Adaptive Attacks Meet Adaptive Defense in A New Era of Cybersecurity

Adaptive defense is a modern cybersecurity approach that augments security operations (SecOps) and helps businesses adapt to the evolving threat landscape. It moves beyond the traditional, static security model by prioritizing hardening, prediction and prevention over detection and remediation.

Technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), that not so long ago belonged to the realm of science fiction, are now easily accessible. In the wrong hands, these promising tools become powerful weapons. An adaptive cybersecurity strategy is crucial for addressing their novel security risks.

How The Cybersecurity Landscape Is Evolving

Highly evasive, adaptive cyberattacks bypass traditional defenses to deliver malware, exfiltrate data or compromise systems. AI and quantum computing are among the most significant and potentially dangerous attack vectors.

Most breaches focus on short-term financial gain, but not all. Quantum computers could crack encryption, enabling hackers to decrypt ciphertext. Robert Hannigan — the chairman of security vendor BlueVoyant International — warned it is prudent to assume threat actors are exfiltrating large amounts of encrypted data for this purpose.

No definitive examples of quantum-aided decryption exist, or, if they do, details remain undisclosed by intelligence agencies. However, experts agree the world is entering the age of “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks.

Adaptive AI is more pressing. In September 2025, the AI company Anthropic detected the first signs of a sophisticated espionage campaign. The company claimed that a state-sponsored threat group used Claude Code to autonomously compromise targets. According to their disclosure, the AI conducted 80-90% of the campaign, limiting human involvement to decision-making.

The attack jailbroke the AI agent to bypass its guardrails. It identified high-value databases, tested security vulnerabilities and harvested credentials by writing its own exploit code. It finished in a fraction of the time it would have taken human attackers.

Firms Are Entering a New Era of Cybersecurity

Businesses spent upward of $200 billion on cybersecurity products and services in 2024, up from $140 billion in 2020. This increase is due to a rise in attack frequency and sophistication. Despite these investments, many hacks are successful because attack vectors are evolving faster than conventional solutions can keep up with.

AI and quantum computing are the largest threats looming on the horizon of the cybersecurity landscape. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Cybersecurity Outlook report revealed that 66% of companies agree that AI will significantly impact cybersecurity in the coming years. However, many other novel adaptive cyberattacks exist, including polymorphic malware and automated reconnaissance.

Even conventional methods are changing. For instance, ransomware is taking on double and triple extortion tactics. Hackers encrypt data, steal and threaten to leak it.

An adaptive defense is necessary to effectively address these rapid changes. It typically leverages autonomous, intelligent or predictive tools to enhance threat detection, classification and response. Businesses can use it to pivot without disrupting operations or inadvertently creating weak spots. As the cybersecurity landscape evolves, so will they.

The Adaptive Defense Model’s Core Principles

Proactive action underpins all effective preventive strategies. Here are the four core principles of the adaptive defense model:

• Gather threat intelligence: Collect information to anticipate where, when and how cyberattacks could occur.

• Conduct proactive threat hunting: Always perform threat hunting under the assumption that cybercriminals are present and undetected.

• Outline clear defense techniques: Establish a clear, data-driven procedure to standardize processes and enable accountability mechanisms.

• Contain and eliminate threats: Work quickly to trap, isolate and eradicate cyberthreats before they can do damage.

With a well-defined plan, organizations can quickly identify and eliminate previously unseen threats. Instead of focusing on minimizing damage during incident response, they can prevent cybersecurity incidents from occurring in the first place.

Ways to Proactively Address Cybersecurity Risks

There are many ways to implement the adaptive defense model — no one-size-fits-all approach exists. However, you can follow these step-by-step instructions to create a practical foundation:

• Utilize the right tools: Leverage autonomous and predictive tools to identify indicators of compromise as they emerge and anticipate novel security risks.

• Use foundational strategies: Follow programs like the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), which has a unique tiered approach to security maturity.

• Search for weaknesses: An adaptive strategy requires constant evaluation. Conduct regular audits, using penetration testing and vulnerability assessments.

• Create a culture of awareness: A plan is only as good as the people carrying it out. Fostering a culture of awareness helps align their actions with goals.

Creating an adaptive cybersecurity strategy from scratch is unnecessarily complex. It is generally more efficient to tailor a recognized framework to the organization’s particular requirements. As a government-backed model, the CMMC provides a clear framework for systematically maturing your cybersecurity capabilities.

It measures an organization’s cyber hygiene by objectively evaluating how it manages controlled unclassified information. It rates them on a scale from Level 1 to 5, with Level 5 being the most mature. The first level comprises 17 controls across six domains, while the last consists of 171 controls across all 17 domains.

There is greater flexibility within the technology stack, as the tools in use vary according to industry, organizational size, and vendor ecosystem.

In regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation and ISO 27001, multifactor authentication is considered a crucial measure for meeting security requirements. It is often recommended or mandatory for a reason — Microsoft research suggests it can block 99.9% of credential theft attacks.

Where Adaptive Attacks and Defenses Meet

In the face of constantly evolving security risks, a static strategy is insufficient. The cybersecurity landscape is reaching a critical inflection point. As attacks become increasingly severe, companies that take no action risk losing everything. Using an adaptive defense framework can help enhance cybersecurity resilience in times of rapidly increasing threats.