Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
If you work in cybersecurity, the conversation usually revolves around risk, breaches, and what keeps us up at night (which, let’s be honest, is often everything). But as the holiday season rolls around, it’s a great time to hit pause and appreciate how far we’ve come.
As someone who’s been in the trenches for a while, I’ve seen the industry mature from the Wild West days of simple firewalls and antivirus to a sophisticated, proactive field. This year, instead of listing the top five threats, I want to share the five security advancements I am most thankful for.
I’m thankful for the rise of the cloud and built-in security.
Remember the old days? If you wanted enterprise-level security, you had to buy the gear, rack it, stack it, and configure it yourself. It was expensive, slow, and often done incorrectly. Let’s face it: AWS, Azure, and GCP are security superheroes. They handle the massive, complex infrastructure security—the physical security of the data centers, the network segregation, the DDoS mitigation—better than 99% of businesses ever could on their own. They offer robust tools and compliance standards by default. What does this mean for our teams? It means that we are now free to focus on what matters most: securing our applications, our data, and our unique business logic. We’re not wasting cycles patching operating systems on servers sitting in a dusty closet; we’re using those cycles to build more resilient software. This is a massive win, making top-tier baseline security accessible to literally every organization, from the startup to the Fortune 500.
I am thankful that Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is becoming the norm.
If I could hand out one physical item to every person on the planet as a gift, it would be a reliable MFA token. It sounds boring, but the impact is profound. Think about it: most successful, large-scale breaches start with a stolen credential. A simple password is, frankly, garbage security. MFA requires a second thing—a phone notification, a fingerprint, or a code—to prove you are who you say you are. This simple act has single-handedly eliminated a vast majority of credential-stuffing and basic phishing attacks. As an industry expert, I can tell you unequivocally: MFA is the single most effective, high-ROI control you can implement. Its widespread adoption across consumer services and enterprise networks is saving the global economy (and countless reputations) every single day. If you don't use it everywhere, please start today—it’s the low-hanging fruit that stops the bad guys cold.
I am thankful for the evolution of our defensive tools, especially Advanced Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR).
In the early 2000s, "endpoint security" meant an antivirus program that used signatures to catch known viruses. It was a joke. It missed almost everything new. Modern EDR is phenomenal. It doesn't just look for known threats; it monitors behavior, analyzes process trees, and collects telemetry across every single computer and server in the network. This gives security teams genuine, real-time visibility and control. If an attacker sneaks past the perimeter, EDR lets us see exactly what they are doing, where they are going, and allows us to isolate that machine instantly. We've moved from hoping the antivirus catches something to having the intelligence to investigate and respond decisively. This is truly the defensive engine room of the modern security operation.
I am thankful for the industry’s major shift toward the adoption of zero trust.
For decades, network security operated like a castle: build a strong wall (firewall), and once you’re inside, you’re trusted. If an attacker got past that wall, they could roam freely. It was a disaster waiting to happen. The principle "never trust, always verify" has fundamentally changed how we design networks. Whether you are inside the corporate headquarters or logging in from a coffee shop, you must be verified continuously and given only the minimal access needed. This paradigm makes internal networks vastly more resilient. It minimizes lateral movement, ensuring that if an attacker compromises one device, they don't get the keys to the kingdom. It’s hard work to implement, but it’s the only sustainable model for the modern distributed workplace.
I am thankful for the passion and resilience of security professionals.
Forget the technology for a moment. This industry is powered by people who genuinely care about protecting others. I'm talking about the tireless security analysts hunting threats at 3 a.m., the incident responders sacrificing holidays to contain a crisis, and the CISOs who carry the weight of an entire organization's digital safety. Cybersecurity is a high-stress, often thankless job where success is invisible and failure is front-page news. Yet, these professionals show up every day, learning new techniques, collaborating, and standing firm against an adversary that is relentless and global. They are the human firewall and the reason our digital world continues to function safely. To every security analyst, engineer, and CISO out there: thank you. You are the real heroes of the digital age.
This Thanksgiving, let’s enjoy the peace of mind these advancements provide and raise a glass to the people who build and maintain them.