AN EVOLVING THREAT LANDSCAPE
A rapidly changing threat landscape is shifting the cybersecurity focus. But in case we’ve forgotten, what is cybersecurity? One way of looking at it is that it is the practice of deploying people, processes, policies and technologies to safeguard organisations, their critical systems and sensitive data from digital attacks. The way organisations approach this is undergoing a profound transformation. Keeping on top of cybersecurity trends and best practices is essential for cyber leaders to effectively manage the rapidly evolving threats and vulnerabilities their organisations face daily. They also need to do this without hindering business aspirations.
EMERGING PRESSURE IN CYBERSECURITY
The Gartner Top Trends in Cybersecurity 2025 survey highlights mounting pressures from several areas:
- The ongoing emergence of generative AI (GenAI) use cases, along with associated risks
- Burnout resulting from the persistent imbalance between the supply of and demand for skilled security professionals
- Relentless growth in cloud adoption, reshaping the structure of digital ecosystems
- Increasing regulatory obligations and heightened government oversight of cybersecurity, privacy, and data localisation
- Continued decentralisation of digital capabilities across enterprises
- The difficulty of fostering a culture of collaborative risk management
- Rising demand for business resilience and security amidst a constantly shifting threat landscape
- The wellbeing of CISOs and security teams
- The imperative for collaborative cyber risk management
- Managing machine identities effectively
AGILITY AND RESPONSIVENESS ARE THE NAME OF THE GAME
Cybersecurity leaders are working to equip their functions with agile and responsive capabilities. The 2025 Trends Report highlights that their actions and priorities are focused on these key practices, technical capabilities and structural reforms, each supporting cybersecurity leaders in achieving:
- Secure, AI-enabled business transformation – This is being pursued by formalising cybersecurity risk accountability, promoting sound cyber judgement, revitalising data security management programmes, and expanding enterprise identity and access management (IAM) strategies to encompass machine identities.
- Resilience – Leaders are enhancing resilience through proactive planning and regular reviews of both technological and human-driven capabilities, by optimising technology investment and utilisation, integrating AI into operational workflows, and tackling signs of burnout within security teams.
- Secure business transformation – This involves developing clear, actionable third-party risk management policies and fostering focused, collaborative engagement between cybersecurity, IT, and wider business units.
ENHANCING RESILIENCE
Security and risk management leaders are under growing pressure to enhance organisational resilience in an increasingly uncertain and high-risk world. Several interrelated factors are driving this heightened focus on resilience, including:
- The continued expansion of digital ecosystems, fuelled by accelerating cloud adoption
- A constantly evolving threat landscape, with emerging technologies empowering more sophisticated attackers
- The impracticality of remediating every potential vulnerability, given their rapid proliferation across modern digital environments
Among the critical assets that must be safeguarded are:
- Physical facilities
- Equipment and infrastructure
- Employees and workforce
- Third-party partners
- Business process outsourcing providers
- Technology suppliers, including cloud and IT service providers
THE TRANSITION TO CYBER RESILIENCE
Board directors and C-suite leaders increasingly recognise cyber risk as a fundamental business risk to manage, rather than merely an annoying technical issue to resolve.
Security and risk management (SRM) leaders are shifting the focus of cybersecurity from pure prevention towards resilience. Cyber resilience adopts a “when, not if” mindset, aiming to minimise the impact of cyber incidents on the organisation and to strengthen adaptability. This approach moves beyond the unrealistic goal of complete prevention, instead prioritising the enterprise’s ability to respond, recover and continue operating in the face of disruption.
WELL-BEING NOT BURNOUT
There is growing evidence that unmanaged stress and chronic pressure within cybersecurity functions can have a detrimental impact on both an organisation’s overall security posture and the long-term sustainability of its security programme.
Burnout among security and risk management (SRM) leaders, as well as their teams, has become a significant concern, particularly in an industry already grappling with a persistent and systemic shortage of skilled professionals. The constant demands of defending against evolving threats, managing complex regulatory environments, and responding to incidents place extraordinary strain on cybersecurity personnel. Forward-thinking cybersecurity leaders who proactively address burnout through prevention and remediation strategies can significantly enhance their programme’s overall effectiveness. By prioritising staff wellbeing and mental resilience, they not only improve operational performance but also strengthen the organisation’s ability to respond to and recover from disruption. Investing in a culture of support, manageable workloads, and continuous professional development contributes directly to workforce retention, engagement, and resilience — all of which are critical in maintaining a robust and adaptive security posture in today’s high-pressure threat environment.
NEW PRACTICES AND PROCESSES
Transformation is a constant for security and risk management (SRM) leaders, who must continually adapt to a dynamic and ever-evolving threat landscape to maintain the stability of business operations. These challenges present an opportunity to adopt a more proactive and holistic approach, and one that embeds resilience across both technological systems and human-driven capabilities. While cybersecurity leaders increasingly acknowledge the impracticality of eliminating every risk, they remain under significant pressure to enhance security outcomes without restricting business innovation or consuming excessive resources. Delivering high performance and continuously improving it, remains a top priority. At the same time, the growing complexity of distributed threat exposure and the decentralisation of decision-making raise a persistent and important question: who is responsible for cybersecurity? The answer is: everyone. Although ultimate accountability continues to rest largely with cybersecurity leaders, the dispersed nature of risk now demands greater involvement from boards of directors and business unit leaders. Shared responsibility, accountability, and governance are essential to managing cybersecurity effectively in a highly interconnected business environment.
THE ROLE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The rise of generative AI (GenAI) is reshaping data security programmes in three significant ways:
- A preference for synthetic data over obfuscated data in AI training, to better preserve privacy, address the challenges of limited data availability, and reduce bias
- A shift from securing structured data to focusing on unstructured data, which is becoming increasingly prevalent and valuable
- An increased necessity to evaluate the data security posture of GenAI systems to ensure data is not inadvertently accessed or shared with third parties
Inflated expectations driven by GenAI hype have led security and risk management (SRM) leaders to reprioritise their initiatives, concentrating on narrower use cases with clear, measurable outcomes. These more tactical AI implementations align AI tools and practices with existing performance metrics, integrating them into ongoing programmes and improving transparency around the tangible value of AI investments.
COLLABORATION ON CYBER RISK
As business technologists increasingly take technology investment decisions within lines of business, and transformative technologies such as GenAI swiftly reshape the cyber-risk landscape, traditional centralised cyber-risk management processes struggle to scale, create friction, and hinder agility. Effective cyber-risk management requires a scalable approach, with risk decisions made by well-informed business technologists. Centralised, yet flexible, oversight supports local decisions through collaborative, agile cyber-risk management.
MACHINE IDENTITIES
The importance of managing (non-human) identities and access for machines (devices and workloads) is increasing. Cloud services, automation and DevOps, along with the rise of AI, have led to the widespread use of machine accounts and credentials for physical devices and software workloads. As machine accounts and credentials are often created and managed by different teams within organisations, they frequently remain uncontrolled and unmanaged, making them a prime target for cyber adversaries seeking unauthorised access to IT systems.
THIRD-PARTY RISKS
Organisations heavily depend on vendors to enhance their GenAI capabilities. Progressive SRM leaders prioritise establishing policies for pausing and terminating third-party relationships to build resilience against unforeseen events. They work closely with business sponsors to jointly manage risks arising from third parties using GenAI and, as a result, guide the implementation of controls.
SECURITY BEHAVIOUR AND CULTURE PROGRAMS
Security behaviour and culture programmes (SBCPs) have become an increasingly prominent method for improving understanding and ownership of cyber-risk at the human level. This reflects a strategic shift towards embedding security deeply within an organisation’s culture, rather than treating it as a separate or purely technical issue. The growing popularity of SBCPs stems from the rising awareness that human behaviour plays a crucial role in the overall cybersecurity landscape. As a result, organisations are placing greater emphasis on fostering a security-conscious mindset among their employees to manage better and mitigate cyber risks.
CYBER RESILIENCE THROUGH CYBER TRANSFORMATION
In summary, achieving cyber resilience in today’s complex and rapidly evolving threat environment requires a fundamental transformation in how organisations approach cybersecurity. It is no longer sufficient to focus solely on prevention; instead, businesses must adopt agile, collaborative, and holistic strategies that integrate technology, people, and processes. Embracing innovative tools like generative AI, strengthening machine identity management, and fostering a culture of shared responsibility are essential components of this transformation. Moreover, prioritising the well-being of security teams and maintaining open communication across all levels of the organisation ensures that resilience is built not just into systems but into the very fabric of the enterprise. By embedding cyber resilience into their strategic frameworks, organisations can confidently navigate uncertainty, protect critical assets, and sustain business continuity in the face of ever-changing cyber threats.
Please contact Cyber London for more advice, support and guidance on implementing a cyber resilience framework.
