We’ve all understood, in the world we’ve lived in since March 2020, the importance of “early detection” to avoid bigger problems. But how are we applying this principle in cybersecurity? Can we do something different?

In cybersecurity, we operate in an environment with threats that grow and shift by the day, driven both by the evolution of enterprise technology and by the increasing sophistication of attack techniques.

We can’t afford to stand still, comfortable with our security systems and processes, without a continuous evaluation process: “Test, Test, Test.”

Some of the most well-known cyberattacks of recent years succeeded because companies failed to diligently protect their basic assets. How is it possible that, faced with known vulnerabilities and available fixes, organizations didn’t act with diligence? New security models rely on continuous evaluation; testing your defenses to confirm their effectiveness isn’t just good practice, it’s what we do in any other professional or personal setting (training or rehearsing before the real thing).

As an exception, some specific scenarios or complex environments call for targeted, one-off testing, the same way companies test their disaster recovery plan at least once a year for low-probability events. Why wouldn’t they do the same for events that will, sooner or later, happen?

Again, there are many strategies and tools to support them, at very different price points, but applying the “test, test, test” principle is universally valid and should be adopted by companies of every kind.

At INNOVATE, we help organizations adapt this strategy to their reality.