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Defensive “castle wall” approaches to cyber security no longer deter increasingly aggressive hackers. To meet cyber challenges, CIOs are now deploying tools and strategies that support prevention, early detection, and rapid response.

Increasingly, cyber criminals attack organizations using sophisticated techniques that evade many of the security controls established over the last several years. Recognizing this reality, CIOs at some leading organizations are approaching cyber risk more broadly by utilizing both defensive and offensive capabilities. In the landscape of cyber intelligence, mere deterrence is no longer sufficient. Companies must be able to identify threats before attacks occur—and respond proactively.

To support this approach, CIOs and IT are adopting forensic, logistics, and analytic capabilities and techniques to mine intelligence from both internal and external sources. By doing so, they are able to develop a deeper understanding of the origin of attacks and track specific adversaries to enhance future risk analysis. If a security breach occurs, they can move quickly to detect, isolate, and contain it.

Moreover, CIOs may soon be able to add new tools to their cyber intelligence arsenals, including technologies that support real-time sharing of threat information within industries; digital identity programs to validate employees and other users working both internally and externally; improvements in the way companies recruit and retain cyber intelligence talent; and bold new approaches to office design that promote privacy and compliance with security policies.

Although cyber threats are pervasive and often complex, the building blocks of a proactive approach to addressing them are similar to those for any well-planned business initiative. As such, organizations need to understand what’s at stake and the maturity level of their current efforts, and then make improvements by enhancing their capabilities whenever possible.

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