Security teams today are operating in an environment defined by speed, complexity, and constant change. With cloud sprawl, growing third-party dependencies, and rapid product changes, the attack surface has grown bigger than ever. New vulnerabilities emerge daily, and attackers often outpace traditional remediation strategies.
It’s no longer enough to detect and respond. Security needs to adapt just as quickly as a business does—or risk becoming a bottleneck rather than a backbone.
But the answer isn’t more tools or trend-chasing. The organizations making the biggest strides aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets—they’re the ones that treat security as a strategic journey. They build capability in phases: gaining visibility, then validating risk, and finally continuously assuring that systems and teams can stand up to what’s coming.
Each stage builds on the last:
As teams progress through these stages, the benefits build. Risk becomes easier to quantify, engineering gets ahead of issues, and security shifts from a reactive cost center to a strategic enabler—supporting innovation rather than slowing it down.
Research from firms like Gartner shows that organizations adopting continuous threat exposure management are up to three times less likely to suffer a material breach by 2026. But maturity isn’t a magic bullet. Resilience is earned—by aligning security efforts to what matters most and knowing which capabilities to prioritize at each stage.
Here’s the nuance: maturity doesn’t look the same for everyone.
A high-growth startup navigating cloud-native complexity doesn’t need the same approach as a global enterprise managing legacy systems and regulatory pressure. A healthcare provider securing patient data may need different assurance mechanisms than a fintech firm handling high-speed transactions. What’s “mature” for one team may be premature—or even counterproductive—for another.
That’s why the journey matters. Maturity isn’t a one-size-fits-all checklist—it’s a roadmap that adapts to your context, goals, and readiness.
In the next section, we’ll break down that roadmap into clear, progressive stages—and explore how different organizations can chart a course that balances ambition with practicality.
Because the goal isn’t perfection. It’s confidence. It’s agility. It’s resilience—built step by step.
When it comes to security maturity, one of the biggest mistakes organizations make is trying to run someone else’s playbook. Rolling out a bug bounty before you have asset visibility, or simulating attacks without solid response capabilities, leads to misaligned efforts, wasted resources, and unresolved risks.
No two organizations face the same challenges. A SaaS company needs speed, a regulated enterprise needs structure, and critical infrastructure prioritizes assurance. Maturity isn’t a destination—it’s a fit-for-purpose journey.
Still, it’s easy to get pulled off course. Roadmaps are often shaped by peer pressure, vendor promises, or compliance checklists. But what works at one stage may backfire at another.
68% of organizations take more than 24 hours to remediate critical vulnerabilities, often because prioritization lacks context. Over half lack a clear framework for deciding what to fix first. And 57% say they spend up to half their time manually managing vulnerability workflows—from scan consolidation to asset correlation.
This isn’t just inefficient—it creates blind spots. As vulnerabilities and attacker speed increase, skipping ahead to “advanced” testing without visibility or triage only adds noise. At best, it overwhelms teams. At worst, it hides real risks.
Even mature teams can stagnate. Relying on annual pen tests and quarterly scans rarely matches the speed or creativity of modern threats. Even well-run programs need continuous validation to stay sharp.
Maturity is always relative—to your environment, your model, and your current capabilities.
The most effective programs are honest about where they are—and intentional about what comes next. The right question isn’t just, “Are we doing enough?” but “Are we doing the right things for our stage?”
In the next section, we’ll map out that journey in four stages—from reactive response to sustained, validated assurance. We’ll show how each phase builds on the last—and how aligning the right activities to the right maturity level strengthens resilience at every step.
Security resilience is built thoughtfully, one step at a time. That growth isn’t always linear, and it rarely looks the same across organizations. What matters is that each phase supports what’s happening in a business, such as faster releases, more customers, and increasingly critical systems.
When priorities are clear, even complex security programs can move forward with confidence.
The stages below don’t represent a rigid blueprint; they’re an example of how teams might evolve their approaches to achieve proactive security. Each one highlights a different set of capabilities and considerations that may apply depending on your environment. As security programs mature, progress tends to follow the rhythm of a business..
Let’s take a look at what that progression might look like.
In the early maturity stage, security is largely reactive. Teams focus on putting out fires—patching new vulnerabilities, responding to incidents, and addressing audit findings. They often rely on basic tools like firewalls and periodic scans, but lack full visibility into their attack surface.
ASM is typically ad hoc. Assets like cloud instances and applications are often discovered only after something has gone awry. This blind spot leaves organizations vulnerable to exposures like forgotten internet-facing servers or unmonitored apps. According to IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report, it takes organizations an average of 277 days to identify and contain a breach—plenty of time for attackers to exploit unknown or untracked assets.
Penetration tests at this stage are limited, often run annually or only for compliance. The focus is on finding and patching known issues—a necessary but reactive approach. Threat intelligence is rarely used, and metrics, if tracked, focus on outputs (like number of patches or incidents) rather than outcomes. The result is a false sense of security—“we passed our audit, so we must be fine”—while real threats continue to evolve.
Reality check: Early maturity is reactive. Teams rely on time-boxed pen tests and incomplete inventories, prioritizing audits over real-world threats. The priority is passing audits—not keeping up with real-world threats.
Why it stalls: The threat landscape moves faster than periodic scans can keep up. In 2024 alone, over 40,000 CVEs were published—an increase of nearly 38% over 2023—averaging 108 new vulnerabilities every day. Static reports can become outdated almost as soon as they’re issued, allowing critical exposures to linger.
What “good” looks like at this stage:
Tip: Hold off on advanced testing like red teaming until guardrails—asset inventory, remediation workflows, and continuous monitoring—are firmly in place.
As security strategies move beyond the reactive phase, the limitations of point-in-time testing become clear. Leadership starts to realize that passing an audit or patching last month’s critical vulnerability isn’t enough—new threats keep emerging, and static processes can’t keep up. The security team is left answering the same question: “Why didn’t we catch this sooner?”
This stage marks a shift from “scan and scramble” to “listen and learn.” Teams begin integrating continuous signals: scanners run between formal tests, tools become more automated, and prioritization starts to replace volume. Reducing noise becomes a priority.
In this stage, organizations often launch their first limited-scope Vulnerability Disclosure Program (VDP) or experiment with a small bug bounty—testing the waters of working with ethical hackers. Internally, intake processes mature, with validated findings routed to engineering instead of overwhelming developers with raw scan data.
Metrics also evolve. Instead of tracking patch counts, teams begin asking:
“Are we fixing the right things, fast enough?” “Which assets or vulnerabilities are still in the dark?” “Are developers learning from the findings?”
Reality check: At this stage, teams are flooded with vulnerability data. False positives, duplicates, and missing context slow progress. Developers spend more time sorting noise than fixing issues, leading to frustration and loss of trust in security findings.
Why it stalls: Without clear intake and triage, even good findings get lost. External reports can feel disruptive without a workflow to manage them. And without tracking asset coverage, leadership has no visibility into what’s being tested—or what’s being missed.
Tip: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of progress. Listening mode is about learning what’s real, what’s noise, and where your blind spots are—not solving everything at once.
By this stage, security teams aren’t waiting for issues to appear—they’re actively hunting them. Organizations shift from reactive patching to proactive exposure management, embedding security into daily development and operations. The mindset becomes “predict and prevent,” not just “find and fix.”
ASM is now a formal, always-on program. Continuous discovery tools (often called external ASM or cyber asset management) provide real-time visibility into cloud workloads, internet-facing assets, APIs, and third-party connections—reducing unknowns and surprises. This matters: 31% of malicious requests now target unmanaged corporate APIs, a clear sign attackers are targeting exposed assets.
With a current asset inventory, penetration testing becomes sharper and more targeted. Instead of relying on annual assessments, organizations combine ASM with continuous testing—closing the loop between discovery and validation, and expanding coverage while reducing blind spots.
External security programs also mature. Teams in this stage often run structured bug bounties or VDPs, inviting trusted hackers to test live environments continuously. These programs run 24/7 and bring new eyes to persistent problems—but they require maturity: a clear scope, triage workflows, and resources to act on findings.
For organizations with more advanced security processes, red teaming becomes routine—through annual exercises or targeted simulations. These test not only technical defenses but also detection, response, and organizational readiness. Whether simulating ransomware or probing M&A exposure, red teaming shifts the focus from prevention to true resilience.
Reality check: You can’t patch everything—and you don’t have to. Proactive teams enrich vulnerability data with threat intelligence and business context to focus on what matters. Yet 37% of organizations say lack of context keeps critical bugs unresolved. The best teams fix the 5% of issues that cause 95% of the risk.
Why it matters: Manual triage doesn’t scale. According to Bugcrowd’s recent Total Economic Impact™ study by Forrester, organizations can save over $800,000 in three years by reducing reliance on dedicated staff for vulnerability review. Streamlining triage and focusing engineers on validated issues frees up time for higher-impact work—making risk-based prioritization essential for both speed and sustainability.
Tip: Think of external researchers as part of your extended team. Proactive organizations can now spin up crowdsourced talent in hours, not weeks—whether for microservices, third-party due diligence, or zero-day response. This flexibility turns security into a business enabler, not a bottleneck.
At this stage, security maturity reaches its peak—not because organizations are now impenetrable but because they operate from a place of confidence, resilience, and continuous validation. The question shifts from “Are we secure?” to “How do we know, right now?”
A security program has all the foundational elements in place: complete asset visibility, contextual vulnerability management, integrated threat intelligence, continuous testing, and streamlined developer feedback loops. But rather than resting on these foundations, mature teams go a step further: they continuously test and improve their defenses through real-world simulation.
Reality check: Traditional testing often stops at isolated vulnerabilities—but attackers don’t. Red teaming simulates real-world adversaries to uncover full attack paths and root causes, revealing how misconfigurations, credentials, and overlooked assets can be chained to reach critical systems.
Despite its value, red teaming remains underused—largely because it’s hard to staff, scale, and maintain the expertise required. That’s why modern organizations are adopting continuous red teaming and crowdsourced models to keep pace with evolving threats and validate whether defenses actually work.
Assured organizations treat offensive security as routine. Instead of annual red team exercises, they embrace ongoing simulations—constantly probing defenses, testing detection and response, and using every outcome to improve.
Why it matters: At this stage, intelligence drives resilience. Security becomes a dynamic system, guided by real attacker behavior and researcher signals. Intelligence-led programs validate not just control presence, but control performance—under pressure. As Tufin notes, continuous validation “flips the script” from hoping tools work to proving they do—enabling stronger coverage, faster detection, and a tighter loop between risk and response.
Key signals of intelligence-led assurance maturity:
Tip: In an intelligence-led model, metrics become narrative tools. It’s no longer about volume—it’s about velocity and impact:
These are the metrics that resonate at the executive level—and that position security as a strategic, evidence-backed enabler of a business.
Building a resilient posture starts with honest self-assessment and steady growth. Intelligence-led security is about making smart decisions based on real-world signals and risk.
In the early stages—whether you’re a startup or formalizing security in a larger organization—the focus should be on foundational visibility. Determine inventory assets, patch known vulnerabilities, establish incident response, and understand your attack surface. Tools like ASM help drive that visibility and enable smarter prioritization from day one. Even a basic risk-scoring model can shift your approach from reactive to strategic.
As your program matures, it’s time to move from reacting to preempting. Use threat intelligence to prioritize based on active threats, not hypotheticals. Simulate attacks through tabletop exercises or light red team engagements. Pilot a VDP or scoped bug bounty to gain external perspectives—it’s less about volume and more about relevance.
Mid-to-high-maturity organizations often face signal overload. Tools are in place, but confidence in outcomes is lacking. This is where intelligence-led security evolves into continuous validation. Security shifts from static coverage to live assurance, focusing on testing whether defenses work now, not whether they worked last year. Frameworks like CTEM or continuous red teaming help bring structure to this approach. Automation becomes essential—not to replace people, but to remove noise and elevate focus.
At every stage, the right question isn’t “Are we secure?” It’s “Can we prove we’re secure against the threats that matter?”
The goal isn’t to be breach-proof. It’s to be breach-resilient. Attackers will always test your defenses, but mature programs test them first. Whether through live-hacking events, simulations, or routine control validation, the outcome is the same: confidence backed by evidence, not assumptions.
By adopting an intelligence-led approach and advancing through each phase of maturity with intention, organizations avoid misaligned investments and strengthen their ability to defend against real-world threats. The outcome isn’t just operational efficiency—it’s the confidence to say, “We are prepared, and we can prove it.”