Cyber security has outgrown its old reputation as a defensive solution, as the department that answers ‘No’ because the question was too risky. Digital transformation, artificial intelligence, machine learning and a wealth of technology innovations have put security at the heart of business decision-making. It’s moved away from a few experts worried about firewalls and access to the C-Suite, where business decision-makers are investing in solutions that allow them to build the business with confidence.
“If your organisation is developing or acquiring solutions, cyber security needs to be embedded from the outset and become part of the design, part of the culture, and part of how the company enables confident innovation,” says Augustine Tumi Mogashoa, IT and Business Continuity Management Specialist at ASQE.
This proactive stance is literally moving security to the left, away from a rigid wall that affects growth and development towards an integral part of processes and the culture of the company. The Accenture State of Cyber Security Resilience 2025 study found that companies with formal incident response times and hands-on drills experienced significant improvements. With just a 10% increase in security investment aligned with strategic practices, companies ‘could detect and remediate cyber threats 14% faster’ [1].
On the flip side, companies approaching security with the attitude of fixing it when its broken tend to take longer to recover and often must manage higher costs. [2]
Mogashoa points out that most breaches still occur because companies are being reactive. They first build solutions and then they secure them, which introduces unpatched vulnerabilities and inconsistent access controls.
“It’s not enough to respond when something goes wrong,” she says. “True resilience means anticipating threats and building resilient systems around governance, risk and compliance (GRC) best practices. This needs to sit in the DNA of the business.”
Security maturity begins with visibility, knowing what assets exist, how they are connected and where the weaknesses lie. It involves continuous auditing and adopting technologies that are capable of enhancing threat intelligence. Modern solutions like AI-driven detection and self-healing endpoints are helping companies to stay ahead of AI-powered and firmware-level attacks.
“You need tools that can handle the threats that are coming out tomorrow,” says Mogashoa. “It sounds cliched, but as deepfakes and intelligent attacks become more commonplace, it really has become critical for companies to build systems that have next-generation threats in mind. It’s about upgrading your systems and your thinking.”
Cyber security is increasingly collaborative. ASQE partners with global technology leaders, including Okta, CrowdStrike, Absolute, Dell Technologies and Infoblox, to deliver integrated and scalable protection. Each solution has a distinct strength and value-add across the key security areas of identity management, endpoint defence, real-time visibility and resilient infrastructure.
“Honestly, it’s a team sport,” says Mogashoa. “Partnering with the right companies means the business can deliver the right solutions. In the same way, it means that we can partner with our customers to ensure their infrastructure is part of the solution. Without collaboration, you run the risk of wedging solutions into round holes, and they don’t deliver the scale and depth of security you need.”
Partnerships ensure ASQE offers always-on visibility, self-healing security and data integrity across business environments. For Mogashoa, creating cyber-resilient organisations means linking people, process and technology so business leaders must integrate cyber security into strategy, ensure executive accountability and build transparency across teams.
“When everyone understands the value of security, it stops being a burden,” says Mogashoa.
References:
[2] https://www.netguru.com/blog/reactive-vs-proactive-management
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