burden on IT teams while improving visibility and efficiency, as overlapping tools no longer create duplicate alerts, or cause one tool to interfere with the operations of another.
Once a proactive posture is implemented, regular testing and validation of security measures ensure their effectiveness. A well-planned testing regimen should include both technical tests and cyber awareness training to help optimise your defences and strengthen your human firewall.
One of the major barriers for businesses looking to implement a proactive cyber security strategy is the skills gap in the field. Many organisations lack the internal expertise to implement a proactive security program, but other options are available.
By working with an external cyber security partner, you can extend your defensive capabilities without needing to hire an internal security team.
That’s why we work closely with our sister company, Cyber Security Associates (CSA) to deliver cyber security solutions to our customers. As a specialist security provider, CSA is well positioned to fortify your defences and assist with implementing and delivering on a proactive security posture. And, by acting at an arm’s length from FluidOne, CSA ensures that all our solutions are held to rigorous security standards.
If you’re ready to take the first step toward a more proactive security posture, our comprehensive Cyber Assessment can help. This evaluation will help you understand your current security position and identify key areas for improvement to strengthen your organisation's cyber resilience. Get in touch today to schedule your assessment and begin your journey to proactive security excellence.