New Approaches Required For Successful Cybersecurity In A New Era
Insights from Chris Dimitriadis, Chief Global Strategy Officer, ISACA.
gettyBy the time a cybersecurity attack is underway, effective incident response from cybersecurity professionals can limit damage, but in many cases, practitioners face an uphill battle in assessing and counteracting the attack’s impact. This reality is only compounded by the volume, pace and sophistication of artificial intelligence-enabled attacks that are becoming increasingly commonplace.
That is why preemptive cybersecurity is gaining traction on the security landscape as a shift from traditional security approaches in the modern environment.
As attacks become more automated, adaptive and capable of exploiting multiple vulnerabilities simultaneously, security teams can no longer rely on detecting and responding to individual indicators after an attack is already underway. The traditional model assumes defenders will have time to identify, investigate and contain threats, but more and more, attackers are operating faster than that model allows.
This shift is already changing the cybersecurity landscape and is likely to accelerate in the near future. Gartner projects that preemptive solutions will grow from under 5% of security budgets in 2024 to 50% by 2030. Preemptive cybersecurity is an advanced defense strategy that aims to prevent or disrupt cyberattacks before they progress by using predictive AI, automated exposure management and the core framework of Gartner’s three ‘D’ pillars of preemptive defense:
• Deny: Closes off access paths and hides vulnerabilities using continuous exposure management and data obfuscation, reducing their visibility or accessibility to unauthorized users.
• Deceive: Misleads adversaries using fake targets, honeypots and automated moving target defenses (AMTD) that change system configurations to waste attacker resources.
• Disrupt: Utilizes predictive intelligence and agentic automation to disrupt command-and-control or exploit activity during the early reconnaissance phase.
Preemptive security differs significantly from other common security approaches. While reactive security responds to indicators of compromise after an intrusion occurs and proactive security focuses on general hardening, patching and periodic vulnerability scanning, preemptive security anticipates specific, imminent threat behaviors upstream in the kill chain to prevent or disrupt execution. This approach is especially valuable in the modern security environment in which automated and AI-driven attacks can be perpetrated at a pace that makes waiting to detect intrusions a perilous proposition for cybersecurity professionals.
As Gartner notes, “This preemptive approach shifts security from detect-and-respond to prevention, embedding predictive analytics, continuous exposure management and automated mitigations into operating systems, networks, applications and services, so users face fewer successful attacks and less disruption.” This approach may also support organizations’ efforts to meet applicable cybersecurity and data-protection requirements.
Preemptive security should become a higher priority when an organization has high-value assets, significant external exposure, a large or rapidly changing attack surface, or limited ability to respond to threats at machine speed. The more difficult it becomes for a security team to manually assess and respond to every potential attack path, the greater the value of moving prevention further upstream.
Moving toward preemptive cybersecurity can require a commitment to change management for many organizations that have their security programs configured in more traditional fashion. Recalibrating for preemptive cybersecurity requires security leaders not only to train their team members in these new methods but to make sure their tools and technology are aligned accordingly to support a successful transition. Just as AI is part of the challenge security professionals are contending with, it also can be part of the solution, and that also applies in the preemptive security context. AI has reached a maturity level that can help in all three pillars, from closing paths, to deploying honeynets, to disrupting the early stages of an attack.
For organizations wanting to move toward a preemptive model, the first step is understanding where your organization is most exposed and where existing defenses depend on human intervention. Security leaders should map their highest-value assets, identify the attack paths that could cause the greatest damage and determine which preventive controls can be automated safely. A common mistake is trying to deploy AI across the entire security environment at once rather than starting with a contained use case where the organization can measure whether automation actually reduces exposure and response time.
Preemptive cybersecurity also makes sense from a budgetary standpoint, as long as a trained workforce is in place to deploy the right AI agents and build an architecture that improves the cybersecurity posture. Without this workforce, costs can rise to levels that are prohibitive for a business to adopt it (as is the case with any AI deployment). At the same time, addressing the impacts of cyberattacks after they occur are notoriously expensive, with the global average cost of a data breach around $5 million, according to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach 2026 report. In addition to savings from reduced breaches, preemptive security can also position organizations for more effective rate negotiations for cyber insurance policies. Other potential benefits are more difficult to quantify, including long-term savings that result from preserving customer trust and loyalty through more effective protection of sensitive customer data.
As AI continues to play a dual role as both a cybersecurity challenge and capability, preemptive capabilities are becoming an increasingly important part of cybersecurity strategies, offering a promising pathway toward effective cybersecurity and business resilience. While transitioning to preemptive cybersecurity often requires change management and corresponding investment in training, tools and technology to support the new approach, the results can provide additional protection against sophisticated cyber threats, but also offers strategic advantages in cost management, regulatory alignment and risk management.
By embracing preemptive security methodology, organizations may reduce some of the financial and reputational impacts associated with cyberattacks, while strengthening trust and confidence among stakeholders through security approaches that are calibrated to the modern threat landscape.
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