Cybersecurity tools have evolved significantly over the years, yet organizations are still experiencing devastating breaches at an alarming rate. High-profile cyberattacks continue to dominate headlines, raising the question: If companies are investing heavily in security tools like endpoint protection (EPP), security information and event management (SIEM), vulnerability management (VM), and threat detection and response (TDR), why are breaches still happening—and why does the problem seem to be getting worse?
The Illusion of Protection: Why Traditional Security Tools Are Missing Breaches
The traditional security stack was designed to detect and prevent threats from the viewpoint of inherently trusting that all activities and changes are approved unless known to be malicious. This approach allows attackers to develop new tactics and malicious code that will be absent from any known risk and unrecognizable given the industry's heavy use of things like Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVEs) databases, STIX/TAXII feeds, and other antiquated and outdated approaches. The use of "bad" signatures or denylists is and always will be reactionary and will never be able to detect zero-day breaches that result in ransomware and other malicious activity.
If we investigate the top 100 breaches of 2024, where organizations have security budgets allocated in the millions, we find that all four of the leading security categories—EPP, SIEM, VM, and TDR—were installed and operating but failed to stop the breach. This begs the question, why and what are we doing wrong as an industry?
1. Endpoint Protection Falls Short
Endpoint protection solutions, including antivirus (AV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR), rely on signatures and behavioral analysis to detect malicious activity. However, modern attackers leverage sophisticated techniques such as fileless malware, living-off-the-land (LotL) attacks, and polymorphic malware that evade detection. Even next-gen AV and EDR tools struggle to detect these threats in real-time.
2. SIEM: Data Overload and Missed Signals
SIEM platforms collect massive amounts of logs and generate an exorbitant amount of security events/alerts. Even when extensively tuned, they continue to overwhelm security teams. The problem? Security teams are endlessly inundated by alert fatigue, making it easy for subtle signs of an attack to be lost in the noise. Many breaches occur because critical alerts were never detected, missed, or buried under thousands of false positives.
3. Vulnerability Management: Patching is Not Enough
Vulnerability scanners help organizations identify and patch "known" weaknesses, but they often fall short of two reasons:
- Attackers exploit zero-day vulnerabilities, which are known and unpatched.
- Many organizations have slow patching processes, exposing systems for weeks or months. Knowing about a vulnerability does not prevent a breach—it only helps if organizations respond quickly and effectively.
4. Threat Detection and Response: A Reactive Approach
Threat detection and response tools such as managed detection and response (MDR) and extended detection and response (XDR), rely on indicators of compromise (IOCs) and post-incident investigations. By the time a threat is detected, an attacker may have already exfiltrated data or established persistent access to add, modify, or delete anything. This reactive approach leaves organizations constantly playing catch-up.
A New Approach to Cybersecurity
While security tools struggle to keep up, cyber threats are becoming more advanced and frequent. Cybercrime is becoming a full-time job, with Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) emerging as cybercriminals offer ransomware kits, making it easier for less-skilled attackers to launch attacks. Nation-state actors are only getting stealthier by using advanced persistent threats (APTs) to evade traditional defenses. Supply Chain Attacks are continuously compromising third-party vendors, giving attackers access to multiple organizations and bypassing their security controls. Threats like these will only continue to evolve unless something changes.
Organizations must shift from a reactive to a proactive cybersecurity strategy by focusing on:
- Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA): Adopting a "never trust, always verify" approach ensures that no entity—internal or external—is inherently trusted.
- Continuous Integrity Monitoring: Instead of relying solely on detection tools, organizations should implement solutions that monitor for unauthorized changes and anomalies in real-time.
- Stronger Identity and Access Controls: Implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), least privilege access, and continuous authentication can prevent attackers from moving laterally within a network.
- Adoption of Process: Security management isn't a product; it's a process. Adopting and enforcing things like change control, a closed-loop process, and workflows, will immediately identify breaches and zero-day attacks
The cybersecurity industry has reached a critical point where traditional security tools are no longer sufficient or effective. As threats evolve, organizations must rethink their approach to cybersecurity by implementing proactive security measures, leveraging Zero Trust principles, and investing in real-time integrity monitoring solutions. Only by doing so, can they truly get ahead of attackers and prevent major breaches.
