How cybersecurity leaders are optimizing their budgets in 2025

The rapid expansion of digital transformation, new daily regulations and the significant increase in sophisticated cyber attacks, budgets now need to accommodate for everything and anything at any given time.

Exposure management is more than just a new approach to the old find-fix process. Much of what passes for continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) is reactive and doesn’t prioritize what can be exploited in your environment. The idea is to focus on your organization’s biggest cyber weaknesses and rally teams to address the issue before attacks exploit it.

Gartner says that by 2026, organizations that prioritize their security investments via a CTEM program will be three times less likely to suffer a breach. This means you’ll need a proactive approach to building and optimizing organizational threat resilience.

Many solutions that claim to provide exposure management are missing a key element. CTEM solutions providers sometimes leave out the “validate” part of the equation. You need real-world context added to your exposure data, which helps you and your teams get faster, smarter and more efficient security outcomes.

The reality is simple: exposure management without the critical context of exposure validation is just a dressed-up version of vulnerability management.

Exposure validation is the proven X-factor that shows how resilient your business is to a threat and how exploitable that threat is in your environment. The time to focus on theoretical threats is over. Without exposure validation these players in the market claiming to provide CTEM are just offering more of the same.

Increasingly, we’re seeing that more of the same just isn’t enough in 2025. Consider the following data points about the impact of breaches on organizations like yours:

• 81% of board of directors' view cybersecurity as business risk (Gartner)
• Over 67% of businesses paid a ransom in the past year, with 45% victimized by ransomware in the previous six months. (Security Today,Cohesity)
• In 2024, 47% of companies reported difficulty acquiring new customers post-breach (up from 20%), and 43% lost existing customers (up from 21%) (CyberMagazine)
• Nearly half of organizations require 6+ days to recover data and restore normal operations after a cyber event (Cohesity)
• Only 2% of companies have implemented firm‑wide cyber resilience, even though 66% ranked cyber as their top strategic risk (PWC)
• 67% of businesses do not feel confident in their ability to fully recover after a cyber attack (Security Today)

Identity & Access Management

Device Security

Exposure validation is the proven X-factor that shows how resilient your business is to a threat and how exploitable that threat is in your environment. The time to focus on theoretical threats is over. Without exposure validation these players in the market claiming to provide CTEM are just offering more of the same.

Increasingly, we’re seeing that more of the same just isn’t enough in 2025. Consider the following data points about the impact of breaches on organizations like yours:

• 81% of board of directors' view cybersecurity as business risk (Gartner)
• Over 67% of businesses paid a ransom in the past year, with 45% victimized by ransomware in the previous six months. (Security Today,Cohesity)
• In 2024, 47% of companies reported difficulty acquiring new customers post-breach (up from 20%), and 43% lost existing customers (up from 21%) (CyberMagazine)
• Nearly half of organizations require 6+ days to recover data and restore normal operations after a cyber event (Cohesity)
• Only 2% of companies have implemented firm‑wide cyber resilience, even though 66% ranked cyber as their top strategic risk (PWC)
• 67% of businesses do not feel confident in their ability to fully recover after a cyber attack (Security Today)

Device Security

Exposure validation is the proven X-factor that shows how resilient your business is to a threat and how exploitable that threat is in your environment. The time to focus on theoretical threats is over. Without exposure validation these players in the market claiming to provide CTEM are just offering more of the same.

Increasingly, we’re seeing that more of the same just isn’t enough in 2025. Consider the following data points about the impact of breaches on organizations like yours:

• 81% of board of directors' view cybersecurity as business risk (Gartner)
• Over 67% of businesses paid a ransom in the past year, with 45% victimized by ransomware in the previous six months. (Security Today,Cohesity)
• In 2024, 47% of companies reported difficulty acquiring new customers post-breach (up from 20%), and 43% lost existing customers (up from 21%) (CyberMagazine)
• Nearly half of organizations require 6+ days to recover data and restore normal operations after a cyber event (Cohesity)
• Only 2% of companies have implemented firm‑wide cyber resilience, even though 66% ranked cyber as their top strategic risk (PWC)
• 67% of businesses do not feel confident in their ability to fully recover after a cyber attack (Security Today)