Page 308 - Cyber Defense eMagazine September 2025

The Genuine Conflicts: Certain scenarios present unavoidable tradeoffs. Regulatory requirements
sometimes mandate specific controls regardless of operational impact. Emergency situations may require
accepting risk to maintain critical services.

When Adaptive Approaches Actually Work

Progressive organizations are successfully applying adaptive security principles, but success depends
on specific conditions:

Technical Prerequisites

Infrastructure Maturity: Organizations need API-driven architectures with micro segmentation
capabilities, real-time policy engines, and automated compliance validation - typically requiring cloud-
native or hybrid infrastructures less than five years old.

Data Visibility: Adaptive approaches require user behavior analytics platforms, network traffic analysis,
endpoint detection and response tools, and security orchestration platforms that can process and
correlate data in under 60 seconds.

Automation Capabilities: Success requires automated policy enforcement and response capabilities.

Organizational Prerequisites

Unified Success Metrics: Teams must share accountability for both security and operational outcomes
rather than optimizing for conflicting KPIs.

Risk-Informed Culture: Organizations need sophisticated risk assessment capabilities and cultures that
can make nuanced security decisions rather than defaulting to maximum protection.

Technical Leadership: Implementation requires deep expertise in both security and operations, not just
project management skills.

The Broader Implications

If security can genuinely enhance rather than hinder operations, what does this reveal about traditional
IT organizational structures?

Governance Evolution: Organizations may need to restructure IT governance to optimize for combined
security-operational outcomes rather than managing them as separate functions.

Role Redefinition: Traditional security roles focused on risk mitigation may evolve toward "operational
enablement through security intelligence."

Cyber Defense eMagazine – September 2025 Edition 308
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