Ivanti’s 2025 State of Cybersecurity Report found something utterly unsurprising: that organizations report a significant preparedness gap (that is, the gap between the perceived threat level and their degree of preparedness) across every threat vector and vulnerability we asked about.
While security teams rightfully devote resources to building resilience so they can swiftly respond to and recover from attacks, closing those preparedness gaps requires proactive cybersecurity measures.
Reactive vs. proactive cybersecurity: what’s the difference?
Proactive cybersecurity refers to what you do before a cyber attack to improve your security posture and reduce your attack surface; reactive cybersecurity interrupts an attack that has already breached your systems, containing it and minimizing the damage it may cause.
These are in no way mutually exclusive. Proactive security reduces risk, but it doesn’t eliminate it. “Reactive” may have a slightly negative connotation, but capabilities that allow you to respond to an attack, no matter how much you’ve narrowed your risk exposure, are vitally important.
Examples of proactive cybersecurity measures
Proactive security is a philosophy, not a blueprint. It’s the idea that taking steps to minimize exposure long before a risk materializes is the best use of security time and resources.
With that said, there are specific capabilities you can build to embrace that philosophy, including (but certainly not limited to) vulnerability scanning, attack surface management, vulnerability management, exposure validation, patch management, configuration management and user training.
Attack surface management
Attack surface management aims to understand all of an organization’s entry points – digital, physical or human – that can be used by hackers to gain access to its IT environment.
The attack surface includes devices (known and unknown), but the environment extends beyond devices. Applications, software, social media accounts and other digital spaces or assets used by people associated with the enterprise are included, too.
Related: Attack Surface Checklist
Vulnerability scanning
Vulnerability scanning is exactly what it sounds like: specialized scanners evaluate networks and IT assets for vulnerabilities that can be exploited, then flag them for security teams to address. Because there are thousands of known vulnerabilities (with more developing every day), vulnerability scanning is most effective when automated.
External vulnerability scans review a network from the outside in, trying to identify ways that a hacker could get into the network. Internal scans take the vantage point of someone who has already broken into the network and the vulnerabilities they could exploit from within.
Vulnerability management
Vulnerability scanning and attack surface management inform the longer, more comprehensive cycle of vulnerability management. This is an ongoing process where vulnerabilities are identified and categorized as a certain level of priority before teams determine the best way to resolve them.
A default approach to vulnerability management is to prioritize by severity, but this approach can overemphasize some vulnerabilities while overlooking others. Layering on threat context – is this vulnerability actively exploited? – and risk context – how detrimental would the exploitation of this vulnerability be for my organization? – produces a clearer picture of true priority.
Exposure validation
Exposure validation tests the feasibility of an attack and the strength of your countermeasures by performing attack scenarios. This approach is also called offensive security. The two most common methods are penetration testing and red teaming.
- Penetration testing (or pen testing) is when ethical hackers attempt to hack your system, then offer feedback on what worked well and what areas require further improvement. Pen testing can also be conducted with automated tools.
- Red teaming, similar to pen testing, involves having ethical hackers conduct a planned cyber attack with the goal of discovering where your defenses can be improved. Red teaming is a scenario-based simulation, whereas pen testing involves looking for as many different vulnerabilities as possible.
Adversarial exposure validation, or AEV, is also emerging as a practice, using software to continuously and autonomously perform attack simulations to prove the existence of exposures.
Patch management
Once vulnerabilities have been identified through attack surface management and vulnerability scanning, prioritized through vulnerability management, and then validating through exposure validation, the question becomes, how do I react? Patch management is one way to respond to and close vulnerabilities, specifically software vulnerabilities for which patches exist.
Patch management is a prime target for automation, particularly when paired with risk-based vulnerability management. Workflows that automatically move from detection to decision-making to deployment shorten mean time to remediation and minimize human errors.
Patch management does have one important blind spot: shadow IT. Without an accurate accounting of what software employees use, patch compliance is impossible to enforce. This is why the discovery component of attack surface management is so critical.
Configuration management
Configuration management, like patch management, is a way to respond to identified vulnerabilities – in this case, vulnerabilities that apply to the devices themselves rather than the software that is run on them. Configuration refers to the proactive cybersecurity measures that are set at a device level, such as enforcing multi-factor authentication or encryption. While these measures can be applied individually by the end user, they are most effectively enforced using endpoint management software.
Again, like patch management, shadow IT complicates the picture. Unknown, unmanaged devices may not comply with your organization’s security standards – there’s no way to know. And just like with patch management, the discovery component of attack surface management is critical. By identifying previously unknown devices and bringing them under management, IT teams can enforce compliance.
User training
Your attack surface isn’t solely digital – there’s a human component as well. Phishing and other forms of social engineering take advantage of human vulnerabilities, often chaining them together with digital exposures (software vulnerabilities, improper configurations, etc.) to launch an attack. Educating employees helps minimize exposures, just like remediating digital vulnerabilities does.
Gaining support for proactive cybersecurity measures
Gaining support for proactive cybersecurity measures is, in some ways, harder than reactive cybersecurity measures. The threat has yet to materialize, so it’s harder for non-security stakeholders to understand necessary tradeoffs, such as temporary business disruptions or other things that hinder productivity, at least in the short term. User education takes time out of busy schedules. Patch deployment can take applications offline or require troubleshooting.
To get and keep support for these sorts of measures, security teams ought to be mindful of minimizing the disruption that remediation can cause (for example, using ring deployment, which rolls out software updates to successively larger “rings,” identifying problems and troubleshooting at each step, before expanding to the full user base).
A risk assessment exercise can also be beneficial for making a threat that hasn’t yet materialized real to other stakeholders. An objective measure of your exposure and the cost of the associated risks – particularly if you’re able to quantify that exposure in financial terms – may be the difference between grudging acceptance and true support for proactive security.
Related: Evaluating Cyber Risk Objectively: A Guide to Data-Driven Risk Assessments
Why proactive cybersecurity matters
A proactive cybersecurity strategy isn’t at odds with reactive security – a healthy organization has robust capabilities to address risk before and after it materializes. But preventative actions will improve your risk posture and make the occasions when a risk does materialize fewer and farther between. Proactive cybersecurity measures like managing the attack surface, patching, sound configurations and user awareness are clear investments in your organization’s long-term security.
