By Elías Cedillo Hernández
CEO & Founder of Grupo BeIT, BuróMC and Elit Infrastructure Services
Throughout 2025, and up to December 8, cybersecurity has emerged as the ultimate way to close corporate objectives, evolving from a set of isolated tools into a strategic capability integrated into governance, operations, and business innovation. The sustained increase in security spending reflects how boards and executive teams responded to an environment of persistent threats, the expansion of hybrid cloud, and the accelerated adoption of generative AI.
Companies that treated security as a competitive advantage aligned investments to protect data and identities, modernize security operations, and strengthen continuity—achieving tangible improvements in market confidence and operational resilience. IBM’s five-step framework for securing AI—protecting data, models, usage, infrastructure, and governance—became a practical reference, while IDC highlighted AI’s double-edged nature: it will simplify defensive processes while simultaneously enabling increasingly sophisticated attacks, demanding unified platforms and robust controls over GenAI risks and privacy.
In parallel, Microsoft reinforced security-by-default discipline and secure operations in Latin America through its Secure Future Initiative, emphasizing that raising the minimum standard (MFA, reducing obsolete applications, and identity protection) delivers immediate benefits when security is integrated by design.
The operational snapshot of 2025 clearly revealed priority fronts. Abuse of valid accounts remained attackers’ preferred entry point, and phishing consolidated as the dominant vector, with a surge in emails delivering infostealers and constant pressure on identity hygiene and credential management programs.
In critical sectors, unpatched vulnerabilities drove more than a quarter of incidents—a clear indicator of the need to accelerate patch cycles and improve exposure visibility. These observations, drawn from the X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2025, were reinforced by Microsoft’s regional defense experience, with ransomware and phishing rising in Latin America, confirming that identity and vulnerabilities were the axes where year-end efforts needed to be strongest.
Industry response in 2025 was marked by automation and consolidation. Organizations that unified their operations centers with telemetry from endpoints, identities, email, data, and cloud under XDR/SIEM powered by AI reduced detection and containment times and improved decision consistency through security data lakes and more dynamic threat intelligence.
Fortinet outlined leadership imperatives for CEOs, CIOs, and CISOs observed throughout the year: transform security into a competitive advantage, embed risk management at the heart of governance, invest in Zero Trust and predictive analytics, promote a cross-functional security culture, and build resilience through planned continuity and recovery.
A complementary milestone was the growing executive responsibility for OT security; shifting accountability to the CISO/CSO and senior leadership correlated with greater maturity and reduced intrusion impact when OT was prioritized—aligning with IT/OT convergence under segmentation and control models.
2025 also delivered concrete lessons in vulnerability and supply chain management. Dell issued multiple security advisories on firmware and BIOS in the second half, reminding us that the risk surface includes microcode, third-party components, and hardware dependencies—and that update cycles must be part of continuity planning.
Telemetry from remote management platforms (iDRAC, RACADM) and patching discipline aligned to criticality and context proved essential for maintaining availability. In this vein, IBM demonstrated internally that AI-driven vulnerability prioritization—reducing alerts, identifying real risks invisible under purely CVSS-based approaches, and accelerating remediation toward actively exploited threats—is indispensable.
These capabilities, combined with backup restoration tests and incident simulations, became essential year-end practices: auditing access and permissions, strengthening phishing-resistant MFA, applying critical patches within 30 days as a standard, and training operational response.
Looking ahead to 2026, organizations must consolidate security as a unified platform and extend its reach to ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) objectives, privacy, and sustainability—connecting cyber resilience metrics to the business’s digital trust agenda.
AI will simplify security tasks and enable broader team participation with intelligent assistance, but it will also raise the bar: requiring specific GenAI governance, controls over PII usage, improved third-party management, and comprehensive auditing.
Zero Trust architecture will solidify as the operational standard for access, with dynamic segmentation, least privilege, and real-time risk signals to authorize or block, while SOCs evolve toward AI-driven operations with richer security data, advanced analytics, and automated containment reducing mean response times to minutes.
Microsoft will continue expanding capabilities in Defender and Sentinel for unified SecOps, while Fortinet will deepen automation and predictive analytics; companies will adopt phishing-resistant MFA, endpoint privilege management, and external exposure coverage as minimum requirements.
Vulnerability management in 2026 will definitively shift from severity-based classification to exploitable-risk prioritization, leveraging AI to correlate telemetry, enrich context, and automate patching and mitigations—including firmware and microcode layers.
Manufacturers like Dell will maintain periodic update cycles, and corporate governance will need to sustain OT co-leadership with visibility and IT/OT segmentation requirements, clear executive accountability, and impact metrics.
To make security a springboard toward 2026 objectives, a two-quarter roadmap will be essential: consolidate Zero Trust and IAM with identity inventory, conditional access, and least privilege; unify telemetry and analytics in XDR/SIEM with a data lake and secure deletion and auditing processes linked to ESG; and adopt risk-based vulnerability prioritization with automated patching flows and time-to-remediation indicators.
Measurement will be critical to maintain executive consistency. Closing 2025 with mean detection and containment times below four hours and aiming for under 60 minutes in 2026 through automation and XDR aligns with the maturity level observed in leading organizations.
MFA coverage for human and service accounts should exceed 95% by year-end 2025 and reach 100% with FIDO2 in 2026 to neutralize credential abuse. Compliance with critical patching within 30 days above 90% at the close of 2025 should improve to over 95% within 14 days during 2026, as prioritization becomes risk-driven and automation reduces friction.
In OT environments, intrusion impact will decrease year over year if executive responsibility remains and segmentation limits lateral movement—with a reasonable cumulative reduction target of 40% by 2026.
These indicators, combined with regular continuity exercises and attack simulations, will ensure security remains an enabler of revenue, reputation, and expansion with AI—rather than a defensive cost.
The close of 2025 demonstrates that cybersecurity already functions as a competitive advantage when integrated into governance, focused on identities and vulnerabilities, and supported by automation and data to drive faster, better decisions.
The outlook for 2026 demands sustaining that discipline with unified platforms, operational Zero Trust, AI-driven SOCs, and metrics connected to ESG and privacy. Organizations that keep these pillars in focus will not only close their corporate goals securely but also open the next cycle with strength—putting security at the service of growth and digital trust.
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