Forget Trends. What Should Your Cybersecurity Posture Look Like in 2025?

Somehow, it’s already February and Resultant would be remiss if we didn’t issue some kind of “Cybersecurity trends for 2025!” style blog post as is custom in this industry. I’m not a big fan of trends, though, because while some become part of every business’s day-to-day reality (i.e., multi-factor authentication) numerous other trends just raise a ruckus before falling by the wayside.

Instead, let’s discuss something practical: Cybersecurity Posture in 2025.

While everyone’s talking about new solutions that either have, or straight-up are, artificial intelligence (AI), large language model (LLM), or machine learning (ML) tools, you still need to nail down the fundamentals: Can you deny, detect, contain, and remediate threats in your environment? Visibility is key; you cannot deny, detect, contain and remediate threats you cannot see. Once you’re aware of them, how fast are you able to act?

Let’s look at the aspects and questions to consider for each of these action areas.

DENY

• Endpoint Security: Eventually, controls will fail, and a user will click on something they shouldn’t. When that time comes, you’ll want a strong extended detection and response (XDR) platform like SentinelOne or Microsoft Defender to intercede and contain suspicious and malicious files and processes before they can do any damage.
• Vulnerability Management: Are you actively scanning, triaging, and remediating OS-level and third-party application vulnerabilities? If not, it’s akin to leaving your windows open in a bad neighborhood. Using a vulnerability management platform that measures not only Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score, but a dynamic risk score—like that from the Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)—helps you to focus your efforts on the vulnerabilities that put you most at risk.
• Email Security: Email remains the largest attack vector, with threat actors targeting it for initial access and to move both laterally within an organization and out to additional organizations. Since attack methods evolve, your email protection system and employee awareness need to as well.
• Firewall Hygiene: When was the last time your team reviewed firewall access control policy to validate that each rule was as tight as possible and that any of those pesky troubleshooting or test rules you had created no longer existed? If you don’t know the answer, it’s not happening often enough.
• Penetration Testing: Speaking of open windows in bad neighborhoods, why not hire a reformed burglar to try to break in? A manual penetration test will identify vulnerabilities you didn’t know existed—including that old SOHO router you forgot about that’s now part of an APT botnet.

DETECT

• Endpoint Security: No, I didn’t accidentally copy/paste and forget to edit. Endpoint security provides us with deep visibility into workstations and servers, monitoring unusual behavior, inventorying software, and keeping a detailed log history.
• Identity Protection: Between email security identity protection features and tools like Entra Identity Protection, automated alerting and remediation of risky behavior can stop attacks before damage is done.
• Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Red Team noted in 2024 that organizations don’t put enough emphasis on network security, and I’ve found that to be extremely accurate as I work incidents and security assessments for Resultant clients. An IPS system typically sits in line between your core switch and firewall analyzing all north/south traffic or between any critical security zones and/or resources. It can help detect and deny malicious domain communication, command and control attempts, and much more.
• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): Nearly everything in your environment can be integrated into a SIEM that will alert on a plethora of events. Even more powerful is a SIEM backed by a security operations center (SOC) to triage and escalate pertinent events for your security team to investigate.
• Data Security: Data is the treasure malicious actors want to steal, destroy, and manipulate. One of the best ways we can protect ourselves is to identify the sensitive data we have and move it to a secure location. Many organizations don’t realize how much sensitive data they have in individual users’ OneDrives, let alone sitting around unencrypted and accessible to anyone who comes across it. A solid data security posture management (DSPM) and user entity behavior analytics (UEBA) system can help solve this problem.

CONTAIN

• Endpoint Security: The MVP of the year! An XDR can quarantine files and contain devices both automatically and manually for speed and flexibility.
• IPS: IPS devices can also dynamically block malicious or suspicious traffic as it’s detected.
• Email Security: A solid email security solution can quarantine suspicious emails and block malicious emails. Ideally, it will also have identity protection and incident response capabilities to alert and remediate compromised email accounts and targeted phishing campaigns at scale.
• Entra ID: Identity protection and token protection can aid in remediating risky sign-ins and mitigating the threat of session token hijacking.

Remediate

Remediation is a culmination of refining the tools discussed above, keeping two main aspects at the forefront of efforts:

Shore up Visibility: Can you see what you need to? You cannot stop what you do not know exists.

Harden the environment:

• Execute firewall geoblocking policies, conditional access protocols across the organization, and email security toolsets for every endpoint.
• Implement role-based access control (RBAC) across both your Microsoft environment and applications.
• Focus on data security by identifying and securing sensitive and critical data as well as micro-segmenting the network by workloads and critical resources.
• Reassess cybersecurity tooling coverage. Most environments struggle to keep up with configuration and security baselines. Dynamic inventories, as well as remote monitoring and management (RMM) and tools like BrightGauge, can aid in the effort to ensure adequate coverage.

You can’t deny, detect, contain and remediate threats you can’t see. The above discussion should point you in the right direction to ensure that not only can you see threats and attacks but can prevent many and respond quickly when necessary.

Find out how your cybersecurity posture will hold up to whatever 2025 brings your way. Contact us to schedule an assessment today.

Schedule an Assessment