As organizations face enduring and significant threats from ransomware gangs and APT groups, and regulatory pressures intensify, 2025 marks a pivotal shift: security and business leaders are increasingly prioritizing pre-emptive cyber resilience over reactive security measures.
The key to minimizing business disruption lies in adopting proactive network security strategies that emphasize readiness, recoverability, and resilience.
In this blog, we explore the cyber resilience trends shaping the landscape as we pass the halfway point of the year.
1. Network segmentation is non-negotiable as AI accelerates the speed of attacks
There is a widespread push towards rigorous network segmentation for critical business systems, not just as a best practice but as a compliance mandate under US GOV Zero Trust and CORA and EU DORA, and NIS 2.
Effective network segmentation is crucial for delaying or preventing lateral movement within networks, which poses an increasing risk as attackers leverage AI to automate and accelerate their efforts. Gartner predicts that by 2027, AI agents will reduce the time required to exploit account exposures by 50%.
Network devices are particularly attractive targets because they serve as the connective tissue for all organizational IT operations. When compromised, these devices provide attackers with persistent lateral movement routes to access, amend and/or exfiltrate sensitive data flows.
To mitigate these risks, configuring and hardening network devices to enforce segmentation and least privilege access has become a critical focus, helping to contain threats before they escalate.
2. Full network visibility to monitor and protect business-critical segments
With the rise in software supply chain attacks and insider threats, as well as perimeter breaches, organizations are prioritizing continuous network change visibility and monitoring.
Configuration changes, software updates, and poor segmentation can all open doors to attackers. The ability to differentiate planned, unplanned, and unauthorized network changes in real time provides a critical security control.
Full network visibility enables businesses to rapidly identify and investigate unauthorized changes as well as understand exposure from any change to industry-specific attack vectors and quickly detect least privilege access and macro segmentation indicators of compromise.
3. Pre-emptive risk-exposure remediation is the new standard
Organizations are evolving from traditional pass/fail compliance-based vulnerability management to pre-emptive exposure management by aligning industry-specific threat intelligence with their vulnerability posture. This shift helps leaders assess the business risks posed by vulnerabilities in critical network segments, such as Operational Technology, and understand how these risks leave the organization exposed.
This approach enables Incident Remediation and Response teams to prioritize their limited resources on improving network readiness and resilience against industry-specific attacks. These attacks often combine various tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to move laterally and achieve their objectives, potentially costing businesses millions in ransoms, lost revenue, fines, and reputational damage.
Experts increasingly recognize that pre-emptively addressing a small, targeted set of known exploited vulnerabilities and misconfigurations - rather than the overwhelming total of potential threats—delivers significant ROI.
This strategy reduces “threat debt” and strengthens organizational resilience against both malicious attacks and accidental disruptions.
4. CMDB-centric approach to underpin disaster mitigation and recovery
Leading security agencies like DHS CISA and industry analysts agree that continuous network visibility and pre-emptive, CMDB-centric security automation increase organizational resilience.
This approach addresses Network Source of Truth (NSoT) gaps that limit disaster mitigation and recovery, supports successful digital transformation initiatives, and reduces operational friction between NOC and SOC teams.
By tracking all configuration changes (whether planned or unauthorized), automated configuration management:
- Accelerates disaster recovery with instant rollbacks.
- Enables forensic-level root cause analysis of incidents.
- Supports pre-production change testing to prevent outages.
- Validates that post-change configurations enforce a secure and segmented state.
The bottom line: cyber resilience is business resilience
CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, and other business leaders no longer see network security as merely a compliance exercise. By adopting pre-emptive, CMDB-centric network exposure management, it has become a critical enabler of business continuity and digital transformation.
Organizations that implement network segmentation, full network visibility, pre-emptive risk exposure remediation and a CMDB-centric approach not only reduce the risk of downtime and financial losses but also strengthen their ability to thrive in an increasingly volatile cyber landscape.
Nipper Resilience for Proactive Network Security
Trusted globally by elite cyber teams, Nipper Resilience gives NOC, SOC and Incident Response & Remediation teams the real-time information they need to assure critical networks are ready and resilient to state-sponsored and industry-specific attacks and are quickly recoverable in the event of a disruption or disaster.
The Nipper Resilience also provides evidence of compliance with the latest readiness and resilience mandates, including US GOV Zero Trust, CORA, EU DORA and NIS 2.
- Proactively detect, validate and assess impact of every network change to identify exposure and IOCs
- Prioritize remediation, response and recovery programs according to business-critical disruption impact
- Ensure accurate and complete CMDB underpins disaster recovery and business continuity program
- Evidence and assure compliance with corporate and/or externally mandated readiness and resilience best practices
Find out how to implement a proactive network resilience strategy for your organization here.