Say a mid-sized law firm found a phishing email in its queue. In response, the firm’s layered defenses sprang into action. The cybersecurity capabilities the firm had in place quickly flagged the phishing email as suspicious and thwarted the attack before it could escalate into a full-blown incident. The threat was dead on arrival—exactly what a practiced security posture is meant to do.
A 40-year-old radiology clinic recently had a very different day. Attackers slipped through an unpatched gap, reached sensitive patient records and triggered a crisis that shuttered the practice for nearly two months while it restored its network and investigated the attack.
In one case, preparedness could have been routine; in the other, it became a lesson in operational survival.