A Cybersecurity Wish List for Businesses of Any Size

Key takeaways

• One of the most consequential factors in whether an organization becomes a target is how quickly it patches a known vulnerability. AI has compressed the window that attackers need to exploit a disclosed flaw, and 72 hours is best treated as a ceiling for patching critical, internet-facing, actively exploited vulnerability.
• There’s a meaningful difference between having a detection tool and having managed detection and response. An alert that no one sees until Monday morning isn’t protection – 24/7 monitoring with a human analyst on the other end is critical to help close that gap.
• An untested backup isn’t really a backup. Ransomware groups routinely target backups to eliminate recovery options, and organizations that can’t restore quickly are more likely to pay. Make sure backups are resilient (multiple copies, at least one immutable) and test the capability to restore these backups regularly.
• 89% of companies report that at least some of their workforce is using AI tools, but only 59% have established AI business practices in place. While organizations rightly focus on external threats driven by AI, that gap points to the need to address the risks that come from their own use of AI.
• AI has made phishing emails significantly harder to spot, and text-based authentication is increasingly the weakest link in the multifactor authentication chain. Phishing-resistant methods like authenticator apps and hardware keys are becoming the standard worth moving toward.